It’s the end of 2020, and it has been more than nine months since we’ve been able to gather with Vyond customers and fans in person. We miss meeting you all at trade shows, swapping ideas and conferences, and celebrating the creativity of our community on the ground.
In our wistful nostalgia, we’re revisiting one of our favorite pre-pandemic events: Content Marketing World 2019 in Cleveland, Ohio, organized by Content Marketing Institute. This cornerstone conference and expo brings together thousands of marketers from around the world. Each year, the event offers our team the chance to meet new faces and old friends alike as we explore what it means to create compelling, engaging content.
Last year, our head of marketing Stacy Adams got to talk with Chad Lakin (Shootsta) and Megan Golden (LinkedIn Marketing Solutions) about the challenges, opportunities, and potential of video in B2B content marketing. In a live-streamed conversation for LinkedIn, Stacy shared her takes on why the play button is the hottest CTA button on the B2B web. Read on for some of our favorite insights from Stacy’s Live with Marketers interview!
B2B Video Marketing Insights from Stacy Adams
On why video works…
“We’re moving so far away from feature-selling and solution-selling to the idea of getting information across very quickly in a way that’s engaging. Something that pulls your eye, pulls you in, and gets you involved in the consuming process will perform much better than something that takes work or more time.”
“We’ve got buzzes and bings and text messages to follow, and you only have a few minutes sometimes to look at something or get information. Video is a great way to share that information.”
On agile content creation in the digital age…
“All these somewhat inexpensive tools and ways to make video means you can iterate on video. It’s not like it used to be where you went to an agency and spent a lot of money and got this great video, but then you wanted to change it.”
“The person that was interviewed in the video left the company, or the statistics in there that have radically changed, and so you need to make changes. Or you’re looking at your engagement statistics through your hosting provider and seeing ‘I get this far in the video and engagement drops. So how can I fix that?’”
You’re able to do that when you’re doing video consistently, when you’re using tools that don’t cost a lot of money, and when you have that kind of time.”
“Take advantage of what the digital world has to offer in telling you, ‘hey, this content is good to hear, now you need to fix this piece of it.’ You can do that with video now, and I think you weren’t able to do that before.”
On the challenges of scaling video production…
“When I first started at Vyond, we were small. Our goal was to get a piece of video with every piece of content that we put out there because we were a video company, and we couldn’t do it. We did not have enough internal resources.”
“Over time though we’ve built a video production team. We’ve realized how critical it is. Even now, though, with a full-blown video production team we still have people who come to us all the time and say ‘I want a video for this,’ or ‘I’m doing this demo I need a video,’ or ‘I need a new help center video for this,’ ‘I need to do this,’ and our video team is constantly swamped.”
On getting comfortable with being on-camera…
“Use an interview setup. When they’re having a conversation, people can forget that they’re in front of cameras. It adds that kind of personal touch, too. You’re not just a talking head. You’re seeing interaction, and more warmth, and I think that works.”
“Vyond is an animated video company, so you can build a character similar to who you are. All you need is a voice over. So if you’ve got someone who’s really uncomfortable, you can make their character lip sync and talk. That makes people a lot more comfortable, just doing the voice-over work in a booth, knowing that no one can see them. I’m the same way. Sometimes I’ll go in and do some voiceover work for my character when I don’t feel like being on camera for certain things. You can ease people into it.”
“And, to be honest, videos don’t need people all the time. You can get a lot across with just images or words, without having that character development. It’s great and it works really well.”
On the future of B2B video…
“Now, there are apps that allow you to just video record from your laptop, or from your phone, and push send. We’ll be doing a lot more of that. Instead of thinking ‘I’m gonna send this email to a colleague,’ I’m gonna press the record button, say what I need to say, and push send. It’s just easier.”
“We’re growing apart, as far as remote work is concerned, companies are expanding, people are moving out of cities that are getting really crowded and expensive to live in.”
“There’s that idea of personal connection that you can’t replace with anything but video. Being able to communicate, see facial expressions, and so on versus sending an email.”
“We’re already doing it with videoconferencing. Pretty soon, I think we’re going to be communicating in short bursts of video versus email or even text messages.”
Watch the full conversation
Watch the full 40-minute interview with Stacy Adams and Chad Lakin by Megan Golden on YouTube, and explore LinkedIn’s Live with Marketers series here.
Get started with video
Vyond Studio is a cloud-based platform for building your own animated videos. With our powerful, drag-and-drop tool, anybody can make media that moves. Learn how Vyond can help you scale your B2B video marketing, and sign up for a no-commitment 14-day trial to start making media that moves.
