Since you’re here, it’s safe to say you know how effective video content is at keeping consumers engaged and primed for purchase.

And you’re not alone.

In fact, according to a recent report from Wyzowl, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and 93% of marketers say video is an important part of their content marketing strategy.

Of course, for such video content to be effective, it needs to have a solid strategy behind it. This means creating video content that:

• Is relevant to your customers’ needs and expectations
• Delivers specific value to audience segments and individual customers
• Enables viewers to take the next steps in their journey with your brand

In addition to benefiting your customers, this also leads to business growth. As Epsilon Marketing found, delivering relevant, tailored, and even personalized content makes the average consumer 80% more likely to make a purchase in the near future. In contrast, delivering irrelevant content will make you seem indifferent to your audience’s needs — which will have a major negative impact on their perception of your brand.

The good news here — as we’ve discussed before — is that video can be used in a number of ways at each stage of the customer lifecycle. 

The four stages of a video marketing funnel. Source

In this article, we’ll dig into the most effective ways to use video content throughout the sales cycle to engage and convert your customers. As we dig in, we’ll take a look at some key examples of brands “doing video right” — and discuss exactly why their approach was so effective.

Let’s get started.

Awareness Stage: Using Video to Attract New Leads

When targeting brand new sales leads (i.e., those in the Awareness stage of the sales cycle), you have two main goals — each of which can be accomplished through the strategic use of video content.

These goals:

• Make the prospect aware of a problem they’re facing
• Showcase your brand’s overarching value
• Get the prospect to take their first “official” steps with your brand

Bringing Awareness to a Problem

First, you need to make your new prospects aware that they have a problem — and help them take their first steps toward overcoming it.

The fact is, your potential customers likely don’t even realize they have a problem in the first place. Or, they may know they have a problem, but aren’t aware of how much of an impact it’s having on their business or their life.

In either case, video content allows you to quickly bring this problem to the surface — and just as quickly deliver the information needed to start working toward a solution.

Marketing guru Neil Patel provides perhaps the perfect example of how to use video content here:

Even the title is perfect:

“5 Beginner SEO Mistakes That Are Ruining Your Website Traffic And What You Should Do Instead”

In one fell swoop (and a quick, five-minute video), Patel shows beginner site runners what they’re probably doing wrong when it comes to SEO, and what they need to do to fix it.

Showcase Your Brand’s Value

Note that this initial content doesn’t necessarily promote the brand, per se — although it certainly can.

In fact, Patel does use video content to introduce his audience to Crazy Egg’s heat map tool.

Here, Patel positions his tool as complementary to other analytics tools — explaining the specific value his tool brings to the table. 

Basically, the idea here is to show viewers just what they’ve been missing out on up until this moment, as well as what they have to look forward to should they continue engaging with your brand.

At Wave.Video, we take a similar approach, introducing the many features our tool offers that our audience has likely been missing out on.

Because your potential customers aren’t yet engaged with your brand (and may be just hearing about it for the first time ever), you’ll want to present these videos on your more public channels.

This includes:

• YouTube (as shown in the examples above)
• Social media posts
• Your website

For example, Wave.Video’s homepage includes a video explaining the overarching functions of our services — and the value it provides our customers.

In some cases, you might create targeted social media ads that include this introductory video content. For example, if targeting lookalike audiences, this more generalized content will likely be enough to pique their interest and get them to engage further with your brand.

Taking Their First “Official” Steps

Speaking of further engagement, your video content should always prompt your viewers to do something once the video ends. 

At this preliminary stage, you’ll want them to do one of two things (or, ideally, both):

• Check out more in-depth content that showcases your brand’s value
• Register for your mailing list, subscribe to your channel, or follow your social media pages

As mentioned above, this step will mark the “official” beginning of their relationship with your brand — signaling you to start ramping things up on an individual level.

Consideration Stage: Ramping Up Engagement Through Video

The Consideration stage of the buyer’s journey is where your prospects will…consider…whether or not to do business with your company.

