What is Inbound Marketing?

eBook_ToolBox_CTA_WebInbound marketing is much more than the latest buzzword to hit the marketing world. It’s a philosophy, a strategy, and a discipline – and it works. Here’s a look at what inbound marketing is and how you can benefit from adopting it.

Inbound Marketing as a Philosophy
Inbound marketing endeavors to turn complete strangers into visitors who visit your website or physical location. You don’t just want them to look around and leave, do you? No, you want to convert them into paying customers. But why stop there? The inbound marketing philosophy isn’t about turning a quick profit, it’s about attraction, conversion, and advocacy. You want your marketing efforts to be so spot on, your products to be absolutely perfect, and the customer experience to be so wonderful that your customers will turn into cheerleaders for your brand. Once that magic moment happens, they attract even more visitors to your site or store where the cycle repeats itself.

Inbound Marketing as a Strategy
With inbound marketing, you must recognize the various stages that customers go through as they make their buying decisions and nurture them through these stages accordingly. Your marketing approach must match their current stage in this lifecycle.

Inbound marketing is also highly personalized, and it takes place across multiple channels. Implementing inbound marketing often involves branching out to new channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or private forums. You need to find out where your ideal audience hangs out and start hanging out there too. This allows you to get a deeper understanding of your ideal customers’ needs and problems which is essential to later tailoring your marketing messages. It also comes into play later when it comes time to interact with prospects and customers across multiple channels. After all, today’s consumers don’t necessarily want to communicate using call centers. They expect to be able to interact on social media sites.

By recognizing the various stages customers go through, identifying your ideal customers, and creating multiple channels to reach them, you can create an inbound marketing strategy that turns strangers into visitors, into customers, into cheerleaders.

Inbound Marketing as a Discipline
As you can imagine, this doesn’t happen without discipline. It requires a different approach than you may be used to. You may be accustomed to buying ads and broadcasting your message to the masses. With inbound marketing, there’s less pushing and more pulling; less shouting and more listening; it’s less about you and more about them. Rather than buying ads and blasting your message to a wide audience, inbound marketing involves identifying your ideal audience and creating and sharing relevant content that resonates with their needs, problems, and desires.

The steps involved in inbound marketing include:Inbound Marketing diagram

  • Attracting your ideal customers – Your website needs visitors before you can possibly make a sale. Use blogs, social media, relevant keywords, and landing pages to attract the right people to your website.
  • Converting them into leads so that you can nurture them into customers – As visitors look around, some may be ready to make a purchase. However, most aren’t ready at this point. After all, you’re complete strangers so why should they trust you? Use calls-to-action and forms to prompt visitors to sign up for a newsletter or download a special report. Once you capture their contact information, you can then engage and nurture them through the sales process.
  • Closing the deal – Using email campaigns, online video, and other inbound marketing techniques, you will provide your leads with relevant, useful information that matches their stage in the process. This sets you up as a trusted expert and positions your solution as the ideal one.
  • Wowing your customers with a fabulous experience – Finally, wow your customers with a fabulous experience from start to finish and you’ll soon have an army of advocates working on your behalf.

Optimizing LinkedIn for Business and Marketing

LinkedIn logo social media iconLinkedIn is a powerful social network embraced by business professionals around the world. Not only is it a great place to network with others, LinkedIn is the perfect environment for growing your business. LinkedIn recently updated its Company Page feature, allowing businesses to make a more profound impact. Below are a few ways that you can optimize your LinkedIn page for business and marketing purposes.

Upload a cover image – Largely aesthetic, having an attractive cover image plays an important role in forming that first impression. Make sure your cover image is professional, attractive, and properly displayed.

Post relevant company-oriented status updates – While your personal LinkedIn profile is all about you connecting with other business professionals, your company LinkedIn page is all about your company.

Target your status updates – Did you know that you can send your status updates to a specific demographic? Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, you can target your updates to a specific set of LinkedIn users based on criteria such as industry, job role, location, or company size. For example, if your ideal customer is a human resources manager in Georgia who works for a company with 1,000 or more employees, you could set your status updates to appear only in the feeds of human resources managers in Georgia currently working for a company with over 1,000 employees.

