Explainer Video as a B2B Content Marketing Trend in 2024 | Explain Ninja

You might expect to see here the classical top list of B2B marketing trends and practices. I’m sorry if the format introduced below will disappoint you a bit. Here we’re not talking about emerging marketing tech but rather about a more emotional and psychological approach to marketing that will help you attract new B2B customers.

Don’t Underestimate Storytelling

Illustration by Julia Hanke for Fireart Studio 

Storytelling is a well-known technique that has been actively used in marketing since our ancestors were hunting with a stone weapon. It’s the epoch of storytelling now. People are fed up with a formal style, obvious promotion, and intrusive pitching. They need to feel a connection with a brand at a more personal level. They don’t want to learn about your offering (at least, not only about it), but they wait to hear a story, in which they will recognize themselves. The story that resonates with them.

Marketing is the unity of data and feelings. The empathic constituent is as important as a visual or textual. Storytelling is a perfect tool to add more empathy into your brand marketing and get more loyalty from a target audience.

Discover the Power of Explainer Videos

If you needed to tell a story, which type of content would you choose for it? Most likely, videos. There is already a lot of noise around videos as one of the top marketing trends today. Now, imagine that your video is not a common live-motion but a unique branded animation featuring heroes that reveal your brand’s character, texture, and style. It sounds alluring, isn’t it?

Animated explainer videos are now even outperforming the usual live-motion videos. They are more eye-catching and memorable. The most significant advantage of animated videos is that they are perfect for storytelling and can help you set emotional bonds with customers.

Learn More About Customer Trust 2.0

Illustration by Lily 

Security breaches, scandals related to customer data privacy, and long-standing distrust of advertising have created the environment in which customer trust has become the new business goal. To revive customer trust, you should be aware of these three main rules of the modern market.

• Get familiar with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
• Try to make your brand the best answer to customer needs.

Mix art and science to deliver valuable content to people. It will help you promote transparent relationships with your customers. To always align with standards of digital customer trust 2.0, you can rely on Google’s reminder and primer on its core updates—specifically calling out a little thing called “E-A-T,” which stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.”

• Collaborate with trusted influencers. Your brand voice might be honest and trustworthy, but you need to sound louder in order to reach a broader audience. Then, you can use the credential and authoritative voices of thought leaders who already have big circles of influence and can help you spread your brand message.

Leverage the Experimental Types of Content

The experimental content doesn’t only mean interactivity. It also includes data-driven content intertwined with influential voices. Collaboration with influencers is always an experiment since you entrust your brand reputation in the hands of another person.

However, interactive content means a lot for B2B marketing success in 2024. Customers don’t compare you with other brands anymore, but with different experiences, they have recently had. Animated infotainment, audio-guided eBooks ROI calculators, augmented reality product catalogs, virtual reality experiences at live events, and much more. From simple, stand-alone assets to real-time, on-site engagement mechanisms, brands can offer new interactive experiences that encourage connection and engagement with their buying audiences.

Use Visually Rich Content

Illustration by Lily

The visual constituent is essential in digital B2B marketing of 2024. Visual platforms are places where we spend most of our time online. In fact, YouTube is the most widely used online platform among U.S. adults, according to Pew Research Center. Realizing the importance of visual content, Facebook has made some changes to make visual content more easily accessible, comes in second. But the new marketing trend of the visuality is not limited by social networks.

Michelle Liro, Vice President of Demand Generation at PTC, shares: “Contrary to popular belief, people do still read traditional content forms like whitepapers, eBooks and case studies. But first, you’ll need to pull them in with attention-grabbing visuals that show them what they’ll get before you tell them what they’ll get.”

Conclusion

The new digital marketing is moving away from traditional and closer to more innovative customer experience. The human-oriented approach is key to successive campaigns in 2024. It also implies leveraging the trends mentioned above. They will help run your B2B marketing more effectively, enrich your content with micro- and macro-innovations, and give a fresh update to your brand image.