24 New Video Marketing Ideas For B2B Companies

When people ask me, "What’s the best way to get my story out?" or "What is the hottest new marketing tool today?", my answer is always the same: video, video and more video.

Especially for B2B companies looking to generate leads or build demand for their products or services, video is hands down the best way to tell your story, scale your content marketing and drive more leads.

The next question people ask is, "How hard is it to produce a video?" Again, my answer is, "It has never been easier." This is also often followed by, "Isn’t video expensive?" And once again my answer is "Nope." Video marketing has never been more affordable to shoot, edit, produce and utilize in any type of marketing or sales efforts.

Today videos are shot, edited and published in a single week. Most of these videos cost under $1,000 all-in for everything. It’s a no-brainer; you need video and you need it today.

With cost, complexity and alignment out of the way, here are 24 video marketing ideas that your business could benefit from today.

1. Client Success Stories

First, utilize client success stories or client testimonial videos. In these pieces, clients tell their story directly to your prospects in either an interview format or a case study format.

These videos usually start with your client explaining their situation, how your product or service helped and then the business outcomes that resulted from using your product or service.

Typically, this video is less than three minutes long and gets right to the point. Your prospects won’t believe it when you note your successes, but when your customers say it, they’ll get on board.

2. Reference Reels

During the sales process, almost every prospect asks for references. These are logistically challenging for every business. You have to check with your customers, you have to coordinate schedules and prospects have to hook up with your customers.

Weeks can go by.

Instead, offer prospects a reference reel before they ask for actual references. We proactively send this link out right before they ask and it has dramatically cut down the need for traditional references by more than 90%.

I’d recommend piecing together five to six current clients speaking for 15 to 20 seconds each about what it means to them to work with your company. Done. You need no more references, and you'll see shorter sales cycles, too.

3. How-To Videos

For product companies, this seems obvious, but how-to videos work for service and software companies, too. These videos highlight exactly how customers use your products and services or they illustrate the specific benefits people get from your products or services.

For services firms, these videos might illustrate what it's like to work with you, what your processes look like and what makes your experiences unique. For product firms, it’s a simple demonstration of how your product works, why it works and what makes it remarkable.

Again, these are short three to five-minute videos that tell a compelling story designed around a specific and remarkable aspect of your product, service or delivery.

4. CEO Interviews

Companies need thought leadership and who better to deliver it than your fearless leader or someone in a similar role.

These videos can be done in a “60 Minutes” interview style. They can be done in “talking head” style. One of the secrets to these videos is to show up with a list of questions and ask those questions over and over again.

While the first answer might not be great, the third time around will produce a wonderfully elegant answer that helps create buzz and positions the company.

Remember, take a stand, grab a position in the market, think about how you disrupt the status quo and use video as your platform to tell an emotional, compelling and disruptive story.

5. Software Demo Vignettes

This is one of my personal favorite video marketing tools, mostly because I think software companies are horrible at doing demos. I’ve sat through so many poor demos for products I wanted to buy. My perspective is from firsthand experience.

Instead of doing individual demos for every single prospect, consider creating a set of canned use case-specific demos that are designed to be amazing.

Shoot these short 30 to 60-second videos that highlight specific use cases in your software. Have sales reps ask prospects to identify their top five or six situations where your software can help and then share only those videos with your prospects.

Have your sales reps share the video, watch them with your prospect, add color commentary to the video after watching it with them and be there to answer any additional questions.

This is more scalable and produces a better experience. You’ll increase your close rate substantially if you use this approach.

6. Videos In Your Sales Process

Your sales process is about getting your prospects to feel with your company, products or services. That has to be a consistent theme that you lean into. How do we get prospects to feel safe? Does what we do help them feel safe?

Aligned with that approach, traditional emails from sales reps are fine, but consider putting some videos into those emails and sending those along to prospects.

A video with a person’s face, a video explaining the points in the email, a friendly disposition and a unique ability to tell your story person-to-person is far superior when compared to a traditional written email.

7. Live Event Videos

The good news is people are returning to live events this year. Conferences, trade shows and networking events are back. This provides a wonderful opportunity to use video to tell your story.

The opportunities at live events are endless. If you’re speaking, and you should be, record those sessions and use them as part of your content marketing plan.

If your customers are at those events, schedule time to interview those people. You can stand up on the show floor and run a short interview with an iPhone.

If you’re exhibiting at the show, you can collect video of your team participating at the show, talking to attendees, demoing products and telling stories. This is excellent content that can be turned into a very valuable video for your website and in campaigns.

8. Virtual Event Videos

Even though live, in-person events are coming back, they’re still being paired with virtual events so you can plan for these types of events to be around for the long term.

These are great for on-demand video recordings.

I would suggest you do monthly or even quarterly webinars or virtual events. Record and edit these and include them as part of your content marketing strategy.

