The Ultimate Countdown: 10 Best B2B Video Marketing Examples of 2015

Every year around this time, we highlight some of the best video marketing examples over the past year in an attempt to provide inspiration to B2B marketers as the new year rolls in.

The truth is, we all need a little bit of inspiration. Especially in the video world. Mainly because the use of video is proving to be more and more crucial to marketing success. In fact, marketers using video are growing revenue 49% faster than those who aren’t and 74% of B2B marketers say video content converts better than any other medium.

So crack open a fresh page in your 2016 planner and take notes from the best.

10. Best Use of a Customer Story

Squarespace’s ‘Building a Website with Jeff Bridges’

Straight-up interviews with your customers captured on camera is one way to go about telling your customers’ stories. Or you could follow the route of Squarespace, who told the story of Jeff Bridges’ sleeping tapes in a raw and oh-so-captivating way.

9. Best Sales and Marketing Alignment Video

Zuora’s ‘Talk to Your Doctor’

When you watch this video, you’ll most likely recognize the format. But Zuora’s application of a popular commercial turned customer story not only helped their marketing team share important stories with their sales team but also broke down the barriers to sales’ adoption of video for their own tactics. Win-win, I’d say!

This video won a 2015 Video Marketing Award! Learn more and see other winners here.

8. Best Use of Humor in B2B

FedEx’s ‘Growing Business’

There’s in-your-face humor and then there’s FedEx’s subtle humor. We love that this video communicates the value the company can provide to a growing business with a touch of straight-faced humor at the end. And by playing with their own special effects, no less!

7. Best Big Bang Video on a Small Budget

Salesforce’s ‘Professional Edition’

This product demo helped buyers self-serve, freeing up Account Executive’s time as a result. Plus, it was a serious budgeted production by only one person at Salesforce using Keynote, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro C and a USB mic with a 15” Macbook Pro Retina display.

The results say it all, though: in the first two quarters of 2015, the video influenced almost $1 million in sales.

This video won a 2015 Video Marketing Award! Learn more and see other winners here.

6. Best Feature Demo

Volvo’s ‘Look Who’s Driving’

This is the second year in a row that Volvo has taken this category (last year with ‘Epic Split’). What can I say, when the value of your product can be shown on camera, show it on camera! Demonstration beats description every time!

5. Best Educational Video

TD Ameritrade’s ‘RIA Journey to Independence’

TD Ameritrade’s Journey to Independence campaign set up an online, self-serve mentorship program. New RIAs (registered investment advisors) can learn from successful RIAs who have gone before them. It’s a great example of how video is the next best thing to being there in person.

This was the campaign’s intro video, you can see the rest of the campaign here.

4. Best Video Series

Intel’s ‘Jim Parsons and the Intel Innovation Adventure’

Oh Jim Parsons … aka Sheldon! How we love you.

Not only is this video a great example of utilizing a TV personality that so many know and love, but also a great example of building a consistent series off of one main character. (Keep watching after the first video, below, to see others in the series.)

3. Best Use of Video in Integrated Marketing Campaign

Gainsight’s ‘Blank Space’

Gainsight created this video for their PULSE conference, where they hired, not only an acapella group, but a T-Swift impersonator to sing this song at the event, too. That’s a strong (and unusual!) integration.

This video won a 2015 Video Marketing Award! Learn more and see other winners here.

2. Best Play on Pop Culture

SIRIS’ ‘Pancakes’

We all know Gordon Ramsay. This video is an amazing example of utilizing a strong pop culture figure and mixing in a little humor and ‘resourcefulness’! While we can all tell that their may have been a few different scenes blended together to create this final video, this particular recipe will certainly pique your interest!

1. Best B2B Storytelling

Schneider Electric’s ‘Llama Superstar’

“Tell the story so your audience can relate” is a best practice we’ve heard over and over. But Schneider Electric took it one step further to beef up the story to an inspirational (and slightly absurd) level!

