The scales have finally tipped in 2021 with video going from a nice-to-have to commonplace occurrence in a marketer’s toolbox. More than 80% of marketers surveyed said that they used videos to effectively generate leads and increase sales in 2021.
Naturally, the questions marketers are asking around video have evolved. We’ve gone from, “Is it worth it?” to “How can I get a greater ROI on video?” It’s a valid question. When you consider all that goes into making a video—scripting, storyboarding, filming, production, editing, sound engineering, and more—the time and money add up.
The good news is that successful B2B marketing doesn’t mean generating an endless stream of new content. On the contrary, great marketing teams balance the creation of new content with efforts to amplify existing content. That means each video you create has the potential to get a lot more mileage, maximizing your return on investment.
So, where can you get started? Let’s look at five ways to repurpose your existing video content.
1) Get Social: Adapt Video Content for Social Platforms
Repurposing existing content like videos doesn’t just save your business significant time and money, it’s also a powerful way to reinforce and reiterate your brand message. Hence, the Marketing Rule of 7—the principle that you need to repeat things seven times for people to absorb what you’re saying. There’s truth to this idea, and by adapting your video across marketing channels, you’re delivering your message cohesively and consistently.
There’s arguably no better platform for reinforcing your message than social media. Since studies show that the average person’s attention span is only eight seconds, try converting your long-form videos into 10- to 30-second teasers with the desired call to action clearly spelled out in the caption. Typical calls to action include visit a website, watch a full video tutorial, or register for a webinar, conference, or product demo. Marketers can use these eye-catching teaser videos for organic posts or paid LinkedIn ads to reach your target audience.
2) Make Yourself at Home: Encourage Visitors to Stay on Your Website Longer
Video is a great way to capture and keep the attention of your website visitors. First, you’ll need to evaluate where video should live on your site. An explainer video that highlights your company’s services, for example, can be great on a homepage, while a product demo might be better suited for a solutions page.
Once you’ve found a home for your video, you can improve SEO by drafting a title and brief description that include important keywords. You can even optimize searchability by including a video transcript directly on your website.
If the content from your video is valuable to your audience, consider gating it by asking people to provide basic information to access it. We typically recommend only asking for name, company, and email; any more than that and you may risk decreasing form fills. This gated form can be a lead gen opportunity and works well for in-depth product demos and webinars.
To autoplay or not to autoplay? We’ve all succumbed to the Netflix autoplay spell. There’s a lot to be said for this approach—it immediately grabs your audience’s attention and can increase the time spent on your page. If you are considering autoplay, keep in mind that not all videos are created equal and, in some cases, it may be best to allow visitors to opt in on their own. If you do decide to go the autoplay route, configure the settings so your video starts without audio to avoid sending viewers scrambling for the mute button.
3) Time for a Makeover: Breathe New Life Into Your Email Campaigns
The recent obituary for email was prematurely published. You might say someone hit send before they finished writing the note. In reality, email marketing is not dead. In fact, it’s growing. 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last year. The challenge today is making sure that when you send emails, they stand out from the crowd. You need attention-grabbing content to engage your audience.
Embedding or linking videos in your emails helps convey a lot of information quickly, making your content highly consumable and giving your audience a much-needed break from the text-heavy emails they’ve come to expect. So, if your latest marketing emails are starting to look more like War and Peace and less like … well, an email, consider using video to deliver your message in a creative, succinct way. Make a memorable introduction or announcement, tease out longer educational videos or product demos from your website, or even personalize your content by sending relevant videos to targeted audience segments.
4) Put It In Writing: Create a Summary Blog
We love videos (can you tell?), but they don’t always have long-term SEO benefits since search engines don’t scan dialogue the same way they scan for text. Enter the summary blog. There are a couple of ways you can approach the summary blog. You can directly transcribe the video dialogue (we recommend this for Q&A’s and other shorter videos), or you can summarize the key takeaways. Now, you have a new SEO-friendly blog with an accompanying video, giving viewers plenty of options for digesting the information in front of them.
5) Closing the Deal: Use Video to Enhance Your Sales Conversations
Your marketing efforts have paid off and you’ve engaged a lead (queue the confetti emojis!). You’ve secured a meeting to learn more, and now your sales team is preparing to woo and wow them.
Sales conversations can be delicate, tense, and too often, a little boring. The pressure is on to convey the core message of your business and how you help your customers in the most compelling way possible, without giving so much information that your audience tunes you out. Remember that explainer video and product demo we mentioned earlier? Why not use video to supplement your presentation? Video is great for explaining complex ideas, showcases your team’s creativity, and gives audiences another content format to engage with.
Still wondering about the best way to repurpose your videos or create new ones? We’ve helped B2B businesses across lots of sectors navigate the world of video marketing to connect with their target audience and maximize their return on investment. Let’s chat.