The more content you publish, the more leads you’ll generate. This is a great way to supplement blog and written copy with video content.

9. Product Demos

If you’re a software company, you’ll live and die by the number of demos you get. But I think there is a better way to show your software besides the live demo.

Consider creating a list of use cases and create short snippets that are a couple of minutes long and only focus on those specific use cases. Let your prospects watch the five or six use case videos that align with their specific issues instead of asking them to sit through an hour video where you dictate the flow.

You can still gate these videos and you can still follow up and offer a live demo, but with this video tactic, you can show your software to many more people.

10. Video For Your Paid Ads

Incorporating video in your paid ad campaign landing pages can boost conversions by 80% or more. (Adelie Studios)

Video is going to provide a major upgrade to both social paid ads and your Google AdWords campaigns. The goal of your ad should be to get people back to a landing page, so video helps get you that initial click and then the all-important conversion on the landing page.

It’s a double benefit to using video in any and all of your paid ad campaigns. Not to mention, it boosts the time-on-page and lowers the low bounce rate, which all signal to Google that you have a legitimate page that should be ranked.

Video is a win-win in this type of campaign.

11. Explainer Videos

These are very common and you’ve likely seen them everywhere. Some explainer videos are animated, some are whiteboards and some are cartoons. These are short videos or animations that attempt to explain complex concepts in just a few minutes.

These are solid applications for video but don’t rely on them to tell your story. I’ve seen a lot of companies put these explainer videos on their home page and then phone in the rest of the site.

That’s not going to work. If your story isn’t compelling, emotional and disruptive without the video, no one is clicking on the video to watch it.

Instead, get their attention first and then use the video to explain in more detail what you do. That’s how to use explainer videos in 2022.

12. Subject Matter Expert Videos

Every company has people on the inside who are subject matter experts. These are the people who have been with the organization or in the industry for years. They have institutional knowledge that cannot and should not be undervalued.

But the key, today, is to unlock that knowledge and share it with broader audiences. This is where video comes in.

These people are often not in sales, not in customer service, and definitely not in marketing, so their access to video creative projects has to be sought out and planned.

In addition, some of these people are not the most comfortable in front of a camera and they might be quite introverted. With a little coaching, solid script development and a great producer/director, you can use video to get this knowledge out of their heads and into your marketing campaigns and website.

13. Videos For Your Landing Pages

Companies that use videos on their landing pages get 86% higher conversion rates. No one should be surprised by this stat. But when it comes to landing pages, it's easy to skip the video and roll out the standard headline, copy, form and image model.

Instead, consider the visitor's experience and use video to help tell your story. Focus that story on the specific conversion you’re looking for on these specific pages.

For example, if you want someone to sign up for your blog, make a video about the value of the blog. If you’re trying to get a sign-up for a webinar, focus the video on the webinar and what they’ll learn if they register.

The more specific your message, the higher the conversion rates. Remember that the more people click and the higher the conversion rate, the more likely this page is going to rank on Google and that helps drive leads, sales ops and new customer acquisition.

14. Video Blogs

Speaking of blogs, if you’re just writing your blogs, then you're stuck in the past. But if you’re using video in your blog, now we’re talking.

There are a couple of ways to do this. You can add a short video to every blog post you publish. You can also publish regular video content for your blog. This is what we do at Square 2. Our Smash The Funnel blog includes weekly posts from our show, What’s Wrong With Revenue? as a video series.

Now we’ve blended our blog, our video content and our ongoing content marketing together for people who are subscribed to our blog. It’s a wonderful way to cross-promote a variety of content to your biggest fans.

15. Video For Your Website Pages

Each of the pages on your website has to tell a story. You can rely on copy or you can lean into video. The more video, the better people trust you and the safer they feel.

The more video on your website, the longer people stay on your site, which signals to Google you have a high-quality site. The more video on your site, the more people click on that video, also signaling Google about your site quality.

There’s no downside to using video to create a more robust and engaging experience across your entire website. There is no page that couldn’t benefit from having video.

16. Video For Your Lead Nurture Campaigns

Lead nurturing campaigns are critical to a continued conversation with people who have converted on your site. It’s how you stay connected to people early in their buyer journey.

Traditional emails are only going to get you so far. Today, that might include the trash folder.

Using video in your lead nurtures extends your ability to get their attention, to cut through the clutter and to tell your story in a more authentic and effective way.

You can use almost any kind of video in these nurture emails. A message from the CEO, a brief demo, customer stories, tips and techniques from subject matter experts—the uses are almost limitless.

My advice is to consider testing different videos until you see your open rates and click-through rates flatten out, and then lean into this type of video content aggressively with future nurture campaigns.

