There is a growing concern among many B2B companies that YouTube doesn't work for their business. They often complain, "Our products are way too niche," or "Nobody is buying our products while watching a YouTube video," or "We have tried posting on YouTube but barely got any engagement." In doing so, they reject the idea that YouTube can be of any help to their business.
Their fears make some sense. B2B companies have it harder than individual creators when it comes to making a video "watchable." People generally trust individual creators more than a video made by a company. The audience on YouTube has become sophisticated enough to realize that if a company posts a video, all it will try to do is sell its product. So they ignore the video from the start, never giving the videos on a B2B company's channel a second chance.
To be fair, it's not that B2B companies are doing a great job of utilizing YouTube as a platform to get clients either. Let us look at the mistakes they make and then talk about possible solutions.
I have a task for you. Think of any B2B company that you admire. Go to their website. Scroll down to their socials. Click on their YouTube channel. There is a 90% chance that they have one. Everyone understands that YouTube is important as a marketing channel. And yet if you look at their videos, there is a 99% chance that none of them has more than 100 views. Rarely any comments. If they do have comments, they are from their own team. The videos that do have more views got them because the company paid to run ads on them, which doesn't count in any real sense. And then you wonder why that is.
Another pattern you will find (it is astounding how similar the pattern is across all industries) is that companies post a lot of videos about their products: how they are better than other products in the market, how great the company is, which events they attend, and so on.
All of them post videos for the sake of posting videos, without any clear idea of how the audience will actually receive them. This brings me to Mistake #1.
It might sound counterintuitive, but hold on to that thought. As a company, you should stop posting videos about your product. Or at least not in the very beginning. The audience already knows you are going to pitch your product. And nobody wants to watch a pitch. It is like watching an ad. And you know what people do when they see an ad: they skip it. Or worse, they ignore it.
Whenever companies post videos on YouTube, it feels as if they are doing something called "spaghetti marketing." It is a term I borrowed from Alex Hormozi. Spaghetti marketing is essentially making a bunch of videos and hoping that one of them will work. This is what most companies appear to be doing.
To be successful on YouTube, you must come up with a strategy and make videos for the whole sales funnel. That means making videos for people who barely know they have a problem, videos for those who know they have a problem but don't know about the solution, videos for those who know about the solution but don't know about your solution, and videos for those who now want to know about your solution. Each group is different, and you have to make different kinds of videos to cater to each one.
A lot of companies believe that what they are selling is simply too boring. Nobody would want to watch a video about anything related to their product or service. That is far from the truth. In my 4 years of running a YouTube agency, we have worked with over 10 companies where we changed how they think about YouTube videos.
There is a framework called "4 Lenses" where I teach my clients to find interesting ways to talk about their products. Essentially, you must make people curious first and talk about your product later. Your job is to make people turn toward your videos, not ignore them.
I made a video on exactly that topic where I go into the depths of it. Have a look by clicking below:
Turning a YouTube channel into an ROI-positive marketing channel is more difficult for B2B companies than for individual creators. But it is still possible. All you have to do is stop pitching your products, think about your sales funnel, and find a better angle for your videos.
If you want help making your YouTube presence worthwhile, click here to fill in your information and book a discovery call.