Target your products and services page – Just as you can target your status updates, you can do the same with your products and services page on LinkedIn. This is a powerful option that allows you to have different versions for different audiences. For example, HR managers in Georgia might see a different version of your page than payroll processors in New York. After all, these are different audiences with different needs – and you have different products and services to offer each one! This is one of the most exciting tools available on LinkedIn – or any social platform for that matter.

Get involved in LinkedIn Answers – This tool allows you to ask and answer questions, both of which can help you build your business. Asking questions is a great way to perform research or gauge potential reactions to a new product or service while answering questions can position you as an authority in your field.

Make your page interactive and engagingConsider adding an online video (hosted on YouTube) about your company or use apps specifically designed for LinkedIn. For example, you could use a WordPress app to add your blog’s posts to your LinkedIn page automatically.

Use LinkedIn to generate leads – Sprinkle offers into your company status updates with calls to action and you may find that your LinkedIn page is a valuable lead generation source. Just as you promote and share links to your landing pages elsewhere, you’ll want to do the same on LinkedIn where you’ve already established your credibility and started forming relationships with people in your desired demographic.

Consider using LinkedIn’s ads – Much cheaper than Google advertising, LinkedIn’s ad program is also highly targeted. Simply craft your ad, hone in on the right type of people, and get noticed.

LinkedIn’s company page feature is an often underutilized tool for marketing your business and making personal connections with your target audience. Not only can you send targeted advertisements on LinkedIn for much less than traditional advertising channels, you can tailor your content to match various audiences.

Social Media Marketing Myths

Social media platformsNo doubt, social media marketing is hot. It is also confusing thanks to multiple social media outlets, changing SEO strategies, and conflicting advice from dozens of self-proclaimed social media gurus. To help you break through the confusion, we’ve busted the following social media marketing myths:

  • You need a presence on ALL social media sitesBUSTED. There are far too many social networks to effectively leverage all of them. Plus, each social network serves a specific purpose, so some may not be appropriate for your business. Go where your best customers hang out, and start there. The big three are: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  • Email is obsoleteBUSTED. There’s a saying in the Internet marketing world, “decisions are made in the inbox.” Building a list should remain a top priority. Your prospects may hang out on, and generally prefer, Facebook or Twitter, but they still use email.
  • Automation is the key to successBUSTED. In theory, automating all of your tweets and updates sounds smart and efficient. In reality, your followers will see right through your attempts and perceive you as robotic, fake, or uncaring. Remember, social media is social. Robots cannot converse nor can they fake sincere interactions. Some automation is helpful. For example, you can set up automatic updates whenever you publish a new blog posts; however, make sure to be interact as people comment and ask questions. While you’re at it, avoid the temptation to blast each post to every single social media site you’re on. Each platform has its content preferences – and your prospects may be following you on several sites.
  • Your prospects aren’t using social mediaBUSTED. While recent research shows that the majority of adults spend time on social media. Whether your customers are teens or great-grandparents, chances are good that a large percent of them are using social media. In addition, people close to them such as parents or adult children are also influenced by companies on social media sites.
  • Social media is freeBUSTED. Watching TV using rabbit ear antennas is free too, but producing and broadcasting ads isn’t. Even if you don’t run ad campaigns on your social media sites, you or your employees will spend a great amount of time interacting with followers. In addition to the human resources costs, it often makes sense to invest in social media management software and analytical tools.
  • Social media for business should focus only on the business and its achievementsBUSTED. If your social media accounts are used strictly for patting yourself on the back and telling the world how wonderful your products and services are, none of your followers will stick around. Remember, people want to know, “What’s in it for me?” The more you can make your posts relevant to your customers’ problems, challenges, and concerns, the more engaging your social media efforts will be.
  • Create a profile and fans will flock to youBUSTED. If you build it, they may or may not find it. Make sure to let your customers and prospects know where to find you. Whether you wrap all of your company cars with your Facebook info, use QR codes, hand out fliers, include social media buttons on your website, or purchase “get more likes” ads, you must let people know your social media sites exist. Take it even further and give them a compelling reason to like or follow your company.

