Using video marketing to produce more leads for your sales funnel is a terrific approach to do it.

It can help you build a stronger brand image, improve customer relationships, and ultimately increase revenue.

As a result, knowing how to come up with strategic thought leadership video ideas at each level of the funnel is crucial to your success.

In 2021, “thought leadership” will be defined as anyone who is a trusted voice in their community. Anyone can have an opinion, but a thought leader is someone who has years of experience in a subject and has established a reputation for being well-informed.

A thought leader is a clear communicator, both in terms of technical speaking and in terms of the ideals they represent.

When it comes to social media and the digital world, the ultimate trust builder is video. It’s been crucial in supporting thought leaders in delivering their messages with confidence and reaching out to a larger audience via social media.

Here in this article, we will tell you some important tips you should consider while improving your sales funnel with thought leadership videos. 

What is a Thought Leadership Video?

Thought leadership videos include

• keynote speeches,
• webinars,
• interviews with industry professionals.

A thought leadership video has one important function and that is to spread a new notion or idea that educates the audience and adds value to them. So, only industry experts are eligible to produce thought leadership videos because they can enhance their audience remarkably.

The function of a thought leadership video is to spread a new notion or idea that educates the audience and adds value to them.

Thought leadership video is usually top-of-funnel content. The most popular and effective thought leadership videos motivate people to take action and evaluate their own techniques.

What Are the Ways to Keep the Prospects within the Funnel?

A sale is made when a prospect completes all of the processes in the conversion funnel.

Whether you’re selling clothes or cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, you have a lot of options to keep the prospects within the funnel. Here are some strategies to retain the leads you’ve generated in the funnel and increase user acquisition:

• Creating both visual and textual UX content that is easy to understand
• Making the funnel’s steps easy to follow
• Adding intent popups to keep your leads from leaving your website
• Taking advantage of newsletters, email marketing, and SMS marketing
• Cross-promotion of your products or services across many social media platforms
• Using video marketing strategies even if you have a small business

Advantages of Thought Leadership Videos

These high-level, top-of-funnel videos are ideal for any company trying to position itself as an industry leader.

There is a high potential that people like to share your videos with their friends. You can make your videos accessible on social media to facilitate this process for your video viewers. Therefore, you may generate more leads for your sales funnel and boost your sales. 

In addition, thought leadership videos can help establish your brand identity and build community by driving dialogue and participation.

How Thought Leadership Videos Can Impact a Sales Funnel?

Thought leadership videos can reinforce your brand identity as well as impact your business sales funnel if properly prepared.

Being a thought leader has the added benefit of allowing you to use live streaming to boost your sales revenue.

If you’re new and concerned about viewers, you need to do a bit of cross-promotion and advertising.

People that listen to you and love your content on a regular basis will want to learn more from you on whichever platform you use.

How to Generate Video Ideas for Thought Leadership Topics?

As a new thought leader, you may be looking for ideas to make more creative videos. Here we have provided several solutions:

1. Use Google

A short search on Google will help you uncover industry trends and provide you with topics to chat about when the camera is turned on.

You can understand what other leaders in your industry are talking about and what your buyer persona loves most to hear about.

Then, you should add your own knowledge and creativity to make a unique and innovative thought leadership video idea. 

2. Use a Keyword Research Tool

Use a simple keyword research tool to see which video topic is more popular once you’ve found some specialized talking points. So, you can concentrate your efforts on themes that are often searched for and become more visible quickly.

3. Check for Your Audience’s Opinion

Make use of your audience to generate video topics for your thought leadership videos.

Encourage them to ask you questions about the needs of the industry or solutions they need to get rid of their difficulties. 

Basically, when people ask you questions, they are both fueling and consuming the stuff you create. Solicit feedback from viewers on what’s on their thoughts so you can identify hot themes.

Instagram’s story polls are a great way for businesses to learn more about their customers.

Types of Thought Leadership Videos

From a simple talking head to repurposing a keynote speech, thought leadership videos come in a variety of formats. Continue reading to discover the most popular sorts of thought leadership videos, as well as some of the great thought leadership videos we could uncover.

