Above: chemicals company CRC Industries' video on IndustryNet.
4 MIN. READ
Statistically speaking, leveraging video marketing reaches more customers than other forms of industrial marketing. In fact, Smart Brief notes that 96% of Americans have watched videos explaining how to effectively use a product or service, resulting in fewer calls to customer service.
Videos provide a powerful way to differentiate a company’s product within an industry and clarify its value proposition. By combining personalization and video, marketing departments can present a powerful product draw - just take a look at a few of these companies and how they took advantage of video marketing to rejuvenate their business models.
Training Videos
For some products such as complex computer equipment and software, companies provide the set-up and training services. Other products require only minimal instruction for the end-user to be able to complete assembly.
Recognizing this fact, Lozier Corp, a small, family-owned shelving manufacturer, created an entire section on its website dedicated to video assembly instructions. A recent Smart Brief survey estimates that companies providing product training videos like this spend 43% less customer service time explaining assembly instructions. The same survey indicates that 66% of customers prefer instructional videos as they are less time consuming and easier to understand.
Lozier's installation instructions section includes both video and print versions, both downloadable, to appeal to the different learning styles of each customer.
Differentiation
Baseball caps, cowboy hats, ski helmets – the hat manufacturing industry may be specialized, but it is an extremely crowded field.
One hat manufacturer, Bollman Hat Company, needed a way to differentiate itself from its competition in order to survive. On the heels of the Great Recession, one of Bollman’s most popular brands, the Kangol hat, was threatened with extinction. The company had decided to manufacture the Kangol line in China many years earlier when manufacturing and shipping costs made the overseas location an attractive proposition.
By 2015, the proposition was not so attractive. Increases in wages and shipping costs, decreases in quality control, and shipping lags in China left Bollman Hat with no choice but to bring the Kangol line to its small, U.S.-based manufacturing facility.
As a small, 100-person company, Bollman Hat could not afford the $100,000 cost per machine to reshore Kangol manufacturing. The goal seemed out of reach. However, the company’s President, Don Rongione, turned to a Kickstarter campaign on YouTube to raise the necessary funds. He placed the video on his company’s landing page and asked partner companies to do the same. Appealing to the fact that viewer support would bring American jobs home, Rongione was able to raise the funds to retrieve and refit the initial machines needed to re-launch the Kangol brand.
Personalized Video Marketing
Everyone loves something that speaks directly to them. Apple knew this when it created its Mac versus PC advertising campaign in 2006. “Mac” was represented by a young, easy-going young man who could perform tasks with ease and creativity. “PC” was portrayed as an uptight, suited man who concentrated solely on work. These ads spoke to the new generation of computer buyers, a large, up-and-coming segment in a tight market.
While the Mac versus PC ads were broadly targeted, any manufacturing company can more narrowly target an audience for increased personalization.
A metal fabricator could create a series of videos showing the quality of its products and their ease of installation. As an example, let's use a manufacturer of security gates. Anyone with a video camera can shoot the original footage from production to installation to use. Simple software editing programs such as Vimeo make it easy to add narration or music and edit the footage down to a reasonable length.
The video can then be sent to apartment building managers, parking garage owners and other interested groups by email. Since the content is highly personalized to address the main pain point (ease of installation), it creates an effective video email marketing campaign.
Tools of the Trade
Video marketing is effective, but teams need the right tools to enable success.
Vimeo is one of many tools that help manufacturers self-edit videos like a professional. Companies uncomfortable with taking on such a task can call on Wibbitz, a company specializing in video creation software and services, or Optinmonster for assistance as well.
The next step is to narrow the audience. Partners such as IndustrySelect provide detailed business profiles of more than 400,000 U.S. industrial companies. The lists can be segmented by region, type of manufacturer, size or other variables. These lists also contain key contact information regarding each company that can be used for an email campaign.
Social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter are excellent venues for short business announcements with links to uploaded videos. Accessing IndustryNet's marketing solutions is the ultimate way to have relevant traffic come to you, allowing companies to leverage IndustryNet's massive industrial platform and showcase their products and services through featured listing pages.
By posting videos and photos, and adding catalogs or cover art, and taking advantage of publishing opportunities on IndustryNet's blog, industrial companies can stand out to millions of industrial buyers that visit IndustryNet -- the nation's premier industrial marketplace.
Manufacturers should also consider asking some of their best customers to upload testimonial videos of them using the product to their own websites, linking back to the manufacturer’s website, as a means to increase business through word of mouth.
While there are many aspects of marketing that drive growth and success, video is one of the most effective and promising. With the right approach and tools, marketing departments can personalize content, appeal to the right audiences and offer valuable information that will increase customer loyalty and help with customer acquisition.
To learn more about how IndustryNet can help you promote your business, learn more about our marketing solutions, or read more about how other industrial companies are leveraging IndustryNet's platform, read our post How These 17 Companies are Winning at Industrial B2B Marketing.
