We recently declared the end of the one-size-fits-all video in B2B marketing. What should B2B companies do instead?

In this episode of “Death to the Corporate Video,” we break down the three videos every B2B company needs to create a full video marketing funnel. 

These three videos are perfect for brands just starting out with video marketing, or those looking to refresh that brand film from 2014. 

The three videos every B2B company needs

1. An awareness ad for social and paid media that introduces the problem you solve.
2. A consideration video that explains what the product or service is and how it benefits the customer.
3. A decision video that reassures buyers that your product is a safe bet.

Resources

How to video throughout the sales funnel

Our testimonial video episode

Why you shouldn’t make just one video

How to allocate your video marketing budget

Why you should consider a “year of ads” strategy

Transcript

Guy Bauer: That's how you should be thinking actually, you should be thinking not as we need a video, you should be thinking of, we need a funnel or we need a journey worth of video. We need a suite. 

Hope Morley: Hello, and welcome to Death to the Corporate Video, a podcast with tools and advice for how to make B2B video ads your prospects actually want to watch. I'm Hope Morley.

Guy Bauer: I'm Guy Bauer.

Hope Morley: For anyone who listened to our previous episode, where we talked about our top B2B ad trends for 2022, you may recall that one of our trends was the death to the one size fits all B2B video. So kind of like the title of this podcast, Death to the Corporate Video, we're seeing the death of the one size fits all video. For anyone who didn't listen to that episode Guy, can you take a minute and explain what that trend was?

And then we will be using this episode to talk about what you should be doing instead, and how to get started with creating a full funnel of B2B video content and B2B video.

Guy Bauer: Great segue, Hope. So the one size fits all. 12 years ago at the dawn of all this kind of ubiquitous video stuff, there was YouTube, Vimeo. So 12 years ago, I would say, that was the start of when companies were like, Hey, we can have a video on our homepage. And it was a novel thing and it was still kind of experimental.

So each company made one video and in that video, they explained who they were, what they did, about their culture. They did like the full thing, because they wanted to say everything all at once. And that was why this whole influx of the two and a half minute corporate video just went crazy. But now, now that in the year 2022, you having a video on your site is not that novel.

And people don't want to watch a two and a half minute thing. The journey needs to be broken up for them into little bite size chunks, little snackables instead of like full meals. So that's really what this episode is about is, well, what are those snacks that we recommend instead of making one big kind of clunky, do it all video.

Hope Morley: Especially for anyone who may have listened to the previous episode, heard us say that the one size fits all video is dead, looked at your own site and went uh-oh. Or this is great for if you are a startup, this works really great for tech, or for anyone who's just dipping their toes into video marketing for the first time, this is a great kind of beginner funnel.

This is the first step. We recommend a version of this to a lot of our clients. And we can walk you through it, right.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. And a quick caveat slash disclaimer is when we call it a funnel, we don't mean like those funnel hacker Lamborghini people on Facebook. Like we're not hacking a funnel here. There has to be a better term, a journey, whatever, but it's a funnel, but, we don't mean that this is like, we're going to, like with this one funnel, it's gonna like, you know, get you a million dollars.

Hope Morley: It's a useful framework to help think about putting together your content and then, you know, adjust as needed for how you like to sell to your clients.

Guy Bauer: And we guarantee you're gonna get a Lamborghini.

Hope Morley: We actually don't.

Guy Bauer: Oh.

Hope Morley: Neither of us drive a Lamborghini. If we had the secret to that.

Guy Bauer: No.

Hope Morley: Oh my goodness.

Guy Bauer: We drive very reasonable cars.

Hope Morley: Anyway. Your beginner first video funnel. So when we're talking about the funnel, the way that we like to think about it is starting at the top of your funnel is awareness. You go down to a consideration phase and then you go into a decision phase.

So that's a very basic sales funnel, or customer journey. However you like to think about it. So let's start at the top with awareness. 

Guy Bauer: And before we unpack this, I'm gonna back up and unpack awareness, consideration and decision. Cuz that may be the first time you've heard of this, but awareness is very top of the funnel. It's either awareness of a problem, like trying to get people to be aware that they have a problem or brand awareness, like aware that you exist.

