For SEO purposes, written content is hard to beat. But high-quality video engages with your audience and creates deeper connections with potential buyers. Most online consumers are more likely to watch a video than read a blog entry or webpage about a topic. Video provides a more powerful sensory experience for the user, and if you add subtitles, viewers are essentially getting the best of three worlds: audio, video, and text.
Many business owners believe effective video campaigns are cost-prohibitive and take too much work to create. The truth is that video can be affordable and simple — and when paired with a thoughtful strategy and reasonable key performance indicators (KPIs), it can be extremely beneficial for transforming ambivalent, lukewarm leads to excited, engaged customers.
Why Video Marketing Is Such an Important Part of Any Digital Marketing Campaign
At LaFleur, we know marketing is a holistic effort. Each tactic, strategy, and initiative has a part to play within the larger whole — and video is no exception. Visual content gives you the chance to put a face to your product or service, utilize the gorgeous branding elements you’ve no doubt created, and position your messaging in a way that resonates with your target audience.
We’re not the only ones who feel this way. Just check out these statistics from BizWeb Journal:
- 52% of marketing professionals name video as content with the highest ROI.
- 76% of marketers plan to use video to boost their brand awareness campaigns.
- 96% of B2B companies are planning to use video in their content marketing over the next twelve months.
- Consumer internet video traffic will move from 64% in 2014 to over 80% by 2019.
And the reason marketing professionals are so enthusiastic about video is because we know consumers want it. Here are some more stats from BizWeb that illustrate that point:
- Consumers are 27x more likely to click a video ad than a standard banner ad.
- Video has been shown to increase email click-through rates by as much as 300% and decrease unsubscribe rates by as much as 75%.
- Video can increase conversions by as much as 30%.
- Pages with video enjoy a 34% lower bounce rate than pages with no video.
When you add up all this hard data, it’s easy to see the importance of video in a larger digital marketing campaign. However, these statistics aren’t true of all video tactics, and your success or failure will hinge on a number of factors — including quality, relevance, consistency, and placement. Marketers need to know when, where, why, and how to develop and utilize quality video campaigns to be truly effective in the short and long term.
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Your Sales Funnel Informs Your Video Marketing Strategy
People commonly discuss the sales funnel in the abstract, but not everyone has a firm grasp of what it entails or even realizes how imperative the sales funnel is to successful marketing and sales operations. Brass tacks: sales funnels are designed to move potential prospects along a series of stages until they convert and become customers. Before we discuss which types of video campaigns you should be using, let’s break down the ideal sales funnel to determine how video fits into larger marketing strategies.
- Awareness: As the name entails, the awareness stage is where the potential lead first learns of your product or service — usually through an organic search, a paid ad, a newsletter, or an ebook download, among others.
At this stage, your brand’s SEO is imperative because your product or service needs to present a solution to your prospect’s problem without them having voiced their concerns directly. More and better-optimized content leads to more visitors and, therefore, more awareness. Utilizing video throughout your website, on YouTube, and within social media is a great way to introduce yourself to potential consumers and gently push them to show more interest.
- Interest: Once prospects are aware of your products or services, they will show varying degrees of interest based on the amount and quality of content you have created. If you have videos that are informative and engaging, you will be more likely to have a real impact on visitors to your site and generate more interest in your organization.
And if you develop email campaigns delivered to an organic list developed at the awareness phase, you can use a video series to capitalize on interested leads. Be sure to let your audience know that each video is part of a larger campaign to ensure repeat viewers throughout the series.
- Evaluation: The evaluation stage is the natural extension of the interest stage. At this point, potential customers are considering the pros and cons of your product or service. They like what you’re saying and what they’re seeing, but as responsible consumers, they’re naturally skeptical and are looking for some assurance.
This is a great chance to leverage video that clearly states your unique value propositions in comparison to your competitors. If you haven’t heard from your lead yet or if they seem to be losing interest, you could create a re-engagement campaign with customized video addressing their specific needs and offering to sweeten the pot through a discount or free gift. Also, be sure to highlight your dependability through testimonials, your relationship with the Better Business Bureau, and statistics that speak to your consistent excellence throughout your company’s existence.
