Developing a B2B video marketing strategy is like spending 5 minutes planning your day’s schedule before jumping in. It’s a very small time investment up front that can lead to big rewards in the long run.

In this post, I’ll explain what a B2B video marketing strategy is, why it’s so important and how to make one!

What is a B2B video marketing strategy?

A B2B video marketing strategy is a blueprint for how video will be used in each phase of your buyer’s journey. It’s the macro view of your video content. It focuses on what each video needs to do, rather than what each video looks/sounds like. It helps you allocate every dollar of your budget and maximize its return on investment (ROI).

Step 1: Align on your goals

The first step in creating a B2B video marketing strategy is to align on your goals. What are the objectives of your video marketing strategy? Be very specific when it comes to goal setting because vagueness here will disrupt the rest of the strategic process.

Align on specific KPIs. Perhaps you want 200 MQLs per month through a lead magnet, or you want to increase the conversion rates on your product pages by a certain percentage.

Your goals will influence everything from how much money is spent on individual assets to the actual words and images used in the videos – so don’t skimp on this step.

Make sure your video marketing goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based (SMART). Getting likes, shares and views are not necessarily goals–they are means to reach your goals.

I recommend involving the people signing the checks for the project in this process. After all, wouldn’t it be nice to know the criteria your video marketing campaign is going to be measured against?

Step 2: Develop your buyer persona(s)

Once you set your goals, it’s time to develop your buyer personas. Who are you talking to? Without knowing exactly who you’re talking to and what their problems are, your video marketing campaign will fall short.

This buyer persona doesn’t need to reflect EVERY one of your buyers. It should reflect your most valuable buyer for this specific campaign. To craft a persona that is useful you need to understand things like:

1. Age
2. Location
3. Gender
4. Income level
5. How they would describe their daily challenges
6. What they’re thinking of your brand
7. And a lot more…

“Try to speak to everyone, and you speak to no one.” I think that’s how it goes. Aligning on your persona(s) now will give you the ability to make strategic and creative decisions later on because you know who you are speaking to. You also won’t waste time and money trying to appease an audience or multiple audiences that aren’t going to help you reach your goals (see Step 1).

Step 3: Map your sales funnel

In order to get people to take the next step with your company, they need to know what that next step is. In B2B, it’s not as simple as making a funny video with a CTA to buy a $4mm software implementation. Your prospects need to be nurtured. They need to be led on a journey. That’s your sales funnel.

Do you have your awareness, consideration, decision and retention phases mapped out already? Do you have content already working as part of a lead generation plan?

Great! Now you simply need to decide where to reinforce your funnel with video. I recommend reinforcing where you’re already winning. If a piece of content is converting, adding a video could make it convert better.

Don’t have a funnel? Our B2B video marketing guide can help you map one out.

Step 4: Conduct a competitive analysis

It’s important to map out where the competition is so we can find some empty space and say what they’re not saying. Or if we have the same message, say it in a different way. This is where competitive analysis comes in.

Make a four column table. From left to right label your columns “Competitor,” “What they say,” “How they say it,” and “How we’ll be different.” For each competitor (I recommend evaluating 3-4 companies), scan their website, content marketing, social media and marketing videos and fill out the fields accordingly.

Your competitive analysis will prevent you from making videos that don’t need to be made.

For example, say you had an idea to make a video explaining what hyperconverged infrastructure is. But during your competitive analysis you discover every one of your competitors has already made that video.

I would recommend spending your money on other assets and let your competitors spend their money educating the marketplace. Find a way to take advantage of the educated buyers the competition has produced for you. Maybe create an asset that meets their needs at a later stage in their journey and take them off your competitors’ hands. See where I’m going with this?

Step 5: Allocate your budget

Warren Buffett once said his number one talent is capital allocation. He knows not just which companies to invest in, but how much. Here’s your chance to be like Warren Buffett!

By this point in the process you should have a clear map of your goals, target audience, sales funnel and competitive landscape. Now simply take your overall budget and line it up against the assets that are instrumental in achieving your goals.

Some tips:

• Remember, reinforce where you’re already winning. Perhaps you already have a landing page with a bunch of traffic, but not a lot of conversions. You may want to add a video there. Converting more of the existing traffic could bring some really quick wins.
• Spend more money on top-of-funnel videos and less money on the bottom of funnel videos. Why? Top-of-funnel marketing is all about inspiring your prospects with high-quality, beautiful, well-crafted content. Bottom-of-funnel marketing is about reassuring your prospects that what you do is real and effective. Once a prospect is in the bottom of your funnel, they don’t need to be inspired with flashy production, they need facts and figures to get them to take the leap and sign on the dotted line .
• Leverage efficiencies. Can you produce your awareness and consideration phase assets at the same time? This is a great way to capture both economies of scale and creative consistency. This way videos made for various parts of the buyer’s journey feel cohesive and work together to convert instead of feeling like unrelated videos for the same company.

Countdown to B2B video marketing success!

At this point you should have your destination (goals), passengers (audience), radar map (competitive analysis), and how much fuel you need (budget allocation) – now it’s time to hit “engage” and develop the creative strategy for each one of your assets.