Video First, Blog Second. Sherri Schwartz on B2B Video.

Sherri Schwartz runs marketing at Ovation CXM and has spent 17 years in B2B marketing. She thinks most teams have the content order backwards.

Key Takeaways

• Make video your primary content output. Let the blog follow, not lead.
• AI-only content makes every brand sound the same. Human touch is still required.
• YouTube is the #2 training source for AI LLMs after Reddit, so video feeds AI search.
• 50 to 60% of buyers now start their journey on an AI LLM, not your website.
• Ovation CXM ships over 200 videos a year across hype, product, FAQ, and partnership formats.

Why AI-only content is making everyone sound the same

The first thing every marketing team tried was AI for content output. Skip the writer. Ship 50 blogs a month instead of five. Twelve months in, the result is plain to see.

"Everyone's message is the same and it's generic and it's become more vanilla." — Sherri Schwartz

Sherri is not anti-AI. Her team uses it constantly. But she draws a hard line at making AI the sole content engine. Brand awareness depends on standing out, and standing out needs a human in the loop.

Her rule of thumb on AI tools: never sign a year contract. Trials only. Month to month. If you've been on a tool for two months, it's probably already archaic and there's something newer.

Why video is the antidote to AI slop

Video is harder for AI to fake. That's part of why it works. The other part is that AI is actively trained on it.

"YouTube is like the number two, outside of Reddit, from a training source for AI LLMs." — Sherri Schwartz

So when you post an interview to YouTube with a clean transcript, you are doing two things at once: giving a human viewer something to watch, and feeding the LLMs that decide whether your brand shows up in answers. AI search and video are not separate strategies. They are the same strategy.

Buyers are starting their research on AI LLMs at a rate of 50 to 60%, up sharply from a year ago. A lot of that journey is zero-click. The buyer learns about you from the LLM's summary and never lands on your site. If your video is what taught the LLM, you win that summary.

What 200 videos a year actually looks like

Ovation CXM has produced over 200 videos a year for the last two years. The volume sounds impossible until you see the format mix.

• Hype videos for brand and partner moments
• Product demo videos
• Explanatory videos
• Partnership videos
• Customer signing videos
• Short interview snippets answering FAQs from buyers' due-diligence questions
• A 30-minute webinar sliced into 50 short social clips

A 10-second clip on LinkedIn is still a video. Once you stop thinking of video as one big production and start thinking of it as a portfolio of formats, 200 a year is normal.

The IBM mezzanine story

In 2024 Ovation created a hype video to celebrate a new partnership with IBM. The point was simple: get IBM's account executives excited about working together.

A year later, IBM asked permission to use that same hype video on a 20-foot screen at One Madison in New York, where banks come in to wait for meetings. Sherri's hype video became, in effect, a billboard inside IBM's headquarters.

She uses that story to make a point about momentum. Most marketing teams get an initial burst of excitement around video, then the excitement fades and execs start asking whether they really need this many. The way to keep the excitement going is to keep finding new ways to use the videos you already made.

Stop writing blogs first

This is the line worth screenshotting. When Sherri was asked for parting advice, she did not hedge.

"Before you write the blog, turn it into a video. Let the blog follow." — Sherri Schwartz

Make video the primary output. Decide what you want to say about a topic this month, record the video first, then let the blog, the LinkedIn post, the FAQ clip, and the short all come from that single recording. The blog stops being the starting point. It becomes one of many byproducts.

Once a team does it that way for a few months, Sherri says it stops feeling unusual. It feels like riding a bike.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should video come before the blog in content strategy?

Because one video can become a blog, a LinkedIn post, a short, an FAQ clip, and a YouTube upload that trains AI LLMs. A blog can only become a blog. Starting with video gives you more outputs from the same effort, and it puts the human voice at the center of your content instead of buried under AI-written text.

Why is AI content alone not enough for B2B marketing?

Because if every brand in your category is using the same AI tools, every brand's content starts to sound the same. Sherri Schwartz calls it "vanilla." Brand awareness depends on standing out, and AI defaults toward the average. You still need human creative direction on top of AI to keep your brand voice distinct.

How does video help with AI search visibility?

YouTube is the #2 training source for AI LLMs after Reddit. When you publish a video with a clean transcript, AI systems learn from it. That means your video can show up inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini answers about your topic, even when the buyer never visits your website. Roughly 50 to 60% of buyer research now starts on an AI LLM, so that exposure compounds fast.

