Jesy Heron: 5 Types of Videos for Demand Generation

Sourabh:
‍For B2B brands who often are selling to somebody who's a narrow audience, it's not for everybody, right? What works from a commercial perspective? What's going to attract the right type of buyer that could actually enter the funnel and potentially lead to a deal? What are we missing when it comes to commercials and producing them for, for a B2B brand?

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Jesy:
Yeah, I think that's a great question. So almost every single video follows a formula, right? So there's a story framework, there's seven parts to a story. And I think that when you, when you have that formula, it's up to you to then interpret the formula that's gonna work best for your audience. So, I don't wanna divert from talking about video specifically, but I wanna take a step back and say that you have to know your audience. So I think that's the first thing that you really wanna hone in on. Do a bit of a discovery, understand who your target audience is so that you can frame your story and your video in a way that connects with them. We're all trying to connect with humans, so no matter if it's in a B2B setting or a B2C setting, it's all B2H, it's all business-to-human. And if you're not interesting and you're not engaging in your commercial to the human on the other end, then they're not gonna care. So you really have to, again, understand that audience so that you can frame your message and connect with the, with the human on the other end.

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Sourabh:
I love it. Know the person beyond the brand or the title. know the person and make it personal. I mean, I think you just increased ROI with that, right, from a commercial perspective. Now there's a very similar type of video to ads or commercials, right, which are for sort of traditional media, you know, outlets, people that'll get us to our audience. We pay media companies like Google, right? And others to do that. But these are our social media videos. So these are not backed by money. These are just gonna live organically. What's the difference when we're putting out content via video on social media that is not intended for our ad channels?

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Jesy:
‍Yeah, I think you have to consider time. We're dealing with an audience and a generation of hyper swipers, and I'm just gonna show the action. It is literally swiping, hyper-swiping. So you have to engage immediately, and you have to make sure that your brand impression is shown throughout the time. So when someone clicks on your video from Facebook, Instagram, whether it's a story, whether they're finding you on LinkedIn. LinkedIn obviously is a huge platform to be able to share content and video is super-engaging on, on LinkedIn. You have to have that brand impression immediately, and you really do have to engage instantaneously. I read that users retain 95% of a message if they're watching it over a video versus 10% that they retain when they read it. So if you think about that, having social media content and really putting that budget towards video content, someone's gonna retain the message at a 95% versus 10%. So that to me is such a huge number that everybody should really start considering, “How do I create that short form content to connect with my audience?”

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Sourabh:
‍And that makes perfect sense, right, what you're saying because the parts of our brain that light up, that are engaged are fundamentally different between purely the cognitive, which comes down to language and especially reading, right? And video where there's a story where there are characters. I mean, there's so many parts of your ring that are engaged. I'm gonna build on this for just a second before we move on to the next type, right? Given that we are trying to engage the audience throughout the video on social media and that we're very pressed for time and brevity is key, what in your experience in working with clients— what has been the best call to action that would drive people into not necessarily the top of the funnel. Keep explaining this to clients, right? Not everybody's qualified, right? But what is the best type of CTA from a video that we've floated on social, in your experience?

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Jesy:
‍Yeah, I think it's the CTA plus that sort of teaser content that you have. I have a client in mind that I'm gonna speak about. So they are a B2B tech company based in Tampa, Florida. And their whole mission and whole goal is to work with small businesses. They wanna be the worldwide SSMB leader in the ERP space. And what they really focus on with their content is more of that like “How-to” content or like the “FAQ” kind of content. So it's really about posing some of those questions that everybody's asking. When I say everybody, it's specific to your target audience But for them it's the debate of “Do I stay on Prem or do I move to Cloud?”

So that's their, that's their big question. And they're trying to push people to obviously migrate to the cloud, but there's fears behind that. So the way that we crafted the content for them and the video content for them is by strategically having some question and some teaser content so that people then are wanting to go learn more. So that teaser content was maybe addressing someone to go to the blog post to find out more information where the full video is then shown. People do tend to engage that way. They like to have their palette wet, and then they go to watch the full length video so that they get all of the information and that's how they engage. And to be honest, those are the metrics that the B2B marketers want. The digital marketers, they are under such enormous pressure to get those conversions, to get that engagement, those view counts, those clickthroughs. And so you have to really create that teaser content to direct someone back to the website, the full length video that, that they're gonna want. And it has to be of that value that the users are used to getting.