And that’s a wrap on the past year in exemplary video marketing. Want more?! Check out 2014’s top video marketing examples, too.

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The Guide to More Pipeline with Personalized Video

To succeed in marketing, you need to be able to reel your audience in. Bring them close and capture their attention. If you can’t do that, how will you ever get to the point of convincing them to buy your offering? You can’t teach your dog, Ralph, to shake a paw if you can’t even get him to come in from the backyard (not that we’re comparing dogs and prospects here).

No, capturing his attention comes first. And the same goes for your prospects.

Then comes the opportunity to build strong relationships, connect, and ultimately convince buyers on the value of your product or service. Without these steps, there are no quality leads to pass to sales, and there’s certainly no significant marketing-driven pipeline.

But capturing attention is hard. I mean, like going-for-a-run-in-a-snowstorm-after-the-biggest-turkey-dinner-ever, hard. With over 85 business emails hitting your prospects’ inboxes every day, how can you possibly reach into the overflowing pot and come out with a solid business relationship … or hey, even an email click-through?

1:1 communication that brings your prospect directly into your story, that’s how. With video personalized for every single one of your prospects.

How do you do that? Good question! And one that stemmed the development of “Kickin’ Butt and Taking Names: How B2B Marketers Can Drive More Pipeline with Personalized Video”; so you can learn how to connect on an individual level to grab attention, engage, and ultimately drive more pipeline from the marketing activities you work so hard on.

Give this guide on driving more pipeline with personalized video a read to:

• Uncover the root causes of attention scarcity
• Explore individualization, 2016’s content revolution
• See a live personalized video campaign and its results
• Discover 5 ideas for your own personalized video campaign

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5 Exceptionally Important Tips for Sales Engineers Creating Pre-Recorded Demo Videos

It’s no secret – B2B buyers are more enabled and empowered than ever before.

But they’re also a little shy….

Before a potential customer reaches out to your team, they have combed through your content, read your blogs, watched your videos, and consumed as much information about your product or service as possible.

In short, they have been avoiding talking to you for as long as they could.

They want to avoid the sales pitch, and… you kind of have to sympathize with them. Being techno-savvy researchers of the 21^st century, your potential customer is comparing your solution to 5-7 competitors. The thought of talking to each one of these sales-hungry companies on the phone is a little daunting – so they’ll avoid it at all cost.

In fact, if they are talking to you, it might be because you have tucked away some crucial information – such as pricing or a product demo – behind your walled sales garden.

It’s time to do your customer, and yourself, a favor. It’s time to set free the demo, and let it live within the liberating winds of the cloud.

A carefully crafted demo video can speed up the sales cycle, save your sales engineering team hours, and help weed out unqualified leads – inevitably giving your sales pipeline better velocity and improved accuracy.

Most importantly, it’ll give your customers even more reasons to feel empowered, and therefore make you their number one choice.

Now… how do we get started? Check out these 5 steps to building a great product demo.

 1. Research the Purpose, and the Audience of Your Demo Video

Before you whip out your dictation tools and start writing down your go-to demo catchphrases, ask yourself the following questions:

• Where in the marketing funnel is this going to exist?
• Which role are we targeting?
• How long should it be? (More importantly…how short should it be?)
• How technical should it be?

Recorded demos should be much shorter than live demos. They should have a clear purpose, a quicker pace, and show only what is necessary.

For example, if the purpose of the video is to educate c-level decision makers, you might want to keep the video to a 2-3 minute highlight reel correlating features to value propositions.

Similarly, if the purpose is to educate your key target users to help qualify them for a more meaningful conversation, then you might want a 5-7 minute video that goes a little deeper in terms of functionality and usability.

Or, you might be building video content designed to support Proof-of-Concepts – which will be as long as they need to be to explain necessary configurations or deployments.

In any case, you will want to err on the short side. Live demos can often stretch to 20, 30, or even 40 minutes long. It’s better to send your potential customers 4 highly targeted 5 minute videos, as opposed to one 20 minute video that casts a wide, and ineffective net.