What types of videos should a B2B company create?

Sherri Schwartz's team at Ovation CXM ships over 200 videos a year across hype videos, product demos, explainer videos, partnership announcements, customer signing celebrations, and short interview clips that answer the FAQs buyers ask during due diligence. A 30-minute webinar gets sliced into 50 short social clips. Even a 10-second LinkedIn post is video. The point is range, not one perfect production.

How do you prove the ROI of video to executives?

Sherri says attribution is hard for video because buyers interact with multiple clips across multiple platforms before a decision. But she has never had trouble getting executive buy-in. The buy-in came from showing video being reused in surprising ways, like IBM using one of her hype videos on a 20-foot lobby screen at their New York headquarters a year after she made it. New uses keep the executive excitement alive.

Full Interview Transcript

Dane: Hello everyone, my name is Dane Frederiksen I am a video production expert in the B2B space and I'm joined today by Sherry Schwartz who is from Ovation CXM and I'd like you Sherry to introduce yourself the way that you would like to be introduced.

Sherri: You did a great job, but I am Sherri Schwartz. I'm the head of marketing at Ovation CXM. I've spent 16 plus, maybe 17 years now in marketing. Really actually started my career in sales, so I've seen that side of the house and I did a fast pivot over into marketing and I haven't looked back and it's been awesome. I've mostly started in startup scale-up marketing organizations. I did get to work with an organization to help take an IPO and have rebranded organizations, built teams from scratch, kind of done it all within kind of the scrappy marketing ecosystem.

Dane: Fantastic. And now you've got AI to superpower all that. And I imagine you're probably using all those skills now with AI. How is that going for you? What's top of mind for you with AI and marketing right now for you and your company?

Sherri: Well, I think the AI ecosystem for marketing has become increasingly more complex, right? It's like every time you turn around, there's a new tool to try. And so never sign a year contract for anything anymore. Only sign, do trials and do month to month and test because if you've been on something for two months, it's probably archaic and there's something new.

And it's easy, there's marketing, there's an AI solution for everything, but what is best for your situation, your team? So, you know, we're looking at where our gaps are, how do we stop fill those gaps? What are the, and we have a video as a service agency, for instance, that we use, but we haven't not tried video AI tools, but it's about trying them to see, they ready yet? Like how much prompting do they need? How much turnaround do they need to really determine where you still use agency, where you still use people and what is there to help expedite? I think for me, what we've learned in 2026 is about how do we operate more efficiently. It's not necessarily a replacement for a person. It's an augmentation of what that person would typically do and spend their time doing that's time costly. or lot of iterations and that's where we're filling the gaps from an output and speed.

Dane: Yeah, it's, I think the way I look at it is like 2025 was the year where we all did AI slop and kind of got burned by that. And now the pendulum is swinging back the other way or maybe completely swung. I'm not even sure where we are with that, but like you're, you're pointing about efficiencies is I think the big lesson that we all learned. is that what you're seeing now for you as well?

Sherri: It is, but what I've also seen and I've read some articles about it as well is I think so many, the first thing everybody wanted to try was AI for content output. Let me just utilize AI and do I need a content writer or they're gonna just create instead of five blogs, 50 blogs in a month. And I'm just throwing some numbers out there. But I think what you've actually seen in the 12 months that a lot of organizations have been leaning heavily into AI content is that everyone's message is the same and it's generic and it's become more vanilla. And in reality, I think that it's actually proven you really still need human touch to it to creatively stand out for your brand. I think it goes back to like brand awareness is such a critical part for an organization and you have to have that human touch to it. If not, think what you've seen, AI is so wonderful, but I wouldn't put all bets on it to be your content engine solely without having that human kind of intervention and creative thinking attached to it.

Dane: Yeah, this is perfectly playing right into my evil plans of talking about video, because I'm a video guy, if you haven't guessed. you know, I have been screaming from the rooftops that video is really the antidote to slop for a couple of reasons, because you can use AI to repurpose it, like with transcripts and video editing tools like Descript. So there's a place for all that. And then, you know, the human aspect of standing out and like we're making video thought leadership right now. And this is something AI still can't really do. So to what extent does that hold water for you? that this to me seems like the gospel that every company should be doing video repurposing as like the core ingredient for their marketing because of the repurposing aspect and you're using AI to actually be efficient rather than make slop.

