You’ve probably heard that technical videos like explainers, demos, and tutorials drive 74% of software sales today. But many tech brands still aren’t using video marketing—or using it effectively.
Maybe you’ve dipped your toe in and were unimpressed by the results…
Maybe you’ve tried to get started but your R&D team was too busy to help you talk to audiences of developers and security pros…
Maybe you haven’t tried video marketing because you lack the skill stack in house and don’t trust outsourcing…
It really doesn’t matter why: because the answer is the same. You can create tech marketing videos, and it’s easier than you think.
At IOD, we’ve created a wealth of compelling video content for leading tech brands like NetApp, Wiz, Zoho, and Bright Data, and we’re always happy to share insights, learn from others’ best practices, and give back to the industry.
To help us do that, and serve our own clients better, we recently sat down with our partners at Igloo Creative House for a roundtable on mastering tech video marketing production at scale. We brainstormed ideas to help marketers like you not only produce tech marketing videos more effectively, but also how to make them deliver powerful ROI.
We know from experience that video really can pay for itself. The trick is getting your video marketing program off the ground.
In this two-part series, we’ll share insights we gleaned from that roundtable. We’ll help you understand and solve the top roadblocks standing between you and video content success.
In this first post, we’ll look at the main types of video content you’ll be creating and the main audiences you need to reach—as well as which types of video content work best for which audiences.
Then, in Part 2, we’ll examine ways to bring down the cost of video marketing while also bringing in revenue. Together, that can boost your ROI and make your video marketing strategy actually start paying for itself.
Ready to start leaping over those roadblocks? Let’s dive in…
Challenge #1: Winning Over the Practitioner Audience
As tech marketers, we face the toughest audiences out there: developers and DevOps, IT and security practitioners, product managers, CTOs, etc. Those are the audiences where you should be putting in 80% of your energy.
Let’s explore the main reasons this audience is so important to tech marketers.
Bottom-Up Adoption
“We all know how software sales used to work. Somebody in a suit would go over websites, brochures, price quotes, and then pick a vendor based on all of that. If we were lucky, they’d take a few minutes to talk to somebody in the middle to make sure the dev team or SOC would be okay with the product.
Today, things are completely different.”—Ofir Nachmani, CEO, IOD
Obviously, executive buy-in is still important—and video is a great way to reach execs. But that’s not how most software sales work.
Bottom-up adoption means that practitioners try the product—often through a freemium or free trial model. If it does the job, they can then drive its adoption throughout their department, or organization wide.
Better yet, if it makes their work easier, they might fall in love with the product and become users for life and evangelists for it, which is how you achieve…
Product-Led Growth
In product-led growth (PLG), according to OpenView, who claim to have coined the term, “the product itself acts as the primary driver of acquisition, retention, and expansion.”
Not only does PLG sidestep the often long and complex sales process, but it also means that long beyond adoption, the product itself can drive upsell directly to practitioner audiences through new features, additional integrations, etc.
The following diagram sums up the differences between a traditional top-down tech marketing approach and today’s leading bottom-up strategies:
Using Video Right to Drive Growth
Video can be a huge part of both bottom-up adoption and PLG, from tutorials that turn beginners into expert users to thought leadership that can help build communities.
But it’s essential to realize that the main reason video marketing fails to get through to these end user personas (we call them the “practitioner” audience) is because they have zero tolerance for fluff.
Not that anybody likes having their time wasted, but there’s an extra challenge with this audience because you need to hit exactly the right level of technical detail. Bonus points if you can solve an immediate problem for them, as IOD CEO Ofir Nachmani discusses in this clip from the roundtable.
Challenge #2: Picking the Right Video Type
You’ve probably watched a lot of tech marketing videos—now’s a great time to start with this playlist of IOD’s own productions—but how closely have you paid attention to what actually goes into each individual video type?
The three main types of videos you’ll use are explainers, demos, and tutorials.
Over 70% of businesses use explainer videos, approximately 50% use demos, and around 60% produce tutorial videos to educate their audiences. But notice that audiences is plural—because you have more than one audience.
As we saw above, for example, the C-suite is still important because they’re the ones who ultimately sign the checks. The practitioner is super important because they’re the ones who are using the product and driving your growth. Meanwhile, the mid-level director or manager serves a number of important roles as well.
And there’s no way you can reach all of these audiences with the exact same video.
As IOD Director of Video Marketing Gur Tirosh noted:
“One of the big reasons tech video marketing fails is that the business isn’t aiming its video content at the right audience(s).
