Have you ever dreamed of attracting your B2B audience via social media and have them flock to your brand like moths to a flame?
Well, you’ll be pleased to know that with videos, accomplishing such a feat is possible.
Video content as a marketing tool has proven to be extremely effective, even in B2B circles.
A recent survey we conducted backs this up because 80% of our respondents claimed that they spend more than a quarter of their time watching videos when using social media.
A strategy for social media centered around B2B video content is what gets measurable results.
But there are plenty of video types or genres you can choose from.
Unfortunately, an abundance of choice can be counterproductive because where do you start?
To combat this problem, we’ve narrowed down the 8 most effective B2B video types that you can share on your social channels.
The best B2B videos for sharing on social platforms
- Explainer videos
- Promo videos
- Culture videos
- Trending topic videos
- Thought-leadership videos
- Case study videos
- Customer testimonials
- How-to videos
Now, making all of the videos at once isn’t the best idea. You should have an action plan first.
For starters, just pick one.
The type of video you should create will entirely depend on your goals and strategy.
If you consider your buyer’s journey, you’ll be able to pin-point what type of B2B video content you should invest in.
Here’s a brief overview of the buyer’s journey and the B2B video types that work well with each of the stages.
Videos for the buyer’s journey
Awareness – Top of the funnel (TOF)
Videos in this stage are supposed to attract a wide audience. The primary aim is to build brand awareness and position your company in the minds of your target prospects.
Videos for the awareness stage
Company culture videos, trending content, thought leadership videos, general how-to videos, and even explainers (more on this later) are perfect for this stage.
The goal is to create short social videos that show your brand personality and offer some useful tidbits of useful information.
Avoid explicitly promoting your brand in video content designed for this stage. It can put your audience off.
Consideration – Middle of the funnel (MOF)
Videos for the consideration stage should help your audience in their research phase. You can experiment with longer content here.
Videos for the consideration stage
Thought leadership videos, video case studies, testimonials, explainer videos, etc. are suitable here.
Decision – Bottom of the funnel (BOF)
At this point, your prospect has chosen your company as the best solution to their problem. They might need an extra nudge to be confident in their decision.
Videos for the decision stage
Video testimonials are perfect for the decision stage.
Loyalty
Many buyer’s journey models end at ‘decision’. But it’s not over just yet.
In the loyalty stage, you need to put in the effort post-sale. This transforms customers into brand advocates.
Videos for the loyalty stage
For loyalty, go with product-focused how-to videos.
If you want to explore the buyer’s journey in detail, check out our post on how to utilize video in your buyer’s journey.
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at each of the video types thoroughly.
We’re also going to talk about why they work and the objective of each. After that, we’ll give you an example of each video type so you can get inspired to make your own.
B2B video types – deep dive
1. Explainer videos
Explainer videos are, as the name suggests, videos that explain a complex product, service, idea, or concept. For this type of video to be effective, it needs to be short. Ideally, it shouldn’t be longer than 2 minutes.
The first explainer video
The very first explainer video can be traced back to the mid-2000s. Twitter had just launched and in an attempt to help people understand what the site was all about, the company teamed up with Common Crafts to create an effective explainer video. The rest, as they say, is history.
Because of the nature of these videos, they can be effective in the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the buyer’s journey.
For the awareness stage, educational explainer videos are perfect. Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell is a YouTube channel dedicated to making this type of content. This isn’t an example of a B2B video, but it can offer inspiration nonetheless.
Well, what about the other two stages? Explainer videos that help audiences compare options or offer important information can be great for both the consideration and decision stages, too.
So, how effective are they? Our survey revealed that 83% of people agree that a product/service explainer video helps them in making a buying decision and that 59% prefer watching a short video compared to reading text descriptions to understand a product or service
Types of explainers
There are various types of explainer videos. If you’re going to go the animated route, then character design is just as important as style.
The various styles include motion graphics, 2D and 3D animation, whiteboard style, stop motion animation, kinetic typography, infographic style, isometric, cell animation, and more. These are some of the best animated video types for your business.