Sherri: Yeah, well, and I think there's, if video isn't a priority in your content channel and in your strategy, you are missing out. Now, you still need written content for GEO and for AI LLMs. Buyers are more more increasingly starting their search and utilizing an AI LLM at 50 to 60% in their buying decisions than they were a year ago. And so it's extremely important to still have written, but AI LLMs also learn from YouTube. Like YouTube is like the number two outside of Reddit, I think, from a training for AI LLMs. It's gotta be super important. think being able to take an interview with one of your thought leaders or one of your executives and recording that interview, whether it's a 30 minute or an hour. and then being able to slice and dice that and create micro interviews for your social media strategy, longer form for YouTube or Vimeo, inserting it into your resources section of your website. The opportunities are endless. I think it's a buyers have a seven second attention span, right? So our intent, if that, yes, it's increasingly shrinking.

Dane: If that.

Sherri: And so how can you bite size, give somebody something that can be entertaining because not everybody just wants to sit down and read a blog. I know I skim a lot of them or I'll have a hundred tabs open in my computer with the idea that I'll go back and read it and then I never did. But if I'm seeing a quick, you know, 10 to 15 seconds snippet on social media, I'm more inclined to watch that. And so I think there, and there are so many great AI tools to slice and dice and help that. to be able to take an interview like this. We've tested the creation of animation in it with AI tools. What I will say from just our experience having tested it, I might say, hey, I want something to look like there's silos and glass shattering with these five words. It could be customer experience is the future. I'm just hypothetically throwing some words out there. And I'll get something that's like 25 % there and then I've given AI and in the prompt, the very specific five words, and it comes back in like, not in English, and just Pig Latin. And then I go back and I re-prompt it and say, nope, that's not what I asked for it to say, can you please fix it to say these words, and it comes back again, not in written English. And so you have to think, there's a right size approach of what tools are ready, what tools are still developing that you still need to keep a look out in. And how much time is it actually taking you to prompt it? Like if you feel like you've sucked a whole day away trying to prompt something for one image or one 15 second thing, that is not a good use of your time. Doesn't mean you can't be an AI forward team. Can't mean that you can't develop an AI strategy and utilize AI in your marketing. It just might not be in that specific spot yet.

Dane: Yeah, it's not there yet, but it'll be there tomorrow. So I've been playing this thought experiment game in my head this week of like, if video is like part or a big part of your marketing plan, how much video would be too much? Is there a theoretical like, that's too much video? I think answer is not, there isn't one unless you're doing it bad, right? And so there's all kinds of reasons that it's not working. Like it's not high enough quality. Maybe your SMEs don't have the time. Whatever those reasons are, the point is that there really isn't a good reason to not be doing video. They're all just bad, bad reasons to not be doing video.

Sherri: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we've produced over the last two years over 200 videos a year. And what that looks like, it's hype videos, it's product demo videos, it's explanatory videos, it's partnership videos, it's customer signing videos, it's even taking some of your most frequently asked questions in your vendor due diligence and the buying process. And it's turning that into short interview snippets where it's question and answer. It's being able to then take that with the transcript uploaded on YouTube for your AI LLMs. It's fueling a 30 minute webinar into 50 different social snippets to be able to utilize for ongoing LinkedIn and social strategy. Opportunities are endless. A tiny 10 second video on LinkedIn is still a video. So I mean, it's very, very easy if you are prioritizing the varieties of different ways to utilize it. It's very easy to get to 200 a year and you look and you're like, man, this is insane. This has been super helpful for us. And we've seen since we've prioritized video for so long, it is a driver. It is a channel driver to our site as well. So it's wonderful for brand awareness.

Dane: Yeah, I've heard people talking about like because the buyer journey has extended to the point that they're like doing the most of their journey before they talk to sales, that video can really it really is the sales process because you're giving the ammunition for people to self educate and and

Sherri: Yes. It is. And it's interesting because, you know, it's when there's 60%, 50 to 60 % of their journey starts at an AI LLM and so much of it is zero click, zero click to ever getting onto your site. They're learning so much just from what these LLMs are divvying up from having scraped your site, other content, review sites, your video on YouTube, you name it, and giving it to them in a silver platter. It's no longer just going to our site and filling out a contact us form. That is lower value than one coming from an AILM where they've done so much self-guided discovery. of your business, of the challenges. And by the way, this LLM already knows who they are, so they skip the BS, right? They skip the very high level superficial searching. They're not looking for just best customer experience platform, they're looking for best one to solve for merchant services and financial or commercial card, or they're going down to the persona level, which then means don't just do a high level 50,000 foot view video, like the have the same type of written content strategy and video content strategy, top, middle, bottom, deep into the weeds, because you don't know where they are in their buying journey and you need to hit all of those points.

