Velocity has done a hell of a lot of B2B marketing videos in the last year or so and only a few have been what most people would call viral video — like this one for your favourite marketing automation vendor:

Before running through the different types of video marketing – and giving examples – it’s good to think about the marketing goals that video can serve:

Video marketing goals

Thought leadership video – taking a stance on an issue or simply sharing best practice.

Product marketing video – including product tours, demonstrations and tutorials.

Case story video – including interviews and talking heads featuring customers – and maybe jazzing them up with the more televisual elements of the customer business (great if they happen to make beer or skiwear; not so great if they’re in insurance).

Video that humanises the brand — fun or viral videos – These are videos with a bit of humour; something you hope will be passed around, linked to or tweeted. Like this one we did a while back (a public service video with our new voice-over)

We’ve experimented with using xtranormal (a text to video tool) for this. It’s a kind of off-the-shelf animation tool with robot speech. Fun, fast and cheap. Here’s an obscene example. The humour in these often comes from the fact that a robot is saying human-like things (especially swearing).

Blogger-relations videos – Where one of your senior people name-checks some key bloggers.

We did this for Cisco and the bloggers really responded to it, with lots of backlinks & posts. (The link drops you in at 2:13 for the blogger mention but you can watch from the start if you’re thinking of transforming your data centre).

TYPES OR STYLES OF B2B VIDEO MARKETING

Taking any of these goals, there are then a lot of different types of video marketing, including:

VIDEO INTERVIEWS

Smart people, saying smart things.  One at a time or multi-person films on a single theme or issue

(Five standalone case videos can be re-cut into some themed pieces)

We like using an off-screen interviewer, editing out the questions and using title cards to introduce topics. Sometimes with a fixed and a hand-held camera for cut-aways.

VIDEO WHITEBOARD SESSIONS

Get your best presenters to give an informal presentations at a whiteboard or flip chart.

Like this one we did for App-DNA.

Success depends on a good, natural presenter.

You don’t need fancy production values: you’re presenting a chalk-talk.

These are great for introductory stuff but can also do deep drill-down material for later in the marketing funnel.

ANIMATED VIDEO MARKETING

You don’t have to do the standard flashy icons-in-white-space video. Put a bit of fun in your video marketing with something like this ‘Monty Python’ one we did for Hyperion:

Or something like stop-motion, low-tech video marketing can be really fun in a high-tech market.

Here’s a Lego Man one we did for ShipServ.

‘KINETIC TYPE’ VIDEO

Write a snappy script, animate every word spoken with on-screen type that zooms in, animates, etc. Again, one for ShipServ:

DOCUMENTARY-STYLE VIDEO MARKETING

Treat the topic as a documentary filmmaker would. Like this one we did for VNL in a rural Indian village:

SCREEN-BASED VIDEO MARKETING TOURS

This one for dotMobi combines a screen tour with an interview.

(We shot off the mobile because of time and budget constraints. Should have done proper screen grabs).

WEBINAR OR PRESENTATION VIDEOS

Just capture the audio and show the slides and/or the speakers.

These can be boring to watch after the event but there are ways to jazz it up.

ROUNDTABLE VIDEO MARKETING

Hold a roundtable, shoot the proceedings and edit it into something snappy.

Getting more from your video marketing content

Although you can crank out a decent viral video or video interview with very little budget, video does tend to cost a bit more than other types of content marketing. So here are some ways to squeeze more from your videos:

– Recut previous video content into new pieces – five old case studies can give you the material for a brand new thought piece on a given issue.

– Do ‘Takeaway’ pdfs or web pages that summarise the session (creating new downloads and giving you extra SEO juice). Salesforce.com did these Dreamforce Takeaways – short summaries of the best sessions from the Dreamforce event. A great way to turn video into content that search spiders can crawl..

– Use transcripts of the text – take the whole script and get it on a web page somewhere for easy reading and SEO.

– Turn your video marketing into blog posts, articles or even an eBook – just extract the ideas, simmer and re-spin.