Social media continues to evolve and is no longer considered “new.” Now that it’s been around for several years, myths are being challenged – and busted.

Lead Generation: Tips for Balancing Costs and Quality

balance cost and value

 

Have you ever been excited to find a cheap source of leads only to be disappointed by low conversion rates? Have you ever paid more than you felt comfortable with for higher quality leads? Have you ever paid way too much for poor quality leads? When it comes to lead generation, lead quality is often closely related to cost. However, cost per lead is not the only part of the equation. It is essential to understand how your lead sources and lead generation efforts pay off. If you don’t look beyond cost per lead and examine your return on investment, you could find yourself making the same mistakes time and time again.

First, no matter where you source your leads, make sure to know your numbers. You should know:

  • Cost per lead
  • Conversion rate
  • Average profit per conversion
  • Profit per lead

For example, if you buy 100 leads for $100, your cost per lead is $1. If your conversion rate is 5 percent with an average profit per conversion of $50, 100 leads will generate $250. This would put your profit per lead at $2.50. Once you know your profit per lead, you can compare that to your cost per lead and decide if it makes sense to continue using this particular lead generation method. Before you abandon a lead source completely, consider if it’s possible to increase either the conversion rate or average profit per conversion.

In addition to looking at the numbers, consider how much a good lead is worth to you. If you sell expensive products such as real estate or industrial equipment, a single high quality lead could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars but the potential payoff could be well worth your money. In contrast, if you sell inexpensive products, it doesn’t make sense to spend more than a few pennies per lead.

Another factor to look at involves where your leads are in the sales cycle. Are they simply gathering information or are they ready to buy? It’s smart to look at the source of these leads as well. Where did they come from? For example, if your leads signed up to enter a chance to win a vacation to Hawaii at the local home and garden show, they’re not necessarily interested in buying a new hot tub, refinancing a loan, or having their kitchen remodeled. Thus, these leads will be less likely to convert than leads who filled in an online request form for a quote on a new hot tub, loan, or kitchen cabinets.

Finally, high quality leads tend to be highly targeted leads. Whether you are generating leads on your own website or buying them from a vendor, the better targeted your leads, the more successful you will be at converting them. This may require optimizing your landing page and advertisements to attract the right people or working with your lead vendor to filter your leads.

For example, if you are a mortgage broker who specializes in reverse mortgages in a particular city, ask your lead vendor to provide you only with leads who want a reverse mortgage in specific ZIP codes. This allows you to get more of the leads you want without increasing your costs.

Lead generation is an art form in its own right. Know your numbers and find ways to increase your chances for success. Take both an objective and subjective look at all of your lead sources and determine which sources deliver the most targeted leads and the best overall value.

Content Marketing – Converting Website Visitors to Leads

Website optimization or SEO drives slae sleads to your WebsiteYou have a website and plenty of visitors arrive; however, few of those website visitors convert. Successful websites use content to attract the right visitors and prompt them to convert. If you’re looking for higher conversions and higher quality leads, it pays to create and optimize content. For example, did you know that content creators are nearly 30 percent more successful at converting organic website traffic into leads than non-content creators?

The Importance of Engaging and Nurturing Prospects
What does creating content mean? It means that creating a website with basic pages about your company and its offer isn’t enough. You need to regularly create relevant, optimized, and engaging content in order to attract high quality prospects and convert them.

Engaging prospects is a must if you want to pique their interest, educate and inform, and earn their trust. If you do this well, you are positioning your solution for success. Publishing engaging content is the first step, but again, it’s not a matter of publishing it and forgetting about it. You’ll need to move from engaging to nurturing your leads. This means segmenting leads and providing them with targeted content in a convenient, accessible manner.

For example, if you publish a whitepaper on a topic your prospect is interested in and require an email opt-in as part of the whitepaper download process, you can then send relevant, engaging content through a series of email messages that build on topics and needs explored in the whitepaper. These messages would be specific to those who have downloaded the whitepaper. If the whitepaper is about online data backup systems, then your email series would need to be relevant to online data backup systems and not about portable hard disk drives or tape backup systems.