That said, you’ll be looking to accomplish three key tasks here:

• Provide a more in-depth introduction to your brand and your brand’s services
• Build trust and deepen engagement within your new prospects
• Nurture your prospects toward their first purchase

Introducing Your Brand

Though your prospects may already have a general idea of what you do and what you offer, here’s where you’ll really be hammering home what your brand is “all about”.

Take this video from Canva, aptly titled “Introducing Canva”:

This short video quickly explains:

• What Canva is
• Who the team at Canva aims to serve
• Why the team has dedicated their professional lives to this purpose

Generally speaking, Canva’s target audience will know by the end of this video that Canva offers the value they’re looking for — and can now focus on the more nitty-gritty aspects of their purchasing decision.

Now, you can also use your “Welcome” video to showcase your brand’s personality (along with the value you provide your target audience).

Purple Mattress’ video, “Does Your Mattress Pass The Human Egg Drop Test?”, accomplishes both perfectly:

In taking a humorous (okay, downright zany) approach, Purple’s introductory video showcases not just the value of its product, but the “human” side of their team, too. This creates a memorable experience for their prospects — leading to improved brand recall from the early stages of the relationship.

On that note, it’s important to point out that these introductory videos are best used during the second stage of the sales cycle, rather than the first.

The reason being, your viewers at this stage will be much more invested in learning about your brand now than they were at the Awareness stage.

(Think about it: Would you watch a video about a brand you’d just heard about before you know anything else about them? And before they’d provided you with something of value?)

Building Trust and Ramping Up Engagement

As we said earlier, you’ll also be looking to ramp up engagement at this stage of the game.

The key to doing so:

Pile on the value, focusing on the specific needs of your new prospects as you learn more about them.

Dropbox, for example, offers video content explaining how specific types of users can take advantage of their services.

Many SaaS companies have taken to creating whiteboard explainer videos to deliver step-by-step instructions revolving around a specific use case for their product.

It’s also important to point your viewers toward additional resources through your video content, as well. ProfitWell, for example, provides links to relevant blog posts and other such content within its ProfitWell Reports:

Nurturing Toward the First Conversion

Though you won’t necessarily be doing much selling just yet, you can still use video content to showcase the value of your brand’s specific products or services at this stage.

Saddleback Leather, for example, provides an in-depth look at its Satchel Purse — complete with an explanation of its value and unique selling points.

Delivery Channels for Consideration Stage Videos

At this point, you’ll be looking to reach specific prospects with specific needs (as opposed to targeting your entire audience en masse). 

With that in mind, you’ll want to be a bit more focused in how you deliver your video content.

The go-to channel for delivering this content: Email.

In some cases, you’ll want to embed your video content directly into your marketing emails:

Or, you might use email to point the recipient to a specific landing page or YouTube URL:

Either way, it’s crucial to segment your audience appropriately, delivering video content that’s laser-focused on their needs, interests, and expectations using different marketing tools and channels to distribute your A+ content. While you don’t need to create fully personalized videos at this stage, you should have relevant video content prepared to engage your different audience members in various ways.

CTAs for Consideration Stage Videos

Your call-to-action at the Consideration stage will typically focus on further engagement.

Whether pointing viewers toward additional content or more in-depth information on a specific product or service, the goal is to prepare them to make a purchasing decision in the not-so-distant future.

Decision Stage: Improving Sales with Video Content

At this point, you’ve:

• Introduced your new prospect to your company
• Delivered value to them in the form of helpful content
• Showcased your premium products or services to them

Now, it’s time to get them to become paying customers.

While this is your ultimate goal, here, you’ll still need to accomplish a few things to make it happen.

Addressing Concerns and Frequently Asked Questions

First, you’ll need to address any questions or concerns your potential customers may have about your brand. 

