7 Ideas for Using Video to Connect with Your B2B Customers

The July/August 2009 issue of Fortune Small Business features Carousel Designs, a niche baby bedding manufacturer, for its Tool Kit | Makeover story.

David Nies, a marketing and branding consultant with Flexible Executives in Atlanta, praises the company’s two owners for two Website innovations (a gift registry and a tool that lets shoppers customize bedding) but rips into them for a Website video “that shows the factory where muscular workers stuff bedding into shipping boxes.” Says Nies to the two entrepreneurs:

A mom-to-be doesn’t want to see the factory floor. She wants to see your mom — now a grandma — talking about raising her kids while designing beautiful nurseries. She wants to see you, your wife and your children, discussing the importance of a safe, comfortable nursery. You have a great opportunity to become a trusted resource for expectant moms. They can’t get that at Pottery Barn Kids.

The shop floor video is now gone and has been replaced with a terrific blog — that includes video on how to order swatches for baby bedding.

Although this is a business-to-consumer marketing example, B2B can learn something, especially when it comes to replacing those photos of the exterior of a “state of the art manufacturing plant” or video showing machinery working. (Booooring.)

Using Nies’ advice, B2B companies can use video to communicate directly with customers and prospects:

• Interview people in R&D about new advances in technology and how these advances have the potential to change industries.
• Do a Q&A with your manufacturing manager who can discuss how manufacturing has changed processes to lower costs and speed up production — and have him or her walk the factory floor while talking.
• Have two or three customers explain why they do business with you . . . and how your products or services solved their business challenges.
• Have your most gregarious sales person invite people to the next tradeshow.
• Turn your datasheet PDFs into video datasheets the way Cisco did.
• Host a fun event to which you invite prospects and customers and record it. Have it professionally edited, add some funky music, and upload it to your site.
• Do a commercial that’s “different” — such as this Father Day’s video from Cisco promoting a router.

In other words, use video to show your company has some personality. After all, it’s run by people . . . and people do business with people — not buildings.

Do you have examples of B2B video that connects directly with buyers in a fresh new way? If so, please feel free to post a link in the comments.