In the marketing world, video is proving more valuable than words, but many brands’ videos don’t hit buyers at the right moment.

The problem is that most business-to-business videos tend to be product-centric, writes B2B video expert Bruce McKenzie on MarketingProfs. While they do a good job promoting and introducing a product to buyers, they don’t address the task of shifting a viewer into a potential customer. “Buyers want information, not infomercials,” McKenzie says on the blog.

To bridge this gap, B2B marketers need a video marketing strategy that recognizes that different buyer stages require different videos. Buyers want case studies and testimonials to show how a product solves a problem and achieves results. Such videos can be targeted toward specific buyer profiles—for example, one video might show how a product benefits salespeople, and another how it benefits sales managers.

The Value of Video

A targeted approach could offer big payoffs to companies, especially given the rise of video. Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research finds that one video is worth 1.8 million words. Every day, 100 million users watch a video online. Thanks to Facebook’s autoplay feature, more people are watching videos than ever. Facebook has surpassed YouTube for the most desktop video views per month, and the social network jumped from four billion views to 12 billion in just one month, Search Engine Journal reports.

B2B marketers are banking on consumers’ preference for video. As seen on the graph shown here, 76 percent of marketers surveyed in Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 Content Marketing Benchmark Report use video as a content marketing tactic. That’s up slightly from the 73 percent reported last year. On the effectiveness front, 60 percent of marketers rated video as effective, a slight dip from 63 percent in 2014.

Boosting Success

Brands could be more successful if they deliver video with an editorial approach, said Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute.

“Instead of ‘random acts of content,’ the brand needs to think about what story they want to tell, what the goal is, and how that story can be told over time to attract and keep an audience—all while doing this on a regular basis,” he said.

As marketers continue to hone their video marketing strategy, effectiveness will likely increase and prove the value of video. When it comes to conversions, 70 percent of marketers who use video say it outperforms other types of content.

Register for the Content Standard Newsletter for more content marketing news and insights.