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Sourabh:
‍Yeah, I mean, there's two things to really differentiate here. It has become much more affordable and, frankly, much more possible to find X, the size of people you're reaching, you know, efficiently, because of how much competition has grown for Google's a algorithms. But it's far more difficult to get the right people into the funnel. Getting the wrong people is where most of us end up really killing the ROI, right? So I'm gonna double down on what you said because this really leans into our next type of video content, right? And before I ask this question though, quick reminder to the audience, we're moving really quickly. Before you know it, we'll be out of time. If you have a question about video marketing for B2B audiences, please put it in the Q&A, we're dropping it in the chat, and I'll work it in with Jesy in this incredibly fast section we're in right now. 

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Jesy:
‍And I'm talking fast, so hopefully you can keep up.

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Sourabh:
‍And you're making me talk fast, right? So the next question builds exactly on what you explained there about, you know, uh, videos that help your audience learn how to videos. I wanna take that a step further into explainer videos. Very popular with tech marketers because what they're selling isn't intuitive to the average. So you really need to understand the use case. So my question specifically is, what do you think is the best way to go with an explainer video? I'm gonna give you three options. Should it focus on the problem and the opportunity lost or build that urgency, right, or fomo? Should it focus on the solution and how it's differentiated? Or should it focus on the value that the solution brings to their business? Which way would you go with a client?

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Jesy:
‍Well, I think it depends on the length of the video. So I'm gonna expand your questions and say “D”. It could be all of the above depending on the length of the video. I think that having it problem-based really allows the user to sort of see themselves in the shoes. And I think that if you go back to the formula of the story framework, part of that story framework is to present the problem. It's almost like the Star Wars story, right? So if you think about Luke Skywalker, and he's the hero of the story, but he meets a guide and the guide is Yoda. And Yoda does kind of present the problem and the solution to Luke Skywalker. But he gives Luke the steps. Here's the three steps that you can take so that you can become the hero of your own story.

I think we can take that back to the explainer videos and say, look, we want to be able to present the problem to you because it's gonna hit home. And it does create that urgency. And you do kind of get the sense of like, “Oh, this brand, this company is empathetic. They understand the challenges that I'm going through as a B2B marketer”. Again, there's the challenges of X, Y, and Z. There's so many things that marketers are in and are going through, and also these consumers are going through. But then the solution, it's nice to see the solution. But it's also nice to see the steps in between. So here's the problem, here's the things that you're, you're struggling with. Here's the easy things that we're gonna do with you and walk you through this journey because we're the guide.

We're not the hero in this story. And then, by the way, here's the solution and here's how you're gonna easily get to the solution and why we're the right choice to get you there. So that's where that value comes in, and it's really about understanding that full story and taking the time to storyboard it. It's all those pieces together and it's not, you know, it shouldn't be missed to say that it takes a really great animator to create the story, to create the pieces so it, you know… It's really a gamut of pixels to Pixar. And some, some people just push out the pixels, right? You know, I'd like to see these get a little bit more, I wouldn't say Pixar, but better than clip art. And then, you know, having that, um, that voiceover, that narrator that really takes you through the journey that's compelling or, or the music, it all comes together in such a way that helps just elevate your story so that people do click. That's what you want when you're spending the money on video.

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Sourabh:
‍This is a masterclass, right? Most people have probably never thought about their explainer videos at the levels of which you're going. And I'm gonna build on your analogy because it's beautiful. You know, you, you mentioned the Guide, and in Star Wars, you know, as a framework, they're actually the original Star Wars movies. We're not gonna talk about the others.

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Jesy:
‍Right? Definitely, definitely. We're not in Mando land right now.

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Sourabh:
‍They didn't happen, right? So when we think about the guide or the explainer videos, right? There's actually two guides in Star Wars and two very different things happen to them, right? Ben is your salesperson. Ben Kenobi literally convinces this poor child, right, to give up everything he has and go on this crazy adventure, which until you see the end of the movie, you're like, “Wait, that kid was a farmer at the start of this”, right? And then not— a very, very convincing salesperson, but he doesn't make it. Ben gets killed, right? Right. So then, on the flip side, you have, as you said, what is the true model of that guide? Which is Yoda. Not the best salesperson, right? No, very, very tough on Luke. But Yoda has this long story arc, Yoda is there the whole way. And step by step, as you said, just keeps getting, you know, Luke closer and closer and all of us, in the audience, to that Jedi state. So I think this is, you know, there's a lot of layers in what you unpack there in how you present yourself as that guide, as opposed to just that quick win. Because you do wanna make it to the sequel, right? You wanna make it to the second and third movie.

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Jesy:
‍There's a lot of content there. Yeah. We wanna make it to all the content.