One step down consideration. That's when people know they have a problem and they are evaluating different solutions. It could be they're evaluating direct competitors. It could be they're evaluating do it yourself. First, hire versus hiring someone to do it. They're evaluating all their options.

Right. And then decision is now they've narrowed it down to, let's see, say two people, two different companies, and now they need content that really reassures them. Now they're looking for the nuance, like which path is the best option. They're trying to de-risk the situation.

So what we are saying is, your first funnel would hit each one of these. So you're gonna make one awareness video, one consideration video, and then one decision video. All right. That has been unpacked. Now we're gonna repack that up, package it up and unpack. Awareness,

Hope Morley: Right. So now we're unpacking the individual layers of the box that we just repack

Guy Bauer: okay. Let's untwirl that if we were on like a GUI we're the plus button, it's untwirling. Okay. So, awareness awareness is. This is pretty simple. And these are my favorite ads to make. If you look at all of Umault's ads, I'm starting to see a trend of all of our ads. Is there, like you could see the natural propensity to make awareness driving ads because awareness ads should really be aimed at making your prospects aware of their problem. And that's it. Aware of their problem. And then at the end, your logo comes up and. A lot of common pushback I get is, but it doesn't say what we do well, yeah, it doesn't, but it actually does because it's basically saying subliminally by illustrating your client's problem so well, and then putting your logo at the end or a clever tagline or whatever it is saying that we resolve that problem.

Like we're illustrating this problem, and we resolve it. The goal of an awareness ad is to just get a click. Usually awareness ads are on not your owned property. So they'll be on social, shared, or they'll be earned. 

Hope Morley: This is often paid media. So you might be talking about social display ads, even OTT, which is, streaming TV ads.

Guy Bauer: Right. So the goal of an awareness driving ad is to get a click over to your owned property, or get someone to call whatever, like move someone from being totally unaware of their problem and that you exist to solve that problem to, Hey, I should learn more and that's it. Awareness ads are short.

They've gotta be under a minute. The best performing ones that we have are like some, some of them are 20 seconds, but they've gotta be short and they should really just illustrate the problem. Obviously that doesn't work in a hundred percent of the cases. Sometimes you may just have to illustrate the solution or, you know, go with something else.

But I would say Pareto's principle is in effect here. It's that 80% of the time you should be illustrating the problem as best you can. And what that does is that agitates a need out of your prospect. It's kind of like think back to those infomercials. You can go from just going through life. Just, yeah, everything's great.

And then you watch an infomercial and in a half an hour, they have you convinced that you need to be juicing every day and you're just gonna drop dead tomorrow if you don't juice every day. And that's because they've agitated that, that they're really good at like agitating a need out of. Like, yeah. I didn't even know this was a problem.

Yeah. I don't have any nutrients or whatever it is that they're trying to sell you. And that's it. It's awareness should be all problem. And if you look at the portfolio of Umault's ads, it's like literally, mostly just hell. It's like we take these characters and put them through absolute hell  and it's very effective.

It's illustrating all of our clients' problems. So that's awareness.

Hope Morley: And these awareness ads, you touched on this, but they should not talk about your product or service in depth at all. These are not explainers. It really is. The problem that we solve is that, for example, that expensive reports are annoying and nobody does them on.

So you're not really getting into the fact that if you are a software solution, that streamlines expense reporting, you're not showing the screens and how it's easier than doing a spreadsheet and that that it sends alerts to everyone to make sure they do their expenses. What you're really just showing is nobody does their expenses on time.

This is bad for your business. Everything is terrible. Oh, Hey, there's a solution.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, sometimes you'll see ads at the final five to 10 seconds. They show a little peek of platform. That's okay. But yeah, it's not you. You're just trying to agitate a need for you existing and that's it relating to someone's problem that they have. It could be that they're aware they did have it, and they just aren't aware of your brand or they're unaware of their problem, 

Hope Morley: Like the infomercial example.

