If lead generation is the very engine of your B2B company – then video becomes the turbocharger that makes it more powerful. It doesn’t keep things running – it boosts performance when it absolutely matters, and with the right strategy – can generate more attention and awareness, build trust, and increase conversions, in a faster timespan.
And in digital spaces, where B2B buyers are so used to watching your video content even before they have a single interaction with your brand – having no B2B video marketing strategy is like trying to sell without a salesperson or account manager.
Today, your video does the pre-selling, framing the conversation, and even pre-handling some of the objections.
Let’s break down five of the most effective B2B video types that help you generate qualified leads, without spamming cold pitch and begging for business.
1. Explainer Videos That Actually Convert
At the top of the funnel, you should have a good B2B Explainer video, normally sitting on your website, and across socials. They are your elevator pitch, that does a positive double whammy – both pre-framing and setting qualified leads in the right state of mind – ready to buy with full understanding of your offering.
This also reduces the amount of unqualified convos with people that wouldn’t be a good fit for your solution, for whatever reason. They grab the attention, fast to watch – and as mentioned before, do a great job as a pre-selling tool.
With more clever editing – can be cutdown into various assets, like gifs, still imagery and cutdown clips for individual features – all of which can function as standalone assets. Neat.
Example: This Slack example, launching a bit over a 2-minute video, has reportedly generated 100,000+ signups.
Why was it so successful?
Because it speaks directly to the problems of knowledge work, and presents the solution in a seamless way.
What makes this B2B video content so effective?
A few things for sure:
- Fast and relatively inexpensive, when compared with live action assets;
- Uses the “Show, not tell” philosophy to explain the offering, instead of feature dumping;
- Normally standing at 60-90 seconds – they are clear and easy to consume;
- Highly customizable and easy to change as needed.
This is why it makes the Explainer Video the king of inbound content.
2. Sales Videos That Feel Like Conversations
Recall yourself clicking on another regurgitated email with “I hope this finds you well…..”
Absolutely not – a wall of text with no real value never finds us well – and we believe most of the people will agree with this assessment.
Now – imagine if someone sent you a short, B2B sales video, with the problem statement that feels like they “get” your business?
Given this – just imagine what would this do to your outbound campaigns, open and conversation rates? Yeah, they would increase significantly, and will definitely yield higher revenue overall.
And the variety of this content is immense – so the world is your oyster here: from DIY personalized videos, to demo recaps, or even short 15-20 second brand awareness videos – all of these formats have the necessary power to cut through the inbox noise, filled with Chat GPT slop.
Example: We’ve repurposed some of the content we’ve done for our client Allfred – to be used for cold email outreach:
3. Webinars & Demos That Build Trust
Building trust is extremely important – especially with high ticket and long sales cycles. A lot of stakeholders are involved – and each of them needs to find their own value in your product – whether that’s the technical team, or C-level looking for practical and real ROI boosts. That’s why B2B video content involving your core team members and specialists, is so crucial.
It should teach, answer questions or demo your product – giving them what essentially is a load of value, a free consultation.
Why? Because any question that hasn’t been raised, or objection still palpable in their minds – and not addressed yet – will come back to haunt you in the form of delayed decisions, or even lost business in the worst of the worst cases.
Example: At the same time – Slack is building whole libraries to support client teams in their various needs.
Webinars can be powerful, especially for corporate clients, but if you’re a small SaaS team, they’re often too heavy on time and budget and you might ask, why? Because B2B lead gen is a long game, webinars work well over time, but when you’re a lean team trying to survive in an aggressive market, you need faster traction, that’s why I’d recommend tapping into webinars only after you’ve covered quicker, more scalable channels.
4. Customer Stories That Sell Without Selling
Sales decks are good – but you can do them one better. When your offering is already vetted, and the results achieved – you should have a number of happy customers doing the talking.
Testimonial videos are extremely universal – and can be used as top of the funnel content – and even as bottom of the funnel content. Your SDRs can use them to reach out to similar client profiles, showing the results your solution has achieved.
And on the other hand – at the later stages of the journey – when your Sales and AMs run into objections – specific testimonies can help bring peace of mind and essentially assist with closing the deal.
Example: Zendesk features their clients in various styles of testimonials – from purely animated and motion graphic ones, to live action assets filmed in a studio – and everything in between.
5. Feature Updates To Re Engage
People spend so much time focusing on just getting new business – that they are forgetting that there is still a lot of money to be made with existing client base, and those that have been using the software, for example – but have churned out for whatever reason.
You need to get in front of them again and again – as they would be easier to sell to than to fully cold audiences. But how do you do that, without being pushy and annoying?
The answer is short Feature Update videos.
Why not go back to those who have churned out, or upsell existing customers with your new features – because maybe you were lacking some features that they really needed, and existing clients didn’t know the update is already live?
Example: The aforementioned Slack – uses a lot of short and engaging feature updates to stay top of mind for a variety of client categories that are already in their orbit.
If you implement all of these video formats – and build on top of a well researched B2B video marketing strategy – you can build an effective lead gen machine that works across a variety of use cases and platforms.
Conclusion
Those were some ways how you can use video for your lead gen campaigns – from educational, to engaging. They are used to build more and more connections and touchpoints, creating a cohesive set of assets that supplement and work around each other.
Build your video assets library, and you will make your B2B lead generation approach more effective.
Select the video type that aligns with your marketing objectives, and receive an immediate high-level estimate of the production cost.