– Create sound bite extracts for presentations and sales teams – so they can drop a 10-second video clip into a powerpoint deck

– An interactive Tablet Magazine for iPad or Android – video is great in an interactive magazine or eBook (we like PressRun for this and not just because they’re a client)

-- Create a soundboard – like this Alec Baldwin one (only much prettier and with good content!)

The Bottom Line?

Video is not only an incredibly powerful medium for B2B marketing, it’s also a flexible one. The trick is to be clear about your goals, choose the right kind of video to accomplish them and maximise their impact through promotion and re-purposing.

So that’s our B2B marketing video summary — and only a little bit of it was really about viral videos.

We’d love to hear your experiences and see any examples of B2B video marketing you’ve done (or just ones you like).

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B social media, B2B video marketing, B2B viral videos, Content, Content Marketing, digital marketing, viral video

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We’ve been huge fans of information graphics at Velocity ever since Edward Tufte self-published his brilliant ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information‘ book. But as the B2B marketing world has gone B2B infographic crazy in the last year or so, we’ve been much more likely to be disappointed than delighted.

Most B2B infographics are really just simple data charts (bars & pies) made pretty. Or they take a bunch of different data points, give them to an illustrator and turn them into an editorial-like page with big, fat numbers, twitter birds, logos and lots and lots of explanatory text. The data didn’t really have to be visualised. The chunks of stats don’t really hang together or interact or contribute to each other. It’s just a pretty page that might as well be text.

For us, a great information graphic is one in which:

• The visualisation actually adds value – it’s not about making data attractive to children; it’s about making data sing
• The picture tells the story – or many different stories; very little text is needed
• That story is BEST told in graphic form – it’s not just text & data with colours and shapes
• One glance makes you lean forward – making you want to know more & dig deeper
• The graphic combines many dimensions – change in a single value over time is a chart; great B2B infographics have layers
• But there is almost no ink that doesn’t contribute – no twiddles and bar-chart-as-city-skyline (what Tufte calls ‘chartjunk’)
• The final effect is beautiful – they can’t help but be so

The Chartball posters by Andrew Garcia Phillips, Senior Graphics Editor/Programmer at the Wall Street Journal, tick all these boxes and are an absolute delight. (Joel Avery, the newest hire in our design department turned us on to these. And we’re really glad he did. The Chartball posters are fantastic.) Here’s a small detail on the pitching staff of the 2009 Yankees, strikeouts against walks (pardon the png quality):

Andrew clearly loves data (not just illustration) and that passion leaps off the page. You could spend hours with any one of his poster-sized summaries of a single sports team’s season. And as you absorb the data, the season actually comes to life. You can see, touch and feel the texture of the season. Star players pop out. Winning streaks emerge and fade back to normality. And, best of all, the data sub-plots relate to each other, adding insight and suggesting causation as well as correlation.

We’ve seen very, very few B2B infographics that do all this (and we’ve struggled with it ourselves). But this is what we aspire to.

Anyone out there have any great examples in B2B?

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B design, B2B infographics, B2B marketing agency, Content Marketing

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That’s why A/B and Multivariate Testing is one of the Six Staples of B2B in our B2B Marketing Manifesto.

And that’s why we did this quick A/B and Multivariate Testing Resource Map for B2B marketers who don’t know where to start.
Go full screen, ignore the annoying arrow on the right, and use the links – there are lots of good resources packed into one page:

This Resource Map is the second of our content spin-offs from the B2B Marketing Manifesto. The first one is the B2B Content Marketing Tutorial — a Prezi on B2B content marketing processes (you really will have to view that one in Full Screen mode).

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B technology marketing, Lead Generation, Testing

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When he was working for a big B2B company, Andrew Walker did a brave thing. He audited every piece of communication that his company put out, with a cold, clear eye. And the result was, in Andrew’s words, “overwhelmingly bad. Every page on our website, every article we’d written, every e-newsletter, every piece of collateral we’d produced focused on:

• How good we were
• What we had done, why we were number one
• Our products and features

We had absolutely nothing written on how we understood the pain points of our customers and prospects or how we could solve their issues”

If more B2B marketers did a similar exercise, they’d see the same thing.

Because if business is a cocktail party, the typical B2B marketer is the bore who traps you in the corner, blathering about his achievements and delighting you with his opinions.