Before you write your script or record – you will need to decide who you are targeting for your content to be truly effective.

2. Pre-Plan Modularizing the Demo for Personalization

Now that you know “why” and “what” your video is showing, you’ll want to ask yourself the following question:

Where can this video be personalized for our different verticals and target markets?

More often then not, your technology or services will be utilized across different industries. And ideally, when you conduct live demonstrations you are “speaking the lingo,” and, “throwing down the jargon,” so that your prospects know that you truly “get them.”

Before you begin writing your script, carefully plan to include some simple edits that will allow you to make multiple versions of the same video – which all, magically, seem crafted specifically for a single industry.

This could include:

• Book-ending the demo with a few slides that communicate key value propositions related to that industry.
• In select areas, editing the voiceover track to include industry terms.
• In select areas, swapping video screen captures with elements (like integrations) that target a key target market.

Alternatively, you could also build a “Choose Your Own Adventure” demo so that this personalized path is delivered organically, on demand.

When using a “Choose Your Own Adventure” approach, you can allow viewers to build their own pathway through the content directly within the video. Or, you could use one of these editing methods to create personalized demo videos for different target markets.

This will save you time in the long run, and also tell your customers that you are thinking intently about their needs.

3. Create a Shot List and Script

In live demos, it’s a cardinal sin to read off a script. In recorded demos, a script is going to be your new best friend.

During live demos, the subtle screw-ups of a human add an authentic experience that is inadvertently persuasive. Conversely, during recorded demos, a speaker’s weird word choices and fumbled phrasings are annoyingly awkward.

When a video is recorded, there is a higher expectation from the viewer that the delivery be without fault. A script will ensure that.

More importantly, a script paired with a shot list will make sure that you don’t skip over any key features.

Writing a script is a little upfront investment that is actually going to save you time in the long run. If you can – record one of your better live demos, listen to it while taking notes, and break down your demo into a shot list and associated talk tracks.

Then, practice the script aloud to remove clunky sentences and unnecessary words.

Below is a snippet of a sample shot list and script to give you an idea of what this might look like.

4. Record Audio and Screen Separately

Everything you have been planning has been leading up to this moment. Are you ready to shine? It’s time for a little voice acting.

As mentioned, recorded demos lack the interactivity of a live delivery. For that reason, you will want the audio for your demo to have some energy, be clearly articulated, and dance without missing a beat.

Unfortunately, it’s really f***ing hard to run a demo while reading off a script with enthusiasm. Not to mention the awkward pauses as you click through to the next feature you are demoing.

Fortunately, through the magic of video editing this problem is easily solved.

Start with the audio first.

Tune your microphone settings and pull your script up on your monitor. Practice test recording a few sentences so you have an idea of your tone and pace.

Then begin, and don’t stop recording until you’re done. If you stumble, just pause, return to the last sentence, and continue speaking without stopping the recording.

With some practice reading off a script, a 3-minute video shouldn’t take you longer than 10 minutes to record. Afterwards, just edit out the screw-ups and you’ll have yourself one-half of a demo.

Then, the screen capture.

Pull out your shot list, and take spaced out captures of the listed features and actions. Just make sure you take into the consideration the length of the associated talk track while recording. Otherwise you may end up with not enough video for your audio track.

5. Add a Little Production Value

“The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.” – George Lucas

Live demos are notorious for having absolute s*** video and audio quality due to latencies in screen-sharing tools.

Since you are recording your demo, ask your finance department for a little spare change to purchase a decent microphone.

Good sound on a demo video is often an overlooked feature but bad sound can make your demo video unwatchable. Investing in a mic will help improve the completion rate of the video, and therefore make your customer better educated.

Also, don’t be afraid to add some music to the background of your video. Just make sure it’s not too loud so that it drowns out the narration.