Organifi, for example, created a series of Facebook Ads including videos that addressed:

• The brand’s overall unique selling proposition
• The rationale behind the higher-than-average price of the product
• The juice’s flavor — along with an offer for a free sample

While Organifi delivered these videos via Facebook Ads, you might decide to use email in a similar fashion. Basically, those who don’t convert after the first video will be shown the second, and so on until they’ve made a decision.

You’ll also want to use video to relay information in a visually engaging way when addressing some of the more technical questions your prospects may have about your products.

Typically, this content will revolve around demonstrating how your product works, or how to accomplish a specific task with your product.

Including these videos within your knowledge base as a complement to the text-based info presented will lead to higher engagement rates and make your prospect’s purchasing decision just that much easier.

Source

Differentiating Your Products or Services (and Your Brand)

Another key task at the Decision stage is to differentiate your product (and your overall brand) from your competitors.

In taking the more direct route, you can present video content comparing your product to others in your industry.

Here, your video might include:

• A point-by-point breakdown of your product’s main features
• A deep dive into a specific feature based on audience interest/need
• A comparison of your “average” customer’s results compared to your competitors

If you don’t want to specifically compare your product to others, you can also opt to present video case studies or customer testimonials.

Within this content, you’ll want the customer to:

• Discuss their experiences with your product (and overall brand)
• Explain what you’ve helped them accomplish
• Discuss the goals they have for the future now that they’ve overcome their initial challenge

Though not necessary, you might have the customer discuss how your brand was better able to help them achieve their goals than their previous option(s).

Making an Initial Sale

Finally, you’ll be looking to seal the deal by delivering the perfect offer to your prospective customers.

Within these videos, you’ll want to make clear:

• What the customer will get
• What the customer’s options are (e.g., tiers of service, etc.)
• What your price points are (and what the customer’s payment options are)

Again, it’s best to create multiple videos for your various audience segments — even when focusing on the same product. Since each audience will have different needs, use cases, and financial expectations, you’ll want to have video content prepared for each of these situations.

In some cases — such as with B2B companies — you may even create personalized sales videos tailored to your individual prospects.

Delivering Decision Stage Videos

Since your Decision stage videos will be targeted to specific individuals (and not a broad audience), email should be your primary delivery channel. 

But, it’s also important to showcase these videos throughout your website, on pages where customers in the Decision stage will be, such as:

• Knowledge base pages (for in-depth demonstrations and explanations)
• Landing pages (for case studies and promotional offers)
• Product pages (for product comparisons and demos)

Decision Stage CTAs

As for a call-to-action, you have three options:

• Prompt viewers to contact customer support for more information
• Prompt them to contact your sales team to get the buying process started
• Prompt them to make a purchase directly

At this point, you’ll have given them more than enough info to allow them to make a purchasing decision. Ideally, they’ll take you up on your offer — and will officially become a paying customer.

Retention Stage: Keeping Customers Onboard Using Video

Of course, once you’ve gotten a customer to convert, you want to keep them onboard for as long as possible.

In order to retain your customers, you’ll need to:

• Onboard and activate them
• Acknowledge and celebrate their growth as time goes on
• Get them to engage even further with your brand as they experience success

Once again, video content plays a huge role in accomplishing each of these tasks.

Onboarding Your New Customers

Throughout the onboarding process, you should have video content prepared for a variety of purposes.

For one, you can use video to effectively welcome them to your community — and set their expectations moving forward. Here, you’ll paint a picture of their future experiences with your brand, along with the future successes to be had.

At #PeabodyWelcome18 Orientation, we asked new students an important question: Why did you choose @VanderbiltU Peabody College? #Watch this #video to hear the wide range of responses we received! https://t.co/nqOxdrft1Q pic.twitter.com/W2CGZ7uD95

— Peabody College (@vupeabody) September 17, 2018

Getting more specific, you’ll also want to deliver in-depth instructional videos, allowing your new customers to get the absolute most out of the products or services they’ve purchased. These can be similar (or identical) to the videos within your knowledge base, being delivered specifically to individual users as necessary.