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Sourabh:
‍Exactly. I love it. So I'm going to take this a step further to a part of the funnel that very few, um, agencies have historically been focused on, but I would say at least half of all of Lead2Pipeline's clients right now globally are laser focused on, which is the bottom of the funnel, right? And the gold here, as you mentioned, they understand what the problem with the status quo is. If we built that urgency, they're now in-market. They're considering solutions, right? Training videos, where we're actually showing the product, where we're demonstrating how to use it. We're sort of giving them the future state. What's the magic in, in training videos that are used at the bottom of the funnel by sales and marketing to try to get the person to over the hump that this will work for you?

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Jesy:
‍Yeah, I think in training videos, the thing that really resonates with that end user is, again, infusing some of the empathy, right? And then I also have seen… This is kind of newer stuff where I've seen a lot of training videos having more personalization in them. So when you're talking about the end of the funnel, right? So the top of the funnel, as we all know, this is elementary, but you're just putting as many people as you can, as qualified as possible. And you're hoping that they just continue to go through that user journey. When you get to the bottom of the funnel, you may have gone from thousands to the twenties or even less, right? Because you just wanna keep going through that funnel, and you've spent all this money on them all the way through that journey.

But the closer you get to the bottom of the funnel, the more valuable they become and the more that they're gonna expect from their content or from their experience with you. So I think a training video can really be that icing and sprinkles on the cake where you can take that experience to the next level and you can personalize your training content or that potential buyer. I was just at Disney, we're talking about Star Wars, so I'll just go ahead and really hammer it in. But you walk into a resort, you walk into a room and it says “Welcome Herron Family”. I mean, everybody gets a kick outta that personalization. So then how do we use it in training videos and how do we, how do we make it relevant? Well, I think if you know that buyer, you've spent so much time with that buyer, you've done all the research about the buyer, so you know their pain points, you know what's gonna be valuable to them, and you can really sort of manipulate your content to pick the pieces that you think are going to be the most valuable to those buyers.

And I think the salespeople, if they're doing their job, which, I'm in sales, I think we do a great job, and they're working with the marketing team, they have all the pain points at their fingertips. They took all the notes, they know exactly that you know, Sally, the CEO, her biggest pain point, I'm going back to the, the on Prem versus Cloud is, “How much time is this gonna take? How many resources is this going to take of my team? We don't have time. We don't have resources. We're already servicing our customers”. So in the training video, referencing the fact that you have 24/7 support, you are gonna walk them through X, Y, and Z, right? Just really hammering in that personalization and that empathy that's going to make them feel like they've covered it all in their training. They know all of our problems, they've listened to us, they've heard us, and, and they've really laid it all out for us in this training video. Again, I'm gonna say it's really diving into the personalization, and just kind of tailoring your content for each of those customers that have made it down to the bottom of the funnel.

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Sourabh:
‍I wanna acknowledge Jesy here, before we run outta time, you're talking at a very expert level. I just want to set the stage right, like no, to be fair, right? A lot, a lot of large B2B, you know, tech brands, are still developing their training and bottom-of-funnel funnel video content. It's mostly in text, so this is still new. And so they're just getting the data together. They haven't even built the insights for the videos, you know, that demonstrate the product and the use cases. You were talking about the next level, past the data, past the insights straight into storytelling, right? This is a pretty high bar, but I do feel what you're saying because when it is personalized, when the person feels like they've taken the effort to understand their particular use case. And I'm not even a customer yet, right? They’re one heck of a champion, right? 

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Jesy:
‍Yeah, exactly.

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Sourabh:
‍Legal and the IT and the finance team or the ops team, or even my vp. We all wanna stay with the status quo, right? We're finding the status quo is— no, this company truly gets it. The experience for us will be different with them beyond the ROI than it is with our current provider. Am I close to what you're going for?

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Jesy:
‍You're nailing it. I think it's all about experience, right? So I'm a digital marketer by trade, by background, and so I know that you're connecting with the buyers and the prospects all the way through the journey on such a personal level, right? Again, you're inviting a lot of people in at the top of the funnel, but then you start to really dive down. And when you think about digital marketing, and I'm talking specifically about campaigns and ads, and you're retargeting and you're remarketing, right? So you just keep drilling down 'cause you know your audience. So why, when you get to video, are you just like, still the “Come One, Come All” genera?l. Why are you putting out general videos? I think that you can put out general videos and there's a place for maybe thought leadership and, brand videos and culture and career videos and things like that.