You could also opt for a live-action explainer or experiment with a combination of live-action and animation.
Bottom line is to find a style that resonates with your brand. Think carefully before you decide, the video’s tone will depend on it.
Why they work
If you’re still on the fence and wondering why should a business invest in an explainer video? Well, it’s because they work.
Take a look at how Dropbox put itself on the map with this brilliant two-fold marketing strategy:
When the file-hosting company made its debut in 2007, they devised a marketing strategy based on 1. a referral campaign, and 2. a homepage centered around an explainer featuring a stick-figure that showed what Dropbox was all about.
This strategy proved to be massively successful. The company’s valuation rose to $4 billion in two and a half years.
This just goes to show that a simple, well-made, no-nonsense explainer video can do wonders for your company.
Here’s one we made for iParkit:
Need more inspiration? Here’s our pick of the 10 best explainer videos to get those creative juices flowing.
If want to hire someone to produce an explainer video but don’t know what to look for in an agency, check out our post on how to pick an explainer video agency.
2. Promo videos
Promotional videos allow you to combine interesting advertising principles into one exciting sequence. You can create something fun, hard-hitting, or profound. It all depends on your goals and your company’s objectives.
Promos are great for attracting new people and can alert them to what you’re up to. You can share them across your social channels to get more exposure, too.
These types of videos are perfect for the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey and can also help you remain top of mind with people who’ve already interacted or conducted business with you.
Why they work
Promo videos allow you to tell a story well. Focus on an emotional response you want to evoke and make sure it lines up with the big picture of what your company is all about.
The marketing world is full of promos and commercials that blew everyone’s socks off; there’s no reason why your content can’t.
Check out this upbeat promo video we created for our company recently. Our team had a lot of fun with this one.
Do you want to be a pro at making promo videos? Check out our ultimate promo video guide and become the master you know you can be.
3. Culture videos
Company culture videos allow people to see what your brand is all about.
These videos are great for spreading awareness about your brand, growing your audience, and can even attract promising candidates for positions in your company.
Because of these characteristics, culture videos are the perfect type of content for the awareness stage.
Why they work
People can get on board with what you stand for and what you offer if they can connect to your brand. It can be difficult to establish a persona for your business, an identity, that the people can relate to. The best way to do this is by showing the amazing team; allowing viewers to get to know them and showing viewers what goes on behind the scenes.
Virgin does a great job of expressing its culture through its content. Here’s a video we love because it also aligns with the company’s musical roots. You can’t help but feel the vibe even if you’re just sitting at home in your PJs during the great quarantine of 2020.
If you want to learn about how to make engaging culture videos, check out our previous post.
4. Trending topic videos
In a world where trends surge, spike, and flatline at breakneck speeds, it can be hard to keep up. But creating videos on trending topics is a great way to spread the word about your brand and grow your audience.
These videos are perfect for the awareness stage of the marketing funnel.
Why they work
Trending videos, when shared on social platforms, can attract a lot of traffic. Your content also has a good chance of getting shared.
If you can hit the mark with a trending topic video, your traffic numbers will surge.
How to come up with ideas
Since you have to generate good quality content regularly, you may end up running low on ideas. Luckily, there are plenty of tools and tactics you can use to find hot topics that are perfect for your niche. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Google Trends
- Google Keyword Planner
- TubeBuddy
- Keyword IO
- Ahrefs
- Buzzsumo
- Trendspottr
- Trendsmap
- Get social (practice social listening and build a community online.)
Visit our previous post for more details on how to Find Trending Topics for Creating Videos.
Take a look at this great trending topic video from McKinsey & Company. During the coronavirus pandemic, this content proves to be relevant and useful.
5. Thought-leadership videos
If you’ve started a business then you already have a considerable amount of expertise in your field. You can use your wealth of knowledge to create thought leadership video content and builds authority on a topic.
This Edelman study shows that thought leadership content can help shorten the sales cycle and increase your brand’s credibility.
B2B leaders, in particular, are paying close attention to this type of content and those who generate it.
Now, it’s not a stretch to conclude that thought leadership videos for a B2B audience would be even better than, say, a text-based report.
