B2B marketing has always been a challenge. You’ve got a smaller audience versus B2C companies with a large pool of customers and increased competition in your field. What many companies lose sight of with their sales and marketing is the importance of remembering that their target businesses are still composed of people. By targeting that audience on their favored social media platforms with something that catches their attention can net them the exposure and leads they would otherwise be missing.

Enter video. Just as social media with images is more impactful than statuses without, video can help capture and hold the attention of your B2B audience and act as a marketing tool for your company – if done right. Just like with any marketing, it’s worth doing right if you’re going to do it at all. Here are five tips to help shape your social media video into B2B sales leads.

1. Keep It Short and to the Point

There’s a reason that Twitter’s character length is 280 characters. The attention span of a social media user – from barista to CEO – is short. You’ve got a small window to impress your user and a finite attention span to hold them. How short? According to research done by HubSpot, you’ve got:

• Instagram: 26 seconds or less.
• Twitter: 45 seconds or less.
• Facebook: 1 minute or less.
• YouTube: 2 minutes or less.

So, when you get started, make sure to build your video’s content and graphics to account for a short run time, especially if you’re targeting a single platform.

2. Show, Don’t Sell

It’s important to remember that when it comes to social media, you don’t have a captive audience. While you can of course use paid advertising on all of these platforms, by default you’re looking at generating interest organically. As such, this is not the right place for sales pitches. You need to generate interest first, then provide that lead to the sale.

3. Entertain or Inform Your Viewers

So, building on “Show, Don’t Sell,” how do you generate that interest? It’s important that your video doesn’t only come off as blatantly salesy, but also intrigues the viewer. There are two major ways to get the attention of the employees and c-suite of your targeted businesses.

Engaging Users with Entertainment

If you can elicit a reaction from your audience, your chances of engagement increase dramatically. You can generate interest from audiences in multiple ways, such as: standing out in the B2B world by using humor; tap into the frustrations of your target business; inspire joy in a great success story. It’s important to remember that feelings do have a place in marketing and advertising.

Showing Expertise Through Knowledge

Much like with blogs, you can show your skills to the viewer through informing them. This information can be internal, such as showing stats or case studies about your performance (or that of your users) or a quick educational video in the vein of a “how-to” or explainer on a certain industry-specific topic. By showing that you’re knowledgeable and skilled, you’re increasing confidence in your products and services.

4. Build for Your Platform

As we discussed in our article, B2B Social Media: Picking Your Platforms, Picking Your Battles, every platform has different strength, weaknesses, and expectation set by their users. Combine this with the average attention span we mentioned before, it’s critical to craft your video (or alternate versions of your video) to meet your needs.

If you’re looking to build specific videos for specific platforms, here are two suggestions per platform. Note that all of these can work on all platforms, but here’s where you might shine.

• LinkedIn: Educational, Through Leadership.
• Twitter: Trending Topics, Company News.
• Facebook: Filmed Company Events, How-To.
• Instagram: Company Culture, Influencer Videos.

Where does YouTube factor in? You can use this to cover all your videos, especially versions with longer run times or videos that run over the “short and sweet” timeframe.

5. Have a High Production Quality

While vertical filming on a cellphone might work for viral video, you need to step up your game. Branding is a critical part of social media, and your video quality – on everything from the script to the framing of the shots and graphics used. It’s important to spend time on polishing your video just like you would for a video ad – and it’ll show on your final product. This is especially true with B2B as an inferior video reflects badly on your services and products.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to get into social media videos, especially as an established brand, Vision Advertising can help. We’re specialists when it comes to online branding and social media. Contact us today to start the discussion and get the tools you need to succeed. We’re also a full-service marketing agency, specializing in comprehensive internet marketing – from websites to social media and everything in-between, to help you not only succeed but thrive.