This is the first post in a “What are the best subjects for technology marketing videos?” series. Click here for Part 2 and here for Part 3
Technology buyers are doing their own research before they contact sales. This opens up many new opportunities for marketers to deploy videos, because there’s no doubt that people who are doing their own research will watch videos that are relevant. But, for the most part, you don’t really know what these self-directed buyers already know, or what they want to know, or where they are on the Buyer’s Journey. So how should you allocate your video resources beyond producing a general overview?”
A good place to start is to ask yourself “What things do people generally want to know that are best explained visually?”
Explaining a methodology visually
For example, one of the hardest things to explain is consulting services, because they basically come down to We help you 1) figure out what to do and 2) get it done.
But you can make the steps in a methodology come alive by with an animation that answers the question “So, what do you consultants actually do?”. That’s the kind of question the lends itself to a visual answer.
The first example here is taken from a CA Technologies video where the company explains the actions taken in a cloud migration strategy engagement.
The second example explains how consultants help lower insurance costs using an insurance exchange.
How will my job be different?
A sales person who served as subject matter expert for a video we produced told us that all the prospect really wants to know is “How will this help me get promoted?”
A variation on that idea — this one is aimed at the CEO of a Managed Service Provider business — is seen in this excerpt from an AVG video. After a very brief setup dramatizing the key problems most MSP execs face, the video shows how the job changes when the AVG solution is in place. The video works because it’s aimed at a very narrowly defined group of buyers and it uses visuals that are relevant to these buyers’ actual jobs.
That’s one reason we’ve recently begun producing Buyer’s Journey Video Bundles™ — by narrowing the audience by persona, we can produce a greater number of videos about a given solution cost-effectively. Here’s an example where a video manages to cram nine (!) ways a solution makes the job go better into less than a minute. The job, in this case, is that of sales manager. Other videos in the bundle were directed at operations and IT.
For more info about designing modular videos for sales engagement and content marketing, download our free report Creating Videos that Support the Technology Buyer’s Journey.