Guy Bauer: Correct. Yep. So that's awareness, let's pack.

Hope Morley: Pack up awareness, put that away. Let's move on to consideration. We got a new box to open.

Guy Bauer: I need a zipper sound effect. Okay. Consideration. Okay. So, now you've earned the click. So your awareness driving ad got them to your property and most likely it's owned. It's some kind of landing page. 

And. They're curious, you've made a big statement. we can solve this problem for you and now they have to answer, they are on the journey to answer their question, but how, but how do you do it? And that's it, that's what your consideration video needs to do. You've earned some attention, so it doesn't need to be 20 seconds.

It should still be short cuz you haven't earned that much attention. So this is where you need to transition from problem into solution. A popular framework is the ow, how, wow.

Which is ow, show the problem, the how is how we fix it. And the wow is the benefits you will get out of fixing this problem. And that's the kind of consideration video you need. Like I said, it doesn't need to be 20 seconds. It shouldn't be five minutes. Like, you know, 90 seconds is good.

You've earned that much attention. And at this point you do need to tell them what you do. You're not boring somebody by telling them about your company or your solution, because they're actually there to learn. That's interesting to them in that moment. That is actually very interesting.

That's satisfying their craving of knowledge.

Hope Morley: Right. So this spot is picking up where the ad left off. Very effective ones. If you're putting together a campaign, it will like literally pick up where the ad left off. You can create them together in a way that it's almost like a longer form version of the initial ad, but it's kind of the next step of you've agitated.

This problem, that show potentially with the same characters or, you know, a piece like that, how you can make their life better with this new product.

Guy Bauer: Yep.

Hope Morley: Or service.

Guy Bauer: And you should also make your consideration video makes sense for people who haven't come from your top of funnel awareness ads. So it kind of does need to restate some of that ow. Some of that pain in case someone has come direct to your site referred from somewhere else and they haven't seen your top of funnel ad. This one is if there was gonna be an all-purpose video, this is the most all purpose out of everything you're gonna make because it in 60 to 90 seconds, it needs to, it's basically the full infomercial for what you do. 

Hope Morley: Mm-hmm

Guy Bauer: mm-hmm.

Hope Morley: And this is the place I've been hearing some people talk about animated explainers as being a little played out. And I think this is the place in your funnel where an animated explainer can fit really nicely. If you have a tech product that you really want to show people how it works and kind of walk through what the actual, what your product is, this could be a place that you'd use that animated explainer.

I think the problem with animated explainers is trying to use them as that awareness driving ad of using them as a paid ad. Cause they're not particularly effective for that. They're often too long and too detailed. But if you've got one, this is the place to put it.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm yeah, a lot of people, you know, kind of abuse the explainer into an all purpose and I will say the explainer is definitely tired. We have an agency we use sometimes in Poland called BluBlu. And if you look at their work, they're really good at.

Hope Morley: They're an animation studio.

Guy Bauer: They're an animation studio and they are very un-explainer.

Like, they're still explainers, but like they're more artistic. Back 10 years ago, it was all explainers were like meet Bob. Bob has, and, and I still see some of those, but, now the explainer, you gotta be more artistic and that's the thing, but all this full funnel we're describing here is.

You know, all of our previous episodes of this show are basically don't be boring. Don't be lame, be entertaining. And that applies to all three of these, these, uh, funnel videos is that's implied that like it has to be actually good. Interesting. Well done, all that stuff. So yeah. Consideration should answer the question.

How do you do it, but how. A great awareness ad is basically at raising a question. lA great awareness ad doesn't answer questions. It makes questions arise out of your audience. Your audience will think things like, but that's impossible. How do you do it? Like, could it work for me?

 They're gonna ask these questions after seeing your awareness at and. They're gonna go click to your site to actually find out. Your site will be as interesting as Wikipedia when you find, wanna find out how old some celebrity is, right. It's in the pursuit of knowledge, you're actually serving them.

And so then when they land on your site and they see this consideration piece that kind of gives them the, ow, how, and wow, you are answering their questions. In fact, at this point in the consideration phase, you should not be, um, kind of, uh, 

Hope Morley: Like you don't wanna be mysterious.

