Editor's Note: This post was originally published on May 2022 and was updated with additional content on May 2023.
Video marketing is growing rapidly. It’s also a versatile tool throughout the customer buying journey and is very engaging, whether you create customer testimonials, how-to, or brand videos.
Today, a video marketing strategy is an essential marketing tool — to reach people today and keep their attention, you need to include online video marketing in your strategies. While this makes sense to anyone online today (anyone reading this, for example), it's worth reviewing the basics by answering the question "What is video marketing?" and exploring ideas such as online video marketing, social media video marketing, and business video marketing.
Vidyard, the video business platform, and a WSI partner, recently held its quarterly virtual summit on video sales and marketing. Fast Forward: Humanizing Digital Sales and Marketing highlighted that sales and marketing need to be “human-to-human” rather than the standard “business-to-business.”
Attendees learned how to build the connections, trust, and confidence that buyers need before purchasing. The aim was to highlight how video must be used to humanize outreach. Here are highlights of some of the top presentations.
Key Takeaways from Fast Forward Presentations
As with the previous Fast Forward Summits, the speakers were experts in their fields. Todd Caponi, President at Sales Melon and author of the book The Transparency Sale, was the keynote speaker.
Other speakers include Todd Hartley, CEO at WireBuzz, Sheena Badani, Senior Director of Marketing at Gong, and Adam Perry, Vice President of Revenue Enablement, Demandbase, to name but a few.
Salespeople ruin everything
“The greatest first step to convince a potential prospect or partner that you are genuinely interested in helping them is to be genuinely interested in helping them.” Todd Caponi
In his presentation, Salespeople Ruin Everything: Lessons from the Past to Guide Us in the Now, Todd Caponi takes the audience on a humorous journey back in time when sales were still a trusted and admired profession. He explores how technology impacted the effectiveness and perception of sales and how to use technology today to create a better experience for buyers.
Audience takeaway:
- Businesses need a fresh perspective on sales technology’s role in their sales processes.
- Look for new ideas on how to prioritize and optimize your sales stack.
- Understand how to develop genuine empathy for the buying brain.
Prospecting with video
Some of the most successful video prospectors of 2022 share how they use video in their outbound efforts to conquer their quotas. In their session, Prospecting with Video: Top Prospectors Reveal Their Tips for Boosting Effectiveness and Efficiency, the presenters share what works for them and how they scale their efforts to send hundreds of videos every month. A whopping 87% of marketers can attribute sales back to their video marketing efforts. Use advanced analytics to prove ROI: If you need to show the results of your video marketing efforts, consider investing in an advanced video analytics tool to get a greater understanding of how well your content is performing. They cover it all, from pre-recorded content to support outbound campaigns to highly targeted one-to-one videos!
Audience takeaway:
- Always look for new ideas on using video for outbound prospecting.
- Tips to scale the use of video efficiently.
- Sample video templates, email subject lines, and more.
‘Red flag moments’ where videos can accelerate sales
Todd Hartley, the superstar of remote selling, shares his tips and tricks for identifying the “red flag moments” during a sales process and how to use video to overcome them. In his presentation, How to Identify “Red Flag Moments” Where Video Can Accelerate Sales, the audience learns how to use video to create clarity, change perspectives, and build consensus quickly with key stakeholders.
Audience takeaway:
- A framework for identifying key moments where videos can accelerate the sales process.
- Tips for creating and delivering sales videos to maximize their impact.
- How to approach videos to ensure they will drive the desired outcomes.
How videos can humanize your sales process
Building on Todd Caponi’s keynote session, top sales representatives share how they embraced video to scale their sales efforts and create the best possible experience for their buyers. The presentation, Humanizing Your Sales Process: Top Video Sellers Spill ALL Their Secrets, discusses the types of videos they found most effective and how they developed their video creation confidence.
Audience takeaway:
- New ideas on how to use video to enhance the sales process.
- Tips for growing on-camera confidence.
- Best practices to get the most value out of a Vidyard development.
Unleashing AI to create better experiences
B2B sales and marketing teams use data to qualify leads and improve sales efficiency. Data also offers new ways to analyze buying behaviors and deliver more personal buying experiences. In their presentation, Unleashing AI to Create Better B2B Buying Experiences, the speakers share the latest account and revenue intelligence trends and how real-time insights throughout the buying journey are used to understand customers better and close more deals.
Audience takeaway:
- A clear understanding of the latest artificial intelligence (AI) trends, account intelligence, and revenue intelligence.
- Actual examples of how other businesses use AI to increase close rates with critical accounts.
- Insights to develop a more ingenious go-to-market motion that delivers better buying experiences.
Deploying video content across your sales team
With the right coaching, resources, and motivation, even the most hesitant sales representative can become a Vidyard master. In this session, titled Deploying Video Tools Across Your Sales Team: Maximizing Adoption and ROI, the audience learns how to maximize the adoption and impact of video selling tools. The speakers share what works well for other businesses and how to create video-selling playbooks. The speakers also highlighted some of the benefits of video marketing and current and future video trends. Learn creative techniques that help sales representatives become proficient and impactful with video.
Audience takeaway:
- Tips for deploying video selling tools to a sales team of any size.
- Best practices for maximizing adoption and impact.
- New ideas to create a video for salespeople and playbooks for the team.
WSI has celebrated more than 25 years as a results-driven global digital marketing company. The WSI network has won more than 125 WMA Awards, and we have been named Top Agency for both 2019 and 2020 by the Web Marketing Association (WMA)! What can we say? We like winning.
Do you want to shift the focus to video marketing? Then contact WSI today.