Account-based marketing is about extending and expanding your business with your best customers. It’s a hot topic in B2B marketing world, and getting hotter, according to Gartner’s Noah Elkin‘s Three Trends Driving Interest in Account-Based Marketing (ABM). One these trends “personalization.” Video for account-based marketing should capitalize on this trend.
Account-based marketing favors the status quo
An interesting study from Corporate Visions (Customer Retention and Renewal Messaging: Mission Critical, But Missing in Action) cautions that lead-gen messaging that’s effective for landing an account is all wrong for keeping it. The logic is simple: in the first case you’re using disruptive messaging to persuade a prospect that the status quo is no longer sustainable. But, once you get the account, you need to keep reminding the customer why disrupting the status quo (whatever you’re doing for him) would be a big mistake. (Though an upgrade to version 2 might be appropriate.) Somewhat surprisingly, most companies in the study said they use the same “disruptive” messaging with prospects and established accounts alike.
Video as customer experience
Imagine a hands-on technology buyer at one of your accounts, who is considering a technology refresh. Do you have a video personalized for this person? Your top-of-the-funnel lead-gen videos will be too promotional. Your thought-leadership videos are probably too broad or too visionary. Almost certainly, there’s no video that presents the information this customer wants in the order he or she would like to get it. That would be the ideal customer experience. Not introductory explainer overviews, but spot-on videos that explain one thing well. Short and to-the-point. Some could be 10 seconds long. Some could be a minute long.
Chatbot-ready video for account-based marketing
Given a wealth of customer information (and a bigger budget) you could build a landing page tailored to this customer persona and equip it with a chatbot. But even without a chatbot, you can make videos that allow customers to take their own route to discovering what they want to learn. Instead of one-size-fits-all top-of-the-funnel explainer videos, make explainer videos that are persona-based. Short videos have more impact when they leave out the stuff people don’t care about. You can embed responsive guidance in any video right now. It’s known as “interactive video.” Clickable objects in the video window enable the viewer to branch to other content. Input fields and buttons can trigger responses. And the user doesn’t need to navigate away from the video. These clickable objects could easily mimic chatbots.
So try imagining your viewer conversing with a chatbot. Then imagine videos that would keep up your end of the conversation. That’s the kind of video that’s appropriate to account-based marketing.
