Coming from a background in sales and marketing, I have tried a handful of different ways to get people’s attention. Some have worked well and others, not so much. The multi-pronged outreach approach of phone, email, and social media will probably continue to dominate B2B sales strategies for the foreseeable future. Between my own personal experience and where the data is pointing, there are a few compelling reasons to start working video into your outreach.
Executives Enjoy Consuming Video
Executives need to read and process information almost all day. Instead of making one slog through another canned sales email, you might find more luck sending a video that’s quick and to the point. According to Wordstream, 59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video. Even if people wouldn’t take a meeting with me in my SDR days, many still responded positively to being sent a video via email.
A lot of the different software out there for video hosting provides analytics on how many times it gets played and for how long. This was helpful for me because once in a while the video would get forwarded around to multiple people (at least it looked that way) and that was encouraging. Plus, viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text, according to Insivia.
There’s A lot of Noise to Cut Through
You can blame a lot of different things for all the noise that we have today. It could be that we had over 40 billion robocalls dialed in 2020. Maybe the fact that about 50% of emails sent last year were spam.
Whatever the cause, most B2B decision-makers have always been and will always be really busy. Simply put, the people who adopt video in their outreach will be able to cut through the noise.
It doesn’t mean deals will start springing out of the woodwork left and right, but some people will be really impressed. Getting the intro or at least making an impression will pay dividends in the form of more RFP’s down the road.
It’s Easier Than Ever to Make Videos
I would be stunned to find someone in 2021 without a camera on their phone. Because we all have access to high-quality cameras, the average sales team or sales development rep team is already equipped to make videos. Along with that, everyone (or mostly everyone) is working from home, so they have their own space to film something.
There are a ton of free software options out there for video editing and then hosting the video online. The approach that’s always worked well for me has been filming with my phone, editing the video in a program like Lightworks or Openshot, then hosting it for free with a service like Wistia. You can take a screenshot of the video, drop the image into an email, and hyperlink the image to where the video is hosted. People will click on the play button and a window will open up with your video like this one that I made (my job involved books at the time):
This specific video got caught in a spam filter (I think), but it would have been awesome to get the contract returned this way.
Tying It All Together
If you need to see it to believe it, you’re in luck. Video is steadily showing up everywhere as an effective way to communicate a brand’s message in B2C and B2B. You can be one of the early adopters earning time on more prospects’ calendars if you’re willing to get in front of the camera or encourage your team to try video. It might be a little uncomfortable at first, but remember, most things worth doing can be tough in the beginning.