It’s weird, because the vast majority of B2B marketers are actually, intelligent, polite people who would never behave like the party bore (or boor). But when they step on to their soap boxes, something changes. They assume that what they’re supposed to do is shill like a carnival barker — when most people would rather engage in a chat.

Maybe it’s because two-way engagements are harder than narcissistic warbling. You have to actually listen. You have to admit (at least to yourself) that there are people for whom your ‘solution’ is not a solution at all. And, most importantly, you’re forced to realise that your company and products and services and competitors actually play a very small part of your prospect’s work life — and an even smaller part of their whole life.

Most B2B marketing makes the fatal assumption that prospects think of little other than their data cleansing problems or their web security holes or their lift truck fleet efficiency. If someone with this assumption in their head approaches you, you’re going to do whatever you need to do to get away. Fast.

One good thing about the new inter-social-digi-marketing is that marketers are stepping off their soapboxes or coming out from behind their Oz-sized curtains and exposing themselves as people. People with names and hobbies and kids and pets. Not just zombies with straplines.

At the end of the day, there are thousands of ways to make lousy marketing. But there’s only one way to make good marketing: start with a realistic view of your target audience’s lives and attitudes and issues. Then show them you’re starting there.

I’m off to the bar, can I get you anything?

———————————-

Illustration credit – Creative Commons – By jimmyknows7

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B social media, Content Marketing, Copywriting

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Facilitated by John Sweeney of DemandGen, the marketing automation consultants, the web panel will include Velocity’s own Doug (“Me”) Kessler and Bob Apollo of Inflexion Point and Hubspot, inbound marketing software. Bob is a marketing performance improvement specialist and he really knows his stuff.

Doug will be talking about 15 Lessons learned from our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign and the accompanying Project Open Kimono. Or maybe 14 or 16 lessons. But lots of lessons. The idea is a short, sharp injection of content marketing mojo so you can avoid the mistakes we made and exploit the opportunities we unearthed.

If you can’t make it on the 15th, check out BrightTalk and DemandGen – they’ll no doubt archive it.

See you there?

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing agency, marketing automation

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You’re a marketer, we’re marketers. It’s good to share the things we like.

Here are nine companies you ought to know about. They all help marketers make more money for their companies; they’re all great at what they do; and they’re all Velocity clients – which says a hell of a lot about their judgement and commitment to quality.

Is this just an exercise in back-linking and backside-licking? Ummm: Yes. But we’re also massive fans of these companies. We can’t market what we don’t believe in and we really believe in these guys. Get to know them and you won’t be sorry:

EPiServer is the world’s best Microsoft.Net Content Management System. It’s incredibly easy for developers and editors and it does things no CMS even thinks about doing (it’s essentially got a marketing automation platform built in). If you’re a .Net shop, EPiServer is a no-brainer. And if you’re not, it’s still the best CMS out there.

Reevoo is the social commerce platform that helps brands and retailers harness the power of the crowd. It starts with ratings & reviews but goes way beyond that. This company is hot – and for good reason. If you collect ratings & reviews the old-fashioned way (sitting back and waiting), you need to upgrade to Reevoo.

Elateral helps major global brands localize and automate their campaign creation and deployment. Their Marketing Services Cloud helps companies like Coke, Mercedes and Cisco – if you’re big and in tech, FMCG or automotive markets, these guys are for you. It’s what Gartner calls Marketing Resource Management and Forrester calls Enterprise Marketing Management and we call a bloody clever way to get campaigns into the field and through the channel quickly, inexpensively and on-brand.

Econsultancy is the world’s best digital marketing community. They’re publishers of top-notch content like best practice reports and buyers guides; they do digital marketing training and qualifications and skills development for whole teams; they do great events like FUNNEL 2011, the B2B marketing event; and they have a killer digital marketing blog. Not a member yet? Shame on you. We really rely on these guys and use our membership in some way almost every week.

Marketo needs no introduction from us. They’re the hottest of the marketing automation and demand generation and revenue performance management software players. They also publish lots of great content for B2B marketers like the Definitive Guide series.

