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By 2021, video is going to make up over 80% of traffic. This leaves businesses without video marketing efforts the arduous task of adapting to a new media for their content marketing strategy. Thankfully, with the latest video creation tools, organizations are now able to mass-produce videos that can be personalized to the end-user. So, the technology is there, but, organizations will still have to undergo a complete transformation of their end-to-end marketing strategy.
Videos will (eventually) be used in every step of the buyer’s journey, from acquisition to retention. Here’s how your organization can benefit from using videos at the different touchpoints of the buyer’s journey:
To sum it up, the buyer’s journey is the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to their purchase. The journey consists of buyer becoming aware of a need, considering the different solutions to fulfill that need, and making a decision off of their research.
It’s pretty straightforward, inbound marketers are familiar with the three phases of the journey, and the types of content to create to help guide the buyers. Here’s Hubspot’s Buyer Journey map:
This Buyer’s Journey Map is a great way to have a 30,000-foot view of what a marketing department should be focusing on to acquire and convert new leads successfully.
What isn’t mentioned in the graph is the post-decision (also known as the retention) phase; where you should be actively communicating with your leads (using CRMs or a similar tool), creating a great customer experience that will secure renewals and upsells, improve your Net Promoter Score, and build customer loyalty.
Before you begin creating any type of content, it’s a good practice to build empathy maps to have a better understanding of your users.
Have your team build out several different personas and incorporate market research and data to help understand your client’s pain points. This will help you figure out what kind of content your team should be producing and how to use it at different touchpoints.
Here’s what an (extremely simple) empathy map looks like:
Ultimately, you’re looking to touch base with your customers before, during, and after a sale is made. There are a plethora of ways to communicate with your audience. Here are a few:
Using the outlets mentioned above will help get consistent traffic and sales. When businesses establish their voice and tone and have different personas set from empathy maps; then they can map out the content for their buyers’ journey and start thinking on how to use video.
Why video? Well, out of all the types of content, videos are guaranteed to get more conversions — significantly more than blog, ebooks, and whitepapers.
Video has already proved itself to be the king of content. The real issue that businesses face is coming up with a video marketing strategy that is uniform, scalable, and consistent.
Previously, it would’ve taken a significant amount of resources to create videos for businesses. Chances are it would’ve been one video produced for every segment with the hopes that the one video would be enough to convert a user. This is where 1:1 video marketing come in. Mass producing videos that are unique to different segments and, once acquired, tailored to the individual.
For the awareness phase, your team should focus on creating videos that are meant to tell people about your brand’s products and services. These videos should be used in targeted video campaigns and social media ads.
You can utilize all those different types of videos on social, e-mails, and press releases to get more eyes to view your videos.
Explainer videos give a brief explanation of the problem a user is probably facing, then promote its brand, and provides information on all the services that the company offers.
As for larger brands, awareness-stage videos can include short movies, mini-documentary, and brand films. These typically require an agency or production company to make, so it might not be ideal for a small to medium-sized company.
Here’s a quick example of a brand video by Patagonia:
It’s a short documentary that inspires customers and builds awareness of the values and quality of the items from Patagonia. This video leads their potential customers to a site called WornWear, where customers can shop or donate Patagonia items.
The consideration phase is where a prospect has a clear idea of the problem and is analyzing the different means to solve the problems.
At this point, your goal is to differentiate your business from the competition while building a strong relationship with a well-segmented group of potential buyers.
By this point in a buyer’s journey, brands should have the e-mails of the potential buyers. With that data, it is best to send video content from an e-mail tool or CRM (Like MailChimp, Hubspot, or Marketo), through a newsletter.
When sending out videos via newsletters, ads, or CRM’s, it’s extremely important to be clear and informative on how the product offering addresses the needs of the customer. This is why it’s important to have empathy maps set up — as they will help answer questions almost before they’ve thought of it.
If you haven’t done so already at this point, it’s best to invest in retargeting pixels so your brand can remain at the top of customers’ minds. Those impressions throughout the web will allow a customer to feel like they are getting the best out of the bunch.
Remember, these are the videos that are going to help your brand stand out from competitors. So, give them a bit of life. Here’s a quick example of an About Us video by Moz that goes showcases its employees and culture.
This video is great for two reasons. It gives potential customers a deeper look at who they are doing business with, and it shows the passion that is put in to build a great product.
These types of videos are ideal in the consideration phase because it humanizes the brand and makes it feel like they are speaking directly to you.
This is decision time! At this point your potential customer knows about you, your competitors, your products, and is ready to choose a service.
They are ready to sign-up and go from warm lead to a paying client — but they still need just a bit more information before they continue.
Videos in the decision phase should be about establishing that last bit of rapport with a potential client and standing out as a thought leader in the space. Brands can gain that last bit of trust by using success stories and reviews about the company.
Here’s a hilarious testimonial video by the people over at Slack:
This video does a great job of finding a creative way to inform the audience of the problems it solves. They used a hilarious way of addressing the problem that blends well with its explanation of how Slack helped streamline their processes.
The oft-forgotten retention phase is where you can upsell, recommend new products and services, and thank customers for their trust and loyalty.
Brands show their customers the added value of their products and services by using videos to humanize the brand and build trust. Retention videos can be simple — like sending a video to celebrate a holiday or birthday— or can be informative content like feature updates and any kind of user education.
With personalized videos, brands have the ability to use data to create a video that is tailored to a customer’s interests, behaviors, and actions. A personalized approach has proved to be an effective method for repeat business.
Contact us at @NewTheoryMIA on Twitter for more details
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