To be recognized as a thought leader, you’re going to have to create content that offers the best; in-depth answers to some of your target audience’s biggest questions.
Tips
- To generate awareness using thought leadership content, you must adopt a vendor-agnostic approach. Your primary goal must be to educate your audience and provide value. Sales are not the objective here.
- This type of content is perfect for familiarizing people with your brand and creates awareness about your company’s overarching story.
- Produce video content that delivers exclusive industry-specific news that only you can report well. Shed light on the things that mainstream media is not paying attention to.
- Keep an eye on emerging stories related to your industry and when something pops up, jump at the opportunity. Provide a thoughtful analysis of the situation and provide valuable insight. This will get you a ton of traffic and love on social media.
Why they work
Thought leadership videos, when done right, work because they offer in-depth insight into industry trends. This sort of information is not available elsewhere.
If you can shed light on important matters no one in the industry has talked about, you’ll be able to gain the upper hand.
Here’s how to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry using video.
Boston Consulting Group has established itself as a bona fide thought leader in its field. One of the ways it does this is through thought leadership content like the video below. They regularly feature subject matter experts to speak on topics.
6. Customer testimonials
If you’re trying to nurture and convert leads that may be on the fence about your product or service, what better way to do so than with customer testimonials?
So, naturally, these types of videos are perfect for the consideration and decision stage.
Why they work
Customer video testimonials for B2B provide the social proof needed to help a person or group of people make a decision.
In a recent survey, we found that 62% of people feel that video testimonials/reviews help them in making a buying decision.
This example from Slack is fun, entertaining, and shows the service in action. It doesn’t get any better than this, are we right or what?
Check out how to make awesome client testimonials here.
7. Case study videos
Video case studies are a powerful data-driven marketing tool and offer proof to prospects that your business has something valuable to offer. You can talk about how you helped your previous clients solve their issue and what impact you had on them.
Use an emotional appeal, graphs, metrics, etc. to drive your point home. These types of B2B videos are ideal for nurturing leads and converting them into customers.
Why they work
The benefits of using video case studies for your business can not be understated. These types of B2B videos follow the old reliable problem-solution format. They allow you to build credibility and let your prospects visualize how you can help them. And of course, you can share them on relevant social media channels.
Check out this Adidas case study. it explores the full value of mobile and just shows how technology influences people’s buying behavior.
8. How-to videos
How-to videos are pretty versatile. You could either make general how-to content that is related to your industry for educational purposes and to raise awareness for your brand or you could create product-focused tutorial videos to help your viewers understand how to properly use your product or service.
Our survey revealed that 72% of consumers prefer watching training/tutorial videos compared to reading training material.
Why they work
How-to videos, whether designed for the awareness stage or the loyalty stage, are value-packed. They are helpful and provide the audience with information that leaves them much better off than they were before.
If you can do a good job of creating this type of content, you can bet it’ll stick.
WIX does a great job of creating useful how-tos. This video helps users figure out how to upload custom fonts on their website.
Where to share
The popular social media platforms include YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. One of the biggest mistake brands often make is that once they prepare a video, they end up sharing it on every social media channel they’re on.
Sharing any kind of content without considering the platform’s characteristics can be pointless at best and confusing for your audience at worst.
Think before you disseminate
If you’ve decided to create some of the videos we mentioned in this article, then you should also think about where you’ll share them.
To get the most out of your B2B videos, analyze all your social channel’s audiences and their frame of mind across platforms.
The insights you gather will help you figure out where to share your content.
Once you’ve carefully considered the nature of your content, and edited it accordingly—you may have to adjust the length, add closed captions, and consider dimensions—you can then share it far and wide.
Specs for uploading videos on social media
Technicalities are important when it comes to creating and disseminating video content.
The requirements across platforms vary slightly and the rules keep changing, too. So, stay up-to-date with all the latest social video specs. It’ll help you avoid wasting too much time in post.
