TBV Insights

What are the best subjects for technology marketing videos? (part 2)

best subjects for technology marketing videos
One of the best subjects for technology explainer videos is the concept that underlies the solution you’re marketing.

This is the second post in a “What are the best subjects for technology marketing videos?” series. Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 3

In a recent survey of B2B marketing and sales execs, one of the top obstacles to “video marketing success” was reported to be “creating compelling content” (45%, second only to “lack of budget” at 47%. Source: The State of B2B Video Marketing. )

One thing marketers can do to overcome this obstacle, and possibly free up some budget resources at the same time, is to stop thinking in terms of product videos. Videos about technology products are hard to produce — let alone make “compelling” — because, for one thing, most tech “products” aren’t products at all — they’re collections of capabilities and ways of doing things. And having defined this nebulous product, product managers and marketers feel compelled to include all its capabilities in their video. This pretty much rules out compelling.

I should be clear that what I mean by compelling is not entertaining. The only thing a B2B video needs to do is compel a buyer or buying team member to take another step or two on their buyer’s journey. Considering that there’s a good chance your viewer will be on a mobile device, and 92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others, you should consider whether or not your video is says something worth sharing. Here, again, a product-centric video might not fill the bill

The underlying concept

best subjects for technology marketing videos
The underlying concept: Assembling powerful citizen-facing applications from simple components.

People do like to share ideas, though, particularly ideas that change how they think about things. Video is quite good at clarifying concepts. Concepts can make very watchable videos. For example, suppose you need to explain the concept of building cloud-based applications to government agencies in the U.K.? That’s a tall order on the phone or even in PowerPoint, but it’s pretty straightforward with video. The key is make it your goal to put just the one idea across — and not to try to do a lot of sales-y stuff at the same time. Here’s how we did it.

best subjects for technology marketing videos
The underlying concept: creating a lean supply chain with demand signals.

Manufacturing software provider Ultriva is especially single-minded about putting across the concepts behind their supply chain software suite (Check out their blog, named one of the best supply chain blogs by SupplyChainOpz.) Here is a video that explains how Ultriva’s concept of demand-driven execution achieves a lean supply chain.

 

best subjects for technology marketing videos
The Underlying Concept: Treating big data, cloud data and structured data as if they all come from one same database.

Finally, what is “Data Virtualization”? Here’s a video where Cisco explains this analytics concept.

 

How can this approach free up budget resources?

Simply put, it’s a lot easier to get agreement on a concept and how to explain it than it is to get agreement on product messaging. It will probably take less time to explain the concept, too. Producing a shorter video with less rework will result in lower costs.

 

For more about designing modular videos for sales engagement and content marketing, download our free report Creating Videos that Support the Technology Buyer’s Journey.

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