But when you're talking about your funnel, you've already done the research. You know the journey of the buyer. So infuse that into your content. And I'll say that specifically with Reslv… I'm not trying to plug, but specifically with Resolve, because we have digital marketers that are helping to create the content for our customers. We wanna be part of that full digital circle, and we wanna be part of that table at the team. And I think, again, I do fight that battle a lot, but when I get to the table and say, “Wait a minute, you've done all this work. You've spent all this money getting these prospects and these buyers into the funnel. Don't flake off when you get close to the finish line. If you've ever run a marathon, you actually run harder when you get closer to the finish line. So sprint, let's go, let's go, let's get the win and have that white glove service and ring the excellence bells so that you can fight procurement or someone who's like,“ I don't know, we kind of—”, to your point, “We like what we're doing”. Wait a minute. “No, they've, they've put the white glove service together and this is gonna set the stage for the rest of your partnership with that client”.

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Sourabh:
‍Exactly. And a lot of times it comes down to timing, right? You nailed it, Jesy, is when the champion has that feeling that this is clearly the better experience, the better option for us, and the ROI will prove itself even if the buying window doesn't open. If you happen to just not have the right timing, right, you've maintained a heck of a lead. That lead can be reactivated in the future because you've already sold them and then yourself as the leading provider, you now just need to get your timing right. And with B2B, salespeople are used to this. There's a lot of times where it's not that I lost the deal to another provider, it turns out there wasn't a deal there, right? I'm right there. I'm gonna keep this relationship warm, right? And I'm going to get them when that window opens, it is my deal to lose now.

Very powerful. The last type of video is the one that everyone's experiencing right now. This is live video, and this is truly newer for many B2B brands. This is very, very scary. “How can we do it live? What if it drops? What if we say the wrong thing?” Augh! Right? You and I have been doing this for more than a decade. That is rarely the case, right? But what would you say for those that are starting in live video programming who haven't done this for years. Where should they start? Jesse? What's the right thing to think about as a B2B brand if you're starting to put out live video?

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Jesy:
‍Yeah, it's easy for me to say it's easy, right? You just do it. But I think that there's this thing called Covid that happened. And so everybody has been on screens, right? We've been staring at ourselves for a long time now, and everyone's on Zooms. You're on these meetings all the time and you're doing things live all the time. So I say that to say it's okay to be authentic. It's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to say, “I just need a minute here. Lemme lemme look at my notes again”. It's just this whole authenticity, right? I can't tell you how many times I was in, you know, Covid and my kids are coming in, right? And you're like, “Oh my gosh!”, but it's okay.

It's all okay. Hire some professionals if you want that, right? You can hire professionals, you can do some of that coaching by yourself. Just look in the mirror, talk it out a little bit. But we're not trained actors, so it's okay. Everybody, again, it goes back to my original point. It's a B2H world out there. So it's a business-to-human. So it's okay. There are humans at the end of the day. And I think that as long as you're your authentic self, it's gonna be fine. I just think it's gonna be fine. And take a pause. If you need to take a pause, regroup. If you need to regroup, if you don't know the answer to a question, it's okay to say, “You know what, let me just… I lost my train of thought here, let me get back to you”. It's a great way to actually follow up. Again, the salesperson in me is like, “Hey, I get to follow up with them with a real reason to follow up with my prospect”. It's all gonna be okay.

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Sourabh:
‍Yeah. And I think this is so important for marketers to hear is to just be authentic and to let your champions, to let your personas be themselves. Especially if you're featuring a customer. Gosh, don't script them. Let them be themselves because on live video, like you said, we've done thousands of zooms now, most of us, right? You can tell within seconds if something is over scripted or, heaven forbid, it's prerecorded because there's nothing live about it. Everything seems to be moving with millisecond precision. This doesn't feel real, right? And I think even the standard for what you mentioned, paid actors, honestly, even that standard has changed. If you look at interviews, how they've evolved, you know, just talk shows from 2016. Now, actors are so much more candid. There's so many more beeps, right? There's so many mistakes.

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Jesy:
‍They're candid, they're accessible, right? They're much more accessible than before. So we're all kinda leveling the playing field a little bit here. Yeah. I think authenticity, transparency, that is actually having more and more value. So that's where the value is. It's not about do I know all my stats? Do I have a script? It's more about the authenticity and the transparency because people wanna know who they're working with and they wanna work with people. People love people.

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Sourabh:
‍Exactly. And you're right. You know, the data shows that when you have a more authentic presenter. A more authentic live experience, much more chance for what we call the second screen experience, they may or may not take your single CTA on your video, but they're more likely to start looking this person up on LinkedIn, reaching out, and now you've got an inbound lead, which is obviously the best type of lead. They are now initiating their research into you.

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