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 video watched every single day. Online video has become an invaluable tool for consumers and businesses alike to find and share content for entertainment, education, and product discovery.
Videos are also one of the most effective mediums for acquiring 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 to understand, compared to those of B2C companies. This rule also applies when reaching out to prospects - have you ever thought of video prospecting?
When it comes to creating marketing videos for B2B, the goal is to simplify concepts using compelling yet concise messaging, so that consumers can understand them quickly without extensive background knowledge.
Today 86% of businesses use video creation as a regular marketing tool. In fact, “How-to videos” are a powerful video format for educating audiences, boosting awareness, and driving conversions. What’s more, B2B enterprises can create 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 tutorials or screen recording software.
Still not convinced about how-to videos? According to a study by Google, nearly 50% of consumers search for product videos online before they decide to make a purchase. This drives home the importance of making it easy for consumers and businesses to access useful content to learn about your product–and explaining why you’re the best option on the market. A best practice to make your users easily find your valuable assets is to repurpose video content, for example providing shorter versions of a long video/recording of a webinar and promoting it differently.
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.
5 how-to video examples for B2B (and why they work!)
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at how these B2B how-to videos to uncover what elements make each video stand out. Structure, storytelling, design, transitions, and music all play an important part in creating a successful how-to video.
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.
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 screencast 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 to provide for longer video content.
PlayPlay Pro Tip
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.
How To Start A T-Shirt Business - Everything You Need To Know
Why it works:
This video 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 professional, highly educational, and fun.
The video is also structured as an online course, with the speaker explaining 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 viewers with valuable information to acquire new skills like entrepreneurship and marketing. The best type of content is genuinely useful for the consumer, while generating 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 screen recordings of other digital platforms they recommend during the lesson, giving viewers an accurate visual depiction 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.
5. 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 screencast to make an engaging and “snackable” educational video for viewers to easily watch and share.
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 tips to make your B2B how-to videos stand out
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 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.
2. Make sure audio quality 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.
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.
3. Add transitions to your video
Transitions are a powerful tool to enhance the structure of your video and optimize pacing to keep viewers engaged and aware of what comes next. It can be the element that sets your content apart from other video competition.
A common business misconception is that you must hire an expensive video editor or production agency to create videos with great motion design. 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 video clips.
Ready to create your first video?
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'll need a video creation platform at your fingertips.
Ever wondered how to effortlessly create stunning corporate videos? With PlayPlay's corporate video maker, you can transform your ideas into professional, attention-grabbing content that captivates your audience across platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, and more.
PlayPlay is the intuitive video creation platform for businesses, with easy-to-use video effects, design templates, stock footage, music, and more. Try it free for 7 days or book a demo online today!
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.