Guy Bauer: You don't wanna be mysterious, right? You can be mysterious with awareness. I remember there was this ad when I was growing up,  when Dodge released the neon, this is like, I'm totally dating myself. When they originally launched the neon on the Super Bowl, the whole ad, it just showed the headlights of the neon. And it was like something small is coming or something like that. And everyone was like, did you see that? What is that? And, and all of us were like talking, like, because they didn't, they made us ask a question. They didn't answer them.

So anyway, consideration should answer them. All right. Consideration has been unpacked. Let's repack that thing up, put it on the shelf, put it downstairs in the basement where all the luggage goes and let's bring up, let's lug the decision suitcase up the stairs and unpack it.

Hope Morley: All right. So the decision. So as Guy said at the top of the episode, when you get to the decision phase, you have a very engaged audience. This is someone who's very interested in your product or solution. They really wanna learn more, but really they wanna be reassured.

They want to know, does this work, have you done this for people like me? Have you done this before? Who would I be working with? If it's a like consulting or some sort of service that you're working with people, or if it's a product they wanna see, what does this look like? What am I actually getting? When I log in for the first time to this new tech service, this new platform what's gonna happen?

So what kind of video can we provide to those people, Guy, who really want that?

Guy Bauer: Decision phase videos can take many different forms. So the most popular is like a testimonial. That's a great way to reassure and take risk off the table. We've done an episode on testimonials though. If a testimonial is done improperly it nulls it out. So what we're saying is, if a testimonial has been done in a way that is inauthentic or looks like, you know, just kind of staged and your customer looks like a deer in the headlights, you know, that undoes the credit that the testimonial does so testimonial, but, you have to do it right. Could be good. If you have a software as a service, something that's like pretty robust a demo, like a four minute demo, could be really good instead of having to schedule a demo with a sales development person. Let someone watch a four minute demo and this doesn't have to be polished.

In fact, I wouldn't recommend it to be polished. What you're trying to do is the medium is the message. So by having one of your software developer expert people give this demo, it's actually saying in the subtext that this isn't staged. It's totally real. The fact that there's not a polished person walking you through it, this person sounds believable.

That means we're believable. There's a lot of subtext in the decision phase. All of the, your decision content should be done with max authenticity and min polish. So testimonial, software demo, if you're like a service based business and you apply expertise and have like some kind of proven process or whatever, you could do a process video.

And, and we have one as Umault we have a process video because our kind of value is that we apply the same process to every project. And that's what nets out great work. We don't have a like a software system or something like that, or an algorithm. We have a process. That's what we're selling. So the process video is really good to reassure like, oh, like you do this so much that you're able to codify your process into a video that you've like spent money on. So a process video. And then finally, if you're selling people on expertise, kind of like a consulting company where there is no, there's no like four step process. Like if you think about one of the big four consulting companies, like they're not gonna like go to market with like a six step process.

What they're going to market with is expertise. So what could be really good is like, and about us, like our people, video, where. Shows the kind of people that you're gonna be working with. And again, this has to be authentic. If it's just people in a conference room, whiteboard, walking down hallways, smiling, you kind of null it out you because then it's just like, whatever, it's just propaganda.

So it's gotta be an authentic, Kind of culture piece that gets your client to understand like the kind of people that they're gonna work with. And we have one of these too. So I think our, our process video is on umault.com/services. 

And then our people video is umault.com/about, and you'll see the thing is done in a way it's, it's telling you about Umault, but it's really trying to say like, Hey, we're cool. We're funny. So that that's the subtext. and that's, what's, you know, like gets you to realize that we're real people. Like, you know, you show your people. So yeah, those are the four most common decision level pieces. The main thing is your decision content needs to reassure that this is going to work. It doesn't need to have flashy stuff. You want zero.Zero. Uh, what was the word Hope? Um, like enigma, mystery, zero mystery. Now, now it's gotta be like completely just, you know, here's

Hope Morley: What you get.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. This is what you get, right. Because they're trying to de-risk the situation, before they move forward and give you money.

