The Video That talks Back

Modern buyers expect a personalized experience. That expectation isn’t limited to their personal lives. It shows up in the workplace too. Business and IT decision-makers at small and mid-sized businesses want the B2B buying experience to be as intuitive and relevant as their B2C interactions.

This creates both opportunity and pressure for HP and their channel partners. HP relies on its partner ecosystem to sell commercial PCs, printers, and managed services. With over 90% of commercial revenue flowing through this network, partner marketing is essential. But traditional co-marketing efforts had grown repetitive. HP and its partners wanted a fresh approach.

HP set out to pilot a more personalized, interactive content format. The goal: help buyers make confident decisions and help partners convert website traffic into qualified leads.

We uncovered that indecision, not competition, was the biggest blocker to conversion. Research showed that up to 60% of qualified pipeline was being lost to decision paralysis. To combat this, we needed to simplify the buyer journey.

We created HP’s first interactive video experience. The video engaged viewers by name, asked them discovery-style questions, and delivered personalized product recommendations based on their inputs. This interaction helped reduce complexity and move buyers closer to confident decisions.

The experience was also personalized for partners. Each version featured co-branding with the partner’s logo and a recommendation engine tailored to their current inventory. Partners could deploy the video passively on their website or actively through paid media.

The pilot campaign outperformed industry benchmarks for interactive video, achieving a 60% engagement rate compared to the standard 35%, and a 15% CTA conversion rate, three times the benchmark of 5%.

Based on its success, partners began investing their own media dollars to promote the experience. HP has since made the interactive video available to 1,000 top MSPs across North America, cementing this pilot as a launchpad for more scalable, personalized partner marketing.