Video content continues to grow in popularity.
And to stay in front of prospects, you may already be planning or filming your own B2B videos.
But what makes one marketing video connect with viewers, while another does not?
Tony Gnau shared his secrets to creating successful business videos at B2B Forum 2024. And in this excerpt below, you’ll get valuable ideas from Tony to create successful B2B videos.
For Tony’s video strategy secrets, watch the B2B Forum clip or read the transcript below.
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Your starter video strategy:
Who’s our audience? What’s our goal? How are we going to measure success? What’s our story? And, how will we promote the video?
Just answer these five questions.
This should be the first thing you do, when you start a video project, is answer these five questions.
Now, you can expand on this as much as you want, but I’m telling you right now:
If all you do is answer these five questions, you have a starter video strategy.
You are going to be head and shoulders above the way so many companies and organizations begin their video projects.
Just by doing this.
So let’s put together a good, sound strategy.
(I see people scribbling down everything. Don’t worry. You’re going to be able to get all these slides at the end. Easy way for you to do it…)
So, people…
Now, when I say people, I’m talking about the people we put into our videos, whether it’s interviews, whether it’s just raw video, or B-roll that we’re going to be shooting…
Let’s be purposeful about the people that we put in our videos.
There are tons of different types of videos you can do these days.
I get that you can do animation, you can do motion graphics, you can even have AI create your videos for you.
But we’re trying to demonstrate the human side of our company, right?
I mean, it stands to reason, we might want to include some actual people in our videos. So let’s do that, but we’re going to be purposeful about it.
Here’s the standard that I give to everyone.
“Who’s the person that you see at the end of the hallway walking toward you at the company that just puts a smile on your face? You’re just happy to see them, and everybody at the company feels this way about them?”
That’s the type of people we want in our videos!
We want people with bright, likable personalities.
Because when we include people like that, it makes it so much easier for our audience to relate to our company. They can relate to us on a personal level, because they like the people that they see in the videos. So we want to be purposeful about this.
Now, I totally get it.
You might be faced with a circumstance where you don’t have a choice on who goes in the video.
“This executive has to be in the video.”
“You have to interview this subject matter expert.”
Maybe they don’t have the brightest, most likable personality at the company. It happens. I’ve been there.
But I’ll tell you what.
No matter who it is, they have people who like them. They have people who love them. They have personalities. We just need to help draw it out of them a little bit.
You can do this as the marketer.
I feel like, as a video producer, a big job of mine is drawing people’s personalities out that are going to be on camera.
It’s an important thing to do. And we can do it.
Usually, when they’re a little more guarded, that personality doesn’t come out. It’s just because they’re nervous. They’re going to be on camera! People get nervous when they’re going to be on camera.
So we just need to loosen ’em up a little bit.
Usually what I tell them is… I always start with this.
I’ll tell ’em, “hey, look, I can tell you’re a little nervous.” I say, “we’re not from 60 minutes. We’re not here to get you or get the company or anything.
“This is a company video!
“We have a vested interest in making sure you look good and sound good. So if you say something that you don’t like or it comes out wrong, guess what? We just don’t put it in the video. So this is very low pressure. Just take a deep breath. We’ve got your back here.”
Usually loosens them up a little bit.
Emotion. As we’re producing our videos, we want to target the emotions of our audience.
Now, when I bring up emotions, people tend to jump to big emotions, like we want to make them laugh, or we want to make them cry.
And if you could achieve those big emotions with your videos, you get an A+ and a thumbs up from me.
But it is hard to make people laugh or make people cry intentionally. It’s hard to do that.
But the good news is, we don’t always have to go for big emotions like that.
When I went back and I looked at those successful videos, something that really stood out to me about them was that 90% of ’em, they’re just trying to get people to feel good about the company.
They’re just trying to get them to feel confident about the product or the service.
These are emotions that we can all target with our videos. We can do this.
And I want you to keep in mind that video is not about facts and figures.
Video is about emotion.
And the shortcut to the human heart is storytelling. That’s the way we’re going to do this. We’re going to tell compelling stories that tap into the emotions of our audience.
We should be doing storytelling in all of our content for sure, but I’m telling you here right now, if you are going to produce a video, I need you to bring your best storytelling game. You really do. Because that’s the way we’re going to tap into emotions.
Strategy plus people plus emotion equals video success.
If you do that, if you apply this equation, you’re going to have video success.
When I say, “apply the equation,” what do I mean by that? This is all I need you to do.
Maybe at the beginning of the project, maybe check in halfway through, and then at the end, I just want you to ask yourself, “do we have a sound strategy? Are we including people with bright, likable personalities that our audience is going to be able to relate to? Are we targeting the emotions of our audience? Are we telling a compelling story that’s going to tap into emotions?”
Ask it at the very beginning of your project as you get started. Maybe during the video production itself, just kind of check in with yourself.
And then, when you get the first cut of that video, “did we do it? Can I see the equation in this video?”
Because when you do, you’re going to have this.
This is the video that we’re all going after.
This is what video success looks like.
Published April 23, 2025
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