But that means you can succeed with some basic knowledge of how to use each of these main video types to reach all your different audiences.”
Explainers
Explainer videos help you reach users at the awareness stage, at the beginning of their journey.
Here are some basic characteristics common to most explainer videos.
A good example for the C-suite might be a quick explainer demonstrating how an AI-powered threat detection platform can significantly cut breach response times and increase overall security posture, while explaining financial and business benefits of both these things.
For the mid-level, on the other hand, a B2B data management vendor could showcase how a data lake can empower developers to efficiently access and analyze large datasets, accelerating time-to-market for data-driven applications.
Demos
Demo videos help you highlight features and use cases for both current and new users.
Here are some basic characteristics common to most product or platform demo videos.
For example, a cloud infrastructure provider might use a demo for an IT manager, a mid-level persona, to showcase the scalability and flexibility of their platform. The demo could highlight how easily the platform could accommodate growing workloads and evolving business needs.For the practitioner persona, on the other hand, let’s say a DevOps engineer, the vendor of a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform could use a demo highlighting ease of automation, cutting time the engineer will spend on development and deployment processes.
Tutorials
Tutorial videos give viewers just the right amount of depth to begin falling in love with your product or platform.
Here are some basic characteristics common to many tutorial videos.
When it comes to tutorials, there may be fewer differences between the types of videos you’ll use for each persona. There are times when even a mid-level persona may need to be hands-on with the product.
One good use of a tutorial might be a cloud access security broker (CASB) solution provider creating a tutorial walking through the steps to integrate their tool with existing security solutions, like an IAM solution, to enhance data protection and compliance.
Another example is a low-code development platform producing a tutorial series for developers walking them through how to build custom applications quickly, letting them explore new technologies where they lack skills and experience.
According to Dan Sela Co-Founder and CEO of video production firm Igloo Creative House:
“A tutorial that’s not edited properly can be super frustrating. To make a great video tutorial, it should be done together with the product owner, who knows the product inside and out, working with the video editor to ensure that the video is on point and structured properly.
For an even more polished video, you can transcribe the voiceover that was recorded during the tutorial, then record a professional narrator to replace your audio and make the video sound even more professional. This doesn’t take a huge investment and in my opinion, gives you real value for your money.”
One bonus tip when you’re creating tutorials for practitioner personas: if you offer the script or code snippets alongside the video, it can really provide a much richer and more helpful experience for that user.
Can Video Marketing Really Pay for Itself?
In this post, we’ve helped you look at two of your biggest challenges when it comes to tech video marketing: first, understanding your audiences, and second, choosing the best type of video content to reach each audience.
Using the insights here, you’ll be able to start planning more strategically and choosing exactly the right content for the right audience.
But there’s still one more challenge left.
Video production comes with a significant price tag. That price tag may be what’s standing between you and the ROI you’re hoping for when it comes to video marketing. Especially if you have to justify the expense to others within your organization.
ROI is a pretty simple calculation, if you think about it.
ROI = net income ÷ cost of investment × 100
So the more you invest in video production, the lower your ROI is going to be. Unless… you turbocharge your video content to drive that net income number even higher.
And that’s exactly what we address in the second post in this two-part series of roundtable insights: getting the most value out of every single video project.
We’ll give you tips for saving money (bringing down the cost of investment in tech video marketing to drive up ROI) as well as tips for driving even greater revenue from a single video (bringing up net income to drive up ROI). Both of these can open up exciting new avenues of possibility and ensure that video marketing really does pay for itself.
To get the most from the experience of our video production and tech marketing experts roundtable, stay tuned for Part 2, where we discuss how to maximize tech video marketing ROI.
To learn more, check out our video services or book your free consult today.
About IOD
Serving some of the most well-respected brands in cloud, DevOps, data engineering, cybersecurity, and AI, IOD creates meaningful tech content that strengthens your brand and converts traffic into quality leads.
IOD’s agile teams of vetted tech experts and professional editors work together to build you a rich content library: animated explainer videos, technical blogs, demos and video tutorials, white papers, ebooks, tutorials, product comparisons, thought leadership, and more.Discover how IOD can help your business strategically scale up tech content to drive conversions.
About Igloo Creative House
Part of the Magic Media group, Igloo Creative House specializes in animation videos that tell the stories of brilliant people, products, and brands. The Magic Media group is a media and tech start-up powered by creativity and innovation with a physical presence in 14 countries and expertise in art, animation, game development, video production, VFX, and more.
