The human attention span is getting shorter. In fact, scientists now reckon our attention is shorter than that of a goldfish! The point is, as marketers, we all want to generate more leads – and ultimately improve our sales – but it’s tough, primarily because everyone is so easily distracted and busy. Generating leads and increasing sales is tricky business!
So what can we do? One possible answer may lie in the use of video.
There’s no getting away from it, video is hugely popular. In fact, by 2017 it’s predicted that 74% of all internet traffic will be video content! So let’s have a look at what you can do with video to to generate leads and improve sales.
Building Understanding
One of the easiest ways to discourage a potential customer is failing to explain your product or service simply. It’s a no-brainer — if you don’t understand something, you’re probably not going to buy it.
A short 1-2 minute explainer video on your home page is one of the most effective ways to build user understanding. A Wyzowl survey earlier in the year found that 73% of people have bought from a company after watching one of their videos.
Create an explainer video and use A/B testing to determine the best position for it on your website. And remember to keep your explainer video short and sweet — 94% of marketers told us they believe the perfect length is 2 minutes or less.
Building Trust
Often, what makes people buy or invest in a product or service is that they trust the brand behind it. Humanising your brand will go along way to making people trust you – you can become a group of real human beings, and not just another faceless company.
Video is a great way to humanize your brand. Take your audience behind the scenes of your business, show them what you do, the characters in your team and demonstrate your passion for your product or service.
One interesting trend in video marketing is the rise of Periscope — and it’s an awesome way to build trust.
Periscope is a live streaming video app that allows you to broadcast video from anywhere. People viewing these live broadcasts can comment and like in real-time.
But how will this improve your sales? Well, it can bring transparency to your brand, build trust with your customers and also put a face, or faces, to your company. Here are just a few ideas on how to use Periscope for your business.
- Behind the scenes — show your customers what goes in the company, show them the process and the people behind it all. Again, building trust is a HUGE deal. The Office of Fair Trade found that 30% of consumers who don’t shop online, cite a lack of trust as the main factor.
- Live Q&As — Helps put a face to the brand and allows you to show off your industry knowledge. This will hopefully lead to a better customer relationship and can establish your business as a thought leader.
- Professional How Tos — Sure,you can do these on YouTube but with Periscope you have the added live element which creates opportunity for live queries from your customers as they watch.
As I said these all help to build trust and humanize your brand as consumers love video. According to data released by Animoto 64% of consumers said video helps them learn more about a company they intend to purchase from. Therefore, live broadcast can only be a good thing for your brand as everything is happening there and then without any editing.
Generating Leads
- Gated video content & CTAs
So you’re creating video and people are watching, they’re interested in what you have to say. This is great – but the problem is, all too often,they’re watching and leaving.You don’t hear from them and you have no way of contacting them. You don’t even know who they are.
There is a solution to this problem. Gating your videos — that is, asking your users to hand over a few details before they can watch all or part of them — is a nice way to turn visitors into leads.
This won’t work for all videos, clearly – you still need those top of the funnel, promotional videos without gated restriction otherwise they won’t bother watching at all.
Instead, like you would with whitepapers or ebooks, you want to use their invested interest to create leads. We’d recommend gating your mid-funnel videos,where your visitors interest is piqued and they’re ready to find out more.
The example above is taken from our Wyzowl knowledge videos, where viewers are asked to input a few straightforward details before seeing the funny out takes and bloopers. They’re likely to input their details because they’ve seen the information they require from the video, which will hopefully inspire trust, they’re not asked to fill out too much, and the reason for filling out their details is given.
The benefit to you is you know these leads are genuinely interested in what you have to offer because they have filled in the data form. Basically, gating your content helps you identify qualified leads who can subsequently be nurtured.
But is it going to work? Well, Wistia offer a gating facility for lead generation called ‘Turnstile’ and they’ve found that videos with forms in them converted at 16% – across more than 2,500 accounts. They also found that videos with forms within the first 20 seconds of the video received 43% conversion rate!
Another thing you can do to take advantage of a viewers interest is close out with a clear call-to-action. If they’ve watched to the end of your video don’t just leave it at that:instead, give them clear direction to another piece of content or the next step in your buyer journey. This lets you keep your video content short and sweet, while actively moving users down your sales funnel.
Vidyard found that viewers who clicked on a CTA at the end of their video converted to trials at a rate of 21% versus 1% of viewers who didn’t get the CTA.
Remember, there’s no need to add forms and CTAs to every video on your site as this could be overkill — not every video is suitable. Instead,think about where in the buyer journey your visitors/leads are – based on the type of video they’ll be watching – to decide if it requires either a gated form or CTA.
Closing Sales
While there’s an increasingly widespread acceptance that video carries serious value for businesses, it remains an under-utilised resource. Even among video marketers, the majority are using 10 or less. The idea of using a video as a series, or as part of your drip-feed email campaigns, hasn’t quite caught on yet.
The thing is, video is such a compelling resource that its uses extend FAR beyond awareness and consideration. Using video in your email nurture sequences is a great (and highly trackable) way to move customers along the buyer journey — adding value every step of the way. Using video metrics around which videos a buyer has viewed, and how much they engaged with it, can play a key part in your lead scoring strategy.
Closing Thoughts
Video is a great way to add value to your customers at every stage of their buyer journey. It helps them learn more about your product or service in a short space of time, gives them valuable knowledge, sets realistic expectations and lets them know they can trust you.
It’s also a valuable tool for your business as it can directly generate leads, play a role in qualifying those leads, and, ultimately, close them into completed sales.
There are almost limitless possibilities with video — and you’re sure to get more leads and ultimately more sales if you make it part of your marketing strategy.
