As the second largest search engine on the internet, YouTube is the world’s most popular source for video streaming – with billions of hours of videos watched every single day. Online videos have become an invaluable tool for consumers and businesses alike to find and share content for entertainment, education, and product discovery. Audiences spend time on YouTube if they want to learn more about a certain topic, industry, or brand’s offerings.
Instructional videos are also one of the most effective mediums for an audience to acquire new skills, with 69% of people preferring video over text to learn about a product or service. This rings even more true for B2B companies, whose products and services are often more complex and difficult for an audience to understand or learn about, compared to those of B2C companies. This is also an important rule to keep in mind for your prospecting - - have you ever thought of video prospecting?
When it comes to creating instructional marketing videos for B2B that audiences can learn from, the goal is to simplify concepts in your videos using compelling yet concise messaging, so that people can understand them quickly without extensive background knowledge.
What are how-to videos?
How-to videos are educational videos aimed at teaching viewers how to complete a specific task, acquire a new skill, or solve a problem. These instructional videos help simplify information by making it clear for any audience and describe step-by-step instructions so that customers have knowledge about a product or service.
The main goal of a how-to video is to present the information in a way that's simple to understand and accessible to viewers of all experience levels. These instructional videos also help boost brand awareness and drive conversions.
How-to videos can be either one-off videos or a video series, for example a video slideshow of the quarter highlights, that explain how specific products or services work by showing them in action with a tutorial or screen recording software. Other examples of these videos include producing a cooking tutorial, a DIY project tutorial, a software tutorial, or a fitness routine tutorial.
Ideas to repurpose your content
You have created high-quality content and your are about to organize events that require a lot of time and money? Always remember to promote your content on different channels in different formats. That way you increase the probability of getting the necessary reach for your content and you don't have to constantly produce new content. Instead you can maintain quality over quantity.
Here are a few examples of repurposing your content:
- An event video to tease your event highlights and make people want to attend the event.
- A personalized video to invite your customers to an event or thank them for their trust and a good collaboration
- A buzzfeed video providing quick, snackable content designed to go viral.
4 best how-to video examples and why they work
In this blog post, we will take a look at how these B2B how-to videos help to uncover what elements make each video stand out. Structure, storytelling, design, transitions, and music all help play an important part in creating a successful how-to video that stands out from the rest. They’re also an easy step of the process, and don’t make creating how-to videos as hard as they may seem.
1. How To Use A Square Register
Why it works:
This how-to video introduces the topic clearly from the start, opening with a shot of the two featured brand products. The video’s narration is well-paced and enunciated in a natural conversational tone, and the music compliments the upbeat feeling of the video without distracting from the voice-over that is set to help the audience understand the message clearly.
The video is structured as a live-action walkthrough, showing how a person assembles the actual products when setting up their store. The visual storytelling takes us through installing the registers and then operating the software in a chronological order of actions that the user can easily follow while watching. Unlike written manuals, there aren’t any missing steps that viewers would have to imagine or guess their way through.
The entire narration is also available as a transcript in the video description so viewers can refer to any part of the instructions at their own pace afterwards.
2. Notion Training: The Basics
Why it works:
This how-to video is a straight-forward narration and screen cast of their project management product and its basic features. There is no music and no motion design, keeping the video minimalist, simple, and focused.
The video also features an outline in beginning and respective linked timestamps in the description to help viewers skip directly to the parts that are most pertinent to them–which is especially useful and efficient for people who do not have as much time to watch longer video content.
Create a case study video
For SaaS B2B companies, it’s a good idea to reach out to customers regularly to understand if there are any features they find challenging to use - this is great inspiration for video content that is guaranteed to perform, as users have a real need for it. By doing so, you also get to know customers being super satisfied with your product.
Here's where you need to take the extra mile and asking for a testimonial video or a case study video as this kind of content adds authenticity to your company which can be converted into value.
3. How To Start A T-Shirt Business - Everything You Need To Know
Why it works:
This recording is part of Shopify’s YouTube series “How to start a business on Shopify”. It’s a great example of mixing live-action footage and motion design to create a valuable B2B resource that is an example of a professional, highly educational, and fun video on YouTube.
The video is also structured as an online course on YouTube, with the speaker explaining on the screen each key step (with reasoning and pros/cons) to opening an online t-shirt business with Shopify. This type of content not only talks about Shopify as a service, but provides people with valuable information to acquire new skills like entrepreneurship and marketing. The best type of content is genuinely a recording that is useful for people, and generates new high-quality leads for the business.