For software or app products, you can deliver these videos directly within the user’s interface at the appropriate moment. For example, if a new user clicks on a feature or function for the first time, a quick explainer video can help orient them and get them started on the right foot.

Otherwise, you can develop email drip campaigns, using video to provide sequential instructional content.

(You should also make these video series freely available on your website, YouTube, and elsewhere, allowing your more eager customers to engage with them without delay.)

Acknowledging Your Customer’s Progress

As your new customers become acclimated with your services — and begin to experience success — you’ll want to reach out to acknowledge their progress. 

Here, you might develop video content that includes dynamic text detailing individual user stats and specs.

You can also celebrate time-based milestones, such as birthdays and brand anniversaries, to keep your new customers engaged. Again, dynamic video content can personalize these engagements — and show your new customers just how much they mean to you.

Video can also be an effective way to announce progress on your end to your audience, too. Whether you’ve made improvements to your product, added a new sales channel, or reached a financial milestone, video can help you celebrate your big win and explain to your audience what it means for them.

Ramping Up Engagement Even Further

On top of simply retaining your customers, you should aim to get them even more engaged with your brand as time goes on. This may mean:

• Upselling your customers on advanced products
• Cross-selling products that complement their initial purchase
• Increasing their engagement and purchase frequency

Here, you can use video as you had throughout the previous stages:

• Comparing advanced products to the current product being used
• Demonstrating specific use cases of the new product
• Showcasing success stories of customers who have upgraded their services

When targeting your individual customers for retention and growth, you’ll of course want to take a more personal route to delivering your video content. Again, email marketing should be your go-to solution — but you can also use targeted ads to deliver upsell offers and replenishment reminders.

Delivering Video Content for Retention

When making announcements that impact your entire audience (or audience segments), all channels — email, social media, website, YouTube, etc. — are on the table. Ideally, this content will not only keep your current customers engaged, but will also attract new clientele, as well.

Whatever the focus of your retention video content, your call-to-action should be to prompt viewers to try something new. It might mean trying a new service you’ve started offering, purchasing a new product, or simply checking out something you’ve always offered that they haven’t experienced yet.

In any case, the goal is for your current audience to become even more engaged with your brand — allowing you to deliver even more value to them in the future.

Using Video to Generate Referrals

It’s generally understood that referrals are the most effective way to generate new business.

So, it just makes sense to invest in creating engaging video content to help spur your referral marketing initiatives along.

More specifically, you’ll want to use video to:

• Explain how your referral program works to your current customers
• Help them effectively refer others in their network
• Help your brand go viral

Explaining Your Referral Program

No matter how simple your referral program is, it’s important to explain how it works to your audience. With video, you can quickly explain:

• How your customers can make referrals
• What new buyers need to do when making their first purchase
• What each party will get in return

These videos can be housed within the referral section of your website, or promoted on your various social media pages. You should also deliver your explainer video to those who sign up for your referral program to ensure they know how to proceed.

Soliciting User-Generated Content

Delivering video content to potential referred customers is also incredibly effective — but there’s a twist. 

Here, you’ll be asking your referring customers to create user-generated video content showcasing your brand’s products in action.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Strava (@strava)

Though you won’t be creating the videos yourself, you’ll want to provide guidelines to help your referring customers create the most engaging and impactful content possible.

Source

Your customers can then post the content they create on their own social media profiles — tagging your brand in their posts as appropriate.

Using Video to Go Viral

In addition to generating direct referrals from your customers, you should also be creating highly shareable video content that has the potential to go viral.

In some cases, emotionally-driven content can tug on the heartstrings of your audience — causing them to share your video with everyone they meet.

Or — like with Purple Mattresses and Dollar Shave Club — quirky content can end up spreading like wildfire:

You might even aim to go viral in a sort of niched-down way by creating highly valuable video content your audience simply can’t find elsewhere. Be it a live broadcast, webinar, or other in-depth, long-form content: If it’s helpful to your audience, you can be nearly certain they’ll share it with others in their network.

