💬 I personally believe a key strategy area that more B2B and SaaS startups should be adopting (taken from the eCommerce playbook), are short-form and UGC-style videos, and imagery.
And there are many benefits as to why I believe both forms are important as part of a cohesive B2B SaaS content strategy - but to quickly get to the point, the primary benefit is that they're an 'authentic and raw' style that can get cut through, especially when served up against the usual 'B2B SaaS playbook' and 'cookie cutter' video and imagery creative style that many brands fall into (especially large enterprise).
Without going deeper and further into the 'why' (as there's a good. chance you probably already know about the 'why'), you're here to see what tactics I recommend from experience and what I've seen top SaaS companies do with UGC in their marketing - so, let's see below.
💬 Many of these below I've seen work effectively are cost-effective to produce/collect, so I recommend trialling out some of these as part of your content strategy - plus, there are many software solutions (which some I mention) to help with the creation and editing process.
A content strategy area that I've seen to be really effective for demand generation and creation (for targeting TOF/MOF audiences), has been the video-podcast "golden" snippet style.
It is a playbook that has been used a lot, and you know what I mean by this if you're in the world of B2B SaaS, or even then, anyone who logs into LinkedIn (haha).
However, short-form isn't going anywhere and it's an effective format to communicate key points and messaging faster.
Quick thought reminder: you have to remember that anyone who's on LinkedIn and fits your ICP, many of them are also users of social media for personal use, and are used to engaging with short-form UGC-style content - so a similar principle applies here, but just with a B2B marketing lens to promote your product.
Related to above point with creating UGC-style content, you can use snippets from the likes of webinars you host or are apart of.
Chop up sections with some editing for short-form.
Of course, to get more social proof videos (like UGC you see on eCommerce), you have to get these from happy customers - however, it can be tedious to create this content (and sometimes expensive).
To keep this process cost-effective, check out a tool called VocalVideo.
As part of UGC-video style promotion, boost across key areas of the customer journey to hone in on important USPs, customer stories, and more - and do this across the primary ad networks (Meta, LinkedIn Ads, and even potentially the likes of YouTube Ads).
With many CRMs, you can integrate dynamic lists to feed as targeting options in the ad networks.
A tactical area around social proof that I tell clients/companies I advise that is worth doing, is adding video reviews to their site and key pages (like features, case studies of course, etc).
And even better, by creating dedicated "wall of love" pages (like dedicated testimonial pages).
There are numerous SaaS startups doing this, and I love the initiative - really effective to then distribute and show off to prospects/those segments being nurtured across the CX journey.
For more content creation efforts that you can add to your UGC video production arsenal, utilise snippets and assets from the likes of events and other things your brand is apart of.
Short-form influencer/thought-leader content is a big opportunity for brands in the B2B space - I'm talking similar to the likes of what top eCommerce brands do.
It's already starting to pick up steam (and will keep going after I write this initial checklist), and it most likely won't stop.
And the primary reasons why is because it's a trust/credibility signal for audiences in the researching/consideration phase.
In conjunction with the above with influencers and content creators, short-snippet videos which focus on key features and use cases can work really well. There are quite a few SaaS startups that are adopting this initiative and seeing awesome results.
An effective method for encouraging and motivating key personnel that you want to contribute short-form content, comes from making the process streamlined and easy for them to contribute. This is where using a platform like VocalVideo can help (which I mentioned above is great for reviews too).