Content Marketing Options
The options available for engaging prospects with content are numerous and include everything from blog posts, online videos, whitepapers, newsletters, email marketing, and webinars to social media, podcasting, and more. Whether you pick one channel or several, it’s important to keep your content relevant and informative.

Other content marketing tips include:

  • Maintain a steady pace. While it’s difficult to generate thousands of pieces of content at once, it’s realistic to do so one piece at a time.
  • Use analytics. From Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to bit.ly links, numerous tools are available that can quickly reveal which content resonates the most with prospects.
  • Act on analytical insights. If you’ve discovered that each time you post to Facebook, you receive a flood of high quality traffic, act on that and make sure to post regularly on Facebook. Similarly, if you’ve discovered that some types of posts convert better than others, create more posts like the successful ones and fewer like the not-so-successful ones.
  • Look at what’s popular elsewhere for inspiration. Are how-to tutorials doing well on other sites such as YouTube or Slideshare? If so, posting a how-to tutorial of your own could be a good choice.
  • Learn which keywords your prospects use to find companies like yours. Whether you intend to use paid search or not, paid search keyword tools (which are typically free) can help you gain a deeper understanding of which keywords your prospects use to find companies, products, and services like yours.
  • Take advantage of social sharing sites. Did you recently give a presentation to a small group? Leverage that presentation by posting it on your website, on YouTube, and on Slideshare – and any other social sharing sites that are appropriate – and reach a larger audience.
  • Use social media. Create a Facebook business page and use it to interact with your audience. Encourage conversations by asking engaging questions. Take a long-term approach, post engaging content, and include calls-to-action without being overly aggressive or pushy.

No matter what type of content you create and how you get it in front of your prospects, the goal is to engage, inform, and nurture.

How are you using content to convert leads? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

 

Website Optimization’s Effect on Offline Marketing Strategies

Website optimization or SEO drives slae sleads to your WebsiteThe importance of website optimization can’t be stressed enough. After all, the website is the heart of eCommerce and it’s where online conversion takes place. In recent years, website optimization has become more sophisticated. Not only is website optimization important online, it can extend offline as well.

According to Marketing Sherpa’s 2012 Website Optimization Benchmark Report, the most important website optimization goals include the following:

  • To increase overall conversion (83%)
  • To learn about consumer behaviors and motivations (64%)
  • To discover the most important wordings and phrases (62%)
  • To determine the most effective page elements (62%)
  • To find leaks in the sales funnel (58%)
  • To build brand awareness (53%)

Over 80 percent of the survey’s respondents agreed that increasing overall conversion was “very important” while 64 percent felt the same about learning about consumer behaviors and motivations. A good website optimization campaign can drive traffic, improve conversions, and provide you with detailed insights about your customers and their behaviors.

All of this learning from website optimization is largely being shared. The report revealed that 70 percent of the surveyed marketers use the lessons they’ve learned from their website optimization efforts to adjust their offline marketing campaigns and other forms of messaging.

With website optimization, marketers have a unique platform that they can use to test messages and responses. As marketers learn more about what works and what doesn’t work through the optimization process, they have the opportunity to use that knowledge in offline marketing.

Based on the Marketing Sherpa’s report, the majority of marketers do so. But what about the other 30 percent? What’s holding them back? It turns out that where a marketer is in the optimization process has an influence on whether or not those online findings will be extended to the offline world. The report revealed that those in the more advanced stages are 57 percent more likely to do so.

No matter where you are in the website optimization process, you may be able to apply what you’ve learned to other areas. For example, if you’ve split tested a landing page and found that your target audience responded favorably to a specific call to action, wouldn’t it make sense to use a similar approach in a print newsletter or some other offline campaign?

Likewise, your analytical tools may reveal interesting trends and insights into your audience. In fact, you may come to learn that your products and services appeal to a completely different demographic than you initially envisioned. What will you do with that information? While tweaking your website and online marketing campaigns to leverage those findings is the obvious choice, have you considered how you might use this information offline?

What if the team that handles inbound marketing isn’t involved in offline marketing? This could be a mistake. This doesn’t mean having your Web marketing team take over offline marketing, but it does suggest that sharing information could be beneficial to your broader marketing strategy.