1. Talking-Head Videos

The simplest way to create any video is using a tripod and a single speaker, which is very effective for presenting educational content.

So, you don’t need many human resources to create a talking-head video.

What is a talking-head video?

One person speaks directly to the camera in a talking-head video to explain a topic or fresh idea.

To make your talking-head videos more interesting, feel free to add GIFs, texts, B-roll footage, animations, or other visuals.

Here is an example of a talking-head video:

2. Fireside Chat 

A casual Q&A-style or AMA-style (ask-me-anything) interview with another expert or leading voice in your profession is referred to as a fireside chat.

The chat can be filmed live in front of an audience, live-streamed, or classically recorded for web distribution.

Producing Q&A and AMA videos can show the level of your expertise to your audience. Provide professional but succinct responses to the likely or true queries your audience has asked you so far.

If there is no good idea behind a Q&A or AMA video, it may be uninteresting. However, you can be creative and make them entertaining and engaging.

Look at how Hannah Kemp uses Q&A video:

3. Keynote Speech 

On YouTube, recorded copies of live keynote speeches are quite popular, and they are regularly shared on Facebook and LinkedIn.

So, this type of video is a great way to leverage your LinkedIn.

A single speaker usually gives a prepared speech, which is often accompanied by a presentation.

It’s possible to make a keynote speech video by recording presentations at a live event or conference.

Feel free to optimize your video for different platforms, or even add titles, music, and slides.

Here is an example:

4. Panel Discussion

Panel discussions can be recorded in the same way that keynote speeches can.

As panel discussions or webinars are often lengthy, make sure to condense the information into a concise, easily digestible format that will appeal to your newly generated leads. You can always direct your target audience to the full version of your recorded webinar.

Watch this webinar example:

5. Video Podcast

Education is the second most popular podcasting genre after comedy. So, thought leadership is a good fit for any business podcast.

Simply record a video version of your podcast from the start. This way, you’ll have two versions of your thought leadership idea; one in audio and one in video format.

6. Vlog

A vlog is a video that contains one person presenting their point of view or experience. Someone who can get on camera and speak confidently, and who never runs out of things to say, is the secret to a great vlog.

Vlogs range in quality from high-end production to shaky webcam recordings. If you’re short on time and need to develop new content, this might be the best solution.

Here is a vlog example:

How to Increase the Views of Your Thought Leadership Videos?

One great way to increase the views of your thought leadership videos is to share and promote them on social media platforms especially Facebook and Instagram that are popular visual platforms. Here are some of the tips to bear in mind while promoting your videos on social media:

• In order for your video to go viral, it must be shareable. Consider why your audience would want to share your video with their friends.
• You will lose your audience if you do not hook them in the first frame. Social media usage is viciously swift so you should keep your videos short.
• Choose a video thumbnail for your videos.
• Simply share your video on each social media platform. Don’t do it on a video platform like YouTube and then post a link to it on Facebook. (thankfully you cannot add a link to Instagram posts!)
• Write a video description into your videos that fit within the character limits of that social media platform.
• Your videos should be meaningful even when their sound is off because the majority of users are on their phones and are unlikely to turn on the sound.
• Include a CTA phrase so that you can achieve your video marketing goal. 

Moreover, if you want to stand out in your niche, you can make great use of the Instagram Live feature which is a great way to influence and engage your followers remarkably. 

Conclusion

It is totally up to you to choose any strategy to keep your generated leads within your sales funnel.

Thought leadership video marketing strategy is an effective way to promote yourself as a leader in the industry and gain more leads for your products and services.

You will enjoy more sales which require you to use accounting software to keep track of your expenses and revenues.

The above tips can help you in adopting this strategy correctly. Wish you the best of luck!

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About the author

I am Parichehr Parsi, co-founder of SEO Builders, and a freelance content creator and link builder. I currently write for digital marketing websites. I love reading, writing, and doing research.