How long should your video be?
Is there an ideal length for a video? The work of crafting a B2B marketing video is always done in hopes that prospects and customers will appreciate the effort enough to watch the whole thing. Some will. But according to 2018 video benchmarks from Vidyard [download page], only two out of three viewers stay tuned, […]
Use this narrative formula to tell your video story
Kurt Vonnegut famously diagrammed the “shapes” of the what he identified as the mere handful of plots that underlie all stories. But the plot of a story — boy-meets-girl, man-gets-out-of-hole, whatever — is not what holds your attention. What keeps you going is the narrative, the tense, interesting moments come at you one-by-one. So, how […]
Six MORE technology video best practices for those who aren’t sure they know how to make a video
Short videos about technology are great for sales and marketing. But they can be tricky to produce when you’ve got technical subject matter and multiple stakeholders who hold competing views of what customers really want to know. Last month, I wrote about some tech video best practices that help to smooth the upfront work that […]
7 best practices for video explainers
For a lot of people involved in technology solution videos, producing videos is not their main job. Video is just another element in a product launch, a trade show, or a web page. They’re not confident that they know what they’re getting into. If that’s you, here are seven best practices for videos about a […]
What makes trusted video content?
Two out of three B2B buyers strongly agree that the use of more data and research would improve the quality of the content provided by vendors, according to Demand Gen Report data. There’s plenty of other research to support the common-sense notion that buyers will prefer content the feels authoritative and trustworthy over content that’s […]
Technology marketing’s top video content challenges
Marketers say that it’s getting easier to reach target audiences. And that audiences are happy to get good content. But, big challenges remain. The biggest challenges, according to a recent Content Marketing Institute Survey, are Creating content that appeals to multi-level roles Differentiating solutions Communicating complex concepts 64% of the marketers surveyed say they are […]
Videos for Inside Sales
A client of ours recently mentioned that their inside sales team would be thrilled to have a new video to share every week — but, of course, “we don’t have the budget for that.” Actually, if they — and you — have a video budget at all, you probably do have the budget to produce […]
Don’t even think about video content
You often see references to “video content” in articles comparing different types of content for sales enablement and content marketing, in this blog post and elsewhere. But, if you think about it, we don’t make video content. Nobody does, because video isn’t a “content type” like white papers, case studies, and other established genres. With […]
How interactive video makes people smarter
A summary of findings from up-to-date academic studies, Evidence of Improving Knowledge Retention with Interactive Video, was recently published by the developers of the free open-source interactive video tool H5P, which I’ve written about previously. Here are a few that are especially relevant to complex and enterprise sales. Interactive video has more impact than traditional […]
Give customers a reason to watch your software demo
Software makes a big impact on the bottom line in just about every organization today. Real-life software users influence buying decisions. So, if you sell a technology solution that involves software, at some point in the sales cycle you need a persuasive video software demo. Depicting credible reason(s) to try your software As with any […]