Dane: Yeah, exactly. It's like hitting a dartboard blind if you don't. The idea of proving the ROI or the return on this to your internal teams or just in general for marketers, how are you seeing like, is it still a challenge to convince like the execs that, hey, this is worthwhile doing, it's driving sales, like this is how we're being found in AI search results. Do you just holistically think that's still a challenge or are we at the point where they're kind of catching on?

Sherri: think the challenge is more the reporting piece of it. It's always the multi-touch attribution or just the reporting piece of it from an ROI perspective. Like here's the exact specific metric. Because they may have interacted with a variety of videos, a variety of different ways. It may be video from YouTube and then hopping on the AILM or vice versa. But I will say we have never had a problem. since diving into video of getting that executive buy-in because we started with Hype Videos 2 to create, I mean, we were a brand that was primarily a services company. And then I was brought on as one of the first marketers to grow the marketing function of the business and pivot from service to SaaS technology. And we rebranded our company. So we were previously known as Boomtown. And we rebranded, we did a revalue prop, we did a new website, and with that came a brand new identity. So it was really easy to naturally have excitement backed by it. But the importance is, is not just to have like an instant beginner excitement that phases off. Okay, maybe I don't, maybe we don't wanna pay for this as much anymore, or do we really need this many videos? The challenge is how do you keep that momentum? and it's the variety of different new ways to utilize it. So we signed a really great partnership with IBM a couple years ago. We created a hype video specifically to send to the IBM team to get their account executives excited about the partnership. Well then next thing you know, a year later, they are turning one of their mezzanines in New York at their headquarters into a large lobby where we primarily sell to banks where banks are coming in and waiting for their meetings and they wanted to use our hype video inside of there to showcase that entire mezzanine, a 20 foot wide like kind of video screen and they asked permission to be able to use that video. So it's 12 months later, it comes right back but now it's being used in another even more creative way in a large audience. It's almost like a billboard but just at One Madison. That again, continues up the excitement. The variety of different ways these videos are being used and can be used, not just from a sales perspective or a thought leadership perspective, but what about at a partnership level to drive that hype and that excitement for a net new partner that who knows where that takes you, where they bring that forward to their audience.

Dane: Yeah, yeah, it's good time to be in video.

Sherri: It is a great time to be in video. Absolutely. I think the challenge sometimes though, and this is where we're at for 2026 is B2C is so fun. Selling shampoo or clothes or a Coca-Cola or a new energy drink. That can be really fun in ways to show video of like you've seen the Coca-Cola can bursting and it's all juicy and looks great or a new flavor and it's got cherries and everything all over it. It's really creative sometimes to show that. Sometimes it can feel like it's boring. How do I show software in a video? So what we're challenging ourselves to do in 26, and this again is another way to how do you drive video excitement year over year, we are testing out new concepts where we're pulling out really fun B2C videos that we like, and how can I make that B2B friendly for my business? so that our videos come to life in an even more fun and creative way where we don't take ourselves too seriously. I don't want that. I don't want to take ourselves too seriously, but how can we creatively show ourselves the same way that an Airbnb could or a Coca-Cola commercial could? And that's where we're going in 2026 with our video strategy. Yeah, absolutely. It is.

Dane: Yeah, fun but brand safe. It's the new challenge for B2B. So as we wrap up, you got any parting thoughts for the audience? Maybe a tip or a thing they should be focused on right now?

Sherri: Yeah, I would always say if you haven't looked at how do I fit it into my existing content pillars, content strategy, let it always be before you write the blog, turn it into a video, let the blog follow, and just have those as you have your monthly or your quarterly, what are we talking about? What are we writing about? Well, if you're gonna talk about it and you wanna write about it, you need a video for it as well. It can't be second or secondary or tertiary in your thoughts when it comes to what's the creative output. Let it be your primary output and put that in and it's like riding a bike. It becomes very natural.

Dane: You're singing the gospel. So thanks for joining me today, Sherry. Appreciate your insights.

Sherri: Thank you so much for having me.