How To Use Videos From Virtual Events To Accelerate The Buyer’s Journey

With face-to-face events quite rightly not an option at the moment, nor for the foreseeable future, B2B marketers’ attention has turned to virtual events. No surprise that virtual events are having a moment and very much trending according to Google:

This certainly reflects my recent conversations with PathFactory’s customers and prospects. B2B marketers are racing to figure out how to engage prospects and drive demand to fill pipelines in an all-digital world.

Not that this is a new question. Marketers have increasingly been responsible for more of the buyer’s journey in recent years (67-90% of it, depending on who you believe) as consumerized B2B buyers engage digitally on their schedule and terms. Digital engagement has been of paramount importance for a long time, but now it is quite literally everything.

Virtual or digital events, including live, pre-recorded and on-demand webinars, video chats, product demos, or larger-scale summit-type experiences, have been a vital part of marketers’ campaign toolkits for the last decade. They’re a great way to engage prospects digitally and frequently become part of nurture programs. The major difference between virtual or digital events and other types of campaigns is one of content type: video is the star of the show here.

That’s why, here at PathFactory, we’ve always ensured our customers can use their video assets within Content Tracks. Regardless of the video or webinar platform (e.g., Brightcove, Vidyard, Wistia, YouTube, Vimeo, Kaltura, Zoom, ReadyTalk, etc.), we make it super easy to add the hosted video or recorded webinar to the PathFactory Content Library. Just add the video URL and from there you can drop it into the Content Tracks you want to share with your audience as part of the event follow-up and other nurture campaigns.

In fact, did you know that many live video streams, such as YouTube and Zoom, work in Content Tracks too?

PathFactory’s mission has always been to help B2B marketers maximize content engagement so that prospects and customers can accelerate their buyer’s journey on their own terms. And B2B marketers (should) want to help them do do exactly the same thing when following up after a digital event with the video. One could argue that the follow-up is even more important than the live event, as the majority of registrants don’t attend live but register so they can watch on-demand at their leisure.

So why just share the webinar recording and slides, for example, when you can include additional, complementary content, such as:

• Thought leadership
• Recent blog articles
• Best practices
• Research reports
• Product spec sheets
• Customer success stories
• Registration landing pages for your next digital event

Package a few pieces up together et voila – you’ve made not only the webinar recording on-demand but a good chunk of the buyer’s journey, too. All relevant content that people can engage with in-session and that will help accelerate their buyer’s journey. Without sending email after email to get their attention.

Here’s an example: We’re currently running a virtual event series – video chats with B2B visionaries like Adam Kaiser, VP Marketing at GAN Integrity, and Hideo Esaka, CMO Corporates at Thomson Reuters. After the first chat with Adam, we shared the recording via email with both attendees and non-attendees. But as you’ll see, they didn’t just get the video recording, they got additional relevant content including our recent Website of the Future eBook and the registration landing page for our next chat in the series.

When we look at the analytics on this Content Track, we can see that 1 in 5 visitors binged on multiple content assets in-session (~4 content assets per binger) and accelerated their buyer’s journey with us (wahoo!). Those bingers are spending an average of 4 min 35 sec with the eBook in particular after watching the recording (wow, that’s some solid time!). Furthermore, because PathFactory measures exactly who engages with what content for how long, we know who’s interested in what topics, and which content is and isn’t working.

Oh, and you may have noticed this by now, but you’re probably reading this in a PathFactory Content Track…check out the related content that we’ve curated for you – there’s so much good stuff here.

So if you’ve got video assets from a digital or virtual event, think about how you’re going to share them: singly or packaged up with relevant content? In a “digital first” world, you need to create more engaging content experiences to meet your and your buyer’s goals. You never want to miss the chance to let people engage with more content in-session and accelerate their buyer’s journey.