Before getting started, let me briefly introduce myself: I’m Louise Brogan, the owner of Social Bee and the person who knows everything there is to know about LinkedIn and how to amplify your business via the social network.

I was recently approached by Wave.video to talk about how videos can help businesses land new clients via LinkedIn. We’ve had a great chat about the matter, yet for those of you who aren’t that keen on audio content, I’m sharing the key points from our discussion.

LinkedIn and Video Content

First and foremost, videos on LinkedIn are powerful: if other social platforms are filled with video content, so you have to work really hard to get through the noise, LinkedIn is a less crowded place for distributing video content. That’s why you should consider LinkedIn as a business-generation machine given you are sharing the right video content to the right people at the right time (think customer journey).

Image source

The number of people using LinkedIn has sharply gone up: because of the COVID-19 pandemic, in just 6 months, 60 mln new people joined the platform. And, as I mentioned, LinkedIn, unlike other social media networks, has much fewer content. So when you start sharing videos (and really, any other content type) on LinkedIn, it’s fairly easy to get a large share of visibility and attention. 

To maximize your videos’ efficiency on the platform, make sure to: 

• Add captions as many people are now accessing LinkedIn from their smartphones so the sound is normally off by default.
• Create overlays that structure the video by clarifying all the subsections.
• Keep the video short: although the maximum video length on LinkedIn is 10 minutes, this is way too long as people don’t normally sit for such length. Especially not new people. So, keep your video down to 60-90 seconds.
• Repurpose your videos and post to other platforms as well as from other platforms. One video asset can become the backbone of your omnichannel content strategy so expand the reach of your video content and, thus, your audience reach.

Which video types help to generate sales on LinkedIn? 

With LinkedIn, it’s not as much about video types as it’s about the content of your video. LinkedIn users react to educational customer-oriented video content. Essentially, this implies creating videos that address whatever questions your audience needs help with. 

So, define top questions about your industry, area of business, product/service, and create video content that answers them.

My experience shows that if you want to make a video attractive to new (potential) customers, it should have the following three elements:

• Explain
• Be nice and short
• Not overwhelm the audience 

Yet, if you want videos to push your audience towards a buying decision, you have to add something else to the mix, namely a sense of urgency. 

Fetching up a short video just to say that there are only a few hours left to get a bonus or special offeror can help to close the deal. This really works with B2C businesses, while with corporate clients, it’s all about a professionally created short video that demonstrates how you can help them and how they can benefit from you. 

What makes your LinkedIn sales videos work?

If a more amateur video content that’s rough around the edges will cut it for most social networks – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and more, – LinkedIn obeys by different rules. 

I’ve pinpointed three key ingredients that can help businesses turn a general video into a video that can “push” sales:

#1. Create a professional look

LinkedIn is a professional network so your potential customers will make a judgment about the quality of your business and services from the way you look. In our case, from the way your videos are created. So, by making your videos look more professional, you will get an edge over your competitors who might not be investing in small details that may help you present your business as superior to others. 

To make your LinkedIn videos look more professional, add extra touches like:

• Adding appealing graphics and text – the visual component is impactful.
• Creating a brand experience: your brand should be recognizable, so consistency is important whether you are dealing with logo, overlays, or choosing a background shade.
• Including a CTA which indicates to viewers what they should do next.

An example of a video CTA from Wave.video LinkedIn page

#2. Follow quid pro quo logic

If you want to accelerate the purchasing decision, you have to address any kind of concerns your potential customers face before they take the final step. And videos are the perfect tool for this – try to create and share as much video content as possible covering your business/product/service from every angle.

#3. Learn about your customers

To make your “sales pitch” effective, you have to know your customers: their concerns, challenges, pain points, motivational triggers, and so on. 

You can, of course, go through Twitter to Facebook, blog to blog, forum to forum in search of this information, yet you can use LinkedIn itself to gather some insights:

• LinkedIn Polls is a useful feature that allows you to ask your audience what they want to know about, what’s most important for them in your business or service, and so on. The answers you receive can become great content idea generators for your videos. 

LinkedIn Polls Tip: With polls, I have a “trick” I’ll share with you – add an “other – let me know below” option among others to drive more engagement within the comments.

• You can use videos to ask your audience a question. A simple selfie-like question from a business representative can help to create engagement and show people that you care and listen.People like to be heard and get involved with the conversation which, in turn, helps businesses build stronger relations with clients and bring in sales.

Keep in mind: not everybody is for you – you cannot land every client that’s out there, you have to find the one that’s truly yours.

How to build an effective video-based sales funnel?

The core idea behind turning mere viewers into buyers is about creating a video-based sales funnel. 

With videos, when people see you on screen, you create a unique connection no sales page can build. And this is the very first step of the funnel when people just view your video on social media. But what you really want is to land them onto your email list. Once people sign up for your emails, they are more likely to pay attention to your offer.

There are plenty of ways to convert viewers into email subscribers, yet I’ve defined the most efficient tactic for this:

• You can fetch up a video telling people you are starting a challenge, webinar, private Q&A session, and more. Then, you tell people that if they want to “book a spot” to watch the full webinar/session or participate in the challenge, they can share their email addresses with you to get the unique link and reminder. 
• Then, once the webinar/session/challenge is over, you can send them more sales-y offers. After receiving valuable and informative content, people are more likely to be positive about hearing you out. 
• When sending an email about your offer, it’s a great idea to employ videos once again – you can either create a video explanation about the product/service you are offering or even create a personalized video for each potential customer. The latter is not very overwhelming if you are creating limited-spots-programs, as the value of personalized content is something I shouldn’t spend time elaborating on.

Final words

All in all, videos are now the it-thing if you want to deliver and spread your message to the widest audience imaginable. And this is especially the case with LinkedIn, where you have less competition and typically less creative businesses to race against. So, try to make videos a part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy and be smart about it. In my turn, I hope I’ve given you enough fuel to start turning viewers into buyers on LinkedIn. 

Yet, if you have any questions – feel free to ask them in the comments below or join my LinkedIn Learner’s Lab for further insights about LinkedIn marketing.