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 a white paper, you know what to expect just by reading the title. Not so with video, where you hardly ever know quite what to expect.
It’s not just that comparing the effectiveness of established types of text publications with the effectiveness of an all-purpose communication medium leads to fuzzy thinking. It also narrows how you think about content and leads to siloed video budgets, rather than an agile approach that makes the best use of video to improve the buyer’s experience.
Rethinking video content strategy
Take another look at these categories:
- Case studies
- Webinars
- Third-party analyst reports
- User reviews
- Video content
- Blog posts
- Infographics
Any and all of the text/graphic genres listed here can be a video, can be converted to video, or can be enhanced, summarized or promoted with video. This is a more productive way to think about video than thinking of video as a type of content. It’s more productive than planning for various types of video content (explainers, tutorials, webinars, etc.) For one thing, you’ll end up with a lot more videos if you routinely add video components to other media. For another, you’ll make engaging videos for the entire customer journey. Most B2B marketers concentrate on making sales-y videos for top-of-the-funnel awareness — as if buyers stopped appreciating video’s communication power after they jump into the funnel.
Case studies
If you’re developing a written case study, it should be easy to add video elements (taken with a salesperson’s smart phone, say). It’s not much more difficult to have a salesperson or subject matter expert tell some or all of the the story on camera. Stories of dramatic turnarounds are natural for video, though such quasi-documentary productions usually require professional videography and editing.
Webinars
Most webinars are people talking over (or in front of) PowerPoint presentations. There’s usually a demo portion that can be excerpted and re-used in videos. With webinars recorded for later viewing, the user experience can be significantly improved with freely available interactive video tools that put the user in control.
Third-party analyst reports
It’s common to mention favorable analyst evaluations in all types of content, including video. If your company makes favorable analyst reports available for download, it makes sense to create a video “trailer” to promote the downloads in social media.
User reviews
Video “testimonials” are invaluable, though sometimes not feasible in the larger enterprises. But webinars featuring customer stories are important for IT buyers.
White Papers/Blog posts
A few companies have turned blog posts and research reports into videos.
Infographics.
I’m not a big fan of infographics in general, but there are plenty of templates out there that make it relatively easy to turn out video infographics.
