Use video marketing for B2B lead generation

1. Come up with on-brand, high search volume video topics that complement your products/services.

Follow these basic rules:  Base the topic on a popular search query so it will rank and generate traffic on its own.  Cover problems your product or service solves. Don’t be too specific. You’ll want to add fresh videos regularly to re-engage your current viewers or email subscribers. A super-specific topic is a hub without spokes.  Be on brand. Choose topics for brand affinity, not just brand awareness. For example, Moz has repackaged their popular Whiteboard Friday videos into a free standalone course on Udemy that ranks third on Google for “SEO training.” The course walks you through SEO basics while also mentioning Moz’s tools as solutions to solve common SEO issues. Plus, the topic of “SEO training” is broad enough to give limitless possibilities to add new videos as they’re created.

2. Schedule campaigns, write content briefs and manage your team with an editorial calendar like ContentCal.

Get your whole team working on promotional assets to support each channel effectively.

3. Mix and match video types to diversify content that can address and solve relevant problems while suggesting your product as the solution.

Consider video types like: Influencer-driven videos like live videos and webinars: For example, SEMrush continue to grow their library of on-demand webinars featuring industry experts. You don’t have to opt in to watch a webinar, but you can put your questions or comments through a lead-generation form. Demos and product walk-throughs: For example, Salesforce uses demos as gated content. And Coschedule uses them for blog content, even ranking some for pretty generic and high-volume terms. If you’re selling a SaaS product, you’re likely doing product demos regularly. You can reuse some of those demo recordings to give your audience a glimpse inside your platform. Use your webinar solution or any of the many tools out there to create product demos. Customer-generated videos like live Q&A and video reviews: It can be as simple as inviting your customers to ask questions through a branded hashtag for you to respond to in a (live) video. Google’s #AskGoogleWebmasters video series is a good example of this tactic in action.  Or it can be a more advanced approach like inviting customers to make a video for you or join you in the video. For example, back when it was called Google Hangouts, we invited our community brand advocates to join a monthly video chat to discuss the best ways to use our platform.

4. Create your video content using Wistia or any other hosting platform, and embed the full video on your blog.

Wistia offers custom branding as well as clickable calls to action and even opt-in forms inside the video. You can base each chapter on a public article, and you can also offer downloadable materials like an ebook, audio version, or cheat sheet in each chapter.

5. Create a text summary or put together a full transcript to go on your blog together with the video.

Re-use screenshots or other images from the video to make the content more useful for people who choose not to watch the video. Use best SEO practices as well as structured markup to ensure visibility in organic search. Convert each article into a PDF and offer it as a bonus download through your course or knowledge base as an alternative way to review the content. Collect all those articles and combine them into an ebook. This one can also be a free download for your students or subscribers.

6. Create annotated video takeaways to publish on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.

Use tools like Placeit to put together annotated videos and slideshows in seconds. Link everywhere you can to your blog post to try and build some traffic:  YouTube: Link from the video description and (possibly) pinned comment. Facebook and LinkedIn: Link from the update or comment. Instagram: Link from Instagram Stories.

7. Extract audio from your video, especially if it’s an interview or Q&A, and upload it to SoundCloud and iTunes.

You can turn your audio into an audiobook and offer as a bonus download through your course or knowledge base as an alternative way for people to consume the content.

8. Ask influencers who appeared in your videos to help you promote your video.

Email them with pre-made Tweets to make it easier for them to share. Create custom images for your participating influencers to use when promoting your content. Tag them in Tweets and Instagram updates whenever you share their video or the whole course. Reach out to their friends by creating a follower targeting ad on Twitter or via Facebook remarketing and use all the channels you’ve repackaged your video course on to promote them.

9. Visualize your strategy so it's easier to identify multiple complementary assets that increase brand awareness, generate traffic, and bring in leads.

10. Focus on creating a long-term asset that consolidates all your video creation and promotion efforts.