A world-class product is not enough to boost sales. It’s the bare minimum required to stay in the competition. It’s the marketing strategy that decides whether your business succeeds or falls flat. Since marketing determines the future of your business you need a marketing tool that’s powerful and versatile.
A tool like video content would be the ideal choice to boost brand awareness, generate leads, increase sales, and delight customers. Not many will doubt the usefulness of video content at every stage of the sales process, but the question is how to use videos to close more deals.
Here are a few actionable ideas that’ll produce quick results.
The awareness stage: Grabbing attention
Video content has an innate trait to grab attention, which would come in handy in the initial stages of the sales process. But to have an impact on the audience you need to add a professional touch. A video editing company could greatly support you in creating an initial good impression of your brand.
Depending on your offering, a wide range of videos could be used to create brand awareness. In the case of ecommerce business, product unboxing, and product tour content are ideal video types to introduce the product to the audience. Businesses trying to sell a service or software have other, better options in the form of explainer videos or whiteboard videos.
Marketers can use video content to breathe life into services and products that are complex and hard to explain. Even complex topics could be broken into small videos allowing prospects to easily understand and recall your message.
Video content plays an important role in the initial stage of the sales process. Several tools allow you to record videos of product unboxing, product tour, or basic explainer videos.
Nike adapt BB
The simple unboxing video of the futuristic Nike self-lacing sneakers has all the ingredients of a fine unboxing video. The clean, uniform background is the best feature of the video. Flashy or two many elements of the background could distract the viewers. Instead, this simple gray background keeps the audience’s focus on the product.
The lead stage: Moving the deal forward
You have their attention, fine. What’s next? It’s time to convince the audience why your offering is different and why it’s better than others. In the previous stage, you managed to learn something about the target audience. Use the information to add personalized elements to the content. Ecommerce marketing is all about having a personal connection with the audience.
Consumers have certain expectations about a product. Plus, they have loads of queries and doubts as well. These expectations and queries form part of the sales interaction in a normal physical store.
In the absence of sales interaction, the vacuum can be filled by video content. Marketers can create videos that move the lead forward. This could be done by educating the audience about the features and functions of the products.
Barclay’s personalized lending video
This Barclay video takes personalized engagement to a new level by directly interacting with the viewer. The speaker also uses the lead’s name throughout the content making it personal. When the content is personalized, the video not only grabs attention, it makes the viewer retain the message longer. Plus, personalized videos encourage the viewers to take action.
The consideration stage: Earning the trust
The digital age is both a boon and a bane. Consumers have a lot more choices nowadays. This has also led to the problem of trust. When every brand advertises its product as the best in the market, it’s normal for consumers to have trust issues. Furthermore, with so many options, consumers nowadays show genuine interest in brands that they consider are trustworthy. In most cases, the absence of trust prevents prospects from taking the final step of becoming paying customers.
Videos help bridge the trust gap in several ways. Your approach would appear genuine and trustworthy by the inclusion of live videos, case study videos, and review and testimonial videos in your video marketing strategy.
Live videos are growing in popularity. Plus, several social media platforms are encouraging more and more live content. The reason is simple; live videos are less scripted and more authentic. It’s a lot easier for prospects to trust your brand if case study videos address the same pain points faced by the prospects.
Genuine testimonials where users share their experience of the product and how it solved their problem could be great advertising for your brand. Video testimonial brings out the user’s joy and emotion which text content can’t convey to the audience.
HubSpot’s testimonial advisement
The video advertisement showcases what authenticity and creativity can do for a brand. The video shows the founder of Endless Entertainment (one of HubSpot’s clients) sharing the experience of using HubSpot’s online sales platform. He also shares how the company’s collaboration with HubSpot brought game-changing results.
The sale and retention stage: Grow, delight, and retain the customers
The closing stage is crucial because most lead fallout thereby dampening all your hard work in generating and nurturing prospects. Hence, use videos to hold leads in your grip. Give them more reasons to buy from you. At this stage, include videos that announce discounts, gifts, offer codes, etc. to create a sense of urgency in your audience to purchase from you.
Equally effective are follow-up videos about the brand and product features. Remind the audience why your product is better than others and how you plan to solve their pain points. The sales process doesn’t end with closing the deal. Brands need to lay the foundation for a long-term relationship by improving the after-sales service.
Great after-sales service can lead to increased customer satisfaction which will lead to more business from the customers. To delight the customers, you can send installation videos, how-to videos, and upcoming deals videos directly to customer inboxes using email software.
Delighted customers can become your brand ambassadors too. They can help you with user-generated content, and testimonials, and bring in more business by word of mouth.
The good company: Customer onboarding video
The Good Company managed to increase its return traffic by 32% with a simple after-sale move. They sent a personalized ‘thank you’ video to all their customers. Everyone wants to feel special and appreciated. This simple move, irrespective of the huge challenge of sending 7,000 personalized direct video messages, proved to be an excellent marketing strategy.
Final thoughts
Your marketing success depends on using the right video type and at the right stage of the sales process. We know you’re busy with a million other things. That’s why we have made the job easier for you.
Use the ideas you find here to elevate the brand outreach to a personal level, sell more with authentic and valuable content, and build relationships with after-sales personalized videos.