- Decision: By now, your potential customers should have the information they need to make an informed decision about whether to proceed with your company. But even with that information, it’s possible a competitor has slipped in or that their needs have changed in some way. Reinforce the quality of your product or service by developing remarketing campaigns that include video testimonials from current and former customers who speak your praises.
As the funnel begins to narrow, more exposure (as long as its tasteful and not done to excess) becomes your greatest ally, so target your audience at key touchpoints such as social media and paid search to remain top-of-mind. Deliver additional value wherever possible to help foster the lead and influence them to act.
- Action: Consumers rarely take action without participating in one or all of the stages above. Action is the culmination of all your previous efforts and is unlikely to occur if you haven’t laid the initial groundwork to move your prospects through the various stages of the sales funnel.
A desired action can be performed in several ways, but the most common are conversions or direct sales, which means you should place relevant video on dedicated landing pages and e-commerce pages whenever possible.
Smart marketers calculate the price of this action by determining how much it costs to get x number of people to the site and then how much revenue each action generates. If you get 100 people to visit your site at a total cost of $300, and 5 of those visitors generate $500 of revenue each, you’ve earned $2,500 at only a $300 spend — a sizable return on investment of more than 800%!
When you know the precise ROI of your marketing efforts, you can scale your campaigns more efficiently and ramp up marketing budget as needed. Depending on your primary tactics, this could mean video with improved production value and more opportunities (and budget) to place these videos at strategic touchpoints throughout the sales funnel.
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Strengthen Your Sales Funnel With Crisp, Concise Video Campaigns
There are so many wonderful ways for marketers (novice and expert alike) to leverage the power of video in their marketing campaigns. Depending on your industry, you could:
- Create “thank you” videos for new conversions that encourage leads to move through the funnel — or remain loyal customers if they’ve already committed to your product or service.
- Develop customer testimonials that speak to your product’s excellence, your customer service team’s compassion and understanding, and your business’ overall ability to solve a problem or fulfill a need at a competitive price point.
- Record webinars or demos of your product or service that prompt more utilization through increased knowledge and education. When someone knows how to use what they’ve bought, they’re more likely to get the most out of it, make more purchases, and spread organic awareness through shares, word-of-mouth, etc.
- Film an introductory video of your company’s products, services, mission, and/or core values that explains how you are unique in the market and how you are dedicated to fulfilling consumer need in your respective space.
- Determine your most effective blog content and make a supplementary video explaining the concept further with charts, graphics, and whiteboards, or simply provide a concise summary of the topic and your main points in a brief video.
- Interview key stakeholders who are heavily involved in day-to-day operations. When consumers have a chance to put a face to a business, it naturally triggers a sense of empathy and togetherness.
- With live video features, you can broadcast from an event, send custom messaging to important potential clients, host an Ask Me Anything, or stream fun office events to showcase your employees, colleagues, and work culture.
These are just a few ideas to get you started, and most of them are inexpensive ways to get started with video content. Read the article below to learn how to create effective videos at lower costs and then implement these or other video campaign tactics to boost ROI and humanize your brand!
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LaFleur Can Script, Shoot, Post, and Promote Awesome Video for Your Business
At LaFleur, we have trained videographers on staff with years of experience creating video campaigns for all sorts of business types — including healthcare, law firms, sports franchises, and even motivational speakers. We use best practices and innovative strategies to deliver high-quality video that works. And we pair these videos with related digital marketing strategies — such as email marketing, blogging, and paid search — to get the most out of every campaign.
If you’re interested in learning more about LaFleur and our approach to video marketing, please contact us by calling (888) 222-1512 or completing this brief form. We record for you, and you record profits — it’s that simple. But we can’t get filming until you contact us, so please reach out today!
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References
DeMers, J. (2015, January 2). How to use funnels for your inbound marketing strategy. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/01/02/how-to-use-funnels-for-your-inbound-marketing-strategy/#538f865a24ff
Litt, M. (2017). Create video marketing for the entire sales funnel. Vidyard. Retrieved from https://www.vidyard.com/blog/create-video-marketing-for-the-sales-funnel/
Van Overloop, J. (2017). How to make your sales funnel more powerful with video marketing. BizWeb Journal. Retrieved from https://bizwebjournal.com/video-marketing/
Zhel, M. (2016, July 19). The beginner’s guide to a sales funnel. MailMunch. Retrieved from https://www.mailmunch.co/blog/sales-funnel/