How To Improve Your Lead Generation With Video Marketing
The goal of any marketing campaign is, in the long run, to generate more leads and drive new sales. Practice shows that video content is far more engaging in these respects than typical text ads. However, even if you actively use video as a part of your marketing toolset, chances are you don’t squeeze everything you can out of them. In this article, we will show a few video marketing techniques and approaches that will help you use your content to its full potential.
1. Gated Videos
Videos are much more likely to be perceived as valuable content than articles – no matter how well-written it is. Therefore, gating videos is a viable way of collecting contact the information of your potential clients.
After you’ve piqued their interest in content that leads up to this video (e.g., a detailed explainer video or a product demo), you gate the access to it. It will both create leads and let you check how many viewers will give you their contacts. It is a helpful way of evaluating the quality of your top-of-funnel content.
The simplest way to gate a video is to include a subscription form offering to send a link to it. The advantage of this approach is that you don’t just know how many people are watching your content and how many times. You get access to individual watching history which helps personalization. It also helps you draw conclusions from large-scale customer behavior.
2. Carefully Placed Calls to Action
There is much more to the call to action than just a phrase at the end of an article. Video content allows it to be used both flexibly and creatively in this regard. One variant is YouTube annotations that you can strategically place anywhere and anywhen in your video. Through them, your viewers can effortlessly subscribe to your channel.
You can also link them to content related to the video or to the page where you sell a relevant product or service. Another option is to add a CTA in the form of a subscription form directly into the video. If the viewer sees it immediately after watching a video, s/he is much more likely to subscribe.
Of course, before you can strategically scatter CTAs across your video you may need to work with it a little bit. Cut some parts, convert MOV to MP4 or vice versa with a tool like Movavi Video Converter, and in general make it presentable.
You may also want to read this, by Julian Goldie: Land High DR Backlinks WITH Video Outreach
3. Video Landing Pages
Using video as a centerpiece of your landing page is a much more effective use of resources than just adding it to random pages of your website. The reason is simple – landing pages are designed for conversion, to begin with. They are therefore light on distractions like sidebars and navigation.
Your viewers will be more likely to fully concentrate on the video and watch it to the end without having their attention wander off. In addition to that, you have more space to place your opt-in forms.
There are many excellent examples of video landing pages. Study them, understand why they work and try to do something along the same lines.
4. Video Testimonials
Normally, testimonials contain a photo, a name and a phrase or two praising your product.
However, unscrupulous businesses too often write them themselves and stick stock photos on top. As a result, traditional testimonials don’t look very credible these days, and few people pay attention to them.
Video testimonials, however, aren’t used nearly as often, and still, have a lot of social proof value.
A visitor sees a real person talking about a problem similar to what s/he experiences right now and how your product solved it, is much more likely to feel an emotional connection and convert.
One example of video testimonials done right is CodeAcademy There is a video of their course’s alumni telling their success stories accompanied by a few dozens authentically-looking textual ones. A visitor naturally views the video and can get additional info from the text if necessary.
5. Video Case Studies
These are similar to testimonials but provide a more in-depth view of the problem. They are usually professional-looking because they concentrate not on a single problem but on a situation encountered by a company or an organization. They tell a story of how your product (service, method) improved this situation or helped them solve their problem, with statistical and factual information to prove it.
When you are trying to persuade your prospect to sign up – be it for a trial run or a consultation – showing real results achieved by a real business can go a long way to influence his decision.
DoubleDutch does it right – they are excellent at introducing individual characters into their case studies to make their videos less lecture-like and more engaging and interesting.
According to the social proof concept, we are more likely to be persuaded by people whom we perceive to be similar to ourselves. Therefore:
- B2B companies should concentrate on case studies
- B2C will get more out of testimonials.
6. Guiding and Redirecting Users to Your Other Content
No video should exist in isolation from the rest of your content.
Normally a person viewing the video on the Internet tends to go with the flow:
- Watch a video
- Get distracted by another one in a sidebar
- Click it and forget all about the first.
You should keep the viewer’s attention and lead him to your other content. The more value s/he derives from it, the more likely s/he is to remember you and come back later. Before the video ends, redirect the viewer to another piece of relevant content. (Another video, social media account, a product page). Don’t expect him to look for the information. Instead, anticipate his needs and guide him to solutions.
Video Marketing Takeaways
Video marketing gives businesses a lot of flexibility and creative freedom. Yet many companies are still very conservative in the ways they use it. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Run A/B tests of your different approaches. You will surely find highly effective ways of both using your existing video content and creating something new!
You may also want to read: How to Inspire Emotional Engagement With Video Marketing
Featured image: Copyright: ‘https://www.123rf.com/profile_theromb‘ / 123RF Stock Photo
David Gutierrez
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