Website optimization is a complex, constantly evolving process. As you fine-tune your website, test pages, analyze results, and learn more about how your customers and prospects interact with it, it’s smart to get the most mileage out of your efforts as possible. The next time you learn something new about your customers through the website optimization process, consider walking across the hall and sharing your insights with your offline colleagues.

B2B Video Marketing Myths

Video marketing mythsIf you think that B2B video marketing is too expensive and for large companies with big budgets or that in order to be effective a business video must go viral, you may be falling for common myths surrounding corporate video. Learn the reality behind the myths and take a confident stance as you plan your B2B marketing efforts for 2012.

B2B Video Marketing Myth #1: B2B Marketing Videos Must Go Viral

If you’re producing a video destined for the Web, you may feel the pressure to make sure that your business video gets lots of hits. While it would be nice to have millions of viewers watching and sharing your corporate video, it’s more important that the video reach a targeted audience. For example, if your target audience consists of high level executives but your video goes viral among low level workers, your B2B video marketing efforts will be ineffective despite millions of views.

Focus your B2B marketing and video production efforts on your target audience and never lose sight of who your corporate video is intended to reach.

B2B Video Marketing Myth #2: Corporate Video Production Is Expensive

While you certainly could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a business video, you don’t have to. As with most industries, there are numerous B2B marketing and video production companies that offer affordable business video production services. You can also slash your B2B video marketing costs by being proactive and prepared. For example, if you’ll be appearing in the corporate video, rehearse your lines at home or the office and arrive at the studio fully prepared. This will reduce the number of takes, reduce the amount of studio and crew time required, and make editing the final business video much easier.

B2B Video Marketing Myth #3: Video and B2B Marketing is for Big Companies

Whether you run a two-person shop or a large corporation, B2B video marketing is an effective way to communicate your offer to other businesses. Business video is ideal for a number of situations including:

  • Selling products and services
  • Attracting investors
  • Demonstrating capabilities
  • Sharing customer testimonials
  • Building credibility, trust, and relationships

If you’re part of a small company, a corporate video could help you compete with larger ones while larger companies can use B2B video marketing to appear more personable.

B2B Video Marketing Myth #4: Each Business Video Must Be 90 Seconds or Less

In general, online B2B marketing messages should be short and 90 seconds or less is a good rule of thumb. However, this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. Depending where your prospects are in the video-to-lead funnel, you may have earned the opportunity to present longer corporate video messages.

For example, if your B2B marketing efforts have previously engaged and converted prospects, these leads now trust you and are hungry for more information about your products, services, or philosophy. If you plan on presenting a longer corporate video to viewers later in the sales funnel, make sure to tell them in advance what to expect. For example, if you want leads to watch a 10-minute business video, let them know that the video will only take ten minutes of their time and will solve their concerns about X, Y, and Z.

B2B Video Marketing Myth #5: It’s Impossible to Embed Business Video into Email Campaigns

Hesitant to use B2B video marketing in your current email campaigns because there’s no universal video player for email clients? While the technology may not be where you’d like it to be, creative B2B marketing techniques exist. Simply include a screenshot of your corporate video and link it to your website where subscribers can instantly watch the business video. As an added bonus, your B2B marketing prospects will be back on your website where you have additional opportunities to get your message across and make the sale.

Which B2B video marketing myths have stopped you from producing a business video? Share your thoughts in the comments section below:

Website Video Spokesperson Checklist

Website Video Spokesperson Checklist

After much thought, you’ve come to the conclusion that adding a website video spokesperson to your website is the logical next step. After all, the virtual spokesperson serves as a friendly and welcoming host, provides useful information and tips, engages visitors, and gently guides them around your website toward a buying decision. But where should you begin? Which type of Web video spokesperson is right for you? We’ve created this checklist to help you make the best decision possible.