Hope Morley: And that's the final goal, right? They watch one of these and then it's time to make the sale, get some money.

Guy Bauer: That is why we do this to get this money.

Hope Morley: Get that Lambo.

Guy Bauer: Mm-hmm yeah. And see, with this simple funnel, you could get a Lamborghini, like there's like this new guy that like one of those gurus, I forget his name, but he's blowing up on TikTok cuz like he's such a clown.

Hope Morley: I do my best to ignore all these people.

Guy Bauer: I want to be one of these. I could never do it though.

Like you could be like me: have a house that's reasonably priced in the suburbs with two kids and a Volvo. Safety! 

Hope Morley: With a savings account!

Guy Bauer: Okay. We unpacked some who put this bag in front of me. I started unpacking a different bag. All right.

Hope Morley: You, I've been home from vacation for 12 weeks. So now it's time to unpack the suitcase. No, that's just me. 

Guy Bauer: Correct me if I’m wrong. So when you come back from vacation, right? What we do is plop the bag in the living room and everyone lives out of the suitcase for two days, then finally gets unpacked, but then the suitcase remains in our bedroom and then like three months later, it moves down to the basement.

Is that you too?

Hope Morley: Yes. 

Guy Bauer: Okay. 

Hope Morley: I just got back from a weekend away. It's we're recording this on a Tuesday morning. We got home Sunday. The suitcase is still in the hallway. With random kids clothes like strew about until I do the laundry.

Guy Bauer: So you need to unpack that thing.

Hope Morley: I need to unpack it really. I need to do laundry.

Guy Bauer: Uh, I hate laundry. Okay. Goodbye. We gotta unpack. We gotta repack go. 

Hope Morley: Let's talk about some common questions that some people might have. Based on listening to this and common questions that we get when we present a version of this to clients and potential clients.

So a couple things, we said a little bit of this at the beginning, but common questions. First of all, we talked a little bit about tech and different B2B industries, but a version of this funnel will work for most B2B industries. You know, it's gonna need to be customized depending on what exactly your, your customer journey is, how you make sales, different things like that.

But, this basic framework will work for most B2B industries. And if you wanna talk about how to customize it for your specific industry and company, you know, hello@umault.com, but this should work for most people. 

Question two budget. We get this a lot. We only have budget for one video. What should we do?

Okay.

Guy Bauer: You know, I know I told you one thing yesterday when we were prepping and I'm like, maybe you do the other, but I would say, yeah, I would say if you only have budget for one thing, you should go awareness. Because what's funny is now more than ever. I see landing page videos kind of going away.

A lot of, if you look at landing pages now, a lot of it's just beautiful imagery with really simple copy. Like think like, if you look at like Apple pages, product pages, like they really don't use video that much. It's a lot of like really pithy little headlines that are clever and, and, and B2B companies are doing the same thing.

So I would say if you can only do one thing, do the awareness thing, this way, you gain awareness, you get traffic to that site, and at least you, you know, you're filling your funnel. People who are interested, it just puts more pressure on your web people and all your copy on your own pages to be really sharp so you don't waste those, you know, that traffic, but I would say for sure, I would say I would take traffic over not getting traffic. So do the awareness.

Hope Morley: Yes. Next question. Why can't I just use one video for everything? What is wrong with that? If I make the awareness spot, like why can't I use it everywhere or if I make my product video. Why can't I use that for paid?

Guy Bauer: And, and we've done episodes about this. If you go to our site, if you just type in like mullet Umault into Google, you'll find a cool article I wrote about this, but

Hope Morley: I'll also link to it in the show notes, but.

Guy Bauer: Oh, yeah, that's the easier way. Real quickly. It's, you know, when you're an early stage buyer, you're looking to be inspired.

