Customer buyer behavior changes daily, and with the digital evolution, businesses are always looking for the best way they can connect with their customers. Take a look online, and you’ll quickly see that top brands are using video marketing as a key strategy to help influence prospective customers. Video is ranked among the most powerful tools that a brand can use to create awareness and customer loyalty. Businesses have quickly realized the benefits of how powerful video can be when properly aligned to the customer journey. This is driven by a desire by customers and prospects to consume video content. Many individuals rely on video content to validate their buying decisions and make purchases. In the acquisition stage of a customer journey, video becomes a critical touch-point. It can make or break the experience of a customer with your brand.
Video marketing and the Elements of Customer Journey
When building a video marketing strategy, you need to look at the phases of the customer journey. These phases can be broken down into awareness, consideration, purchase and then advocacy. In all the four phases, video is capable of educating prospects in a more interactive form than any other digital medium. It is important to focus on the funnel areas that require the most attention, and which ones can make the most critical impact on the prospect. When developing videos, ensure that they are specially designed to align with the stage and goals of the customer journey.
So, how does video support and enhance each stage of the customer journey?
Building Awareness
When creating a video for marketing, you want to get a lot of eyeballs on it. You need to present them in the right way and on platforms where the content makes sense. It is possible to track how the individuals watching the video are behaving and the actions they are taking. You can see whether an audience who watches the awareness video has turned into a client or moved down the funnel. An awareness video is part of your branding, much like signage, your logo, and other branding elements.
Your awareness video should trigger an emotion because customers buy with emotions. All purchase decisions start with some emotional trigger, which is true whether you’re selling something as complex as an enterprise software solution or as simple as a doughnut. You can create video content that talks to the excitement, emotional pain, or other feelings the audiences have at the beginning of their customer journey.
Telling your story is crucial in the awareness phase. Storytelling helps create an emotional connection with the audience. It is necessary to create an emotional connection with stories because it helps draw people towards your brand. It also helps prepare them to the next point in the marketing funnel, in fact, it pushes them to head down the funnel. More often than not, brands will turn to digital marketing agencies and specialists to discover how they can use the power of stories in their videos.
Consideration
In the consideration stage, social engagement comes into play and it’s important to recognize this fact when creating your video. Social media is a powerful tool to get audiences to pay attention to you. You can attract them to join you on the journey of your brand. Because you want them to develop a relationship with your business or brand, you should engage them properly. Establish relationships with the audiences using highly relevant video content.
Videos can provide information to the audience about frequently asked questions or things like how-to tutorials that help in branding your business. Realize that a single pretty video won’t do the trick. You need to consider producing a series of short videos, probably on a weekly basis or a monthly basis. These can take the form of video blogs that are educational and engaging. Remember, your video doesn’t have to look like a Hollywood short film. What you need to focus on is the value they give to your prospect. This way, you help the audience build trust with your brand and position your company in the customer journey. Seeking the best digital marketing services can help get effective video marketing solutions for your business.
Responding to questions raised by customers through video helps you connect in an emotional way to your audiences. It also helps connect on a personal level with the customers. With video, audiences are connecting with your brand on a human level. You also need to find the right channels where you will stream the videos. Most often, brands leverage large video streaming outlets like Facebook or YouTube. Keep in mind that you are working on developing strong social engagement so social platforms will help with both amplification and engagement with prospects.
Conversion or Purchasing
Although a video can create brand awareness and attract the right audience, it does not mean that potential clients are ready to purchase your products right away. You should not assume that people are going to automatically convert to a customer by watching a bunch of social engagement videos. In the conversion stage, you need to go the extra mile to help individuals convert or purchase products.
Create client onboarding videos to help reach out to the individual clients and influence them to make purchases. You need to illustrate what kind of experience a client will have when they purchase your product or service. The aim is to support the purchase and remove any barriers. We often recommend having video content similar to what you would present when making a sales call or when meeting a client face-to-face.
Send the videos to the customers who have subscribed to your website or have opted-in. You can also use analytics tools to track the watch times and views. Ensure you track engagement with the videos at the funnel’s bottom.
Client testimonials can also be very impactful in the conversation phase. You can create videos that have testimonials from present and past customers. These are customers giving their experiences with your brand. People are likely to purchase a product if their peers have commented positively about it. Testimonial videos are a great way of accomplishing this.
Advocacy
After you have converted the audiences into customers, that’s not all. Yes, they have made the purchase and increased your sales, however, there is more you can do. Now it’s time to turn them into your brand’s greatest advocates. The advocacy stage allows your business to continue impressing the customers. You need to identify the touchpoints after a purchase. Consider re-engaging clients during the onboarding stage so that you can ensure they are happy through the entire process. A happy customer is far more willing to be featured in a client testimonial than a customer that has had a poor experience during this stage.
Partnering with your customers on a video to showcase the work both you’ve done and they’ve done helps to re-assure your customers that they are in the right place with the right partner. It feels strange when you abruptly end a relationship with a customer after they have purchased a product. To eliminate that kind of problem, you can use the advocacy videos. Customers will have a greater experience and become increasingly loyal to your brand. Ultimately, videos help increase retention, improve customer experience, and encourage customers to refer other people to the brand.
Conclusion
Video marketing can be so powerful in influencing the customer in their purchase journey and beyond. You need to understand which messages resonate with your prospective customers at the different stages of their buyer’s journey so that you use the appropriate video content that translates to the next phase. The videos are created to help move the audience down the funnel and ensure they make purchases, become brand advocates, and remain loyal to the brand.
Guest Post: Article Written by Amit Agrawal, Founder and COO of Cyber Infrastructure Services.