There are a butt-load of sites out there that offer inexpensive music tracks that would be sufficient for mid-funnel demo videos, Bedtracks is a great example. The music can lighten the mood to the video, add some humor, and make the whole experience of watching a recorded product demo far less bland.

In addition, adding the music actually has a very functional effect.

If you have edited your audio narration down from one recorded track, you may inevitably have some awkward clicks, pops, or volume mistakes throughout the recording. The music will cover these up, like the final glaze on a holiday turkey, so that the final product is as smooth and tasty to consume.

There you have it – 5 steps to a recorded product demo that will keep your prospects engaged and educate them on your product or service. Plus, you’ve freed up tons of time for your sales engineering team to tackle other revenue-generating tasks!

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Want to learn more about using video to optimize the sales process? Check out our on-demand webinar “How to Use Video in the Sales Process to Close More Deals”!

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The Struggle of Holiday Classics: A Vidyard Story

Holiday classics are classics for a reason. The original ‘holiday classic’ definition dates back to the early 1900’s and states that in order to qualify as a holiday classic, every person must have watched the film a minimum of 73.6 times, every person must be able to recite the script while icing an upside down cake, and every person must sing the soundtrack in their sleep while also changing the sheets … in their sleep.

True story.

Really, everyone loves a good holiday classic. But they’ve also been done over and over … and over. And in marketing – when we’re all looking for ways to touch the hearts of our customers, stand out, and be noticed – we can sometimes abuse them.

But hey! We’re all on the hook for crafting brilliant, original content around the holidays – we get it! No seriously, we were swingin’ for hours trying to come up with an original holiday video! Check it out:

Happy Holidays from the Team at Vidyard!

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If You’re Going to Reach Consumers with Video, Do So Quickly

The verdict is in, and the analytics are clear: if you’re selling products and services to modern customers, no tool has a bigger impact on sales than video. Marketing pros know it, too: video is the medium with the best ROI. But…what kind of video? How long should it be?

Death by Longevity

Cool fact: a video loses 90% of its audience after 100 seconds of elapsed time. Cool fact #2: There’s a science to fast-storytelling. The science goes like this:

• don’t wait longer than 0:03 seconds to surface a product benefit.
• And then don’t wait longer than 0:09 to surface your second product benefit, or to tell a joke, or light something on fire.
• If your viewers are still with you after those first 2 milestones, you’ll likely keep them until about 1 minute.

But making videos that entertain and educate can be an uphill battle. One reason for this is that ads encroach on consumers’ media experience so much – on their Twitter feed, Facebook timeline, and so on – that consumers have even less patience than they once did for marketing messages. They often want to escape them, not listen to them.

And the ‘inundation’ problem holds true for marketing executives, too – over 80% of C-level execs reported watching more online video today than they did a year ago, while 75% say they watch work-related videos at least weekly.  

Back Off, Bud

So what do you do about viewers’ loving video but hating the hard sell? Simple – remember the following adage: “The less you sell, the more you sell.” Consumers at the point of purchase will buy if they see a helpful, neutral, editorially-toned marketing message; and they will run away if you get aggressive. Got a great product and want to shout about it from rooftops? Great — just stay up on that rooftop when you’re shouting. The further down the sales funnel you go, the more whispering you should do. Another way to put it: the closer you get to the point of sale, the less a customer likes prodding. So, ‘tell them, don’t sell them’.

Death by Shopping List

Tempted to jam 17 ideas into a single minute by listing all of your product’s benefits fast, like an auctioneer? Don’t do it. Customers want “proof” behind your claims, more than the claims themselves. Listing a number of benefits one after the other is simply failing to prove these claims one after the other. A single truthful claim, well backed-up by clear evidence, boosts consumers’ confidence and spurs their tendency to make a purchase. In summary, confusion never sold a product.

Now What?

Now that you know about best practices, you face video’s toughest challenge: how to get started. Here’s a simple roadmap.