  • Choose the video production company first, not the individual virtual spokesperson – While you may be tempted to look for the perfect website video spokesperson on various websites, it’s smarter to choose the video production company first as not all companies have the marketing skills you need in order to incorporate an effective spokesperson strategy. In addition, once you find a production studio with the expertise you need, the producer can help you select the best virtual spokesperson for your website.
  • What to look for in a Web video spokesperson video production company: a blend of video production and online marketing skills. While many studios are fully capable of producing a website video spokesperson video to overlay on your website, not all are well versed in the online marketing profession. By finding a hybrid studio that excels in both areas, you’re more likely to have an effective finished Web video spokesperson production that engages, converts, and nurtures your website visitors.
  • Analyze your target audience. If you don’t know who you are targeting, it will be virtually impossible to select a website video spokesperson that appeals to them. Use surveys, market research, focus groups, and other resources to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience.
  • Create a list of actions you want visitors to your website to take. This ensures that when the time comes to craft a script for your virtual spokesperson to follow, you’ll know exactly what you want to accomplish and where you want to lead your audience.
  • Start casting your website video spokesperson only after completing the steps listed above. Not only will you have an experienced producer and marketer to help you with this task, you will have a solid idea about the age and gender of the actor you should hire as well as the role the virtual spokesperson will play.
  • Pay attention to each actor’s qualifications. When watching demo reels, you may feel that a given actor has the general look you want, but isn’t quite right. Perhaps the accent is too strong or the current costume too formal looking for your site. However, actors are extremely versatile. By paying attention to the skills each actor lists, you may find that your favorite “not quite right” website video spokesperson is fully capable of conforming to your specifications.
  • Be involved in the writing the script. Though your video production company will likely provide you with a scriptwriter, you should provide direction. Using the list of actions you developed earlier and what you know about your website video spokesperson’s abilities, collaborate with the scriptwriter to create a script that conveys your message and leads to results.
  • Build in room to improvise. Your website video spokesperson is a creative professional who understands the goals of this profession. Take advantage of these creative talents by allowing some room for improvisation. You may be surprised at the warmth and spontaneity that a little wiggle room produces – and your virtual spokesperson’s warmth will resonate with most website visitors.

Adding a Web video spokesperson to your website does take some effort on your part. Follow this virtual spokesperson checklist to: ensure that you have a capable video production and marketing company behind the scenes; a website video spokesperson that appeals to your target audience; and a script that carefully guides your website visitors to an informed buying decision.

What do you think about our website video spokesperson checklist? Did we miss any important key points? Share your ideas in the comments section below:

B2B Video Marketing: What Do Your Business Customers Need To Know

woman thinking

As you brainstorm ideas for your next B2B video marketing message, it’s easy to take the wrong perspective. You may want to focus your corporate video on how wonderful your people are or showcase the bells and whistles of your products. While this is understandable, your business video and its B2B marketing message may fail to resonate with your business customers. To avoid this, you need to adopt the customer’s perspective. What do your customers care about? What do they need to know? How will your product or service benefit them?

B2B Marketing Brainstorming Prompt: What Do Your Customers Care About?

During your B2B video marketing brainstorming session, ask yourself what your business customers care about. When you understand this and address it in your corporate video, you’ll be more likely to develop a connection with your customers. Your business video can communicate that you understand the problems faced by your customers and share their concerns.

One of the best ways to find out what’s important to your customers is to ask. B2B marketing is an ongoing process requiring a dialog between you and your business customers. Take your B2B marketing customers out to lunch, read the same trade journals they read, and ask probing questions at every opportunity. You could even watch their own corporate video productions to gain a better understanding of their concerns. Before producing a single business video, make sure to incorporate questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and surveys as part of your B2B video marketing strategy.

B2B Video Marketing Brainstorming Prompt: What Do Your Customers Need to Know? Corporate video is an excellent platform for communicating new information. In fact, your business video should be both engaging and informative because your business customers have little time to spare. In addition, you may only have 60 to 90 seconds for your entire business video, so you don’t have time to spare either.

As part of your B2B video marketing brainstorming session, consider what your business customers already know and what they need to know. For example, if your B2B marketing customers are well aware of a new regulation and its affect on their industry, your corporate video on that topic needs to quickly move beyond what they already know and position your solution as the best one. What do they need to know about your solution that makes it better or different than other solutions. What don’t they know about your solution that they should know? Answer these B2B video marketing questions and incorporate your answers into your corporate video.

