Business-to-business (B2B) brands are using video marketing now more than ever. Why? It’s a hugely effective way to engage B2B prospects and customers.

Video marketing statistics from Wyzowl’s recent State of Video Marketing Report say it all:

👉 91% of B2B marketers say video has helped them increase website traffic.

👉 90% say marketing videos have helped them generate leads.

👉 87% say it has helped them increase sales.

👉 88% report a positive return on investment (ROI) from their video marketing.

B2B video marketing is versatile and can be used to connect with customers throughout your marketing funnel. A video marketing strategy can help you educate and inform your prospects and convert them into paying customers.

You can use video marketing beyond your website’s home page. Videos can be used in any context to convince and convert your prospects in a more engaging way than visuals would.

This article explains how you can use B2B video marketing to connect with customers across your sales funnel. We’ll also provide some examples of how it can work for your business.

What Is the B2B Marketing Funnel?

If you work in B2B marketing, you’re probably familiar with a marketing funnel. But for those who aren’t, here is a quick overview:

The B2B marketing funnel maps the different stages of a prospect’s relationship with your brand.

It starts with them being unaware of your brand and your products or services. It then progresses through awareness, interest, and consideration before it finally ends with a purchase.

B2B marketers create campaigns that move prospects along this funnel, including using video marketing.

What Is B2B Video Marketing?

B2B video marketing involves creating and sharing video content to promote your products or services to other businesses.

Unlike business-to-customer (B2C) marketing—which targets individual consumers—B2B video marketing focuses on engaging other businesses and their decision-makers. Videos are aimed at company executives and managers who can influence purchasing decisions.

B2B video content is often tailored to specific industries or sectors, addressing their unique challenges and needs.

The Goals of B2B Video Marketing

When you create video content, it’s important to have a goal behind each piece. This will determine the type of video you create, its topic, and how you present it to your audience.

Some common B2B video marketing goals include:

🏆 Lead generation

These videos are intended to attract potential clients through informative and engaging content.

🏆 Brand awareness

This type of video content aims to build brand recognition and trust within a specific industry.

🏆 Education

These videos inform potential customers about the benefits and applications of your products or services.

🏆 Conversion

This type of video is intended to encourage potential leads to move further down your sales funnel until they become paying customers.

5 Types of B2B Vidoes

There are five main types of B2B video content:

🎬 Explainer videos

These videos simplify complex products or services, explaining how they work and their benefits. They may also include step-by-step instructions on how to use your product or service.

🎬 Product demos

This type of video showcases a product or service’s functionality and features. The aim is to convince prospects that your product or service is worth investing in.

🎬 Customer testimonials

These give your brand credibility and show prospects how your product or service has benefited other businesses. This builds trust with prospects.

🎬 Webinars and tutorials

This kind of video aims to educate potential customers about industry topics or how to use a product or service.

🎬 Case studies

These videos are intended to highlight real-world situations where your product or service was used successfully and helped your customers achieve results.

The Benefits of B2B Video Marketing

There are several benefits of video marketing for your brand:

✅ Enhanced engagement

Video content is often more engaging than text or static images. They hold the viewer’s attention for longer.

✅ Improved communication

Complex information can be conveyed more clearly and memorably through visuals and audio.

✅ Higher conversion rates

Videos can boost conversion rates by providing more compelling and persuasive messages.

✅ Versatility

Videos can be repurposed across many different platforms and for various marketing strategies.

3 Tips for B2B Video Marketing

Using B2B video marketing across your funnel is a great way to increase conversions and sales. But this can be challenging to get right.

Here are our top tips for achieving B2B video marketing success:

1. Your video budget doesn’t have to be huge

Many B2B videos you see online are commissioned by large companies with extensive budgets. They are produced by professional video marketers using expensive equipment, which can cost thousands.

However, your B2B video marketing efforts can still be successful even without a massive budget. Modern mobile devices have good-quality cameras and microphones built into them.

And design software like Canva only costs around $10 per month and includes basic video editing packages.

It’s worth training yourself in basic video editing skills. There are plenty of courses available on online learning platforms such as Udemy.

