YouTube offers videos about everything, from ghost-hunting to learning how to put oil in your car. There is no limit to the unique, educational, or eccentric video content to binge. However, if you're a creator, all of the content on YouTube can be incredibly intimidating. How do you create B2B marketing videos that are different from your competitors, and still provide tremendous value to your customer?
Answer: there isn't one perfect way to create YouTube videos. Instead, there are a lot of best practices and YouTube channels that are already getting incredible engagement on their video content. If you spend time researching some of the most successful YouTubers in your industry and beyond, you can pick up a few tips on how to make your channel equally successful.
How You Can Learn From The Best Brands on YouTube
When it comes to finding success on YouTube, it all comes down to finding your niche. Broad, general content rarely sees engagement on the channel, as YouTube is saturated by content creators that make the same videos about the same topics. That's how we get channels and videos that look too similar and aren't memorable in any way.
The biggest takeaway you can take from this article is that you can be successful on YouTube, but your content needs to be different and provide value. When you find that hook that makes your content and your brand unique, you can use it to draw in new viewers, and gain trust, respect, and admiration from returning ones. Here are how some of the best video marketing gurus out there did it, and how you can use their tactics to create your video marketing strategy.
SEMRush
SEMRush is a platform that helps businesses identify profitable keywords. A lot of marketers use the tool to inform their content marketing strategies and find a lot of success with it. On their YouTube channel, SEMRush provides a mix of getting started videos, common mistakes, and quick fixes, as well as channels outlining their areas of expertise, such as social media marketing and PPC.
You can take a few plays out of their playbook by:
- Providing step-by-step instructions for the first time someone uses your product or service
- Addressing frustrations or pain points that customers may experience using your product or service
- Creating overarching channels to help viewers differentiate your videos by topic
SEMRush also uses YouTube to promote their podcast, Search Marketing Scoop. They tease the content of the podcast in videos, then direct the viewer to subscribe from iTunes or their Android device.
HubSpot
HubSpot is known for their valuable content, so it's not a surprise that they have a great YouTube channel. They make it look easy to make a video go viral. Similar to SEMRush, HubSpot uses playlists to organize and promote their knowledge about lead scoring, web security, and more. Those topics are within their wheelhouse and answer questions and challenges that their customer experiences.
However, HubSpot's YouTube content is so excellent because they also branch out. They cover unexpected subject matter, such as how to brainstorm, the relationship between creativity and constraints, and Gestalt Psychology alongside videos about lead generation and case studies.
The result is a blend of educational and thought-provoking subject matter. You can accomplish the same type of exceptional video marketing content for your YouTube channel by:
- Investing in illustration and graphic design, such as whiteboard animation services
- Diversifying your subject matter
- Creating videos based on well-known psychological methods or themes
Another thing that HubSpot is very successful at is discussing newsworthy trends that relate to the internet and digital marketing. While bitcoin has little to do with HubSpot's platform, it's a trend that their audience finds interesting.
Workfront
Workfront is a project management tool that is similar to Wrike and Liquid Planner. Customers use it to organize projects, assign tasks to team members, create internal processes, and set allocations. It makes sense that they would have a YouTube channel to explain how to use the product on a day to day basis.
As you would expect, they post videos with product demos, integrations, and new releases. However, they also do a fantastic job of creating videos that are fun to watch. Their Working Dead series, an obvious play on The Walking Dead, demonstrate the need for the Workfront product without seeming overly promotional.
These types of video require finding qualified actors and having the ability to write an entertaining script. The payoff is a unique collection of content that users love to engage with and share.
If you want to try the Workfront approach, you can create a video marketing strategy that is:
- Based on something prevalent in pop culture
- Pokes fun at your target audience or industry
- A series of episodes that your customer can binge on
For more inspiration about lighthearted video content for business, Workfront's CHAOS series and their Horror of Work Chaos illustrated series are also worth checking out.
Canvas LMS
Canvas LMS is an open-source learning management system for education. The tool supports teachers with the ability to record video and audio feedback on assignments, automate classroom tasks, create reward patches for students, and work in online collaborative workspaces. The platform is for a variety of teachers and classrooms, from K-12 and higher education.
To help address the unique needs of each segment, Canvas LMS uses their YouTube channel. Similar to other brands, they utilize playlists to separate K-12 from higher education but also create videos specifically for each grade level.
A lot of the videos are focused on the values and benefits of their product and told through the perspective of actual teachers.
If you have various audience segments for your product or service, you can take a similar approach by:
- Using playlists to separate content by segment
- Including audience specific keywords in all of your headlines (such as 1st grade versus 5th grade)
- Walking through use cases with actual customers from each segment
Additionally, the Canva LMS videos show that you can use DIY video production resources and still create excellent content.
Neil Patel
Neil Patel is an internet marketing guru with an incredibly successful blog. Patel brings his expertise to YouTube with a channel dedicated to content about blogging, optimizing your website for search, and email marketing tips. I follow Patel's blog, and I could not help but notice that he bases a lot of his videos on content he's already written.
In fact, his article 4 Ways to Decrease Your Bounce Rate in the Next Week looks suspiciously like this video, also titled 4 Ways to Decrease Your Bounce Rate.