And when you're a late stage buyer, you're looking to be reassured. That's why the awareness piece can be mysterious. It's can be kind of like, it doesn't need to give specifics. It's really just trying to inspire you. Like, Hey, do you have this problem? We can fix it. So at different points in the customer journey, you're in different, in a different mindset. Awareness, you know, you, you're looking to be inspired. Consideration, you're looking to learn more and decision, you're looking to be reassured that this is gonna work. If you're using your reassured piece to people who are unaware that they have a problem. I mean, you're just talking to the wrong people at the wrong time.

If you're trying to show an awareness driving spot to people who are late stage, who are ready to buy, and then you put mysterious like spot in front of them that illustrates their problem with your logo. That's not catering to their need at the time. They need to know specifics. They want to talk to customers.

They wanna know more about your people, whatever it is. And then in the middle, that's where it gets dangerous. Cuz the middle piece, that consideration piece does cover ow, how and wow. But what I would say. It doesn't work for decision people, cuz decision people. They're like, yeah, I already know I have that problem and I already know what you do.

And I already know the potential benefits. So the decision people are like, this is a waste of my time. I need to know facts, the awareness people it's like. It it's a little too long for them. Like, like why? Like it just see, like if they see the playhead at a minute and a half, it's kind of like, um, that meme that's like no one.

And then you just start flooding them with a ton of information about something that they didn't even know. That was a thing. So that's why I would say one size fits all thing is, it's better than nothing, but it's not gonna be that effective because at different points in the sales journey, people are in different mindset and they require different things.

If there was a case for a one size fits all, it is that consideration piece. Because as I was saying that I'm like, eh, you could throw a consideration piece up as an awareness. Spot it does cover the whole gamut. Ow. How. Wow. I would say it's not going to be as effective as a very quick 20 to 30 second spot. It, it just won't.

It's never gonna beat that out. 

Hope Morley: Yep. Any other common questions, Guy? 

Guy Bauer: What's funny is no. It's always around investment. It's always around money. When you get to look at everything from a macro scale, I have an article coming out on our year of ads strategy, and as I was writing it, I was like, so surprised at how efficient you can be when you're thinking of everything holistically.

So what I would say. That's how you should be thinking actually, you, you should be thinking not as we need a video, you should be thinking of, we need a funnel or we need a journey worth of video. We need a suite. 

Think of it like that. And then you can be ex I mean, it's unbelievable how efficient you can be. Start thinking of journeys rather than one off videos. A lot of the questions we get are around, like, but why would we do three? Why let's just do one. And, I would say like nine times outta 10, we can get you more than three for the price of one.

If we just think, you know, smart.

Hope Morley: Agreed. I think if you feel like you only have the budget for one, it's still worth talking to an agency and seeing what you can do with that budget and trying to be efficient. People who do this for a living. Not that I know anybody, but they know how to do this effectively. And if you try to break these three video ads up into three different projects, you're gonna be paying, you're gonna be overpaying.

And if you can do it together, consolidate your production days, you can really be the most efficient with your budget. And those decision phase videos that we were talking about. Some of those don't necessarily have to be done by a professional at all. If you're doing a product demo, use screen recording software that you can get out there for free you, that doesn't necessarily have to be a big budget production.

Guy Bauer: Yep. Agreed. This has been a great episode. Thank you. Hope.

Hope Morley: Thank you for a lovely unpacking. How to create your very first video funnel. And now I just feel guilty that there's a suitcase in my hallway.

Guy Bauer: We'll go pack it up, get it out of there.

Hope Morley: Thank you everyone for listening to this episode of Death to the Corporate Video, if you'd like to learn more about Umault you can visit us on our website at umault.com. That's U M A U L T.com. Or you can find us across all the social media channels at Umault. I'll be linking to a lot of resources in the show notes.

We talked about a lot of different articles and things we've written about in the past, but check us out at umault.com/insights for so many blog articles where we've talked about how to allocate your video marketing budget, how to be more efficient with production. We have a whole guide written about using video throughout the B2B sales funnel.

So check that all out. I'll link to it in the show notes. And if you've got any questions, do you wanna talk more? Please reach out.

Guy Bauer: Yep. See ya.

Hope Morley: Bye.

Guy Bauer: They could be in some kind of, um, oh, sorry. That's my mom.

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