Industrial MarCom Blog

Add Rich Media Content to White Papers

In a B2B survey done by KnowledgeStorm and MarketingSherpa, 80% out of over 4,000 respondents said they rely on educational content from their vendors in making their buying decision. At 71%, white papers topped the list of most wanted educational content.

With the rising use of video in B2B marketing, it makes a lot of sense to incorporate this rich media component to white papers. I recently came across a turnkey service for video white papers offered by a company called Accela Communications. The benefits and higher ROI of using rich media in white papers are very apparent.

You can read more about white paper marketing with video our our site.

Using Video in B2B Marketing

The use of video in B2b marketing is on the rise and is expected to grow exponentially. In the August 11 issue of BtoB Magazine, Tom Simmons, President-Creative Director of PRTNERS+simons wrote,

"Web video will continue its rise in prominance. It is admittedly the preeminent marketing channel for all marketing communications—consumer, b-to-b and professional—and its role will become even more critical. The text-based content emphasis that has been the default Web strategy will continue to lose its prominence."

In a recent BtoB Webcast audience poll, 29.2% of the respondents said they used video in their marketing mix. This is second only to Blogs which are used used by 32.5%, followed by RSS Feeds (17.5%), Social Networks (14.2%), Threaded Discussions (4.2%) and Wikis (2.5%).

Jay Gulick, Director of BNET also makes a very strong case for the use video in B2B marketing in his post Video: The B2B marketing sweet spot. In his video he explains why B2B marketers should provide customers with resources such as white papers, case studies and Webcasts instead of traditional display ads.

Are you currently or thinking of using video in your marketing?