From being quarantined in our homes to keeping six feet apart and avoiding handshakes, the way we interact with other humans has drastically changed. In the business environment, the normal behaviors and tactics that salespeople have relied on to drive their success are no longer available. We can no longer drop by to see a client, meet a prospect for lunch, or fly to another city for a face-to-face meeting. More and more selling is now being conducted over the phone and via email.

And this isn’t a short-term trend. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that “a new normal has developed for businesses of all sizes across nearly all industries, with changes likely to endure even after COVID-19 is a thing of the past.” We may have lost a few tools from our sales toolbox, but we’re going to replace them with new ones that we can use to build relationships and advance the sale.

FUN FACT: Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text. 

With good reason, video has become one of the strongest means by which marketers and sellers are getting results and improving performance with their overall strategies.  

Studies have shown that as humans, we find video more memorable, more engaging, and thus it leads us to lean towards video as the most popular form of content out there. Video is taking over. And we're here for it.

Marketing mavens, take note. Video is here to stay. Not only is it here to stay, but it’s here to enhance and improve your marketing strategy. But this isn’t anything you don’t know… yet.  

Marketing statistics on video only continue to support the argument of video’s impact on marketing and sales performance, but are you taking advantage of the full capabilities and forms that video offers?

Most employees know the importance of blogging for business. It’s getting them to create the content that becomes the obstacle. There’s never enough time; they aren’t strong writers; SEO is a foreign language – whatever the reason, getting consistent quality content is hard.

Luckily, we know some tips and tricks that can help make content creation a lot easier – plus, saves a whole bunch of time!

Sales enablement is the technology, strategy, processes, and content that empower sales teams to sell smarter and faster. Our high-paid salespeople should be spending the majority of their time having quality appointments with potential buyers and presenting solutions, NOT trying to figure out what they're going to say and do next, having to wait on managers for coaching, or creating/finding the right content and resources to share in any given scenario. Salespeople in 2019 should be efficient and smart - so they can work smarter and faster, but also so the buying experience can be better and easier.   

It's our belief that every single successful sales organization needs sales enablement content, and today I'm sharing three types of sales enablement content that every sales team needs. 

Recently, I shared a post explaining how to send videos via email. Due to spam, security, and email hosting features, many email clients do not allow video embeds directly into emails, so with a few easy steps, marketers and salespeople can send video via email, just not with an actual embed. If you are a Hubspot Sales user at the Professional or Enterprise level, I have good news! Not long ago, Hubspot announced a feature that enables salespeople (or any Hubspot user communicating with a contact through the CRM) to embed videos directly into their 1:1 emails! 

This question is asked a lot. And you'd think with it being almost 2019, the technology would allow for this to be a normal practice. But it's not. Due to security, spam, and varying features across email clients, most email clients do not support this feature, so it's recommended that you insert a thumbnail or gif of your video and link to a landing page that the video is hosted on. 

How To Send a Video Via Email:

1. Save the video to a video hosting site.
2. Optimize the video on the hosting site.
3. Save an image or screenshot as the custom thumbnail.
4. Insert an image or gif that matches the custom thumbnail into your email body.
5. Link the image in the email body to the video. 

Below, are some details and further explanation on how to send a video via email.

Alright, it's time. Video is important to marketing and sales. I know, I know... but have I done much with it? Not until this year. After attending INBOUND 2018, Hubspot's annual conference, I decided that it's time. Time to jump feet first into the world of video to enhance our company's marketing and sales efforts and achieve bigger and better results. 

Video is often cited as a tool that helps drive marketing and sales performance, and the numbers shared in a Hubspot blog back up those claims:

• 97% of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.
• 76% say it helped them increase sales.
• 47% say it helped them reduce support queries.
• 76% say it helped them increase traffic.
• 80% of marketers say video has increased dwell time on their website.
• 95% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
• 81% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand's video.

We often wear a lot of hats, juggle a lot of duties, and report to a lot of people. It can be challenging to gracefully and successfully achieve everything you want to (and need to) while also adopting a new marketing or sales tactic. I network with a lot of marketing, sales, and public relations professionals, and these are the most popular reasons people share that they avoid getting started with video, and ways to overcome these excuses to achieve results with video in marketing and sales strategies.

It’s really no secret that video is used more and more for marketing to an audience. It’s fast, it’s visually appealing, and people seem to gravitate towards watching video more than any other content platform.

With the boom of video being used to target prospects and educate leads, it only makes sense to marry the idea of using a video directly on your lead gen offer’s landing page.

Here are four reasons why video can help retain more viewers and convert more leads:

5 Tips to Help You On Your Journey

We recently came back from the INBOUND 2016 Conference in Boston, MA. While our head is still spinning from everything we heard, learned, saw and discussed, we did walk away with a pretty great take-away that was a confirmation to the direction we think our company and clients should begin diving into. That take-away was video marketing for lead generation.