B2B Video Marketing Brainstorming Prompt: How Will Your Solution Benefit Your B2B Marketing Customers?

Finally, your business video brainstorming session should focus on how your solution benefits your B2B marketing customers. Rather than focusing your business video on bells and whistles, focus it on benefits. Your corporate video viewers may be momentarily impressed by your product’s features, but the benefits are what will win them over. For example, a car that gets 30 miles per gallon has an impressive feature (good gas mileage) but its benefits (save money, reduce carbon footprint, and fewer trips to the gas station) are what resonate with customers. Similarly, if your B2B video marketing involves a business video touting accounting software with online reports, the online reports are a feature whereas the benefit might be anytime, anywhere access to real-time financial data. Focus your corporate video on the benefits and your B2B marketing campaign is sure to be successful.

Brainstorming ideas for your corporate video involves getting into the heads of your B2B video marketing customers. What do they care about? What do they need to know? What benefits will they realize by choosing the solution your business video proposes? Answer these three B2B marketing questions and write your corporate video script around your answers. In short, your B2B video marketing campaign answers the question on your B2B marketing customers’ minds: What’s in it for me?

What do you think? Are there any other questions a corporate video should answer? Share your B2B video marketing ideas in the comments section below.

Testimonial Video Production: Why Client Testimonials on Video are Effective

testimonial video production

Testimonial video production is a process that can yield tremendous results. By posting a customer testimonial video on your website, not only are you leveraging the power of word-of-mouth advertising, you’re also presenting social proof that you can deliver on your promise. When viewers watch client testimonials, they can see that a past customer of yours is happy with your service. When taken all together, your prospects will start to trust you and your offer. Let’s take a look at why testimonial video production is so important.

Leveraging Word-of-Mouth Advertising with a Customer Testimonial Video

We all know how powerful word-of-mouth advertising is. When a customer tells other people about how wonderful your product or service is, those other people warm up to the idea of potentially making a similar purchase. However, the traditional word-of-mouth advertising model is slow and largely out of your control. With video client testimonials on your website, you can speed up the process and take control over the entire testimonial video production.

For example, with a customer testimonial video, you no longer have to wait for customers to tell their friends. Instead, you’ll record client testimonials and place them prominently on your website where your prospects can easily view them. In addition, since you control the testimonial video production process, you can provide a script for each customer testimonial video or carefully edit the client testimonials for maximum impact.

Client Testimonials Deliver Social Proof

Each customer testimonial video on your website serves as social proof that you can deliver. While word-of-mouth advertising does the same thing, that social proof usually takes place outside of your realm. In addition, the people hearing word-of-mouth recommendations may not be suitable prospects. With testimonial video production, you now have a way to prove your capabilities to an audience that’s already interested in learning about them.

Your prospects are prospects because they’ve arrived at your website looking for information about your product or service. As they are exposed to your messages, they may be interested but also slightly doubtful. Your client testimonials can ease those doubts by proving that you did deliver on your promises. What’s more credible, an advertisement touting the benefits of your products and services or a customer testimonial video featuring a satisfied customer who has the same problems and needs as your prospects? Let your customers build trust on your behalf by starting the testimonial video production process.

What Makes a Customer Testimonial Video Effective?

As you begin the testimonial video production process, it’s important to understand what makes client testimonials so effective. By understanding this, you can choose remarks that build trust and reflect well on your product or service.

The most effective testimonial video productions include the following:

  • Relatable people – Select customers that your prospects can relate to. For example, if you’re marketing a product to executives, your customer testimonial video should feature a business professional. If you’re targeting young adults, your client testimonials should be from young adults.
  • Specific examples – An effective customer testimonial video is loaded with specific examples, not vague murmurs of greatness.
  • Benefits – As part of the testimonial video production process, provide a loose outline of some of the benefits your product or service delivers and make sure that your client testimonials mention those benefits.

Throughout the testimonial video production, keep benefits firmly in mind and focus the entire production around those benefits. Doing so ensures that each customer testimonial video is as effective and credible as possible.

How have you approached testimonial video production? Which client testimonials are the most effective? Share your thoughts in the comment section below: