B2B YouTube Case Studies
When you think of YouTube, you might think of cat videos, gaming content, or a whole bunch of other things. But YouTube can be an incredible source of growth for your B2B business. My experience has mostly been with B2B SaaS, so a lot of the examples here are going to focus on those kind of companies, but the principles are the same across different B2B niches.
Not only is it the world’s second largest search engine, but video marketing, when done well, can help increase the trust that potential customers feel towards your brand, often more than plain text. Let’s dive in to see some examples to inspire your B2B YouTube Channel strategy.
If you’re figuring out how to generate solar leads, then building a YouTube Channel can be effective, especially if you’re able to serve a state or whole country. If you’re working on solar lead generation for commerical sales, then pay attention to how these channels approach speaking to a B2B audience.
Remember that even if people don’t initially discover you through YouTube, your channel will likely be the second search result for your company, and having videos that provide lots of value can be immensily helpful in building relationships with potential customers.
Examples of Great B2B YouTube Channels: Startups & SaaS
These are companies that you can take inspiration from directly, and the strategies they are using are going to help actually generate leads and new users, rather than just ‘awareness’ – which is what larger B2B comapnies like Microsoft typically focus on with their YouTube strategy.
How These Example YouTube Channels Have Been Selected
What makes a B2B YouTube channel great? Here’s how I’ve selected these:
- I looked through the databases of B2B SaaS companies on IndieHackers and GetLakta
- On IndieHackers I filtered for comapnies with $5mm or more annual revenue. On GetLakta I chose not to do this, as this info is behind a login wheras on IndieHackers it’s public.
- Then, I checked which of these ~ had YouTube channels at all, and looked to see how many views and subscribers each channel had, and then selected those with at least 1,000 subscribers:
- Finally, I browsed through this shortlist of channels to check which have good examples of different aspects of great B2B YouTube channels: good topic coverage, motion graphics, visual style, presenter setup, etc. Read on to check out my findings…
Best B2B YouTube Channels: Stats
Let’s quickly look at the commonalities between these successful channels, and try to answer some of the common questions people typically have about building a B2B YouTube channel, such as:
- How long should our videos be?
- Do we need to have someone on camera?
- How much stock footage should we include?
- What about motion graphics?
- Should there be music in the backround?
How Long Should YouTube Videos Be?
Whilst the common advice is to go for videos around 2 minutes in length, recent research has found that the number of videos averaging over 20 minutes in length grew by 66% in 2020. Looking at the example B2B SaaS videos which I’ve selected here, the typical length is around 5-16 minutes.
For more in depth guides and tutorial content, closer to the 15 minute mark works. For ‘overview’ videos then closer to 5 minutes is going to make more sense. They key is to have valuable content. YouTube’s algorithm doesn’t favour any particular length of video, but it does want to see high “watch time” – the average percentage of your video that people actually watch.
Great B2B Explainer Videos on YouTube
Not every explainer video is a great fit for being on YouTube, but these examples are a good balance between fitting in with a smart YouTube strategy, whilst also doing a great job at explaining and selling the product.
Startmail
Private email service Startmail has a really nice explainer that not only does a good job of highlighting the problem it solves, but also feeling organic and relateable. I believe they may have hired Kurzgesagt do produce this.
Notion
Notion not only has a great overal channel with really good topic coverage, but this deceptively simple explainer video sell the product fantasticlly, whilst also working well as an organic YouTube channel video, which is a tricky balance to get right.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign has a series of different explainer videos for aspects of their product. They focus on showing simplified versions of UI components. This style of video can work really well and is typically easier to produce than those with more detailed ‘character animation’ (videos with animated people in).
Motion graphics and visual identity
Channel design and organisation (playlists, channel art etc)
B2B YouTube Channels with Good Topic coverage
Convertkit
Veed.io
Snappa
Snappa is like Canva except focused on B2B. Their content strategy is focused on problems that users might be trying to solve, rather than specific videos about product features. In this example, they know that a lot of people are looking to easily create great looking cover art for Spotify, so that’s what they focus on helping with here:
IncoDocs
IncoDocs is in a pretty ubscure B2B niche – documentation for global shipping. So not the most obvious example you might think of for a good B2B YouTube channel. However they have been able to amass over 750k at the time of writing. They produce detailed videos and also more basic introductory videos like this one:
HubStaff
HubStaff is an employee management and payroll SaaS. Their channel has a good overall B2B YouTube strategy, targeting the three main funnel stages of problem aware, solution aware, and finally product aware.
Clickthrough rate optimisation: Good thumbnails & titles etc.
Best “How to use the Product” videos
Notion
Integromat
In Depth B2B YouTube Channel Case Studies
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a SEO tool, and they practice what they preach by using SEO (written and video content) as the main source of new customers for their business. We actually use it when working on SEO for solar companies. Here’s an example YouTube video from Ahrefs:
How long are their videos?
Typically between 7 to 16 minutes, or around 1,400 to 2,800 words.
How does that compare to the typical length of their blogposts?
Ahref’s blog has posts that are on average a bit longer, in the range of around 2,200 – 3,000.
What do you see on screen in a typical video, and for how long?
Presenter
These frames are taken from three different videos. So they have definitely gone for consistency! Notice the ‘lower third’ graphic in the third example image.
Stock Footage
Graphics
Simple illustrations with minimal motion added (no character animation).
Titles
Simplified UI illustrations
Actual screenshots
AppSumo
Appsumo is a marketplace of B2B SaaS products, so their topic coverage tends to be a bit broader, focusing on the common problems that their overall market has – starting and growing small online businesses.
Next Steps
YouTube marketing is all about the storytelling power of video. It doesn’t have to be super hard, you just need a strategy and some consistency.
Take a look at written and YouTube content from your competitors, and other people producing content in your niche. Think about which problems your customers have, and see if you can come up with 3-5 potential video titles that you could potentially create.
If you’re looking to start or grow a YouTube channel for your SaaS company, click below to book a Content Audit Session with me. We’ll identify opportunities for you to be everywhere and reach new audiences with video.