Is 2019 the Year of Dynamic Video in B2B Marketing?

There’s no denying it. Video marketing works. These stats from Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey 2018 prove it:

• 97% of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service
• 76% say it helped them increase sales
• 80% of marketers say video has increased dwell time on their website
• 81% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video

But here’s the catch: last year, according to the same survey 81% of businesses used video as a marketing tool, and 65% of those that didn’t use video said they planned to start in 2018. That means your marketing videos face increasing competition and you’ll need to do something truly special to turn the heads that count.

That’s where dynamic video comes in. Today’s technology lets you incorporate personal information about a target individual or account into a video, the idea being that the video is more likely to engage that viewer because it’s about them.

With personalisation being a big deal across B2B marketing right now, I think 2019 will be the year of dynamic video.

It’s never been cheaper to produce high-quality video, and analytics and intent data mean we can get a clearer picture of who our target audiences are, at an individual level. Put the lower costs and better data analytics together and you have the magic combination to make dynamic video viable.

The popularity of Netflix and YouTube, with their algorithms that analyse a user’s viewing habits to recommend further videos that may be of interest to them, shows a big appetite for personalised video experiences.

People appreciate interactivity too – video games, the most interactive of all entertainment mediums, made $108.4bn in global revenue in 2017. Of course, the level of interactivity in a dynamic video falls far short of a video game, but there’s still a two-way conversation taking place in both forms of media. And who knows where it’ll lead as the format develops?

People love the sound of their own voice – but don’t freak them out

Relevance is the most important goal here because it’s what will get a viewer’s interest. In B2B, buyers don’t make impulse purchases but instead take their time to make a decision, often after discussing it with multiple stakeholders. The more relevant the video, the more likely it is they’ll get that conversation started.

However, it takes more than inserting their name. The message itself must be personalised, through a data-driven approach that helps define the right message and the right time to get your video in front the target viewer. The video should reflect their interests and where they are on their buying journey.

You’ll need to experiment to find out how deep you can go with the information that you include – too little and it won’t be relevant or personalised enough, too much and you’ll scare the viewer. This same challenge lies across all data-driven marketing. As IBM Watson’s Jodie Sangster said at MOI’s B2B 360 Marketing Summit 2018 in July, you need to make sure it doesn’t spill over into customers worrying about their privacy – what’s known as crossing over the “creepy line”.         

It’s still early days for dynamic videos, but I think there’s a good chance 2019 will be the year it comes of age.

What do you think will be the big thing in 2019? Get in touch to let me know your thoughts.

David Haward

Chief People Officer, MOI Global