Strategies for the right digital video marketing
Videos are taking over the marketing world. Just log into Facebook, scroll through your feed and take a look at how many videos appear. Daily, people watch a staggering 8 billion videos on Facebook. Throughout their entire path to purchase, 72% of B2B buyers watch videos. In B2C, YouTube is making its mark showing how products work, or if they’re worth your money via reviews, for example. Digital video marketing is changing the face of B2B and B2C marketing. No matter how long your sales cycle is.
There are three video marketing strategies to engage with your leads – educating, entertaining, or inspiring. We’ll now delve into what each type involves.
Educational Videos
When it comes to educating, Bunnings focuses its content video marketing on DIY tips. These explain how to do tasks. This subtly includes tools to buy at Bunnings, to make your DIY job easier. Bunnings’ objective is to show their audience how to complete necessary tasks. Like cleaning gutters, for instance, and which of their products make that easier. The key is to speak genuinely to your persona’s needs, solving their problems.
Entertainment Videos
For entertaining content marketing video, the aim is to capture your audience’s attention, with the hope to go viral. GoPro and Red Bull are great ambassadors for such video marketing tactics. They have consistently chosen to make entertaining and adrenaline-pumping videos. Their success stems from people sharing videos, in order to get their brand the most attention. Emulating such video marketing strategies, mean that you need to know your audience well. There is no better way to do so, than by gathering a strong persona brief. And aligning that connection, between your audience and your brand.
Inspirational Videos
Not-for-profit or charity groups are good examples, when it comes to inspiring content marketing videos. These non-governmental organisations (or NGOs) will use inspiring themes, to communicate their ideas, in ways that text or pictures alone could not achieve. Through digital video marketing, NGOs like Starkey Foundation can tell a story. They grab the audience’s attention, and heart, to get them to donate or volunteer. Videos can help quickly generate emotion and connection with your persona to evoke loyalty and action.
However, those three options alone, are not always sufficient in funneling your customers from digital. When undertaking digital video marketing, you need to not only understand who your audience is, but also their life cycle in the purchase phase. Various audiences will react differently to particular videos. This depends on where they are at within your sales cycle. You must understand all aspects of your persona. Take into account their customer journey.
Match the right content marketing video to the correct funnel stage
Top-of-funnel, Middle-of-funnel, and Bottom-of-funnel videos serve a different purpose. There are elements to keep in mind to distinguish each stage.
TOFU
For the Top-of-funnel (TOFU) stage, the first video has to grab the attention of your audience. It must entertain them, without appearing too salesy. Such videos can include: “how to” content; re-purposed webinar videos; thought leadership; or fun, thought-provoking content. These videos can live on your website (found through organic searches). Or, people can share them on your social media channels (distributed to those who may find it useful).
Top-of-funnel digital video marketing should be short, un-gated content. It should educate, arouse curiosity, and in some cases emotion. It’s also a great way to fine new audiences. And to reach out to a broader group with more generic content, that pulls a variety of possible interested parties, for which you can then target later on, with more specific content. World relief provides a great example here of a TOFU video that speaks to a larger generic audience:
MOFU
Middle-of-funnel (MOFU) marketing videos should become more targeted or try to solve a specific problem. Videos for this funnel stage could be detailed product demos; client testimonials; case studies; or integration content. It should appear on your website, but keep it behind email form enquiries, or on specific landing pages via downloadable content options.
If one of your clients is willing to talk about how you solved their problem, this can be a major asset. It can serve as a mini case study, genuinely speaking to your persona, via your client’s own words.
The content at this phase is about getting to know you more and showcasing what sets you apart from others.
BOFU
Lastly, the Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) videos, are for when clients are almost ready to buy, and just need that last little push. Marketing videos for this stage could include lead nurturing campaign videos, product explainer videos, FAQ videos, customer check-ins (personalised), or post-sale instructional videos. Host those videos on your website (behind email or enquiry gated forms), on specific landing pages (that can be unlocked or provided to qualified prospects), or in your email lead nurturing campaigns.
Here is an example of an instructional video from Valvoline on ‘How to Change The Oil’, it promotes the product, but it also provides practical instructions which a customer could actually apply once purchasing their product. It’s also the type of video that a customer is likely to key in to YouTube search, to pull up content on their specific micro moment, ‘Changing the oil’.
Creating video content marketing around specific stages is very powerful. There are some astonishing facts about marketing videos and conversions. First, since its debut, videos have helped convert better than any other medium. So much so, that adding a video to one of your landing pages can increase your conversions by 80%.
But how do you generate leads through digital marketing videos?
There are two main strategies when using videos to help you get conversions, and it’s either a direct or indirect approach. Lead generation strategies are different for both, whilst there are also methods you can apply, to cut-through the competition, to engage on a deeper level.
Direct
A direct approach is when the video is offering value in exchange for contact information. If you decide to follow this approach, you have to make sure the video is worth while enough to get the contact’s information. Those videos should not be hosted on YouTube, but should rather be gated, in exchange for the lead’s information. These, as well as other factors will drive your customer behaviour to purchase.
An example of this is using the WISTIA web tool to integrate calls to action for your web video. Adopt an email collector form, to pass new leads directly to your email lists, for them to view more valuable video content.
Indirect
On the other hand, an indirect approach is when a different asset is the valuable offering, and you can use the video to help promote it. This method is used as a trailer, to bring your audience to a landing page, and get them excited about what is going on. This type of digital video marketing acts as a promotional asset to encourage swapping information for some other asset. The method is most often used at the Top-of-the-funnel, and should always link back to your landing page.
Customisation
Lastly, there is nothing more powerful than a personalised video. If you already have a database with your leads’ information, you can use that precious data to create marketing videos that will stand out, and hit home to your database. Engagement is at its highest, when the customer’s name appears on a video, with a click rate between 80-90% if not more. Who can say that they have not watched one of those friendship Facebook videos, personalised with their name and profile information? Email video marketing or Social Video advertising is a great technique to increase your sharing rate. Did you know that people are 4 times more likely to share content, with videos than content without?
Retargeting with videos
You can use your digital video marketing in your retargeting campaigns. Since videos are built on a specific asset, when someone watches a video, and therefore fills out a form, you can then use that lead’s data to retarget them in the future. You can also include a retargeting pixel in your end-of-video call to action, and create a list of people who have watched your video and downloaded your asset. Else, leads who have only done the first task, and use that data to retarget them later, with a different landing page and/or content.
Increase engagement and improve SEO
Finally, look at which pages of your site are most visited. If it is your blog, then include some videos there, to answer specific search queries. If certain pages have poor engagement rates and loose visitors fast, then there could be an opportunity to keep them there longer, and draw them in with rich video content. Just keep in mind your audience, and what they want to see. Focus on your persona and the lifecycle stage of their customer journey – and if executed well, you will see the clear difference a few videos make in your lead generation strategy and delivering more website traffic.
Find out more about Video Marketing
If you liked this article, and want to know more about using video to enhance your digital marketing, then feel free to speak directly with our video production experts. They can guide you on how to stay ahead of the pack, by helping you create the perfect digital video marketing for your business.
