grown up I was always told I had a face for radio and a voice for print so naturally I decided to make a weekly video show take that haters and lots of b2b brands are doing the same according to a new study by mondo summarised by marketing land a whopping 67% of marketers list video as their top priority for this year and next there's just one problem most b2b videos are drier than Mitch Hedberg riding an overcooked Thanksgiving turkey under the sweltering Saharan Sun thankfully today on marketing is broken we're chatting with foundation marketing founder Ross Simmons Ross will tell us which channels are best for b2b video how we can all make better wetter videos and hopefully what to do if you can't forget the voices of your childhood bullies [Music] welcome back to marketing is broken your weekly source for what's new in digital marketing and really old in dog ears topping the charts right now video marketing video is the great equalizer never before in human history have we all carried around the power to make incredible videos using just the tiny little super computers in our pockets and yet somehow b2b businesses still manage to produce crap like this [Music] now that's truly riveting media if you grew up in an underground bunker in the 40s with only a creepy straw doll named Chester for company and nightmare fuel for top performing marketers the video bar is higher a few things contribute to videos growing popularity and marketing sales and customer success number one lower production costs mean it's easier than ever to create a great video number two more people are consuming video at work look boss no hands and number three new tools and software have enabled better video conferencing and new channels to share so how can your business play catch-up in this already competitive video space especially if Chester's more your speed we brought in digital marketing consultant speaker and regular video creator Ross Simmons to share his ideas what are the hottest channels for b2b right now and what tactics do you see companies using in each one yeah so there's no question that when it comes to b2b LinkedIn is still one of the kings of the entire social media and digital marketing channels right like LinkedIn Taylor's itself towards b2b professional as it tailors itself to people who want to do business so there has been with no question a rise in the popularity of LinkedIn recently and it's showing no signs of slowing down linkedIn has quickly modified its space in the social media world by opening up the network so it is no longer just you and the people who you are connected to you can now literally be connected to anyone simply by producing and creating content that your industry would be interested in so LinkedIn has recently also announced that video is something that you can upload to LinkedIn you can do video live they're looking at considering the stories there's rumors around that I think that LinkedIn when it comes to video is something that everyone needs to keep their eye on and every b2b brand should consider investing in outside of LinkedIn a lot of people think that channels like Facebook are – b2c and that they can't embrace them that they don't work but in reality everybody is a human and you might be wearing a suit and tie during the day but in the evenings you're scrolling through Facebook and you're looking at cat photos you're watching what your friends from high school are doing you're engaging in human neck natural things so linked LinkedIn while it has this brand perception as being the only place to do b2b business Facebook is also just as valuable you just have to think a little bit more creatively around your targeting because you might not be able to be so specific to say I want to target people with this job title but Facebook without question is also starting to take off in the b2b space especially with the rise of Facebook groups where professionals are coming together to discuss their industry to discuss their passion in a small central location and have discussions on a daily basis if you can get your content into those communities or rent ads at the people who are in these communities there's a massive opportunity for you as a b2b marketer to get in front of and connect with people who you want to reach videos getting really competitive in the b2b space just as competitive as blogging or podcasting now how can marketers make sure that the video that they're making stands out and remains differentiated especially as things will continue to heat up in the video State that's awesome awesome question and it's a great insight like there's no question that it is becoming more competitive and it's showing no signs of slowing down as data plans become cheaper as the cost to actually create a video becomes cheaper there's going to be an increase in the amount of video content out there and because businesses are continuously growing there's gonna be more businesses doing video content too so the best way to differentiate yourself there's a few things that I always suggest that brands consider first and foremost you really need to start by understanding your customer and the people you're trying to reach and you have to unlock what we would call content user fit and content user fit is this idea of what type of content does your target audience engage with most frequently and often in a positive way meaning do they press like do they share do they comment what type of content does that happen with and oftentimes we make the mistake of only looking at our competition to uncover content user fit and we use that to guide our thinking around ok we should create a content like this because our competitors do that's not the right approach you need to look at other industries if you're targeting b2b professional who's in the marketing space ask yourself does this person also subscribe to cooking videos and if so what's the format that they have used to start creating great cooking videos apply that same thinking to your industry and that will allow you to be differentiated maybe you're going to look at motivational videos are they someone who's always sharing motivational content can you apply similar philosophies to motivational Princeton's of content that they've they've been engaging with to your own industry and replicate that with the content that you're doing once you've done that and you've identified content user fit the opportunities are endless you can start to scale that out once you identify the different channels that they're spending time on that's when you have content channel fit and when you have both of those you have content market fit and you can just start to reuse the same concept over and over again on different channels until your audience is fatigued and then it's on to the next one to create more content that's great that's a great insight so talking a little bit more about operations so a lot of people talk about you know why or you know what to do when you're creating video but in terms of like operations how how should marketers be thinking about how to create video you know regularly in a way that's efficient and cost effective too yeah so great question there's a lot of questions around video content and I've said earlier in our conversation like it's getting cheaper and cheaper today to create video content which is a great thing for all brands all you really need to do is consider two approaches that you can go down you can either be a have a content marketing engine within your organization where you have an in-house resource who understands video understands storytelling understands editing and they are executing on your video content on a regular basis that is a great approach where organizations who have the budget to do it but also have the insights internally to plan a Content calendar around video there is without question a lot of value in having that person in-house and they don't always have to be full-time it could be a part-time world that you hire for a video content marketer or whatever that may be bring them in and they are going to help you with the execution on the flip side the other opportunities that you worked with partners you work with freelancers you work with agencies you work with people who have worked in your company before may have left but they have that that understanding of video content whatever it may be you start to work with partners who can assist with the actual development of these video princes there are a lot of different websites out there today that you can also use if you want to take an even lower cost option there's a site called lumen 5 where you can take a blog post that you have written uploaded it upload it to this site and it will try to use what it calls a I'm not sure exactly what's behind the scenes to analyze the content that you have written and try to create a video from that so there's a lot of different tools out there that you can use like that but there's also the freelancing tools that I'm sure everyone is familiar with like up work freelancer comm etc you can go to those resources fiber and you can go to those sites as well to kind of consider whether or not there's an opportunity for you to embrace that type of a model as well that's great so many different options there Ross Simmons thank you so much for your time I appreciate it thanks for having me on I hope your audience needs a lot out of this that's it for today I want to know are you a video maven or would you rather be locked in a bunker with Chester than try your hand at the video game let me know in the comments hey it's Josh from brainish insights thank you for watching marketing is broken if you like this week's episode please click below to subscribe or check out other episodes and if your company could use more insights around your branding efforts check out brainish incise calm