This video produced for the law firm Cuddy and Feder LLP was shot with a laptop camera. It uses simple screen graphics and background music. Anyone could produce this with some basic tools and a little know-how:

2. Use your audience’s favorite platform

It’s critical that you know your target demographic and the platform they prefer so you can build your presence there with video content.

The table below is based on data from Sprout Social. It shows the largest age group and the percentage of female and male users on popular social media platforms.

This information can be used to choose the platform to tailor your videos. For example, if your target audience is male and in their 20s, you might choose X, formerly known as Twitter.

But if they’re female and in their early 30s, Pinterest is probably a better option:

It’s important to consider how your audience uses each channel, too.

For example, Pinterest and Instagram are focused on images, making them more suited to businesses whose services can be communicated visually—think graphic design or landscape gardening.

LinkedIn is designed to network with other professionals, so it’s a good choice if your business depends on building relationships with key decision-makers.

Of course, social media is only one channel, and you should think beyond online platforms. Your audience may be more likely to watch your videos on a video billboard at a tradeshow or on traditional TV ads.

3. Think about the stage of the funnel your prospect is at

We used social media in the example above because it’s a great channel for the awareness stage of the B2B marketing funnel.

However, as you move prospects further down the funnel, you’ll have to produce different types of online videos and deliver them over different channels.

For example, social media is good for an explainer video, where you help people without the intention to buy something you are an expert in. This valuable free video content will help raise awareness of your company and increase your brand value.

However, once your prospects reach the decision stage, your relationship with them and the type of information they need will change. Customer testimonial videos delivered via email may be a better option here.

4 B2B Video Marketing Examples

This section lists the main stages of the B2B marketing funnel and the types of video content you can produce at each one to drive customers toward a buying decision.

➡️ Awareness

At this stage, you’ll aim to make customers aware of your brand, product, or service.

To do this, you’ll need to think about ways people who fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) might come across your brand.

One of the best ways to drive awareness is through content marketing. This is when you create videos that solve your customers’ everyday problems for free.

If your content is helpful, potential customers will begin to recognize your brand and see you as an expert in your field.

It’s important to note that you should only aim to solve problems relevant to your business. For example, if you’re an insolvency practitioner, you might produce a guide that explains how business owners could determine whether their company is insolvent.

👉 How to do it

If you have a problem, what’s the first thing you’ll do? For most of us, the answer is “Google it.”

You can use this to your advantage by creating content that people can find on Google, YouTube, or any other platform with a search function.

To do this, you need to know what problems your customers are seeking solutions to online. You can then create video content that answers them.

You’ll probably need to use a bit of search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure your content is found by search engines and listed high on their results pages.

SEO is a huge topic, so we won’t go into detail here. However, you can read about the basics in our guide to inbound sales.

A critical part of content marketing is to include a call to action (CTA). This short message at the end of your video compels the viewer to engage further with your brand and eventually move to the next stage in your marketing funnel.

The aim is to capture their contact details so you can track their interactions with you in the future.

Some CTAs to consider using in your videos include:

• Watch a related video.
• Sign up for a live webinar.
• Follow you on social media.
• Sign up for your email newsletter.
• Contact a salesperson to find out more.

YouTube has tools to build these calls to action into the end of your videos. For example, the video below features two links. One to subscribe to the channel and a second to watch another video:

By keeping a record of your prospects, you can note which ones fit your ideal customer profile and show high buying intent. These people will become your list of qualified prospects, which is critical for the next phase of your B2B video strategy.

🎬 An example

Here’s a good example from start-up accelerator Y Combinator. It’s a video on how to set pricing—something that is often difficult for businesses to get right—especially start-ups.

This video is incredibly useful for Y Combinator’s potential customers, as it shows that it understands their challenges and that it would be a good company to work with.

Someone starting a company will likely look for this information long before considering funding. Based on this video, they will likely check out Y-Combinator’s other videos, making them a trusted source of start-up know-how:

➡️ Consideration

At this stage, your aim is to ensure your prospects consider your products or services to solve their problems.

The best way to do this is by using a product overview video. This might cover:

• The problems your customers typically face.
• What your product is.
• How your product helps overcome the customer’s problems.
• Its features and functions.
• Some statistics, case studies, or testimonials from satisfied customers.

The video content you create at the awareness stage can be used to send your audience to a product overview video.

