3 Innovative Ways Organizations Can Use Video to EduMarket

If you haven’t heard of Gary Vaynerchuk (@Garyvee on twitter), you’re missing out. Gary is a best-selling author and social media expert. He has built a highly successful strategic creative agency helping businesses maximize social media in today’s crazy and noisy world. I would highly recommend you consume everything he’s put out. He has enough video content on the YouTube to keep you engaged well-beyond your Netflix Daredevil binge. In one of his articles, “The Rise of Video Marketing on Social and How if Affects Your Business,” Gary says,

“The bottom line is that video is king right now; it's still evolving and changing rapidly. We're living that. And Facebook Video is being grossly underestimated. Don't get left behind. Get into it.”

Gary goes on to talk about how critical it is to use video to market businesses on social platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, etc.) and gives some tangible statistics to support his claims.

In fact, there is little doubt a video marketing strategy is well worth the effort for organizations but should the approach be different for B2C vs B2B organizations?

B2B Landscape

The B2B landscape has changed about as much if not more than the B2C market. There are two key changes that B2B organizations must be aware of when creating a video marketing strategy:

1. Buyer Behavior Has Changed. This image is from the CEO of Sales for Life, Jamie Shanks’s presentation at the SAVO Summit. It summarizes the behavior of today’s B2B buyer.

2. Buyers Buy in Committee. A McKinsey article, shares the expanding teams of decision makers and wanting information in “modules”. This allows for ever-expanding buying committees to be on the same page, get the same information, and help the organization make the best decision. In my opinion, this trend doesn’t seem to have many positives for the buyer or seller because it makes for long sales cycles filled with paralysis by analysis resulting in wasted time.

Now that we know these two buying trends are real and impacting the way B2B organizations sell and market, what can organizations do differently in their video marketing strategy to align?

The answer: EduMarketing. Now, you won’t find this word in the dictionary, but EduMarketing is using video as an educational tool for prospective customers. The intent is that by providing education, your organization will also be seen as an industry leader and the preferred choice when making a buying decision.

 Here are the top 3 ways to EduMarket for B2B organizations:

1. Paid Video-Based Courses. Organizations are more than willing to spend money and send their employees to conferences or instructor-led learning events, so why wouldn’t they pay to educate their employees via online courses? The current online learning market is estimated at $190 Billion and supposed to double over the next few years.
   
   
2. Free content. If trying to monetize intellectual knowledge by selling courses to prospective customers isn’t appealing, how about giving it away? An example of a company that’s doing this exceptionally well is Wistia. Wistia is professional video hosting site with great analytics and video marketing tools. Since Wistia offers products around video hosting for businesses, they give away free educational content in four categories that they believe will help customers or prospective customers maximize their use of Wistia. The amount of time and energy they put into their Edumarketing approach is incredible and it’s paying off. Check out the “learn hub” page on their website to see edumarketing in action.
   
   
3. Educational Advertising. Building videos that educate clients about trends, insights, or the future of a particular industry is currently the most popular of the 3 ways to edumarket. Companies go wrong when they build videos that talk about product features and functions rather than educating or adding value to potential buyers. All of the social platforms that Gary Vaynerchuck mentioned are good places to start, and I would add LinkedIn to the list.

 " Courage is being scared to death.... and saddling up anyways."  - John Wayne.

Saddle up like the Big Duke, and commit to using “edumarketing” as a new way to share knowledge and create opportunity for your organization.