Being a B2B brand does not give you a license to bore.
Even if you’re working in an industry perceived as boring and selling products to businesses with the same stereotype, curing insomnia is not a great way to engage any target audience.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that businesses are made up of people — and people enjoy entertainment.
Creative uses of media and messaging are the best way to shake an audience awake — and this is exactly what we at Switch Video specialize in: creating compelling videos that explain what you do in fresh and exciting ways.
A creative campaign does not have to be wacky or zany. Rather, its primary goal is to hit your target audience in ‘the feels’.
Emotion is the diesel fuel in the engine of commerce. Nearly all purchasing decisions — 90 percent, to be precise — are made subconsciously. If your customer feels you understand them and your problem, they will likely buy from you.
Here are three ways to strike an emotional connection with a B2B audience:
- Make it Personal. Today, we live in a personalized culture where consumers expect to play a central role in every story. By creating personalized videos for your target audience, you’re scratching this very itch by making the customer the hero.
When data management company Reltio was looking for a fresh way to stoke interest in its flagship product, it created a personalized video campaign targeting 10,000 leads — and the results were incredible. Nearly 30 percent of the individuals who opened the email clicked through to watch their personalized video. All told, the campaign performed ten-times better than the company’s average marketing efforts.
These are exactly the kinds of marketing videos we produce for clients ranging from LinkedIn to IBM.
- Incorporate Multiple Mediums. We at Switch Video know that video provides a terrific medium for letting your creativity shine through — but it’s certainly not the only medium.
Intronis, a cloud backup and recovery company, earned a 700-percent return on its marketing investment by gaming the system — literally.
As a tech company marketing to other tech companies, Intronis wisely inferred that geek and gamer culture would resonate with its audience. Using the tagline, “Intronis got game,” the company delivered classic Atari gaming consoles to its targets along with its website URL.
Not every audience dreams in 8-bit graphics, but Intronis should inspire you to think outside the boring box and find fun, creative ways to speak to your target audience’s interests. Try taking a multimedia approach: Pair one of our strategic videos with something unexpected!
- Start a Culture War. As the saying from a popular HBO series goes: “In the game of thrones, you either win or you die.”
Fibrelink, a mobile management and security company, is not in the dragon or medieval swordplay business — but it is in the business of winning leads through creative marketing.
Knowing that “Game of Thrones” is currently all the rage, the company created a playful video campaign called “Game of Phones” that included comparisons between smartphone operating systems and the major families from the HBO series. This creative move led the company to see a 20-percent boost in leads.
Integrating pop culture into a campaign can give even the most boring brands a sense of style. Throw out a catchphrase from the latest episode of SNL, or incorporate an iconic character into your campaign. Your audience will respond to the familiarity of the material and, frankly, to the coolness of it.
The above examples prove to you that B2B marketing doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, it can be quite fun — and exercising your creative muscles actually pays off.