However, content marketing can also be used at the consideration phase. The main difference is that your videos at this stage should solely focus on how your product or service solves the prospect’s problem.

👉 How to do it

One of the most important things to do in a product video is to frame the problem you solve around your offering.

Let’s say you sell machinery for professional printers. Your competitors might all focus on their printing speed, so you decide to focus your offering on quality.

Your video could highlight how quality is a big problem for printers. You’d then explain the ways your machinery ensures quality.

Creating a sense of urgency around solving these problems is also important.

You might say, “Today, printing companies lose thousands of dollars every year to customer complaints due to poor-quality prints.” This encourages the viewer to take action now rather than put off a buying decision.

Once again, you should end your video with a call to action. However, this time, you should guide them toward a buying decision.

This could include:

• A case study or webinar about how your product helped a customer.
• A customer testimonial.
• Guiding viewers to contact a salesperson.

🎬 An example

Here’s an example from property repair and maintenance SaaS provider EVO. It opens by listing a number of issues that lie at the heart of the problems faced by the housing industry. Note that these are also the problems that its product can best solve.

It then provides a short, simple explanation of how the product works, how it solves these problems, and the benefits it offers customers:

➡️ Decision

At this stage, your customer is considering your product alongside many others. They have also decided that their business problem is urgent, and they need to purchase a solution to solve it.

Videos at this stage should help prospects envisage what life would be like if they made a purchase from you.

One of the best ways of doing this is by using customer testimonials. This is simply a video that shows your customers talking about their positive experiences with your product.

👉 How to do it

Making a good customer testimonial video is relatively easy, but it takes some planning.

First, write out some questions that will guide the customer to talk about the problems you’ve solved, the benefits of working with you, and why you were the best or only choice for them.

At the start of the video, get your customer to introduce themselves, their company, and their role.

Try to get some footage of the customer using your product to include in your video.

Use screen text where required to help explain the point that you’re making.

Try to limit your video to three minutes or less to ensure you keep people’s attention.

When interviewing your customers, seat them in a comfortable chair against a neutral background.

Frame them so they are visible on one side of the camera shot. Ask them to look at you and position yourself so they are looking across the camera shot. Here’s how it should look:

🎬 An example

Here’s a good example of a customer testimonial from Zoom. The customer is Hubspot. The video is very high quality—but that’s not why it works:

It works because it succinctly explains why Zoom (and Slack) are critical to Hubspot’s everyday operations by solving issues like people working in different time zones and the need to have instant video calls.

It also ties these back to the ultimate benefit—allowing Hubspot to serve its customers better.

➡️ Purchase

This is the stage where your prospect makes the decision to buy. If your funnel has worked effectively, then the prospect should be ready to buy—it’s just a simple case of giving them a nudge and reminding them to do it.

One way you can do this is by sending them a personalized video that asks them to join you on a sales call in hopes they will become a repeat customer.

👉 How to do it

Personalization software like Hyperise lets you quickly and easily add personalized elements to videos.

This includes audio and visual elements such as the person’s name, company, and website.

You can see how it works by visiting our video personalization page and typing your email address.

You’ll be given instant access to a video made just for you. Or you can take a look at this video we created, which explains how to use personalized videos to book more sales meetings:

Add Flair to Your B2B Video Marketing with Hyperise

In this article, we’ve covered the four main stages of the B2B marketing funnel and highlighted the types of video content that can help you achieve your goals in each stage.

However, there are many more types of videos that you can use and more nuanced stages in the marketing funnel to consider.

When planning your B2B marketing video campaign, the most important thing is to focus on your customers. What do they need? Where will they look? What platforms do they use? How will this change as they move down the digital marketing funnel?

You can create an effective B2B marketing video campaign if you understand these key elements.

Hyper-personalizing your B2B video content is an excellent way to grab your prospect’s attention. It shows that you’ve taken time to create content that’s just for them. It also demonstrates that you’ve done your research to get to know them.

With the Hyperise toolkit, you can personalize your video content, adding multiple dynamic layers. And you don’t need any specific knowledge to get this right. You can do it all in a few clicks with our intuitive tool.

Visit our website to register for a free Hyperise trial. We’ll show you how to personalize B2B videos at scale for ultimate success.