Inside Sales Lead Management Featured Article

Drumming up leads is as integral to the sales process as closing the deal; no salesperson will be claiming that free set of steak knives or booking a berth for the president’s club trip without an effective lead-generation strategy. Increasingly, video has become a potent tool in the box when it comes to leads.

Using video first and foremost has the advantage of creating a visual relationship with the prospect. Amid a sea of emails, blogs, website branding, social networking, bylined articles, direct mail, TV ads, radio noise and display marketing, video communications can help a company or representative stand out, if it’s done the right way.

According to Sarah Greesonbach, a former teacher-turned-content and digital strategist with Greesonbach Creative, video works for the same reasons that video conferencing is a superior collaboration tool vis a vis voice-only calls: the person on the other end can “get a sense for who you are, how you speak, and how you provide value to your customers,” she noted.

Video is especially good when it comes to supercharging online content marketing efforts. Companies can often simply repurpose existing assets, like blogs or infographics, turning them into informative videos. Then, they can be pushed out via social networking and other marketing channels, encouraging potential customers to click to view or download.

“To get started with video, simply record video versions of what you’ve got on your website: blog post summaries, trade show experiences, case studies, white papers and any expert interviews you’ve already captured in text form,” Greesonbach wrote in a blog.

This is particularly successful because increasingly, busy business owners aren’t taking the time to read online content — easily digestible snapshots, especially via a common and known platform like YouTube (News - Alert), can be more impactful.

“You may experience video as a consumer technology in your personal life, but the truth is that video content is everywhere now, and that includes serious B2B industries like healthcare, manufacturing and industrial,” Greesonbach said. “According to Forbes, 75 percent of executives watch work-related videos on business-related websites weekly and more than half watch work-related videos on YouTube weekly.”

And it’s not just YouTube; video content can be used across platforms, including Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter, embedding them on websites, and mailing out links within newsletters and the like.

As far as creating video assets, most business owners already have the equipment they need, thanks to quality (and often free) video capture and editing applications for smartphones, and the webcams that are integrated into laptops. Video marketing like this need not be slick, TV-quality professional-grade content.

“Video filming and editing is becoming an important skill for your B2B lead generation efforts,” Greesonbach said. “Rather than be intimidated by the details, consider embracing these new technologies to add another enticing level of engagement to your marketing efforts.”