If tech companies limit their video strategies to in-market buyers, they’re underinvesting in the buyer stage that may matter most.
According to the 2025 B2B Buyer Experience/Buyer Journey Research Report, B2B buyers have already selected 72% of the vendors on their shortlist on Day 1 of their selection process. And 96% of the time, the chosen vendor was on the buyer’s shortlist on Day 1.
That means the competition is often won before buyers formally enter the market or speak with sales.
Approaching Video Through The 95-5 Lens
The 95-5 framework estimates that ~95% of your potential buyers are out of market for your product or service at any given time, and 5% are actively buying.
Once buyers enter the market, their journey can be divided into two phases:
- Selection: Buyers research vendors, define requirements, and rank their options. Lasts ~6 months.
- Validation: Buyers contact sellers on shortlist, and decision-makers confirm their preferred choice. Lasts ~4 months.
Each stage requires a different job from video content.
Out-of-Market Buyers: Become Memorable
At this stage, do not expect your content to deliver immediate conversions. Play the long game and invest in storytelling to grow relevance.
Goals: Build awareness, credibility, and relevance before the buying process begins. Become the “safe choice” by showing your ICP that you understand their category and challenges.
Effective videos: Invest in brand storytelling to build familiarity. Use recognizable cultural and visual cues, as well as video framing constructs, to resonate with your ICP. Stay top-of-mind among prospects with webinars and episodic content.
Useful metrics: Reach, branded search impressions, qualified video views, target account engagement
Key stat: Brand videos generate 1.5x more decision-maker views on LinkedIn than other content types (Source: LinkedIn Internal Data, 2025)
In-Market Selection: Facilitate Evaluation
This is the start of the active buying process. During selection, buyers research and rank potential vendors.
Goals: Use video content to help decision-makers confidently evaluate your product’s features and integration capabilities. Anticipate buyer queries and ensure your content addresses those questions to build trust and influence.
Videos: Product demos and explainers that show your product in action and summarize technical specs. Sales enablement videos like product walkthroughs to highlight key value props, integrations, and core workflows.
Useful metrics: Demo consumption and completion rate, high-intent page views, video-influenced opportunities
Key stat: 94% of B2B buyers use LLMs in the early/mid stage of their buying process, which reinforces why video is so important. AI engines favor YouTube.
In-Market Validation: Reduce Perceived Risk
This is when the shortlist is validated and buyers are confirming their selection and beginning to negotiate.
Goals: Making the shortlist is not enough. You still need to equip your internal champion(s) with videos to overcome objections by executives and other decision makers. Use video to reinforce trust, emphasize security & privacy, and highlight existing customer satisfaction. Address any buyer barriers in your content.
Videos: Testimonials and customer stories to show proof points. Executive thought leadership that speaks to your product vision and roadmap.
Useful metrics: Shortlist conversion rate, proposal win rate, sales velocity
Key stat: Videos with real people and authentic stories have 78% more engagement on LinkedIn.
Budget Implications
Since buyers rarely select vendors that are absent from their shortlist, companies should avoid concentrating their video budgets entirely on active demand. For many B2B tech companies, that means shifting a larger share of investment upstream to build awareness, familiarity, and credibility before buyers enter the market.
Companies with low category awareness should invest more heavily in becoming memorable, while established brands and incumbents may need to place greater emphasis on product evaluation and validation content.
Making The Business Case For Video
Marketers often understand the strategic value of video but still need evidence to justify greater investment internally. Use the following LinkedIn data to help support that case:
- Video ads drive ~3x higher engagement on LinkedIn
- 63% of B2B tech buyers say short-form video helps inform buying decisions.
- 55% of B2B buyers say they are influenced by creator content from industry experts on LinkedIn
Also, the average B2B buyer is now 39.6 years old, which fits within the millennial age demographic. LinkedIn also reports a 35% year-over-year increase in video viewership among millennials. Together, those trends strengthen the case for making video a core part of B2B go-to-market strategy rather than treating it as a supplementary format.
Other Resources
For more information related to video trends and strategy, see below:
- How your product’s onboarding flow should inform your video strategy
- Use video to optimize the B2B customer journey
- Use a video audit to build your video strategy
Not sure where to begin? Schedule a free video strategy consultation with us.
