It is estimated that in 2021, the average person watches more than 100 minutes of online video every day. But is that relevant to your B2B marketing efforts?

“The vast bulk of this video consumption is marketing content,” says Maury Rogow, CEO of Rip Media Group and CMO of TheVideoBot. “Big-budget marketers are trying to out-shout each other, which does not work. It particularly fails to work in the business-to-business sector, where the marketing targets are professionals already being bombarded by cold calls.”

Rather than attempting to pump up the volume even more, Rogow suggests that ROI-conscious B2B marketers combine microtargeting with personalized video.

“The object is to reach a given person with a given message,” explains Rogow. “A personalized video message is currently the best and most cost-effective way to do that. Users of this new technology report that it is significantly more effective than conventional email campaigns. Personalized video is a powerful, cost-effective way to connect with exactly the right audiences—and even the right person.”

According to Rogow, a recent user in the apparel industry sent personalized messages to an aging and unproductive prospect email list and had a 400-percent response increase and four new sales. In another case, a B2B company in the service industry reported a more than 300-percent increase in both reply rates and actionable leads. In yet another instance, a nonprofit female-empowerment group that sent out 20,000 personalized videos reported a 400-percent increase in engagement.

“These results,” says Rogow, “make it clear that personalized video can turn cold data into hot new prospects.”

In these cases, it seems the key to a video’s effectiveness is its specificity. One can choose the outgoing message according to the recipient’s stats (e.g., job function, area of specialization) and position the messaging to set up the next contact level: order placement, a scheduled appointment, a website demo page, whatever the desired action might be. The platform personalizes content in the same way for each recipient on the merchant’s prospect email list.

“It’s sending the right video at the right time to the right customer,” Rogow adds. “Any opportunity to turn your cold data list into a hot lead list is something every marketer, whether B2B or B2C, should jump at. If you have CRM information about your customer—say name, location, age, and product interest—you can create a video that is directly marketed at that single person. Again, if you have general information—say location and product interest—you can create a video that is specific but focused on that city; the weather there, local images, and place your product in the scene. Perhaps a red Toyota, going through the snow over a mountain pass, which is directly related to the preferences of your audience.”

The idea is to nurture top-of-funnel leads all the way to a closed deal, which can go a long way in building a loyal customer base.

“Once the customer is engaged, there are personalized videos waiting in each of 4 different product funnels,” explains Rogow. “From that point, the customer is led by a landing page and a video to the next steps [and eventually] to the sales page.”

Using a personalized video solution, such as VideoBot, is reasonably inexpensive, and I found it easy and intuitive to operate when I investigated their free test drive.

“It doesn’t require significant training,” says Rogow. “It only takes about 20 seconds to create one. Just insert text, customer logo, name, and you’re done.”

Rogow maintains it is a combination of personalized video message and microtargeting—aiming a very audience-specific message at a preselected recipient—that enables smaller firms to realize a highly significant return on a low investment.

“Particularly in the B2B space,” says Rogow, “companies struggle to get bigger without going broke in the process.”