Baynote does dynamic personalization for e-commerce. It’s software that turns visits into conversions using the wisdom of crowds. Very clever.

MediaPlex is the ad server for brands that want a better return on their online display advertising and search advertising budgets. Unlike the vanilla ad servers owned by the giants, MediaPlex is incredibly customisable and comes with a team of marketing super-geeks who really know how to squeeze every last conversion from any online budget. Nobody gets online advertising better than these guys. Dell and Betfair benefit from it every day.

Smallworlders do intranets for distributed marketing teams – agencies, client-side brand teams and internal comms teams. Their Sandbox platform is ready to go when you are. Some huge names use Smallworlders as a smart, full-service alternative to all those DIY Sharepoint sites that never really work. Need an intranet fast with all the bells, whistles and social media stuff? You just found it.

MobileIQ is a mobile app and mobile website developer (they did the BBC News app). They also own PressRun, the tablet publishing platform that turns print magazines into fully interactive tablet experiences. Incredibly cool stuff, backed by a great team.

Looks like we’re developing something of a Marketing-That-Targets-Marketers practice here at the Velocity campus and sports-complex.

If you do get in touch with any of these excellent companies, say hi from us. No, we don’t get a commission, but we do get a warm fuzzy feeling without the hangover.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Lead Generation, Web Marketing

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We’re big believers in the power of a great FAQ section on a B2B website — not just for customer support but for marketing.  So here’s our FAQ on FAQs:

What’s an FAQ?
For some, it’s a list of questions that people really do ask a lot. For others, it’s more like a list of questions you wish were frequently asked.

What’s it good for?
An FAQ does a few things that other forms of communication don’t do quite as well:

1) Let you tell your story in an informal, conversational  way from the user’s perspective

2) Address some common objections – without having to bring them up in the main ‘product’ copy

3) Provide a level of customer support – helping customers use your products and helping prospects make the right decisions

Who should use them?
Every website can justify an FAQ section but not every site needs one. We like FAQs for companies that are introducing a new category or new application because these tend to generate lots of questions about where the new thing fits into people’s lives. We did one for PressRun because they were pioneering a way to turn print magazines into tablet apps.

What makes a good FAQ?
I’m glad you asked that. A good FAQ is clear, well-organised, gives short answers, uses an open, conversational voice and links a lot to helpful content (on your site and — god forbid — elsewhere).

How many questions should I include?
Twelve. Unless you’ve got a really complicated story, then put in as many as you like, organised by topic for easy navigation.

How promotional should I be?
Go ahead and promote, but don’t be crass. The beauty of FAQs is that they feel like a friendly, open, honest view of your business. If you ask stilted questions like, “Why is your widget so popular among IT departments struggling to stay on top of power consumption ?” people will probably figure out that this is not really a list of questions that are frequently asked. It is a brochure in very poor disguise.

Why do so many leading technology brands choose to work with Velocity?
See what I mean?

Can I use my FAQ to pimp some of my content?
Indeed you must. You’ve produced lots of content that’s useful to your target audience. It would be malpractice not to steer people to this content in their hour of need. Again, don’t be crass about it. Make sure the content is relevant to the question.

Can I use my FAQ to bring up sensitive issues I’d rather not flag in the main web copy?
Yep. FAQs can be a really good place to raise and counter a common objection without broadcasting that objection to on your home page. For AppCentral, the enterprise app store folks, we covered issues like, “How is Mobile App Management different from Mobile Device Management?” and “Why can’t we just use the iTunes App Store?”

What if I can’t think of twelve good questions?
It doesn’t matter. Nobody counts.

Really?
Really.

You sure?
Well, some people do. So you might as well make a few extra ones up.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing agency, Copywriting, persuasion, SEO, Web Marketing, writing

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There’s some yadda-yadda to go with it but you’ll probably get the idea…

More Project Open Kimono, in which Velocity exposes itself to the elements:

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

Project Open Kimono Part 11 – the one about autoDMs in Twitter

Project Open Kimono Part 12 – Re-purposing and atomising your content

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B social media, digital marketing, Lead Generation, SEO, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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Even the smallest company has at least one guy who can tell its story really, really well. He’s the guy you always want to bring to important sales calls and meetings. The one who can make your story seem so simple, clear and compelling.

