Chalk Talks: Using Video for Account-Based Marketing

B2B companies are embracing account-based marketing as a better way to identify, engage, and convert key accounts. Those using video in creative ways to help them stand out and deliver a more personalized experience are seeing higher response rates, shorter deal cycles, and better results for their ABM programs.

My name is Tyler, and in this Chalk Talk we’ll discuss how you can use personalized video content throughout your ABM programs to help you cut through the noise and turn more targeted accounts into paying customers.

Account-based marketing helps to ensure that you’re building programs designed to attract, engage, and convert those key accounts that you know are an ideal fit for your business. It’s also a great way to ensure that marketing and sales are aligned on which accounts they’re going after, how they’re going to connect and engage those key accounts, and how they’re going to use the right information at the right time to help them convert those prospects into paying customers.

The Challenge of ABM

Now, ABM sounds great, but it also comes with a number of challenges that forces us to rethink how we build these programs. This is largely because we’re often targeting prospects who have not yet raised their hand or come inbound into our sales funnel. As a result, ABM is largely an outbound methodology, and this creates a few big challenges.

First of all, at the connect stage, how do you capture attention and awareness? How do you stimulate a response from individuals who haven’t yet come inbound into your programs? Once you’re building engagement, how do you build trust? How do you build a more personal connection? And how do you create a sense of urgency for an account that may not think that they’re ready for a demo? And finally, how do we move from individual lead level intelligence to account level intelligence to help us better understand and tailor our message for a solution that targets an account as a whole? The good news is, video content and video analytics can help you with each of these challenges head on, so let’s take a look at how you can use video to supercharge your ABM programs.

Video for Account-Based Everything

When you’re trying to generate awareness, and this ties directly to that connect stage, there are a few different ways that you can use video to stand out and get the responses that you need. The first is leveraging video with an email marketing campaigns that are targeting individuals at key accounts. Let’s say you’re going after GE and you have 50 different contacts across the business that you know could be a fit for what you do. Instead of blasting them with the same old text-based email or a link to an ebook, include a video, a customer testimonial related to the industry that they’re in. Perhaps even a custom video recorded by your marketing and sales team that explain exactly why and how you can help their business achieve their results. This can be much more powerful and generate much higher click through rates than traditional email marketing.

The second is the one I get really excited about, is taking this to the next level with personalized video. This is the idea of sending out in an orchestrated way a video to a number of different individuals within a key account, but personalizing the content in an automated way to include their first name, their title, or perhaps their company name right inside the video and right in the thumbnail image. Let’s take a look at how personalized video actually works in the real world.

Personalized Video for ABM

Let’s say you’re a business and I’m targeting you with one of our ABM programs, and this is a thumbnail of a video that lands in your inbox.

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Now, you’re more likely to click on this than a traditional text-based email, but what if this video included your name in it? Or your company name? Would you be more inclined to click through and watch that content or to share it around the office with your peers and colleagues? Well, the good news is the data says yes. In fact, users are five times more likely to engage in a personalized video message than they are in traditional text-based email. That can be the difference to standing out in their inbox and getting your message heard, and being swept aside and lost in the clutter of their overly busy inbox.

Another great way to stand out is not just in the inbox, but in the mailbox using something like this, a video card. Video cards can now be shipped to people directly, and they include a video screen right inside them where you can have a custom video or one of the ones you have off the shelf as a way to explain exactly how you’re going to solve problems for them. This can not only be a great way to generate awareness, but it can be a great way to create brand buzz within their office, as things like this tend to get shared around very, very quickly.

Video for Sales Engagement

So, now you started to get their attention from a marketing perspective, how do you engage with them in a one to one level in your sales team? That’s where personal video messages come into play. Imagine as you’re hitting your accounts with these automated marketing emails, they get a personal video message from an account rep at your company to introduce them to themselves and to your business. Let’s take a look at what that might look like.

This here is a personal video message sent from ViewedIt from a sales rep to an individual at a target account.

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You can see they’ve written their name on the whiteboard so that right from the thumbnail image you can tell that this is a personalized message just for you. Now, videos like these, just like with personalized video, tend to generate 5x or higher response rate than traditional text-based prospecting emails. Again, this is a great way to not only create a great brand experience, but to introduce your business and to explain exactly why it is you can help solve problems.

Now, once you’ve got their attention with one to one personal messages, you can use tools like ViewedIt to record custom demos, custom screen captures, that again, show them exactly how you can help their business, and that helps you develop a more personal and trusted relationship. You can also start sharing relevant customer success stories, and again, other videos that will help bring your brand to life and showcase how other businesses like theirs have solved problems with you.

Turning Viewers into Customers

So, things are going well. You’ve now engaged with this key account, you’re hitting more people with your content. Now how do you use insights to help you convert that deal? Well, with tools like Vidyard you can actually understand which individuals within that account are engaging in your video content, what are they watching, and which parts are they replaying? This can give you some really great insight into who’s interested in what, but what you can also do is take all of that information up to an account level. So you can understand, for example, at ACME overall, how are they engaging in my video content? Who are all the different stakeholders that are watching that information? And what can I glean from that to help me understand not only what the individuals are interested in, but what a tailored solution for that business overall might be.

As I’m ready to present my proposal, again, I can use a tool like ViewedIt to record a custom video proposal where I can actually speak to my audience to explain exactly what’s included in the package, what the costs and terms are, and to answer any questions that may come up.

So, a number of great ways in which you can use video to help you connect, engage, and convert key accounts as part of your ABM programs. My name is Tyler Lessard, and this has been a Vidyard Chalk Talk.

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