Inbound Marketing Age

With modern businesses investing heavily in their online presence, video represents more than the opportunity for creative venture – it’s an active response to the expectations of a web-savvy audience.

Hubspot research proved 69% of marketing, sales and business professionals had used video marketing before. A further 31% are planning to use it in the near future.

This steady rise in popularity has transformed video production from novelty to necessity for the most successful inbound marketing strategies. The upshot is, join in, get smart or get left behind.

So how do you fold it in to your overall inbound marketing strategy?

For many people, being videoed is up there with their worst phobias. Even the most dynamic personality can find themselves trembling in front of a camera. And for others it’s a breeze. The quietest person in the office can be transformed once the spotlight’s on them.

But whether you’re a natural on film or feel queasy at the thought, there’s no denying the power of video when it comes to B2B marketing.

"A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words," according to Forrester Research's Dr. James McQuivey. And over 70 per cent of marketers say that video creates more conversions than any other medium.

Adding video to your digital marketing mix can help you reach and influence more people at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

However, despite its track record for success, lots of businesses are still wary about investing in video production – and why shouldn’t they be? It sounds expensive and seems like a mammoth task to add to the workload.

But you don’t have to possess the budget and expertise of a Hollywood producer to create video content that will capture the attention of your audience.

Over the history of the Internet we have seen countless social media networks launched, blossom, and in many cases, fall by the wayside. In the past five years alone we have seen the launch of Instagram (2010), Pinterest (2010), Snapchat (2011), Google+ (2011), Vine (2012) and Ello (2014) – to name the more well-known entrants to the market.

The best B2B videos are interesting – even fun – to watch, valuable to the viewer and easy to share.

But what is the best way to make sure your B2B web video is seen and shared? Just like your blogs and your website, you can optimise your web video so that it is easily found, and you can position it so it is easily shared.

For example, results from the Content Marketing Institute’s 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report shows that video is one of the content marketing tactics that has seen the biggest increases in adoption rates among marketers, with an adoption rate of 70%.

It’s the vehicle of choice for a growing number of business owners and executives in need of information.  A recent Forbes report, Video in the C-Suite, showed that

• 75% of executives surveyed watch work-related videos on business websites

So if you’re a keen reader of marketing blogs or news articles, you can’t have missed the plethora of “predictions”/“future trends”/”objectives” type posts that inevitably appear at the advent of a New Year.  Some extremely useful and credible, and some frankly not so…

Rather than try to search arduously for our own “new predictions for 2013 that no one else in the field can possibly have thought of”, we want to recognise here the thoughts and aspirations of some of the best minds in inbound marketing and applaud their convictions for the coming year.

So here’s our list of the five most salient and sage predictions and objectives for 2013 from the thought-leaders in our industry:

Though a video production may seem at first glance to be not dissimilar from traditional interruption marketing, the reality is that it offers a much more versatile way to reach buyers. Here are five ways in which a good online video production can enhance your marketing efforts.

Online video increases brand awareness

Video marketing has become one of the most powerful and exciting tools available to B2B organisations in recent years. It's particularly effective at engaging time-pressed buyers and executives, and can quickly generate great interest in what your company has to offer. But what can you do to ensure that viewers convert into new clients?

1. Start with an attention-grabbing  concept

Without great concepts for your videos, none of the other points matter. Brainstorm ideas around the key stages of your sales funnel.

The study also revealed that one of the most watched types of video marketing was the case study, with 56% of executives saying that video case studies were what they watched most often on business-related websites, while 19% said that they were the type of video marketing they watched most frequently on YouTube.

These days, many B2B businesses are scrambling to enhance their online presence with video marketing services. This can be an effective inbound marketing strategy, but in the rush to create and upload content quickly, they often end up putting out sub-standard video marketing which fails to achieve the intended purpose.

When producing B2B video content, it’s important to think about how you can make it appeal to buyers, in order to encourage them to take action. Here are five video marketing tips to take into consideration when planning your online video marketing strategies.

According to research by Digiday and Adap.tv, many online businesses are shifting their marketing budgets away from simple display forms of advertising such as banner ads, and towards online video marketing.

An irreversible shift to new media

Digiday and Adap.tv  have produced the Video State of the Industry Survey for 2011. The report found that 43% of agencies and 24% of advertisers in North America plan to divert funds from display budgets to fund online video marketing efforts. Many advertisers (41%) also plan to shift funding away from print campaigns to fund video marketing, while 29% are taking it out of broadcast television budgets.

Everyone loves watching videos, not just because they're funny and entertaining, but because they're a different way to educate and inform ourselves.  

That's probably the most important reason why video marketing is a popular way to drive website traffic and promote a business.

If you're thinking about using video marketing to promote your business, you may be wondering how to do it successfully.  Follow these tips to learn how to post videos that bring people back to your site time and time again.

Is trying to go viral in b2b, innovative internet marketing, or just a pipe dream? As a means of reaching a large and rapidly expanding number of people quickly, viral marketing is one of the most powerful strategies of the internet age.

And though it is often seen as a strictly consumer-orientated online marketing avenue, a growing number of B2B marketers are exploring the potential of B2B viral marketing today.

Digital marketing remains a fledgling field, and one which is constantly changing and evolving alongside the technology and trends that make it possible.

For anyone with an online B2B presence, keeping abreast of these developments is important in order to stay competitive, and so here we present a number of digital marketing predictions which may help you plan your online strategy over the coming year.

Prediction #1 – Continued growth in the importance of mobile marketing 

The days when online digital marketing

Online video is listed as one of the top ten strategic technology trends by digital marketing specialists Econsultancy. It is perhaps one of the fastest-growing trends in media today. So it's worth considering this....

More than 15 million people in the UK will watch 200 million videos today. Meanwhile, more than 35 million people will watch an average of 17 hours of online video each this month. People expect to see video content online nowadays, and that applies to output from both B2C and B2B organisations.

Many professionals in B2B sectors were struck by the possibilities of video as soon as it appeared. Seth Godin, the world-leading marketing expert, wrote a blog entitled 'Video changes things' back in 2007 in which he stated: “With very little notice, YouTube has become a significant force in business learning. People who would never read a 200-page book will happily watch a three-minute video.”

Research demonstrates however that SMEs and individual professionals have also caught on to the potential of B2B online video. YouTube reaches half of online UK small business owners while 47% of IT professionals watch videos to research technology solutions on the site.

One of the most exciting and potentially useful aspects of the internet from a B2B marketing perspective is video content. If a picture can say a thousand words, just think how many a short informative video can account for.

Unfortunately, despite its potential, online video is often underused, and in some cases not used at all. Some of the common reasons given for not taking full advantage of web video for business include:

• We can’t afford it, it’s too expensive
• We don’t need it, our clients aren’t interested in video content
• We don’t have the skills/ resources for online video content creation

Web video for business is big business. If you’ve got a website, then you will most certainly benefit from having video content on it.

Indeed, some of the world’s leading organisations use B2B online video to spark relationships and conversations.

People buy people
Having video on your website makes it easier for visitors to connect with your company. This is especially true if your video features you or your colleagues. People buy from people and they love to put a face to the brand. Show yourselves via video, and you grab that chance to make an instant and meaningful connection. That connection, of course, is what can ultimately lead to increased sales for your business.