1. Make sure your video is about 1 subject — not 2 or 3. You’ll generate better viewer attention and retention.
2. Keep it simple. Have you decided there are 3 or 4 or even 10 key concepts to communicate? No problem – break those 3 or 4 or even 10 concepts into 3 or 4 or even 10 videos, of 1 minute or less.
3. Keep it short. Is your video 9 minutes long? Trust me: viewers will miss 8/9ths of it. They’ve clicked off and have gone out to pick up the kids, walk the dog, and rearrange their sock drawer.
4. Maximize the chances your viewers keep watching after Video #1. Just add a call to action near the end of that 1 minute to drive them to the next one.

Cool Tip: If a viewer knows how much time they’ll need to invest in a video, they’ll watch longer. So, visually place total running time somewhere in the description under the video thumbnail or still image. Your text might be something like this: “This video explains the Affordable Care Act in 1 minute and 9 seconds.”

Next Steps

OK, you’re sold. You want to get started. Excellent. Go (quickly) to hire a writer. If you’re starting with almost no budget, the most important video resource you can spend money on is a scriptwriter. Why? Because they’re experts at writing text that makes sense when it ends up on screen. Remember, the hardest part of making a short video is making a short video good. By the time you say, ‘Hi, my name is Jim, and I’m here to tell you all about our amazing widget,’ you’ve just spent 10 seconds of your precious 60. A good writer, like a good teacher, can get to the point fast; and communicate a hugely complex subject in a way that builds confidence. For proof, stand in front of a mirror and try to explain why your listener should buy your Smart TV (or insurance product or fleet management software) …in 1 minute.  

Why O, Why O, Why-O? Video Just Keeps Getting Stronger

The stakes literally couldn’t be higher when it comes to creating video content. Consumer video consumption will equate to 4 times the Internet traffic of web browsing and email this year. Yes, if you added up all web browsing and email, video viewing will eclipse that data usage by 400%. And B2B companies are joining the trend in droves, almost 90% are planning to use video in their content marketing over the next year. Video is, and will be, everywhere. Time to capture your B2C and B2B viewers with honesty and humor; boost their confidence, and close the deal.

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5 Signs ABM Is a Smart Addition to Your Marketing Strategy

For the past decade, B2B marketing has mostly been exemplified by lead generation. Vendors use social media, SEO, and marketing automation to draw traffic to their site, capture contact info, and nurture contacts into qualified leads.

With the right nurture process and a stellar sales team, you can get a lot of return from “traditional” lead generation. But it has its weaknesses. Most notably, lead generation focuses on marketing to individual leads, which doesn’t always account for the complexity and scale of an enterprise purchase — often made by a diverse team of stakeholders after months of deliberation. According to CEB, the average B2B purchase now requires 5.4 signatures.  

Why Account-Based Marketing?

Account-based marketing, or ABM, helps marketers compensate for this complexity by directing message and medium at buying groups within named companies, rather than individual leads. Let’s say you’re an HR software vendor, for example. Instead of trying to draw interest from anonymous hiring managers and COOs, you could name companies that are a good fit for your product (because of size, industry, etc.) and specifically target those companies.

By starting with named companies and delivering ads and content to groups of decision influencers at those companies, you cut out the whole process of discovery and capture, which can significantly shorten the sales cycle.  

The idea of dedicating resources to specific accounts is by no means a new concept, but the nature of those resources is changing in a way that makes ABM accessible and affordable. The new league of ABM platforms give marketers the ability to target accounts by IP address, opportunity size, or sales stage and track engagement at a much more granular level.

Software vendors like Demandbase provide ABM analytics to help marketers
see which accounts are interacting with digital content.

It hasn’t taken long for ABM to prove its weight in gold. A SiriusDecisions report from this year found that 92 percent of companies recognize the value of account-based marketing, even if they haven’t used it. As ABM finds its place in the industry, you’ll need to answer the obvious question: Is it right for your business?

Here are five key indicators to help you decide. If you identify with any or all of these statements, ABM is probably a good fit for your marketing strategy.