This guy is a priceless asset – but the one thing even he can’t do is to replicate himself. So his persuasive powers are not what the techies call ‘scalable’.

Unless you capture him doing what he does best: giving a simple chalk talk or whiteboard session. That’s what we did with Paul Schnell, the CTO of App-DNA and top Windows 7 Migration expert (dig that anchor text). When Paul talks, you don’t just get what App-DNA does, you want it. So we stuck Paul in front of a whiteboard, did a bit of pre-scribbling and let him loose.

Paul is a natural performer. It feels like he’s in the room with you, having a chat. That’s why we had him deliver his chalk talk straight to the camera. If he had been just as articulate but not quite so ‘telegenic’ we probably would have had him talk to an off-camera interviewer (maybe with a second, hand-held camera for energy), then edited together the best bits.

With Paul, we just got out of the way and let him present right to camera – and it works really well.

As a B2B marketer, one of your most important jobs is to capture the expertise of your best people, then bottle it up in eBooks, white papers, slideshows, videos and blog posts.  The chalk talk is a great way to present your gurus undiluted. And since it feels like a ‘roll up your sleeves’ working session, you don’t have to spend a fortune on production values. Just light it well, get good, professional audio, and you’re there.

Even the best, most articulate presenters will usually need a bit of editing. Paul turned out to be something of a one-take wonder. One thing’s for certain: everyone who sees his chalk talks will know that App-DNA are the go-to guys for application compatibility software (okay, enough with the anchor text).

Have a think: is there anyone whose mojo you’d love to bottle? Break out the chalk or marker pens, wind them up and get the hell out of the way.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B video, Content Marketing

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Do you believe that B2B marketing has become a new Land of Accountability? Do you believe marketing is as much about bottom lines as straight lines?

If so, then let’s talk. We’re looking for a Digital Marketing Analyst who can support the planning, execution and reporting of a range of B2B digital campaigns.

You’ll be the one mining marketing gems from the growing data mountain:

- Trawling Google and social media packages for real insight.
- Turning information into great ideas, optimization campaigns and reports.
- Reminding our clients why we’re worth every penny of our fee.
- Showing the world that great marketing delivers ROI.

Is it you?
You’ll know the job’s right if you have a:

- Couple of years in the marketing or online PR industry under your belt.
- Belief that every marketing investment deserves a return.
- Unshakable feeling there just might be a better way.
- Love of a consistent improvement chart.
- Desire for a digital future.

What’s the day-to-day?
Here are the details:

- Provide regular campaign reports and insights to team and clients
- Manage and monitor progress of social media campaigns
- Manage software to drive successful social and SEO campaigns
- Optimize content from websites to eBooks
- Contribute creative campaign ideas
- Use and update project management tools
- Work closely with outside contractors
- Stay up-to-date with fast-moving social media, SEO and web analytics technologies
- Maintain documentation to chart social media and SEO campaigns successes
- Build a presence in the wider social media community
- Work with databases that underpin “lead-nurturing” marketing campaigns
- Maintain analytical reports in client-friendly manner

You’ll be working with

- Agency management
- Design team
- Outside contractors

You’ll be reporting to

- Account Director

Term of employment
Permanent

Salary
Let’s talk about it, but we’re thinking £25 to £30k

Qualifications and Skills

- A minimum of two years in B2B marketing / communications role
- A strong sense of customer service with deep attention to detail
- Good analytical, writing and communication skills
- Self starter with organizational skills capable of working across multiple projects
- Knowledge of Google tools (Analytics, Keyword Tools, Adwords)
- Knowledge of social media tools (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook)
- Knowledge of project management tools (Excel, Basecamp, Microsoft Project)
- Knowledge of CMS technologies (WordPress)
- Some understanding of HTML and JavaScript an advantage

Interested? Then contact me (neil@velocitypartners.co.uk) with your CV and a few lines about yourself.

Find out a little bit more about Velocity here.

Sorry, troops, but no agencies this time.

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B analytics, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Online PR

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