How Rethinking the Social Content Strategy Helped an Animated Video Marketing Company Drive More Demand on LinkedIn

November 4, 2016


An animated video creation, production and marketing service company for technology companies like Cisco, BMC Software, Compuware, IBM, UPS, Brocade, Oracle, CA Technologies and many others did not have the systems or processes in place to build and leverage relationships. They relied on “word of mouth” and on satisfied clients continually coming back without any urging. But because of the “marketing slow down” when enterprise IT technology companies shrank their marketing budgets, clients stopped investing in expensive animated videos.


Because there was no “keep in touch” system in place, previous clients forgot about the animated video firm as they were no longer on “top of mind.” So we went to build a LinkedIn community to re-engage clients and prospects and provide them with discussions and content that moves relationships forward. But most of the company’s content was around video production so it was later stage content. For example, here are the blog articles the firm was creating:



  • Don’t forget sales when creating your explainer videos
  • How can your video content address group dynamics
  • Starting at the end: constructing videos around the call to action
  • Six questions to ask when planning a 2-Minute Explainer
  • 3 things to understand in planning an enterprise explainer solutions
  • The must-have information to include in a two-minute B2B video
  • Five mistakes B2B organizations make when condensing information into two minutes
  • Why make your introductory B2B content marketing video two minutes long?
  • 4 ways to help ensure your B2B content marketing videos create conversations
  • How to condense your product information and marketing messages Into a two-minute
  • (or less) video
  • Why I don’t like storyboards for B2B videos

What Was Wrong with This Content?


You see there was no content to drive demand. There was no content to create an unconsidered need and an unexpected urgency and demand for the company’s services. You see, the company was only basing their content on what customers were saying what their needs were. So, they were responding to those known needs with commodity messaging that were very much like the information their competitors were providing. They weren’t showing prospects a pathway to change and giving them the urgency to do it now.


A recent Forrester study shows that 74% of committed executive buyers will invest in the company that is able to create the buying vision and turn it into a path to value. Can you tell me how articles around video production creates the buying vision? It doesn’t!


How the Animated Video Explainer Firm Started to Create the Buying Vision and Demand


In talking with our client, we found out that in many cases their animated explainer videos were just being put on the homepage or product page and used within their tradeshow efforts and that was it. Now as Content Marketing Institute shows, marketers are using at least 13 different content marketing tactics.


So our client needed to put a social content marketing plan in place, where there were articles, podcasts, white papers and webinars on how the videos should be integrated with social media platforms like LinkedIn, webinars (how videos should be used before, during and after the event), email marketing, PR and other marketing initiatives.


The animated explainer video firm literally laid out a road map that shows how the videos should be used within their everyday sales and marketing activities and demonstrated concrete results for clients that were using an integrated approach.


Notice, how the firm is now creating an unexpected need. Their prospects’ minds and budgets may be on a different approach like webinars but now they see exactly how they can get an even greater ROI for the initiatives they are focusing on.


The firm also created a plan to focus on sales enablement and how sales and marketing leaders need to have a new thinking about explainer videos and design them for buying teams that not only involved IT but also operations, finance, sales and marketing and other departments. This content that created a new need led to a completely new revenue stream for our client: Buyer’s Journey Video Bundles.


Cisco invested in the bundle to communicate the business value of their workload automation software to data center operations, to data center architects and to big data specialists – 3 different and unique audiences. Axios invested in the bundle to help IT champion the extension of their popular assist platform and to help other departments like HR, corporate finance department and facilities and security understand how they can automate repetitive tasks and replace high maintenance home-grown solutions with ITIL-compliant cloud solutions. Five9 commissioned the video bundle to target IT operations, COOs, and sales execs within contact center outsourcers. Journey sales used the video bundle to tell sales managers about how their analytic features can help fill the pipeline, tell the sales team how they can use smart rooms to increase engagement and provide a video invitation to customers to show customers how smart rooms benefit their team.


Community Building, Re-Engagement and Lead Nurturing with the Right Social Content Leads to More Revenue Using LinkedIn


Once the animated video firm had the right content they were then able to create a LinkedIn community that was filled with discussions that focused on the unexpected video needs of IT sales, marketing and sales enablement leaders. Because their discussions introduced new ideas their prospects weren’t thinking about and because these discussions led prospects to content that created the buying vision, there was a quick demand for the video firm’s services. In fact, after re-engaging with a former client on LinkedIn, the firm received a video project that generated $ 38,000 in revenue and it was an opportunity that would have otherwise been missed.


Based on the sales and marketing initiatives that the target companies were engaged in – and on the needs and goals of the target decision makers, the company also began a 1-to-1 nurturing campaign that showed the prospects how they should be using videos. From there, they led prospects to white papers that they can download. They were then able to nurture the prospects on and off LinkedIn. Through an email campaign, prospects were getting our client’s articles that were published on top websites like MarketingProfs (which has 600,000 global members including entire marketing organizations at the world’s largest corporations) and the CMO Council (which has 10,500+ members that control more than $ 450B in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide). And, the LinkedIn nurturing campaign focused on issue based content that moves prospects forward.


So our client’s prospects, which included enterprise IT companies like Microsoft and Oracle saw that our client was a thought leader and they realized that they would not just get a video delivered to them. But, they will also get a plan and vision for using those videos in the most effective manner.


Let’s Talk Results….



  • More than 500 sales, marketing and sales enablement leaders from companies like Act On Software, Compuware, ADP, Kapost, BMC, CA Technologies, Flexera and others are part of the firm’s LinkedIn group
  • The firm had sales ready conversations with companies like Microsoft, DynamicWeb, Qubole, Dell, SDL, Serus, Netsertive, EMC, iSupport and many others
  • The firm gained more than $ 100,000 in additional revenue from new clients from LinkedIn like Deltek, Oracle, Dynatrace, Seeburger, JourneySales, Axios Systems and others
  • The firm gained $ 65,000 in additional revenue from their Buyers Journey Bundles that we created after the company saw demand for the buyer’s journey content they were creating.

Now, take a look at the content you’re sharing on LinkedIn and other social media platforms? Is your content driving demand and an unexpected urgency?


 

Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community

(44)