1. You Have a Highly-Skilled, Well-Resourced Marketing Team

One of the most evident barriers to ABM is a skills gap. Roughly 47 percent of B2B companies feel they lack the skills and support to succeed at account-based marketing. So if you’re already there — if your team has a good handle on which companies to pursue, how to create the right messaging, and how to implement new technology — you’re about nine steps ahead of the competition.

Maybe your lead generation efforts are performing as expected, but aren’t exactly taking anyone’s breath away. ABM is a great way to step up your game and create some bigger revenue opportunities for sales. Just make sure you have a system in place for tracking these accounts through the sales development process.

2. Your Product Sales Are Driven by Buying Groups

The executive lead who single-handedly approves large purchase decisions is every marketer and salesperson’s dream. But in many cases, decisions are made by larger buying groups, which means they will take longer and require a different kind of support. Where focusing on the person can sometimes backfire  (drawing more attention to disparate objectives), account-based marketing focuses on inspiring consensus within diverse buying committees.

Of course, this will depend on the nature of your product/service offering and the size of the companies to which you market. If your product is a simple web app for time tracking, you can and should go after individual decision-makers. If it’s an enterprise resource planning solution, on the other hand, you’ll need to get buy-in from executives, IT managers, financial consultants, and even middle managers.  

3. You’re Struggling to Maintain Lead Volume

In a sense, the success of traditional lead generation depends on your ability to keep a steady flow of leads running through your sales pipeline. Generally, that means you need to bring in a high volume of top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) leads, nurture them, and zero in on the most qualified.

If you’re having a hard time pulling in volume at the top, it’ll be nearly impossible to reach economy of scale with your lead generation. If you’re a smaller business, expanding your reach may not be an option yet. But then, maybe it’s a myth that you need to attract hundreds of thousands of prospects just to convert a few. Why not start with the few and concentrate on nurturing and expanding those relationships? That’s ABM.  

Some analysts even say this new approach calls for an upside-down funnel (i.e., a pyramid), where specific accounts are the target audience and advocacy is the desired end result, instead of the typical lead to purchase path.

Credit: FlipMyFunnel

4. Your Sights are Set on Specific Prospects

Whose business do you want?

If your answer is “mid-market organizations in the banking and financial service industry,” your best approach is probably to generate leads in that industry and follow up with the most promising ones. But if your answer includes the names of specific companies, you might be a good candidate for ABM.

From an outbound perspective, that means retargeting named companies by IP address and tailoring content to the right decision influencers. From an inbound perspective, it means tracking engagement metrics at the account level — e.g., page views, downloads, video views from Company X).  Having a holistic view of how multiple stakeholders from one company engage with your content helps you improve their experience and generate revenue faster.

5. You Want to Sell Beyond the Sale

In the age of revenue marketing, it’s easy to develop a kind of tunnel vision for sales. All of your efforts start to revolve around pitching products and services, incentivizing buy-in, and converting leads into deals. These are all important functions of marketing, but they aren’t the complete picture.

There’s an entire relationship that begins immediately after the buying transaction, and if you manage it properly, you can turn a positive customer experience into loyalty and advocacy, which means cross-selling, up-selling, and referrals … which means more revenue. Maximizing your relationship with specific accounts through ABM is one of the best ways to turn loyal customers into effective advocates.  

Account-based marketing may seem complicated, but technology aside, it’s a matter of priorities. If you want to drive revenue, you can either rake in as many leads as possible (the shotgun approach), or you can focus your efforts on the most valuable accounts (the dart gun approach). That means naming them, engaging them, measuring results, and maximizing value through loyalty and advocacy.

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Your Sales Team Has A Video Problem

People buy from people: a core sales principal that is getting more difficult each year.

Best-in-class sales teams understand the importance of connecting emotionally with customers. However, today’s customers are leveraging the vast information of the internet to research, compare and review solutions without any sales assistance. Which means sales teams’ profound skills in connecting with customers, and using emotional connection to influence are greatly diminished in today’s world. We have less time to make an impact.

