Did video marketing catch your attention lately? Are you wondering if time spent creating and editing videos to push sales will be worthwhile?
If you look at mainstream marketing – promotions for clothing, makeup, food, or even consumer technology – and compare the field to industrial marketing, it becomes immediately clear that they’re hugely different. First, there’s far less competition in the industrial sector; there are usually fewer products and fewer sellers for each. It’s also more likely that buyers will work directly with manufacturers or other first-line providers.
Beyond the limited market, industrial products are also highly specialized in their functions. By and large, industrial products fill acknowledged needs, rather than consumer desires. All of this makes for fundamentally different sales environments and it might even leave some industrial brands wondering how much marketing they really need to do. The answer: they should be doing a lot more than they’re currently doing, particularly when it comes to video marketing.
Providing images, particularly video, is a powerful way to boost conversion rates among industrial product consumers, but it needs to be done well and with an awareness of the audience. The pivot to video is well-established and it’s time for industrial manufacturers to get on board.
The Value Of Video
If industrial buyers largely understand what functions their purchases perform, why is video considered to be so valuable? As it turns out, industrial buyers like video! What they’re looking for, though, aren’t necessarily explanations of how the products work but of why your business is the one they should trust with their major investments. Demonstrations and training videos are useful – in part because they can use them to train their own staff – but as colleagues in the industrial world, buyers would rather see your shop floor and hear from your staff than just see how your product works. That’s how they decide who they want as their supplier.
Creating Connections
In addition to demonstrating who your business is from a personnel standpoint, video is also a good way for industrial businesses to attract new clients based on affinity. For example, the construction chemical company LiquiMix features videos of the Ecoquip Vapour Blast system being used on an exciting military-to-civilian helicopter conversion project, as well as a more playful video where it’s being used to clean a pool. These are two vastly different projects, but the videos demonstrate the scope of the company’s services and their ability to serve diverse markets.
Think Social
As demonstrated, using video on your website can help your industrial brand make connections with clients but when we talk about the pivot to video in marketing, mainstream web content is rarely at the center of that. No, it’s really all about social media and Instagram has made major strides with manufacturers. That’s in part because the latest iteration of Instagram allows for many kinds of content. While main profiles host polished, descriptive content – both photo and video – stories and IG TV play host to temporary, less polished but more social content. Both help foster different types of engagement and community and serve to direct users to your site.
Video is the star of modern marketing and it will be the launching pad for the next innovations – augmented and virtual reality advertising. Given the current efforts to integrate these interactive tools into online marketing efforts, industrial brands need to master the art of video promotion now.