DemandGen Report

Struggling to stand out in a crowded inbox filled with Webinar invites, more marketers are integrating video messaging into their demand generation campaigns. By distributing viral videos through social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, and integrating the rich media into outbound messaging, several companies have reported significant upticks in web traffic and lead volume.

Following up on the success of the initial YouTube campaign, Serena created a “Go @#$% Yourself” campaign distributed to Facebook users. This campaign leveraged the Involver video/social media platform to serve viral video within Facebook and generated over 2 million views.

Tapping into this huge audience of social networkers, Serena allowed viewers to watch, share and embed the video, invited them to join the “Super Masher Group” and even ran a contest to see who could get the most folks to join. Michael Parker, Sr. Director, Global Marketing at Serena, says the campaign also had a significant impact on lead generation. “While definitely an alternative method to communicate Serena’s value, we were focused on not simply driving awareness, but actual leads. Towards that end, we enabled users to download our software or a white paper directly from the Facebook Super Masher user group,” Parker said.
 
In order to manage and convert as much of the traffic to qualified leads, Parker said Serena steered users came from YouTube or Facebook to a landing page served up from the company’s Marketbright marketing automation solution. “That way we could identify and track all inquiries and leads. Those that actually converted to leads were passed off to Saleforce.com, where a sales person would follow up. If someone did not become a lead, we could at least identify that interested party, and serve up our banners via re-messaging,” Parker explained.

Although Serena does not release specific numbers related to sales and revenue, Parker pointed out that the company experienced a click-through rate of 0.72% with its Facebook campaign, more than 14 times the industry average of 0.04% for Facebook. “We did drive actual conversions and leads across both YouTube and Facebook.”

Based on the positive reaction to video messaging, some lead generation providers are now developing innovative solutions to add new media into their campaigns. Atlanta-based lead generation consultants Covente recently introduced a offering called a VisByte, which are 30 video clips ranging in length from 30 seconds to 3 minute visual messages sent to prospects as part of lead generation campaign. 

Given the flood of different offers distributed, Simon Boardman, CEO of Covente, argued that video is proving more effective in engaging prospects. “It’s really about combining the powerful of visual media with the traditional delivery techniques of other media and driving better response results.”

While the production capabilities and costs have been a deterrent for many BtoB marketers, Benjamin Wayne, CEO of Fliqz, a leading video solution provider said even small companies can be effective with video messaging. “You can be quite effective with very low production costs with videos that are still hard-hitting in the marketplace. In our world, costs typically start at about $99 per month and go up from there,” Wayne said. “I’d say our average customer in the BtoB space probably spends about $200-$500 a month on video-- $2500 to $6000 per year.