Corporate Web Video should engage and entice action

Jason Kincaid’s recent TechCrunch post, The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo clearly highlights an effective way for B2B Sales and Business to Business Marketing teams to use online video as a means to create competitive differentiation in their online marketing mix. As any digital marketer worth their salt clearly understands, the  “8-second rule,” the time that a visitor will take to determine if your site is worth spending any time on, must always be considered  when writing any online copy or designing page layouts.  Jason explains the problem this way:

If you don’t have some kind of bite-sized hook that introduces them to your product, there’s a good chance they’ll stare quizzically at the screen, shrug their shoulders, and head back to Google to find something else that fixes their problem.

Being an online video software company, we understand how video can be a vital part of any engagement marketing strategy. Back in December of 2008, we found and blogged about a TechTarget study that found that 89% of respondents indicated that a 3 to 5 minute demo or product showcase are useful during their search.

A product demo screencast can logically articulate your product’s features, but in order to create real differentiation among competitive products or services, you’ll need the emotion that your company’s best spokesperson carries to explain why your product matters. John Windsor summarizes it best in his blog when he says, “Logic leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action.” Use your product overview video as an opportunity to create a genuine connection with your visitor and allow them to put a face to a name. This creates emotion, which can be used as a launching pad to the action you want your website visitor to take. That’s why we believe the most effective product videos are ones that are purpose-built – concieved from the start with the desired action or end result in mind.

From a B2B marketing perspective, it’s also important to keep in mind that an Engineer is interested in a totally different 5 minute story about your product or service than the Controller at that same company. In other words, there are many ways your story should be told, depending on the function, need, and time availability of the specific website visitor who’s watching it. This form of buyer-led video is the best way to highten engagement and ensure you’re not boring your visitor with information that’s not important to them, at the expense of the key messages.

Jason’s post focuses on ways to use video to clearly articulate what it is you actually do, without the marketing jargon. Absolutely, this is a great way to generate interest and allow your visitors to draw logically conclusions about your product or service. True video featuring your company’s best storytellers and a buyer-led experience that allows visitors to experience your message at a pace that’s comfortable to them, is your best bet to create an emotional response that will generate action and create more highly qualified inbound leads.