How B2B brands can use case study videos to close bigger deals
Business at its most fundamental, is about trust. Can I trust this company with my data, my operational requirements, my profits. And in B2B sales, it is one of the biggest barriers to a sale.
Lets break down how case study videos can help with this and what you should think about when preparing to create one.
Video is 10x more engaging than text when it comes to case studies.
This is for a whole host of reasons, the main one being that, it's hard to fake. With text, it can be manipulated to be positive or maybe it was written by the company and signed off by the client. With a video, that is much much harder to do. You've got your customer on camera praising you and highlighting the good work you have done for them and how you've helped them.
Because it’s a video, you can see the emotion and the genuine reactions of the person, which helps build trust in a way that text alone struggles to do. It is also a great format for telling a story, you can show things happening without having to say them, letting the visuals speak for themselves.
What makes a great case study video?
It’s important to follow a real customer story and not to just focus on features and technical specification, but on the impact these changes have had. By focusing on the impact, you are showing the potential client that not only are you easy to work with but that you get results. At the end of the day, most people don’t really mind how you operate, just that what you do achieves results!
Secondly, a clear structure is vital. A basic template you can use when planning your video is:
Problem > Challenge > Solution > Future
This helps keep a narrative structure that is logical for your viewer but shows progression and a shared journey and win at the end. It’s the B2B equivalent of the good guys won and they all lived happily ever after.
This next one isn’t a hard and fast rule by any means and it will depend on the type of business you are, but authenticity beats perfection most of the time. What this means is that most audiences are savvy, they know when something is fake. That layer of inauthenticity is a barrier between them and their emotional response brain, which is the part you are trying to communicate with as that is how all of us actually make decisions.
Visual proof - Show results, don’t just talk about them.This is so important and depending on the business is easier or harder to demonstrate, but you must find a way to show the impact, the medium of video is unique in this respect as you can explain a lot in a very short amount of time, it’s an information dense format.
Where to use case studies for the most impact.
- Sales pitches and proposal meetings - This is often an overlooked moment to share video, but it can be really effective.
- Website landing pages - This is twofold - you can benefit from the video from an SEO perspective, you can also avoid people having to read paragraphs of text, which a lot of people don’t have time for, they are much more likely to watch a short video than read for 5 minutes.
- Linkedin and social ads - Obviously social platforms are a great way to reach a large audience. They can be a great way for your employees to engage with your company page on Linkedin and share videos which typically get a lot more engagement and reach than image or text posts.
- Email campaigns - Another great way to share case studies is in email newsletters. They have a much higher engagement and click through rate than text based case studies.
How to get clients on board for a case study video.
It’s not always easy to get people to help you out and record a testimonial. Here are a few ways you can get them onboard.
You can offer an incentive to take the time to be involved. This could be a discount on the next piece of work you do for them, it could be the positivity and exposure they get if you have a much larger audience than them online. Often people will be willing to help out for nothing but a nice lunch and a chance to get away from their desk for a bit!
Keep it short - 60-90 seconds is optimal, it doesn't demand a huge commitment from your client but also helps with being more impactful as people will tend not to watch videos much longer than this.
Case studies are a powerful and tried and tested method for building trust, engaging potential clients, and showing expertise, by recording them as video instead of just text you can leverage the unique benefits of the medium to push the case study even further, making it much more likely to be effective at winning you new business.
Ready to Make Video Work for Your Business?
At Commotion, we create high-impact B2B video content that captures attention and drives action. Whether you need brand storytelling, case study videos, LinkedIn content, or high-converting ad campaigns, we help businesses like yours stand out with engaging, strategy-led video production.
Let’s bring your story to life. Book a call today to see how we can help.
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