YouTube
Video guidelines:
- Recommended dimensions: 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p), 1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and 3840 x 2160 (2160p)
- Minimum dimension: 426 x 240
- Max dimension: 3840 x 2160
- Recommended aspect ratio: 16:9 (pillarboxing added if the video is 4:3)
- Max file size: 128 GB
- Accepted video formats: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM
- Max video length: 12 hours
Native video guidelines
(landscape and portrait)
- Recommended video dimensions for landscape and portrait: 1280 x 720
- Minimum width: 600 pixels (length depends on aspect ratio)
- Landscape aspect ratio: 16:9
- Portrait aspect ratio: 9:16 (if the video includes a link, then the aspect ratio is 16:9)
- Mobile renders both video types to aspect ratio 2:3
- Max file size: 4 GB
- Recommended video formats: .MP4 and .MOV
- Max video length: 120 minutes
- Max frames: 30fps
Facebook Live video guidelines
- Recommended dimensions: 1920 x 1080 at 1080p
- Frames: 30fps
- Max bit rate: 4 Mbps
- Max livestream length: 4 hours
For more on Facebook livestream specs, visit StreamSpot.
In-feed video guidelines
(Landscape, square, and vertical)
- Minimum resolution for landscape video: 600 x 315
- Minimum resolution for square video: 600 x 600
- Minimum resolution for vertical video: 600 x 750
- Landscape aspect ratio: 16:9
- Square aspect ratio: 1:1
- Vertical aspect ratio: 4:5
- Max file size for all formats: 4 GB
- Recommended video formats: .MP4 and .MOV
- Max video length: 60 seconds
- Max frames: 30fps
Video Story guidelines
- Recommended resolution: 1080 x 1920
- Minimum resolution: 600 x 1067
- Aspect ratio: 9:16
- Max file size: 4 GB
- Recommended video formats: .MP4 and .MOV
- Max single video story length: 15 seconds (if it’s longer, it will be broken up into multiple Stories)
Instagram TV guidelines
- Recommended resolution: 1080 x 1920
- Minimum resolution: 720
- Recommended aspect ratio: 9:16. 16:9 is also supported. previews show at 4:5
- Minimum video length: 1 minute
- Max video length: 10 minutes or 60 minutes (for some accounts using a desktop to upload)
- Max file size for videos less than 10 minutes: 650 MB
- Max file size for videos up to 60 minutes: 3.6 GB
- Supported file format: MP4
Native video guidelines
- Aspect ratio: 1:2.4 to 2.4:1
- Max file size: 5 GB
- Accepted video formats: .ASF, .AVI, .FLV, .MOV, .MPEG-1, .MPEG-4, .MKV, .WebM
- Minimum video length: 3 seconds
- Max video length: 10 minutes
- Max frames: 60fps
LinkedIn livestreaming video guidelines
- Length: You can’t go on forever. You can stream for 4 hours max.
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9 – Square or portrait videos aren’t an option right now.
- Resolution: 1080p
- Frame Rate: 30 fps
- Key Frame: Every 2 seconds (60 frames)
- Bitrate (video): 6mbps
To learn how to start livestreaming on LinkedIn, check out our detailed post.
Video guidelines
(landscape and portrait)
- Landscape recommended dimensions: 320 x 180 (256K bitrate), 640 x 360 (768K bitrate) and 1280 x 720 (2048K bitrate)
- Portrait recommended dimensions: 240 x 240 (256K bitrate), 480 x 480 (768K bitrate) and 640 x 640 (1024K bitrate)
- Minimum dimensions for both: 32 x 32
- Maximum dimensions for both: 1280 x 1024
- Aspect ratios: 1:2.39 to 2.39:1
- Max file size: 512 MB
- Recommended video formats: .MP4 for web and .MOV for mobile
- Max video length: 140 seconds
- Max frames 40fps
If you didn’t find the specs you were looking for here, check out Sprout’s extensive post on the topic (it covers video ad specs and other platforms like Snapchat and Pinterest as well).
Glad you made it all the way. We hope this information will be enough to help you get started on creating great B2B video content for your business.
If you’d like some help on the video production front, we’d be happy to be of service.
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