Koroberi Blog

How many times has a client balked at a project price or the deliverables associated with a project and wanted to negotiate? You presented good solid pricing that represented the scope of the job well, and they just didn’t accept it. Do you stand firm or lower the price to get the work? It is always a challenge when dealing with clients who always haggle. Sometimes you just shake your head and wonder if they act that way in real life situations.

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We recently interviewed George Wright, VP of Marketing, and Kels Goodman, Video Producer, of Blendtec. They are the creators of the popular YouTube videos series, Will It Blend?, which has generated over 200 million views. They spoke to us about the inspiration for the series, the goals behind the campaign, the keys to social media, and how it relates to B2B marketing and corporate culture. They even gave a shout out to Koroberi. It is our video after all.

Watch the video here and share with your friends and colleagues. We have also posted this on YouTube so you can embed the video in your own blog if you want.

According to a recent online survey of 400 senior marketing and media executives, two-thirds of them expect 2009 to be the year they embrace online video as an important part of their marketing strategies. Nearly three-quarters of those plan to use video to expand their brand awareness. And this trend will certainly be part of B2B marketing in the upcoming year.

Video is a more engaging medium than text on a screen, and as people become more comfortable with web video in their daily lives, this will flow through to the business arena. While there are several different approaches to generating video content for the web, companies will succeed when videos are created as part of a campaign with a clear goal in mind, and are developed within the context of the brand.

1. Develop your own videos
Cisco is a well known brand and a leader in the technology industry. As part of a product launch for the ASR 9000 router, they created a campaign around a bumbling tech reporter who is assigned to break the story of the new product. Even CEO John Chambers shows he can play along. The initial video was combined with a blog, facebook group, twitter account, youtube and a preview launch site to build awareness of the product launch. Read more about the success of the campaign and the importance of cross-promoting video content on Dianna Huff’s B2B Marcom blog.

Marketing software and service provider Hubspot created this video to explain what they can do for their clients. Again they cross-promote this, and other video content, through their blog, facebook, twitter and youtube.

2. Call for user-generated content
Software company iRise has a slew of informational corporate videos, product demos and customer testimonial videos on their website, but according to this blog post by Tom Humbarger, the company CMO wanted to host a user-generated video contest to build awareness for the company’s products and give its customers the opportunity to share their passion.

By offering a $15,000 first prize, the company generated 44 entries to the contest. This was the result of posting in over 100 online forums and groups for film and video makers. While he calls the campaign a success with over 16,000 visitors to the contest website, 57,000 page views, and more than 30,000 video views on YouTube, I would point back to the goals of the campaign. No videos were created by iRise customers, including the 3000 members of their user community, but only by creative types competing for a cash prize. And the winning entry is not even included in the video section of their web site. The announcement of the winner was on the company blog, and the contest site is still live for your perusal.

Since the creator of the contest no longer works at the company, we may never know how this user-generated contest affected the brand, but this is a good example of a B2B video contest.

3. Embrace existing user-generated content
And the final example of video marketing is to seek out and embrace video content that is being created. This example may be less relevant to B2B marketers, but people are passionate about their favorite brands and talk about them online. As video continues to be more widely used for online conversations, marketers and pr professionals need to be comfortable reaching out to video bloggers and be receptive when they reach out to them. Below is a video interview I did with Lynn Williams, Community Relations Representative of Mt Olive Pickle Company. I contacted her as a blogger interested in their New Year’s Eve event (a pickle drop) for my site NewYearsDrop.com
http://www.vimeo.com/2691396

So, in summary, video will be an important part of marketing in 2009, but like all components of a marketing campaign, it must be developed with a clear goal for success, be consistent with your brand, and be part of a larger promotional strategy. If you have other examples of B2B video, or any comments to add, please leave them below.

I sat down this morning to write about ideas for B2B marketing during the holidays. It was already a little late, but the freshness of great marketing ideas should hold up through the holidays. As the day was passing by, I realized that this would be a great chance to find other Business to Business marketing blogs and do a wrap up of what they were saying. After several searches I discovered that there is not a lot out there about marketing during the holidays, but I did find some good suggestions.

The Integrated Marcom blog suggested offering holiday gifts through emails and newsletters. These include free downloads, animated greeeting cards, or even a Starbucks gift card.

The Email Marketing Reports site ran a four-part series on holiday email marketing that dealt with planning, frequency, and tips for the days around shipping deadlines, but it is the final post that is relevant to B2B marketers whose business is not seasonal. It suggests continuing to publish newsletters on a regular schedule, even if it is just to send a holiday greeting, or a customer reward.

The Funnelholic blog takes a different approach and provides a list of gifts marketers could hope to receive in their stockings, including a lead-nurturing system, a marketing plan, and even a marketing budget. None of these are a given in our current business environment.

The Woman Partner blog offers 10 ways to cross market your products or services with an appropriate partner to expand your audience in the coming year.

And finally, Brand Flakes for Breakfast showcases a unique holiday video produced for RMI Direct Marketing. This video helps customers relate to their reps at the company by showing them at work, and has a lot of fun doing it. You may recognize the style and the tone from a hit TV show.  The company has a small promo button on their site, which links to a custom landing page (rmiextremecaroling.com) to host the video.

Happy holidays from all of us at Koroberi, and if you have any last minute shopping to do, you better get going.