17. Video For Your Email Campaigns

Just like lead nurture emails, your “air cover” emails need video too. Why? Because people are now inundated with marketing emails and anything you can do to help yours stand out and get your story through that clutter is going to help.

Video in emails helps with the open rate when you promote video in the subject line. Video in the body of the email is going to help with the click-through rate and increase the likelihood that your story gets told.

Video on the pages the email links to is going to ensure that additional content is shared and ultimately that demo or sales meeting is booked because people have gotten to know your company, your people and your products or services better through those videos.

18. Behind The Scenes Videos

People don’t want to read how the sausage is made, but they want to watch. How many videos have you watched that show you in a few minutes how things are made? It can be hypnotizing.

Your business is the same. Regardless of what you do, people want that sneak peek behind the scenes and video is an excellent way to show them what goes on.

If you make products, show them the manufacturing process. If you provide services, show them the team at work. If you develop software, show them a feature selection meeting, a client feedback meeting or your product team debuting new potential features.

If the video is produced correctly, these can be very compelling bite-sized pieces of content.

19. Whiteboard Videos

If you're not sure what a whiteboard video is, take a look at the image above. This type of video features a hand or marker creating a story live on the whiteboard while a voice-over details the drawing.

Generally, the process of drawing and talking is engaging. However, sometimes the visuals are so engaging, the audio track becomes secondary, losing some of the concept's punch.

These videos used to be much more popular before live-action video production became easier and less expensive.

Today, many of these videos are swapped out for more authentic live-action videos featuring real people.

There might be a place for whiteboard videos in your portfolio, especially if you have a very complex concept that can be explained easily with this approach.

20. Animated Videos

Just like the whiteboard videos, these animated videos were much more popular a few years ago. Tools like Ceros and Powtoons have made creating these cartoon-like animated videos easy for the non-animation professional.

But with the influx of easy-to-use and easy-to-produce low-cost video apps, more and more people have been doing traditional videos.

As with the whiteboard videos, complex ideas can more easily be communicated via an animated cartoon. But I think this loses some of the authenticity associated with live video and in some cases, cartoons and animation might not be the right genre for your specific story.

21. Video LIVECasts

Podcasts have exploded in popularity in 2022. Everyone has a podcast. I’m actually a huge fan and encourage anyone with interest to start a podcast. The popularity and capabilities of audio content are impressive.

But why stop at a podcast when you can easily have a LIVECast, videocast and a podcast all at the same time? This is content at scale and something you should be considering.

In the time it takes you to prepare and record your podcast, you can do a video show, too.

If you’re nervous about doing a live show, then stick with the video and audio versions of the same show. Regardless, the video gives you the chance to post your content on YouTube, share video snippets on social and create a channel of your own on your website.

Video content around your show can be shared in emails, blogs, sales emails, nurtures and almost anywhere else in your marketing.

This should be part of your plan to scale your content marketing strategy in 2022.

22. Ask Me Anything Videos

Not sure what to include in your show? Start simply by answering people’s questions. Ask Me Anything sessions or Office Hours sessions are quickly becoming very popular for people to pop in, ask a question, listen to other people’s questions, get info and be on their way.

But why not record these and use these as video assets in your marketing?

With Zoom, these live sessions with your prospects can easily be recorded and if there are no objections or confidential information shared, these videos can be posted on any of the channels we've mentioned. 

23. New Product Feature Releases

Are you a product company? No worries; there are special uses for video for your company, too. People love to get information on new product features and they love to get it before the general public.

People like feeling special and like they are on the inside.

Consider highlighting some of your new product features and releasing a “behind the scenes” or “sneak peek” video that shows people what’s coming before it's ready for the general public.

This can be the impetus for an entire campaign. This can be included in private access-only website pages. This can be a video that sales shares only with top prospects.

The uses are endless and the ease, low cost and effectiveness of these videos should put them at the top of your list in 2022.

24. Cross-Sell/Up-Sell Videos

Finally, this last item on our list shouldn’t be last, but rather something to wrap up our list. It’s actually one of the best uses for video and one we see so few companies using.

If you’re looking to drive revenue from your current customers, then you need to tell them stories about other people like them and the benefits these people realized from using additional products or services offered by your company.

They're the perfect audience for this content because they already trust you, they’ve already purchased from you and they already had positive experiences with your company.

Now leverage video to tell them stories about other people like them and the new products or services they purchased. Instead of sending them discount coupons, create a series of videos and share those stories.

As long as you make it easy for them to follow up and order or speak with someone at your company, this will be a quick and easy way to drive additional revenue from your current happy customers.

In no time, we identified 24 new ideas using video. Each of these is easy to produce, low cost, and quick to turn around. You could be using video like this in your campaigns in a matter of days.

If you’re looking for improved results from marketing, sales and customer service, look no further. Start using video today.