Further, as customers’ day-to-day behaviors have changed, the human brain remains the same as they were thousands of years ago: evaluating friend-or-foe exactly like New World explorers or African tribesman of days past. Anyone we interact with is deeply analyzed on physicality, tonality, and verbiage in a matter of seconds.

Our sales teams are increasingly in situations where they have a minimal amount of time to make emotional customer connections. A further challenge is today’s efficient sales teams transacting more telephone-based sales, reducing our customers’ interpretation of us to simply tonality and verbiage.

Physical presence is the anchor tenant of our brain’s interpersonal analysis, representing 55% of our observations, even when there is no physical stimulus. When we speak to someone on the phone, we attempt to determine what they look like, their age, and the details of their location. In the absence of physical cues, our brain will narrow its focus to tonality to help extrapolate hints about physicality. As a result, we teach our sales teams things like “enthusiasm sells” or “the customer can hear you smile over the phone”. Selling over the phone inherently limits our ability to create the deepest possible emotional connection.

Until now.

Video is the next best thing to being with a customer in person. Best-in-class sales teams create competitive advantage by establishing physical interactivity, via video assets, in remote sales situation.

Top Ways to Use Video in Sales

Here are some of the best ways we have seen great sales teams use video:

• Customer Testimonials – Portray smart people who trust your product or service with strong, in-person customer testimonials.
• Company Culture Videos – Convey your strong culture through interviews with executives and employees.
• Seller Videos – Introduce yourself, your approach and your beliefs to every new client.
• Video Proposals – Bring physical connection and trust to your proposals by delivering the executive summary in video format.
• Product or Services Demos – Include your sales people, or product experts, in online video tours.

Plus, top sales teams are tapping into the unique power of video: if you know what they are watching, you know what they are thinking. Today’s sales people are tracking content, like email opens or whitepaper downloads, and trying to guess what it means. With video, you can track second-by-second what your customer watches, or re-watches, or when they lose interest. There is no better insight into your customers’ thoughts and feelings than what they choose to watch.

How Video Supports the Sales Organization

Let’s take a look at how video can play a pivotal role in supporting a high performance sales organization.

Sales Development

• Increased Prospecting Conversion: video helps your emails stand out from inbox clutter
• High Quality Lead Conversion: Video highlights the customers who are truly interested, helping refine the message to qualify the opportunity

Sales Reps

• Improved Pipeline Management: Video can help AEs prioritize the best deals based on amount of video consumed at a given account
• Faster Closes: Video can help get at the truth of how interested a prospect is, where their interest lies, and focus on the topics that the customer cares about

Technical Pre-Sales

• Increase Pre-Sales Productivity: Sales Engineers can record a collection of micro demos that can be combined to create a custom demo experience tailored to an account
• Grow Bigger Deals: SEs can focus their time and resources on helping close deals and creating bigger deals – where they add the most value (vs. giving top of funnel demos)

Managers

• Lower Cost of Sale: Video can be used by AEs for early stage demos – eliminating the need to pull an SE in until a later time, speeding up the deal
• Increased Sales Effectiveness: Creating on-demand training assets helps arm new and veteran reps with the latest in competitive, product or sales best practices

Your marketing team is likely on their way with video since 90% of marketers say video is becoming more important to strategies and 74% of marketers agree that video converts better than other mediums. It’s time for sales to play a role in video operations.

In many organizations, sales teams are thinking about video as a tool, not a strategy. Video is seen as ‘a marketing problem’, however sales needs to be very vocal, and involved in video creation, distribution and analytics operations or they’ll miss out on massive benefits that video provides sales.

Sales teams that deploy video as a strategy will powerfully adapt to the reality of today’s fast-moving and remote customer, and outperform those teams that continue to sell without the emotion, efficiency, or deep customer insight that video delivers.

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