Why B2B Buyers Want to See Your Experts Before the First Meeting
When a business buyer agrees to a first meeting, they have usually already formed an impression of your company. They have looked at your website, read a few posts on LinkedIn, perhaps listened to someone from your team speak. More and more of that impression comes from B2B video and audio content.
For B2B companies that sell expertise, this is an opportunity. A short video or a podcast episode lets a potential customer meet your people before they meet you in person. In this article we look at which types of B2B video and podcast content tend to work, how to produce them without draining your team’s time, and how to get more out of every recording. In the Nordics, where buyers tend to value low-key expertise over sales talk, letting your experts speak can be particularly effective.
Why B2B video and audio matter
B2B purchases are rarely decided on price alone. Buyers want to know whether they can trust the people they will be working with, whether those people understand their problem, and whether the collaboration will be easy. Text can explain what you do. Video and audio show how you think and how you communicate.
There is also a practical reason. LinkedIn, YouTube and many other platforms tend to give video a prominent place in their feeds, and many decision-makers listen to podcasts while commuting or travelling. Content in these formats reaches people at moments when they would not sit down to read an article.
B2B video formats that work
Not all video is equally useful. In our view, the formats below give the most value for companies that sell through meetings.
Short expert videos
One person from your team explains one idea in one to two minutes: a common mistake in your industry, a change in regulation, a lesson from a recent project. These videos work well on LinkedIn and can be reused on the website and in sales emails.
Thought-leader interviews
A longer conversation, often 15 to 30 minutes, with a founder, partner or specialist about a topic your customers care about. Interviews build authority and give a lot of material that can be cut into shorter clips.
Podcast series
A podcast can be built around your own experts, customers or partners. Inviting a customer or a potential customer as a guest is also a respectful way to start a relationship. A series with a clear theme and a regular rhythm tends to work better than single episodes.
Sales clips
Short videos made specifically for the sales process: a two-minute introduction to a service, an explanation of how onboarding works, or answers to the questions prospects ask most often. Sales teams can send these before or after a meeting, which saves time and keeps the message consistent.
Customer stories
A customer explaining in their own words what problem they had and what changed is among the most convincing content there is. It requires the customer’s consent and some planning, but one good story can support sales for a long time.
Production without the drain
The most common reason companies do not use more B2B video is time. Key people are busy, and preparing for recordings can feel like a distraction from client work.
A few principles make it manageable:
- Plan topics in batches, so several videos can be recorded in one session
- Prepare short talking points rather than full scripts, so speakers sound natural
- Record in a proper studio with good light and sound, so editing is quicker and the result looks professional
- Let someone else handle editing, subtitles and formats for each platform
With this approach, one half-day in a studio can produce content for several weeks or even months.
One recording, many pieces of content
A single interview or podcast episode can be turned into many assets: the full episode, several short clips for LinkedIn and other social channels, quotes for posts, an article for the website, and short clips for the sales team. This is where much of the return lies. The cost of producing the recording is spread across all the places it is used.
Subtitles are worth adding to almost every video, since many people watch with the sound off, particularly on mobile.
Measuring the effect
Views and likes are easy to count but say little about business value. More useful signals include:
- Whether prospects mention having seen your videos or heard your podcast in first meetings
- How video on landing pages affects the share of visitors who book a meeting
- How sales clips affect response rates and the time it takes to move a deal forward
Asking new customers how they first heard of you, and noting it in the CRM, is a simple way to see the effect of content that tracking tools often miss.
How Contentas Marketing can help
Contentas Marketing has its own in-house studio for photo, video and podcast production. We help you plan topics, record your experts, edit the material and turn each recording into content for LinkedIn, your website and your sales team.
We work with B2B companies selling in the Nordics, both those already established in the region and those entering it for the first time. If you are new to the Nordic market, read our guide on how to win your first Nordic B2B customers.
If you want your potential customers to meet your experts before the first meeting, book a short introductory meeting.