Video in the B2B customer journey

The introduction of the internet has changed how we buy goods and services in ways no one would have every imagined. The internet brought something that would change the way we can make (buying) decisions forever, and no, it isn’t Amazon. It’s search engines. The ability to search for any information about virtually anything has really changed the way we look at the world and make decisions about almost everything. We go online to find information for school projects, find inspiration for our next vacation, recipes, what movie to watch tonight, and even find a life partner. That also goes for most buying decision we want, or need to make.

This is where the customer journey comes in. As a business you want to guide your prospect along the different stages as much as possible. The B2B customer journey can be long and is more complex than its B2C counterpart. Video can play a key role in guiding your prospect through the different stages. Let me show you how that works in the different stages.

Awareness

In the first stage of the buyers journey, the awareness stage, a prospect has identified that they have a problem that needs to be solved. This is often followed by a broad search for solutions, where the prospect is looking into multiple different solutions. This does not necessarily have to be your solution. But you obviously want it to be.

Video is a great way to create awareness for your solution for multiple reasons. The first reason is not that video is easily consumable in a short amount of time, or more of the information that is transferred using video is better remembered than using text, or that most people are visual learners. No. The first reason is: search. Your prospects search for solutions using a search engine (probably Google) and video is usually at the top of the search results. Besides that, it’s really easy to incorporate SEO in video and most search engines love the combination of video and SEO.

But producing any video, incorporating SEO and putting it on your website and YouTube isn’t enough. In each stage of the customer journey different types of videos, that communicate different information, are needed to succeed.

In the awareness stage it is important to stand out from other companies and solutions, show how your solutions solve your prospects problems and keep it short. Videos that inspire your prospect on their journey are a great way to engage them with your brand and solutions. This can be achieved by creating short versions of your brand film.

Another way to engage your prospects in this stage is by explaining your solutions using short commercials, or explainer videos to educate your prospect. Depending on your solution and your prospect these could be live-action (filmed) videos, or animated videos. Live-action videos perfect for showing human interaction and emotion and animations are a great format to show and explain systems and processes. If your solution is process, or system oriented and involves tangible elements like machines, 3D animation is a great way to explain a solution.

Consideration

In the consideration stage your prospect is comparing information and narrowing the selection. In this stage you should educate with a hint of soft selling by positioning yourself as the industry expert. Now it is time to make your solution really stand out of the crowd and to demonstrate why it is the better choice.

By making your prospect the hero, you can connect with them on a deeper level. One way to do this is by creating a brand film that resonates with your prospect and their problems.

Product videos and walkthrough video are other types that help your solution stand out. Use these videos to go deeper into the details of the solution you offer. Really explain what it is and how it will make your prospect’s life better (i.e. solve their problem, or problems).

A third option is using testimonial videos where former or existing clients talk about your company, solutions and how it benefited them, how it solved their problems. Those stories will help your prospects to connect with your company and solutions.

These three different video formats all have one thing in common: they are longer form videos. Now that your prospect is considering your company and solution, they will be open to spend more time with your information and engage with your videos.

Speaking of more time, webinars are also great ways to engage with your prospect in this stage. In a webinar you can walk prospects through your solution live, or talk through a presentation if it’s complicated to show your solution. A webinar also gives your prospect the opportunity to ask questions directly.

Decision

In the decision, or purchase stage, you don’t have to be flashy, or inspirational anymore. That doesn’t mean you can just completely shift direction, tell a completely different story, or go completely off brand. In this stage it is important to be direct. Be direct about your solution, your offering. Show and tell how your solution helps your prospect in one or more ways. Zoom in on different aspects of your prospects problem and different aspects of your solution. How does your solution save time? How does your solution work in a different setting? How does your solution work in combination with other tools, or solutions? Or can it maybe solve other problems, as well?

By offering detailed walkthroughs of your solution, explaining in detail how your solution solves your prospect’s problem, or laying out (all) features and benefits, you can give your prospect the information and details that you may have left out in earlier videos, or other communication. Detailed product demos and how-to videos are the form for this stage.

Post-purchase

After winning the prospect they become an actual customer. You would think that is where the customer journey ends, but that isn’t exactly right. The customer only begins to use your solution to their problems and starts to interact with your company and people. This is still part of the customer journey.

Depending on the size of your company and that of you customer’s, the teams that will interact with your solution, both on your side and the customers side, can greatly vary in size. To enable these teams to work together and interact with your solution you could organize workshops. An important downside to workshops is that people will need to travel to a specific location at a specific time. The travel issue can be overcome by opting for video workshops. But the time factor still remains.

Video can solve that issue easily. By offering onboarding and help videos you can explain your solution and guide your customer’s employees in how to use and implement it. One of the biggest benefits of this approach is that they can access these at all hours of the day and from any location, as long as they have a computer and working internet connection.

And if your solution gets updated with new features, or fixes for issues, or customizations, you can easily explain the changes using video.

Conclusion

As you can see there are quite a few ways in how you can guide your prospects through the different stages of the customer journey. It doesn’t really matter what product or service you offer, as long as it is a solution that helps solve your prospects problem(s). key is to create videos that in the beginning inspire your prospect to look at your solution and company and as your prospect moves further through the customer journey, your stories and communication need to be clearer and more direct. At the same time the videos you should use in each stage become longer and more to-the-point.

One final take-away is that some types of videos can be used in multiple stages of the customer journey. For example, help content, like a how-to-video, can be used in both the Awareness and post-purchase stages.  So, there are ways to reuse and repurpose content that you created.