In the interest of going viral, you’ll want to present this video content wherever you possibly can — and be sure to make it shareable.

Referral Calls-to-Action

Your CTA depends on which approach you’re taking.

If promoting your referral program, you’ll want your viewers to officially sign up for it — and start telling their friends about your brand.

If soliciting user-generated videos, you’ll be prompting your audience to create and publish their content as appropriate — again being sure to tag your brand and share the content with others.

And, of course, your viral content should be easily shareable. In some cases, you may offer an incentive to those who share your video — such as entry into a drawing or contest of some sort.

In any case, your goal is to get your brand’s content in front of new eyes — and get these new prospects to take their first steps toward converting, themselves.

Reactivating At-Risk Customers with Video Content

When engagement dips, you need to act quickly to get your once-loyal customers back onboard.

Here, you’ll be using video content to:

• Re-engage with your at-risk customers
• Deliver more — and more relevant — value to them
• Collect feedback from those who are ready to move on

Using Video to Re-Engage At-Risk Customers

In some cases, your at-risk customers may have let your brand slip to the back of their minds.

Re-engaging these individuals might simply be a matter of reminding them of their experiences, and of what they’ve accomplished as patrons of your company.

Video can help you get the message across clearly and effectively.

This content should:

• Thank the customer for their continued support
• Discuss the progress they’ve made (via dynamic text, as discussed earlier)
• Provide one-time offers made just for them

It also might be the case that your at-risk customer isn’t getting the value they’d hoped for out of your products or services. In this case, you’ll want to deliver upsell or downsell offers that provide more relevant value to them.

Here, you can use the aforementioned product demos, comparison videos, and testimonial content that showcases the perfect option for the customer in question. If possible (and profitable), you may even create personalized video content for your high-value, at-risk customers to keep them onboard in some capacity.

Collecting Feedback from Nearly Churned Customers

In some cases, it will be clear that your once-loyal customers no longer wish to engage with your brand.

Whether they’ve been inactive for an extraordinary amount of time, or have actively requested that you cease contact, video can allow you to connect one last time to convey an emotional “thanks”, and to part ways on good terms. 

Though your churning customer is under no obligation to do so, you’ll want to take this opportunity to solicit feedback regarding their overall experience with your brand.

Here, you’ll use video to make the ask — then follow up with a text-based survey via email. Depending on the circumstances, you might provide a form for them to fill out, or may simply ask them to respond to your quick questions directly in the message.

Or, you could take a more lighthearted route, as HubSpot does in their “goodbye” video:

A Final Call-to-Action

Your CTA at this stage depends on what you’re looking to accomplish.

If you’re looking to re-engage the customer in any capacity, you’ll want to point them directly to their next purchase. Once you’ve made your offer, make it as easy as possible for them to take advantage of it.

If you’re looking to collect feedback before your customer churns for good, use your video to make an emotional and gracious plea. Then, point them toward the easiest and most efficient way for them to provide their comments before heading off for good.

Video Marketing: The Key to Delivering Value Throughout the Sales Cycle (and Closing More Deals)

Keeping your customers engaged and heading toward success is crucial to the success of your business.

And it requires more than just providing them with a killer product or service. You also need to deliver valuable and practical content to all customers throughout the sales cycle.

Yes, it’s important to deliver all types of content throughout the sales cycle. 

But video has proven to be the most effective way of keeping customers engaged and coming back for more.

Which is why Wave.video provides a host of video marketing tools for your company to take advantage of.

Ready to dig in? Sign up for free, and start ramping up your team’s video marketing efforts today.

About the author: Josh Brown is the Marketing Manager at Helpjuice. Helpjuice’ knowledge base solution makes it easy for your sales team to organize and manage content as well as to collaborate, ensuring that everyone on your team is in-the-loop.