It might seem sneaky, but it's pretty brilliant. Patel is a marketing master, so he understands that his content is valuable and that he should repurpose it for various platforms. By recycling his blog content into a YouTube video, he's sharing his insights and reaching new people.
You can do the same with a few simple tips to repurpose your content assets:
- Embed your YouTube video into a SlideShare presentation for LinkedIn
- Turn your video into an infographic and share it on Pinterest (if this applies to your audience)
- Take the audio from your video file and upload it on Soundcloud
There are a ton of ways to give content new life. Learn more tactics in our repurposing content ebook.
MOZ
MOZ is is a software as a service company with tools to aid inbound marketing and content creation efforts. They have a vast community of SEOs at their company, making them trusted experts for all things digital marketing. They continue to foster and build on that trust using their channel on YouTube.
Every company has a unique personality and things that set them apart from their competition, and for MOZ, it's their team and culture. Those key differentiators are all over their YouTube page, with a series of fun videos starring their employees.
It's a reminder that in business, your differences are your strengths. Since MOZ's employees are so well known, people look to them out for advice and subject matter expertise. It elevates the brand as a whole.
You can create employee-centric videos as well, and benefit from:
- An activity that energizes and excites your staff
- Videos that show the knowledge and personality your brand has to offer
- Higher engagement when your team members share and distribute these videos within their networks
Overall, it's also a video marketing tactic that is low-risk and helps you establish some trust with your customer.
Russell Brunson's Funnel Hacker TV
Ryan Scott, the Head of our Inbound Marketing team, passed Russell Brunson's channel to me for this article. I was blown away by his content. Rather than taking a stale approach to marketing and sales funnels, Brunson creates videos that feel edgy, daring, and thrilling.
It reminds me of shows like Dog The Bounty Hunter or reality television programs about poker.
Brunson's confidence and distinct brand voice are why his videos are so compelling. The videos are educational but feel more a trusted friend showing you all of the best-kept secrets of the industry. While not every brand will share the same brash preferences that Brunson has, you can also leverage your voice to create a great channel.
To capture your brand voice for a one-of-a-kind YouTube channel, consider a few things:
- What kinds of influencers and experts does your customer trust?
- What type of companies share your values and beliefs, and what voice are they portraying in their content?
- What types of language, branding, and personalities would your customer dislike or not trust?
It all depends on your audience. I'd recommend checking out our SprocketRocket Strategy Kit if you're still mastering a brand voice. We have a few templates that help you figure out your brand personality, and there are a lot of other useful documents in there as well.
ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is a software that companies use to build landing pages and manage their funnel. An alternative to more costly marketing automation platforms, alongside other affordable tools. The result is sometimes an ecosystem of marketing, website, and reporting tools we like to call a Franken HubSpot.
Despite the cost benefits, this type of marketing stack is notorious for challenges around attribution, user flow, and consistent automation. ClickFunnels itself requires a lot of integrations, resulting in a lot of customer questions about how to use the tool effectively to support a marketing strategy. They answer a lot of these questions and concerns using YouTube.
If your sales and marketing teams spend a substantial amount of time answering customer questions or walking them through set-up, a similar approach could be beneficial. You can cut down on time spent on custom answers to common queries.
To create your FAQ focused YouTube video marketing strategy, start with:
- The common frustrations of your ideal customer
- Features of your product or service that are difficult to understand
- The feedback that your sales and marketing team receive from customers and leads
Using this information, you can address critical issues and provide tremendous value to your customers.
Honorable Non-B2B Mention: Binging With Babish
I never heard of Binging With Babish before a few months ago. A friend recommended Babish because he did a video about garbage plates, which are native to where my parents live in Upstate New York. Now, I can't stop watching. The host, Andrew Rea, is a chef from New York City that recreates obscure food from television and film.
He covers everything from Krabby Patties from Spongebob Squarepants to McDonald's Szechuan Sauce from Rick and Morty. The result? A series of videos that show how to make food items that you always wondered how to cook.
The concept for the channel is brilliant. It combines pop culture with how-tos, making the videos highly engaging and fascinating to watch. Andrew provides entertainment while teaching his viewers how to do something. The quality of his videos are also incredible, and he's not shy about sharing the tools and resources he uses to cook and film.
If you have something to teach your customer, you could take a similar approach, as long as you:
- Stick to the how-to, and skip anything that will stray from the instructions
- Create a short, but exciting introduction (for the Rachel video, it's an actual clip from that episode of Friends.)
- Provide excellent quality, with high-resolution video and clear, crisp sound
I'd recommend not being too ambitious with humor if you're first getting started, and focusing on providing the most value to the viewer.
How To Ensure Value From Video Marketing
It can be challenging to plan for massive success on YouTube, but the example that these brands set is a start. You can see what works and what doesn't, and select a strategy and approach that makes sense for your audience. That way, you can plan for the type of content that your customers can't help but engage with, and even share with their friends (you're all going to be fans of Binging with Babish now.)
To guarantee even more success with video marketing, line it up with your inbound marketing strategy. Videos can support your customer during every stage of the buyer journey, and create more engagement on landing pages, website pages, emails, blog posts, and more. To learn more about creating an overall inbound strategy, check out our Free Book Download of Conquering the Inbound Marketing Mountain.
