As people are increasingly discovering new products through online channels, nurturing customer engagement grows more vital to the success of any brand - Which is why most companies nowadays invest significant resources and effort to produce cool material that attracts new audiences.
But engagement is something that changes over time.
What works for you today won't necessarily do so tomorrow. Given the dynamics of the marketing sales funnel, companies need a plan to follow up on their prospects – addressing their needs as they evolve.
For such a challenge, a video content strategy has become an effective and convenient tool for most brands. Given the flexibility of the medium and the wide variety of styles to choose from, you have many possibilities to build and improve your sales funnels with video.
Today, we want to help you with that task. So, we've put together this piece discussing the best types of video to use at each stage of your client's journey. Giving you actionable tips at each point to make your videos more persuasive and compelling!
Let’s get to it, shall we?
Awareness Stage: Introducing Your Brand to New Audience
Some people say that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. When it comes to promoting your brand, this observation is truer than ever.
During the awareness stage, you want to produce videos that, instead of closing a sale, allow you to establish a friendly conversation with your audience. Only that way will your prospects become familiar with your brand and eventually grow interested in what you have to offer them.
How-To Videos
When they surf online, people don't consciously look for any brand to make them an open offer. Instead, their behavior is more targeted: people want to find solutions to meet their everyday needs and problems.
One of the things audiences value most (especially in social media) is fun, easy-to-follow tutorials that allow them to perform tasks on their own. As the first contact with your prospects, How-To videos are very reliable content that engages audiences by teaching them things like: How to prepare unique, tasty recipes. How to set up a workout routine. How to install certain things or products.
And generally, how to make their lives easier and save time.
By giving this type of video to viewers, you can use your product to do the job. This is how, in a subtle way and always focusing on being useful, you will make your solution known to new customers.
Pro Tip: How-To videos need to be very practical, as you want viewers to feel they can do things on their own. For that reason, try to segment your piece in small steps, using timestamps, numbers, or chapters that allow your audience to retain the whole process in simple units.
Whiteboard Videos
When used right, video content can be one of your brand's most powerful educational tools. This is useful for introducing audiences to new concepts, complex topics, or processes that are worth exploring in detail. The question is how to do it.
For this task, whiteboard animation can come in handy. This video style is popular for its hand-drawn animation on a white, clean background, which unfolds as you develop the message or story.
Brands use whiteboard videos to communicate important issues, such as the story behind an idea or how a multi-scale process works. However, you can also give it a greater promotional twist, where your product serves to address the problem in front of the audience.
Pro Tip: Although whiteboard videos stand out for their black-and-white style, color is a useful tool to highlight key elements of the piece. For example, coloring your brand logo, solution, or certain characters in the video will make the content more memorable to your audience.
Commercials
Sometimes, all you need to make new audiences know your brand is to give them a sample of your work. But as they don't know you at all yet, you don't want to give them too many details about your products. Rather, you want to convey an experience.
You can achieve this through commercials that, like their TV counterparts, aim to give an unforgettable image of your product. The key to their success is their focus on the benefits of your solution: e. g., the gameplay, comfort, elegance, or simplicity that the product brings.
Commercial videos work great as ads, which you can repurpose and distribute across your social media channels. Make them fun and interesting enough to draw audiences from all over the web.
Pro Tip: Commercials are a great addition to your lead pages, as well as online surveys and quizzes, giving visitors or participants a taste of your product after having completed a form.
Consideration Stage: Explaining What Your Brand Is All About
Once you've given your prospects content showcasing the basics of your brand and product, it's time to give them more details. With the next types of video, viewers will get a clearer idea of exactly how to leverage your solution—which is just what they need in the consideration stage.
Animated Explainer Videos
Just as animation is a great way to discuss educational issues with viewers, it is also a wonderful medium to explore the ins and outs of your product or service.
Animated explainer videos rely on flowing, colorful visuals—lines, shapes, figures, and characters—to make your message more enjoyable and easier to consume. This style is ideal for presenting your solution, as it leads viewers to direct their attention to those aspects that you decide to bring to life in images.
Pro Tip: Explainers are very versatile, so you shouldn't think that there is a unique formula to approach audiences. Based on your goals, you can choose to tell a story through colorful characters or maybe combine animation with live-action footage, giving a more realistic view of your product.
Product Videos
Now, if you want to display your solution in real-time, there is no better way to show it than through a product video. Classic product demos focus on showing a clear and professional image of how your solution looks, as well as a description of its features and functionalities.
But the most effective videos go beyond that. This kind of piece aims to demonstrate how viewers can expect to use and handle the product in their own hands once they buy it.
For example, instead of simply listing your product's options or functions, you want to show other people using it live, just as your audience would. By having actors turning on the product, weighing it in their hands, and testing it, you will provide your prospects with a complete and clear understanding of what they can get.
Pro Tip: The best way to showcase your product's features and benefits is to improve your piece’s script with storytelling. Through stories and characters that resonate with your audience, you can dramatize situations where your product comes to solve a problem. This way, viewers will be able to better understand its use and whether it fits their needs.
Decision Stage: Using Video to Close the Sale
Once your prospects fully know your brand and offers, you just need to give them a little push to motivate them to purchase it. To do this, you need to build trust at the consideration stage by addressing their concerns.
Testimonial Videos
You can give prospects a sample of what other people are saying about your brand through testimonial videos. These pieces are of huge help to leads interested in learning about other customers’ first-hand experience with your product and whether it solved similar problems.
Testimonials are best in the form of interviews. Past, happy clients can give their insights on a wide range of topics with the lead of key questions, such as: How did they discover your brand? What makes your product different from other solutions they tried? What benefits did they find in your product? Would they recommend it to someone else?
By giving them time to express themselves at length and with confidence, you will have a great interview to show those prospects who are looking for a second opinion.
Pro Tip: Authenticity is key in testimonials. That is why, when preparing the interview, it’s better to give topics, not questions to the interviewee. That way, you can record their genuine reactions and comments.
FAQ Videos
Curious customers may seek more than the opinion of others. They want to know with certainty all the details related to your product. For instance, information regarding its features, usage, maintenance, or security.
You can tackle all these topics one by one with FAQ videos. By introducing the topic through specific but relevant questions, you can bring together experts from your company (or even outsiders) to clarify every aspect related to your product.
As part of your landing pages or social channels, these pieces can answer the last questions remaining in viewers' minds.
Pro Tip: FAQ videos can be long or short, depending on your preference. While the former serve as general information for your audience, the latter can be useful to repurpose them as short clips for social media and playlists.
Conclusion
As you've seen, video content has multiple creative options to support your client throughout the sales funnel. You can create videos to give insights, showcase your brand, and convey confidence to your viewers as they go.
It is important that, once you create your video, you make it easily accessible. They all have a place on your websites and social networking channels. Just make sure that prospects can watch and enjoy your piece at the precise time they need it.
