Creative Best Practices for Producing B2B Video on Connected TV

Editor's note: QuickFrame is a member of the LinkedIn Marketing Partner program. Learn more here.

This is a marketing safe space, so let’s be honest with ourselves here. At some point, everyone who has ever created an ad has also said to themselves, “Ugh, another ad break.” 

Aren’t we all guilty of timing a bathroom break with a commercial break? Or using a 30-second spot to rush to the fridge and refill our beverages-of-choice? Even if we make those ads ourselves?

Our industry may never truly escape the inherent wariness viewers hold towards ads, but it’s still one that we can’t stop taking seriously. No one can afford to make a bad first impression. That goes double for B2B marketers — triple, if we’re talking about TV. B2B video ads have a reputation for being same-y at best, boring at worst (hey, safe space, remember?). But now Connected TV (CTV) is offering an extraordinary opportunity for B2B brands to reach their target audiences directly and affordably, it’s time to level up.

What’s at stake? Reports show that 90% of B2B buyers choose vendors they already know. Boring ads make for bad first impressions. Bad first impressions mean your brand disappears from that buyer’s mind the minute their show comes back on.

When B2B marketers produce CTV ads, they need to be immediately engaging, with specific creative elements like storytelling, emotions, and strong concepts that can hook the audience and keep them rooted to their couch (or recliners, or bean bag chairs they kept from college.)

We want to show you how to do just that with creative best practices and production tips to help you make stellar B2B ads for Connected TV.

Tell a Story (and make it relatable) 

As QuickFrame’s Max Berns mentioned during a webinar we co-hosted with LinkedIn, a major mistake B2B brands make is not utilizing storytelling. Humans inherently respond to narratives, which is why it can be such a valuable tool for engaging target audiences.

That doesn’t mean your narrative has to be a stereotypical story with heroes, and villains, and surprising twists. (You could, but that might get expensive.) It could simply teach your audience something new — like an explainer that shows how a B2B product can integrate into a person’s workday, or alleviate their biggest business-related headaches. 

Storytelling doesn’t have to be complex, either. With a simple narrative that hooks your audience, you can bake value props into your creative without audiences immediately realizing they’re receiving a brand message. You may not feel like Martin Scorsese, but you aren’t masterminding a will-they-won’t-they relationship between strangers for Love is Blind, either.

In other words, you don’t have to be a storyteller to tell a good story. All you need to know is what your audience wants, and how your product can meet their needs. 

Inspire an Emotional Connection 

Another mistake B2B brands can routinely make when producing video ads: not attempting to create an emotional connection with their audience. Emotions create relatable situations, which help audiences personally connect with your message (and your brand).

Here’s the thing about emotions: they’ve always been a central player in how we make decisions, whether it’s what vendor to buy from at work, what to get for dinner, or whether buying a 12-foot skeleton from Spirit Halloween is a smart investment. (It was, OK?) According to Psychology Today, “When we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous, related experiences affix values to the options we are considering. These emotions create preferences, which lead to our decision.”

This is proof that your ads need some form of emotional resonance to drive action. It doesn’t even matter what kind of emotion you’re using, though certain emotions do perform better than others. What’s important is that you’re making some impact on your audience on a human level, whether it’s joy, fear, sorrow, or something else entirely. 

Grab Attention with a Clever Hook 

Much like their B2C counterparts, B2B marketers need to capture their audience's attention as quickly as possible, especially when advertising on Connected TV. As with any good elevator pitch or sales presentation, you need a strong opening hook or your target audience may dip out and start doomscrolling on their phone before they get to your Call-to-Action (CTA).

Kicking off your ad with something clever, surprising, or enticing in the first few seconds will hook your audience from frame one; once they’re hooked, they’ll be more likely to stick around and finish the ad. 

So put extra focus on those first 3-5 seconds — they really make all the difference.

Use Persistent Branding and Clear Call to Actions 

This is the most practical best practice on the list — and one that is super easy to implement. We recommend always featuring your logo and URL throughout your ad so your audience knows who you are, and where to go to learn more about your products or services.

And because CTV ads aren’t clickable, you’ll need a visual or audio CTA to guide the audience towards the action you want them to take. A CTA can motivate the viewer through messages of urgency or direction, like “sign up today” or “don’t miss out on this deal!”

A study from our friends at MNTN found that performance marketing video ads with a CTA, logo, and URL throughout experience a combined 41% lower average cost per view (CPV), and 112.6% higher average conversion rates. To see great examples of CTV creative, check out our video ad lookbook, Made with QuickFrame.

