People are expected to drop off your sales funnel as it gets narrower. However, you should strive to keep the number of leaks as small as possible. Which may seem hard to do since you can’t control customers’ minds… yet!
But don’t worry, you can go for the next best thing: putting in place a robust video marketing strategy that guides your potential buyers down your funnel every step of the way.
You see, with the right information in the right stage, customers can progressively keep moving down your sales funnel! And video content allows you to deliver that in the best possible way.
The thing is, each stage of the process involves different marketing goals. So, each one can benefit from different types of video to get the job done.
Today, we are going through some of the types favored by skilled video companies, which can help make your customer’s funnel experience as enjoyable as it is effective. Let’s check them out!
Awareness Stage
At the top of your sales funnel, you will be targeting a broad audience.
These people have just realized they have a problem and want to find out more about it. Potential customers are trying to get informative content that can help them understand their pain-point better.
They aren’t thinking about buying anything yet, so if you reached them with a sales pitch… they are likely to ignore it. Instead, you should attract people to your funnel by focusing on videos covering information they may search for, or find on social media ads.
Educational Videos
Having buyers searching the web for information about their pain-points gives you a perfect chance to rank higher in SERPs and grab their attention with educational video content.
This isn’t only a matter of building brand awareness, mind you. It’s also about making you look like a total pro on your field! You see, your audience is out there looking for answers, and it has a tremendous value to be the one that sheds light on their problems. Well… at least that’s what happens when your educational video is good.
What do I mean by good? I mean: entertaining, understandable, and that it revolves around relevant information that can genuinely help viewers with their pain-points.
Oh! And one that doesn’t try to sell anything outright!
I know it may sound tempting to talk about your products or services in these videos, but people clicked to educate themselves, not to buy. So, they won’t expect nor enjoy any kind of bait-and-switch.
Commercial Videos or Ads
Maybe you don’t have time to wait for your educational videos to rank organically in SERPs, and you need to attract people to your funnel now. In that case, you can combine Commercials with paid ads on social media to drive visitors to you.
Commercials can get new customers familiar with your brand as well as reinforcing brand awareness on existing customers. They tend to be short videos of about 30 seconds or less, that aim to spark interest in your brand.
Remember that I told you educationals shouldn’t promote anything? Well, with commercial videos, it’s the other way around. They are clearly promotional in nature. However, during the awareness stage, they tend to focus more on your overall brand than on a given product.
That usually makes them effective at creating a strong impression on viewers. Doubly so when they make use of powerful audiovisual resources and narrative.
Consideration Stage
Ok, potential clients that reach the middle of your funnel have already understood their problems. Now they are out to look for potential solutions!
They’ll start exploring their options ― your product or service included ― and sorting them out. They want to make an informed decision, so they’ll visit your website to learn more about your products or services in detail.
At this stage, your mission is to provide these potential clients with content that allows them to do precisely that. Here are two types of videos that can do the trick!
Explainer Videos
There’s no better way of providing customers with perspective about your products than with an explainer video.
Explainers describe your value proposition to your audience in a compelling way. They use storytelling to showcase your audience’s pain-points in context, as well as why and how your company can help them.
Believe it or not, effective explainers manage to convey all that in about 90 seconds by condensing information using a three-act structure. In fact, explainers ― especially when animated ― tend to be really easy to understand even when targeting the most complex topics!
Some explainers are better in storytelling than others. The best ones out there are those that succeed at telling a story that the target audience can genuinely relate to. That way, viewers can picture your company being the right solution for them.
Product Videos
I guess when buyers get to your website, they can find images and information about your products or services. But let’s face it: that may not be enough to give them a full scope of what you are offering. That’s a big problem since they may be reluctant to place their trust in a product they don’t fully understand, especially if they are buying online.
But don’t fret! That can be avoided by adding at least a product video to the mix! These videos showcase your product or service’s features and how it works, giving viewers a closer insight into their problem-solving potential.
Now, the most effective product videos tend to be the ones that show a product in action. But it should be done within the context that your target audience would use them. That way, they can see themselves benefiting from it.
Decision Stage
This is the stage you were waiting for! Some potential customers have reached the bottom of your funnel and are a step away from buying. They’ve sorted out similar solutions and selected yours as a potential one, but there may be things keeping them from taking the leap and purchase.
So, your job at this stage is to clear up any doubt they may have and elicit confidence in your brand or products to facilitate decision-making.
Testimonial Videos
If your buyers have never closed a sale with your company before, they may be concerned about doing so for the first time. In those cases, no other type of content comes as handy as testimonial videos!
These videos aim to build confidence in your brand and the solutions it provides. They accomplish it by showing former customers speaking about their problems and how your company helped them solve it.
Your audience is aware any content your company produces is biased. But testimonial videos don’t give that impression because they involve an outsider, which makes them more reliable.
Let me get something clear, though: authentic testimonial videos are reliable. Those other testimonials that are acted, or scripted, or heavily edited, don’t tend to spark a bit of trust. On the contrary, they take a toll on the brand’s credibility.
So, whenever you work on these videos, start by finding genuine, happy customers that can to share their story.
FAQ Videos
Some buyers have specific doubts about your product or service or your company’s policies. Sometimes that prevents them from finally closing the sale.
Finding a FAQ video on your website or social accounts can do away with those doubts and convince them to make the transaction.
The idea here is to provide dynamic and clear answers to the most common questions you receive. These responses can benefit viewers that may be wondering the same things.
The focus of a FAQ video isn’t selling, though, but helping clients. The selling part comes naturally as a progression of having well-informed potential customers.
As a general good practice, try to always display the questions in the video’s description and pair them with a time-mark. That enhances the audience’s experience since they can go straight to the answers that interest them.
Parting Thoughts
That you should understand your target audience pretty much goes without saying. But what often comes to mind with that sentiment are things like our audience’s age, gender, preferences, etc. And we leave out an equally vital aspect: their stage on our sales funnel!
By identifying this critical factor, you get to understand which information your audience is ready to receive, and how to give it to them in the best possible way!
Videos can help a lot when it comes to moving leads down your sales funnel, but each stage benefits from different types of videos. So, use the information you read here to craft more effective video-powered sales funnels that adapt to each stage’s content needs.
You won’t be disappointed with the results!
