YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and has more than one billion users. While this is a platform commonly seen as a video tool for amateurs, over the last few years, YouTube has truly become a media powerhouse. B2C companies have embraced this platform, but B2B businesses have been slower to jump on board. In the video below we will take a look at why YouTube is a powerful medium for B2B companies as well.

Video Transcript

Today on Hack my Growth we're going to be talking about the power of YouTube marketing and whether or not this channel and powerful medium is right for the B2B audience.

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Let's talk a little bit about YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. It is an amazing tool to disseminate your message to a specific group of people who are looking to connect and interact with you. It's an essential tool in today's marketing world. A lot of people in the B2C community use it very well. There's a lot of music videos available. The entertainment industry has done a very good job using YouTube, and as we know, YouTube also has a lot of fun videos and cat videos and silly video and videos that are just absolutely random.

But is it really worth a B2B industry investing in this video platform? Well, my answer is absolutely yes. We're going to talk a little bit about why it's such an essential part of anybody's marketing strategy and where there's a lot of opportunities today for B2B businesses to capitalize by using YouTube.

70% of marketers are now using online video. It's growing in popularity, but the problem is not everybody is using it effectively. Not everybody knows how to do so in a way that's going to drive interactions. So if you can do a better job of telling your story, video is a powerful way of really bring more of the emotion and tangible elements back to your marketing. 70% of marketers in B2B space plan to spend more time on YouTube because they're starting to see the value of real human connection that video brings. It's really just visual storytelling that allows people to engage on a deeper level.

Now major brands like HP, Microsoft, Cisco, and Adobe are investing in their B2B side with YouTube. They're creating digital content that is very specific. Maybe it's tutorials, maybe it's education videos, maybe it's product demos, maybe it's a culture video, but these major brands are really starting to invest in video and specifically on YouTube to ensure that they're providing continuous value. It's not just for people who are looking for products and service, but for people that are also part of their community that also want to learn a little bit more about their product service and go deeper.

Tutorials are a powerful way to help people engage better with your product. People get to see how things work instead of having to read it. A lot of times that really connects with certain types of personality traits. Look to some of these big players in the game and big players in the industry and see how they're using B2B on YouTube.

Another fact is executives are drawn in by video. 75% of Fortune 500 executives view videos online. They're checking out videos online. They're looking up product information. They're looking up tutorials and how to use different things. There's a lot of ways to capture high-quality sea level leads by using video and again, YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. You've got Google, and then you've got YouTube. They both obviously work together, but YouTube's a different beast. It's people looking for a different type of content that is going to speak to visual needs but also allow them to be a little bit more conversational with the person that they're looking to maybe doing business with or buying a product from.

48% of B2B buyers us their smartphones to watch videos. YouTube's mobile usage is through the roof. People are using YouTube on their mobile devices more than any other device, even in the B2B space where typically we see most of the B2B transactions still happening on a desktop. Overwhelmingly, most of the business and most of the organic searches still are done on a desktop, but when it comes to video, we have a number of people, 48% of B2B buyers are using their smartphones.

More than 70% of B2B buyers view new product demos before making a purchase. This is another opportunity if you've got a new product coming out. You've got a new line of products coming out that are related to a B2B audience; video is a great way to introduce them to that product. To show them the details of that product. This is why live video stream has worked really, really well for Apple and they're now going to be featured by Google at their next conference. It can work really well for smaller B2B businesses as well. It allows people to engage with you and feel like they're present and being able to see the product in real time.

Now 65% of senior executives have visited from a vendor after watching a video. So executives are searching. They're finding content they like. They watch a video and then right after that they go and check out that vendor's website. 

Video is a powerful way just to initiate that first interaction, and then it can actually help position your business and your company in a better light because you're giving really good detailed quality content. Here's the kicker; when you use video in your B2B landing pages, conversions have been known to increase up to 80%. 

Video is a great way to do things that text can't. Now text is important, and you want to have blogs, and you want to be able to write good content, but when you can show good content it really flips the scale and allows you (as a B2B vendor, as a B2B product designer, as a B2B business) to have the conversation with that potential client.

Really at the end of the day it's those conversations that lead to sales. YouTube is an amazing platform for people to find you that might not have even known that your business was out there. And, if you could really champion your cause or your industry in the B2B market while using a platform like YouTube, you can benefit greatly. So if you're not using YouTube, I would highly encourage some of you to do some investigation of people in your industry that may be using it and if they're not that's even a better opportunity. That means you can be the first one. You can lay the groundwork to start creating great video content, publishing it on YouTube and start getting found. People are looking for the solutions that you are providing.

Well, I hope you liked this video. If you've got questions, please comment below and please subscribe and be part of our community. Thanks again for watching and until next time happy marketing.