Themed motion design transitions and live action video is used to introduce lesson details, as well as illustrate examples of topics that the presenter talks about. The video also incorporates a screen recording or recordings of other digital platforms they recommend during the lesson, giving viewers an accurate visual depiction on their screen of what to look for and how to use these tools.
PlayPlay Pro Tip
Providing free video resources and gated content (that are of high quality!) builds brand trust and authority and is a key strategy to bringing in new customers.
You can also use each piece of content to cross-promote another. In the above video, Shopify promotes a free webinar on the same topic of starting a t-shirt business in their video description.
4. How To Create A Social Content Calendar
Why it works:
This quick and simple how-to video by Facebook utilizes dynamic motion designs and an energetic music track to illustrate each step of creating a social content calendar. Rather than relying on wordy narration, they use easy-to-read text overlays with emojis and photo/video screen cast to make an engaging and “snackable” educational video for people to easily watch, share, and learn from.
Additionally, it features examples of real social posts with creatives and copy, providing viewers with inspiration for their own content formats. When it comes to “how to” content for creators, seeing real-life examples to draw inspiration from is valuable, especially because it’s not always possible. At the end of the video, a relevant and immediate call-to-action instructs viewers to download a free content calendar template, which provides another traffic channel to the brand’s website.
3 steps to follow for making your how-to videos stand out
Ready to start filming your how-to video but don’t want to miss out on some important steps? Here are 3 steps you can’t miss when creating a video your audience will love.
Step 1: Script the video before filming it
How to make a professional video? The key to a high-quality and stunning video is always to write a great video script and storyboard before you start filming. This first step saves time and money during the shoot, so you can focus on getting the best footage rather than debating what’s going on in the scene.
You may realize during filming that you want to add or remove lines from the script, and it’s always easier to make edits to an existing transcript rather than making it all up as you go along.
Step 2: Make sure audio quality in the video is as good as image quality
A common mistake in the video editing phase is not paying enough attention to the audio quality or worse – forgetting to purchase the royalty for music tracks and leaving the watermark on the final video file. Those are some editing mistakes you shouldn’t be making if you’re trying to create an engaging how-to video!
The second step for creating how-to videos is to make sure that you review all angles of your video before hitting publish, from image quality and spell check, to checking that footage and audio are in-sync.
Step 3: Add transitions to your video
The third and final step to ensure your how-to video is powerful and engaging is focusing on your video’s transitions. Transitions are a powerful tool for any tutorial or how-to video because it enhances videos’ structures and optimizes pacing to keep any audience engaged and aware of what comes next. This step is the element that sets your tutorial or how-to video content apart from other instructional videos.
An example of a common business misconception is that you must hire an expensive video editor or production agency to create videos with great motion design that will appeal to your audience. In reality, there are many affordable explainer video software options on the market with ready-made templates and motion design effects that you can apply directly to your instructional video clips.
Create stunning professional how-to videos with PlayPlay
Now you know the ins and outs of a high-quality how-to video, it's time to start creating your own. But first, you will need a video creation platform at your fingertips to make stunning videos to share to your audience.
That’s where PlayPlay comes in!
PlayPlay is an example of a video creation software that makes it easy for anyone to create high-quality, professional videos in a fraction of the time and cost typically associated with agencies. Best of all, you don’t have to start from scratch—edit one of our customizable templates or let PlayPlay’s AI Assistant help generate video drafts for you, so you can share your video with your audience as quickly as possible.
Here’s how one of our customers describes their experience with PlayPlay.
“I was very skeptical that PlayPlay would hold up to its promises of being user-friendly and a faster/easier way to make videos. I was proved wrong very quickly. One of my favorite things about PlayPlay is how easy the templates are to utilize for different things… This program is user-friendly in a way I have never seen before. I also enjoy the support availability.”
Want to test it out for yourself? Try PlayPlay for free for seven days to help you create great how-to videos your audience will love!
Start by outlining the process for the topic of your video. Write down each step as you understand it, then simplify them as much as possible. This is also about editing your topic to only include vital information, so focus on the essentials while ensuring nothing important is left out. Use this advice or guide as the foundation for creating and editing your video script.
It might seem obvious, but take the time to introduce yourself at the beginning of your videos! Begin your video with a screen that presents your name and photo, and briefly share what you do best or what sets you apart. If you’re making an "about us" video for your business, highlight what makes your business, product, or services unique.
Melissa Francois
Head of Global Content & Comms
With over 10 years of experience in the wild world of SaaS, Melissa cares about building great brand stories and driving community engagement through engaging content. Off the clock, she enjoys long walks and a pint in a cozy country pub.
