Why is video marketing uniquely valuable for engaging engineers, more than other audiences? More importantly, how do you create effective video content, and how do you deliver videos to the right audience?
When your audience is highly technical, video marketing is often a more important marketing medium than it would be in other B2B industries.
When we polled engineering marketers earlier this year, 48% said they have allocated a bigger budget for video in 2015. Only 13% said they would allocate less.
Engineers prefer video
This is great, because engineers prefer video. We survey our engineering audience annually to ask them how they prefer to consume stories. In the latest survey almost half of them told us they preferred video (multiple responses were allowed).
The responses of these engineers is consistent with the rise in total videos consumption on the Internet. (PS- we'll also holding a live webcast in partnership with TREW Marketing to discuss 2015 survey results from engineers on Sept 23 2015. Register here.)
Why does it work?
So why does video marketing to engineers work, and why are we all spending so much on it? Engineering marketers are spending more on video because:
- Video is uniquely able to convey complex information, such as product specifications or how to use a product in an application
- Many engineers prefer to learn new information through video
How marketers can create compelling video
The key to a good video is to first identify the purpose and the audience. If you want to build awareness for something new, it’s a good idea to focus on solving a particular engineering problem rather than the feeds and speeds of your new device. If, on the other hand, your video is intended to convert visitors into buyers, then running through the specifications is a good idea.
Consider carefully who your presenters will be, and how they will convey the tone that your company requires. You don’t want to have your humorous video yanked when the CEO sees it and doesn’t find it funny.
Find a hook between your product and your audience. If you are already well versed in content marketing you will understand the importance of finding the intersection between your product’s features and the needs of your audience. If anything, that requirement to find a good hook is amplified in video.
There are more details available in this eBook, Video Marketing for Engineers. It has a few examples of excellent engineering videos and why they work.
Getting your video in front of the right audience
Let’s say you spend $5,000 to produce your video. You post it on your web site, send it to your email list, and post it on social media. That effort nets you 1,000 views, so your total cost per view is $5.
If you set aside some budget for distribution, you may be able to get a number of relevant views for less than $5 each.
You can see where I’m going with this. There is a case for paid distribution, whether on social media or through publishers like ENGINEERING.com, which coincidentally is the top ranked result for the search term “engineering videos”.
If you have ideas for a video or want to brainstorm about how to use video in your content marketing strategy, let me know.
All the best,
John
