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What IT Pre-Sales Engineers Really Think About b2b Content Marketing.
Video 18 of 18: Video Case Studies
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An edited transcript of the conversation is provided below.
Where are the other videos?
Click this link to see all videos in this series: IT VAR b2b Marketing Video Series
Video 18: Edited Transcript
This final question is on the topic of "social media and video."
In particular, it's about video's role in b2b marketing for IT products and solutions.
Matthew, one area of interest to me is case studies, especially video case studies.
There are people out there who produce video case studies for corporates. They create a professional video. They'll interview the customer. They'll get all the sound bytes, the ideal quotes that are needed. And turn it all into a very professional production.
Anyway, on LinkedIn, there was a discussion group for IT marketers where I actually mentioned, (I was inspired by your post about Riverbed), that this company were making Riverbed customer videos that I quite liked.
The video was about 8 minutes long, a talking head production of a real customer describing why RiverBed was their ideal solution for various issues.
Is 8 Minutes Too Long for a 'Talking Head' Customer Success Story Video on YouTube?
However, some marketers on the LinkedIn group looked at the video and came back with good comments.
And the gist of it was they said that eight minutes was too long, and any surveys and results that they've done suggest that lots of people are bailing out after two or three minutes on customer-type, case study videos, on YouTube. (That was my understanding, on YouTube.)
They reckoned, and they went through the whole video, that the interviewer should also have been shown; it shouldn't just have been a talking head.
Matthew, with that as a setup, what do you think about video as a tool that can get a vendor's message across?
Do people really have time to watch it?
Should they only be two or three minutes sections?
Yeah, I think there's some value in it. I do think that two or three minutes is probably about right.
I don't necessarily think that the interviewer needs to be shown. As long as it's a human being, talking naturally about a product, and I can't tell from their eyes moving that they're reading a bland script.
There are some videos I've seen of customers for various products on various vendor sites where they're talking about the product and they're genuinely excited about what it did for their business.
I can relate to those. I was in a corporate office last week. This one company had bought a particular vendor's product.
Then there were videos of one guy in particular that was kind of one of the top managers from the IT side that was on this website.
I'd never met the guy in person but I'm sitting in a cubicle and I'm looking into this guy's office.
I'm sitting in a cubicle right near his office and I recognized the name and I recognized that I saw that guy on those customer videos.
I was excited because here's a guy I saw taking about this product and, you know, here's this guy ten feet away from me in his office.
And that's where I know him - from a video on a vendor website.
It's just kind of a surreal, weird thing.
But, you know, I think there's some use to video. I think there's validity to it.
It doesn't have to be too long, and make sure it's a real person talking about a product that they like, not reading a scripted message. Because people can spot a fake pretty easily.
Passion Plus 'Information Technology at Work' Equals Oxymoron?
Why shouldn't you, why shouldn't people be passionate about the technology that they use?
I mean, it's OK to be passionate about any number of other things, why can't people be passionate about the technology that their company uses?
And if a vendor made that happen, why shouldn't they be able to speak highly of it?
I don't see it as a big problem.
Conclusion - And a Small Favo(u)r To Ask of You
This is Mark McClure and you've reached the end of the video series discussing b2b content marketing issues from the perspective of a Pre-Sales IT Systems Engineer (Matthew Norwood).
You can find Matthew online at:
insearchoftech.com
And on Twitter as @matthewnorwood
You can find me online at:
samuraiwriter.com/blog
And on Twitter as @samuraiwriter99
And about that favo(u)r… if you found any of the videos helpful, please click the YouTube 'like' button and also share them with friends/colleagues (via Twitter, FaceBook, Google Plus, and other social media services).
Thank you.
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