B2B Video Production Tips

Now that we’ve explored creative best practices for B2B marketing on Connected TV, let’s dive into the nuts and bolts of video production. 

Aside from the “persistent branding” point above, all of the tips we’ve described thus far could be logically bucketed into the “pre-production” phase of producing a video ad. But that’s just a third of the whole production process. Video production is traditionally divided into three separate stages — pre-production, production, and post-production. Here are a few tips to keep in mind for each.

Pre-Production: Proper Planning = Maximized Budgets

This is your planning phase, where you sketch out everything you need to produce a great ad, from concepts, scripts, and shot lists to location scouting and talent sourcing. You’ll also need to decide what type of video you want to produce. Will it be a live action explainer, an animated product demo, or something more out-of-the-box?

Perhaps most importantly, you should be very clear in pre-production what your objectives are so you’ll know exactly what your campaign will need from the very beginning. This will ensure you won’t forget about specific shots you want to include, voice overs you need to capture, or creative variations you’ll need to produce. With proper pre-production planning, you’ll be able to maximize your budget in post-production by eliminating the need for reshoots, which can quickly balloon your overall production costs.  

Production: Film Everything in a Single Day

This is the stage where you actually shoot the video and start to see all of your pre-production planning come to life. Everything’s in line: you know who, what, when, how, and why. The more thorough you are in pre-production, the more organized you'll be as you move into the production stage. 

But to make the most out of the shoot — and keep production costs as low as possible — we recommend capturing all of the footage you need in a single day. This will further eliminate the need for reshoots. If you create an exhaustive shot list during pre-production, detailing every scene and angle you need, you’ll be able to keep your shooting schedule on-track.

Keep in mind that what you’ll need production-wise will depend on the type of video you’re making. A live-action shoot will require a specific type of crew, like camera operators and sound technicians, that you won’t necessarily find on an animated production. Conversely, an animated commercial probably won’t need to budget for transportation services to ferry talent to and from the set, but you’ll probably need specialized artists, like 3D modelers, to bring your animated characters to life.

Post-Production: Use Checklists to Keep Project on Track

Post-production is usually a mixture of problem-solving and creativity to make your video look and sound as polished as possible once production concludes. It’s also one of the most labor-intensive phases of the process, involving everything from editing and sound mixing to adding motion graphics and other creative visual effects. 

A common mistake that can increase overall costs in post-production is not planning every deliverable from the start. However, if you did your pre-production homework, post-production should run smoothly — and stay on budget. When you plan each deliverable you need at the beginning of the production process, you’ll naturally generate a checklist of what you should have in hand once post-production wraps.

For instance, say you developed one concept that you want to use for a 15-second and 30-second ad placement. You want two different actors to deliver this concept, with each recording two different opening hooks. Your deliverable checklist for post-production could then look something like this:

Actor A:

• 15s 
  • Hook 1
  • Hook 2
• 30s
  • Hook 1
  • Hook 2

Actor B:

• 15s 
  • Hook 1
  • Hook 2
• 30s
  • Hook 1
  • Hook 2

With a deliverable checklist, you’ll be able to keep post-production on track and avoid forcing your team back to the editing bay because you forgot to plan for a necessary cut. And if you notice that your ads aren’t hitting your objectives once the campaign is live, you can always go back to the post-production process to recut the ad with new voice overs or CTAs.

Because of the technical skills required for post-production work, be it in professional editing software or specialized animation, we recommend working with a video production partner, rather than just leaning on your in-house teams, to ensure your ads are of the highest quality.

There’s No Better Place to B2B than on Connected TV

Television advertising isn’t just the domain of B2C any more — it’s now an ideal platform for B2B brands to get their ads in front of the right audiences, at the right time, with entertaining creative. Following the best practices we’ve outlined here will get you started on the right foot, especially for all the B2B marketers in the room new to CTV advertising.

But this should just be a starting point for you and your teams. The creative process, even on ads, is deeply personal, and can be entirely subjective, so we encourage you to develop an approach that works for you, whether that’s producing entirely in-house or tapping a video production partner like QuickFrame through the LinkedIn Marketing Partners program.

No matter which path you choose, advertising your B2B brand on Connected TV means you’re already a step ahead. You might not stop every potential customer from getting up during the ad break, but with the right approach, you’re bound to make a few of them think twice.

Want to learn more? Join us on April 24th as we sit down with LinkedIn and discuss Why B2B Brands Should Make the Leap to Connected TV and learn more about LinkedIn CTV.