Ask a manufacturer to make a product video, and they’d probably create an explanatory video for the mass market and call it a day.
Ask a marketer to do the same thing, and they’d list ten ways to promote your product through video.
So, in this article, we’re covering all the (ten) different ways a marketer would recommend you make your videos.
What makes a good B2B video?
Before we delve further, let’s first explore the basics of what makes a video “good.”
Any promotional video, B2B or otherwise, should have a good mix of the following:
- Product information
- Relatability
- Urgency
- Story
- Emotions
- Social proof
- Unique selling point (USP)
- Excellent visuals
And from there on, narration, structure, flow, and content also decide if your video lands in the pile-box of good or bad.
The power of visual storytelling — make your B2B videos relevant
According to recent data, more than 96% of marketers consider videos an integral part of their marketing strategy, and more than 91% of businesses plan to use video as a marketing tool in 2023.
This goes to show that the popularity of videos is increasing, and B2B businesses need to have a pulse on this trend to see how they can differentiate themselves in the eyes of consumers.
So, without further ado, let’s explore how to make a marketable product video and see a few B2B product video examples.
1. Be informative and honest
Alright, maybe the manufacturers were up to something because more than 96% of customers have watched explainer videos to learn about a product/service.
Speaking of which, this is an example of how a product explainer video should look like.
In this video, Slack takes you through the following:
- How to manage your workflow
- How to interact within channels
- The integrations and widgets it has
- How to make the most out of the platform
Additionally, they have broken down the content into different topics for easy navigation.
Pro tip: To create a trustworthy image of your brand, be as authentic as possible. For example, if you have a video comparing features between a competitor and yourself, don’t over-exaggerate your product features while giving little importance to theirs.
2. Make your video shareable
When we speak of making videos “shareable,” we’re looking at a two-part answer.
For the first part, ensure your videos have links to the necessary social sites and landing pages. Here’s a helpful example from PandaDoc that you can use as inspiration.
The second part of this is to make videos as engaging as possible, so your prospects and consumers end up sharing them.
For example, ZenDesk recreated an iconic (and hilarious) “Harry Met Sally” scene to promote their product.
And if the comment section is any indication, you’ll know that customers loved it. In fact, many went on to feature this commercial on their websites and LinkedIn pages.
If you’re looking for inspiration on incorporating humor in your B2B video ads, check out ZenDesk classic ads (there’s never a dull moment with them!)
That being said, humor is not the only way to make your product videos worthy of sharing. You can also focus on other topics of importance.
Although not B2B, Dove often uses its platform to showcase social messages. In the example below, it partnered with bloggers, poets, dancers, and others to share instances where women were judged based on their looks.
The ad inspires people to give beauty their own definition and not be stuck with societal expectations. All in all, it’s one hell of a message showing its primary customers it understands their problems.
3. Create a sense of urgency
Fear and FOMO are powerful emotions — and marketers use these emotions to create a sense of urgency to get prospects to buy their products.
Now, there are different ways you can create urgency. If you choose fear as your preferred tactic, you can run ads for limited-time offers and discounts.
If you use FOMO, you can show your prospects what they’ll miss out on if they don’t get your product.
For example, Adobe’s “Click, Baby, Click” ad shows the losses you can incur if you don’t look at analytics through Adobe’s Marketing Cloud.
4. Show how your product is made
Is there really any better way to share the ins and out of your product than to show it in action? Methinks not.
And if you don’t agree with us, you should watch this video example by Squarespace.
To make this video, they partnered with Jeff Bridges and his brand of humor to show viewers how he made the website for his Sleeping Tapes album.
As a side note, this advertisement is also an excellent example of how to do influencer marketing correctly.
You can take the same path as Squarespace, or you can look at creating something different (e.g., you can talk about your inspiration to create the product, the techniques you used to develop it, what problems you faced, and how you combatted them, etc.).
5. Build a story around your product
In marketing, storytelling is everything. To make your product stand out from its competitors, you must create a story around it. Because without a story, you’re just another product on the market.
Slack understands this, which is why it uses effective storytelling in its product ads. The example below is *technically* a case study, but it’s executed in such a way that it takes users through a humor-filled ride of storytelling.
Check it out for yourself.
Slack
While this article is primarily for B2B examples, here are a few B2C examples you can take inspiration from.
British Airways
British Airways uses a true story to incite emotions and show how you can create genuine relationships regardless of cultural differences.
Montblanc
In this ad, Montblanc takes the help of Hugh Jackman to tell the story of how the brand came to be and its history.
If you’re not a naturally gifted writer, you can use text-to-speech platforms — even if you word vomit, these solutions will help you capture your best and worst ideas.
6. Appeal to the emotions of your audience
Emotional storytelling is an art and a science, and very few businesses can do it well. GoDaddy is one of them.
This Super Bowl commercial by them may be only 30 seconds long, but it’ll take you on a rollercoaster of emotions. And inspiration like this is just what you need.
Pro tip: There’s no one-rule-fits-all for emotional advertisement. You can focus on either one emotion or try to ring in a plethora of emotions.
7. Showcase what makes you different
You can show prospects what makes you different from your competitors in a thousand ways. For example, you can create a video to compare your product with others like PandaDoc.
Or, you can differentiate yourself with your brand ideology (like Apple did with their “Think Different” campaign).
Or, you can create a mission-based message, as Salesforce did with Matthew McConaughey.
Or you can explore the other 997 ways. Keeping true to the spirit of this headline, showcase what makes you different by doing something different.
8. Go into detail about what you offer
If a prospect is seriously considering doing business with you, they’ll likely need to know everything you offer and what you can do for them.
So, what does this mean for you? Simple — it means that creating a detailed product video should be one of the tasks on your to-do list.
You can take inspiration from SurveyMonkey, which released a two-minute-long video explaining its capabilities.
Or your videos can be longer than the two-minute mark, too. For example, Zapier created a 46+ minute video (which was essentially a webinar) to explain what Zapier is and what it does.
9. Incorporate customer or employee testimonials in your video
When marketing a product, the product itself isn't the only thing customers care about.
For example, if you promote debit cards for kids , your prospects (aka parents) wouldn’t only consider what the credit card could do for them but would also want to know what safety measures it has.
Similarly, no matter what business you do, you should consider other factors that might convince your prospect to buy from you.
One of the biggest convincing factors we can think of is social proof or testimonials — either about your product or your company culture (you can source this from customers or employees, whichever works best).
For inspiration, you can look at Microsoft’s “People of Microsoft” series, which shows a glimpse of what employees think of the company. You’ll also find a thousand different customer testimonial videos on the web.
10. Use animations
Most B2B companies deal with a lot of complex topics, and they have to come up with ways to make them engaging for ads, video tutorials, and other kinds of audiovisual content. That’s when animations come into play.
Here’s an example of Samsara taking a complex topic (fleet dash cams ) and turning it into something easy to digest by using animations.
Key takeaway
We get it — creating marketing videos for B2B can prove to be difficult. But videos are an important form of communication and can effectively turn prospects into consumers if done right.
And now that you know a couple of strategies and have a few B2B product video examples, the very next step is to create them.
And that’s where we come in. StoryXpress has helped more than 1.5 million users and 5000 brands create videos successfully, and we can help you too.
Simply sign up for free to see what we have to offer.