How to Use Video Marketing to Generate Leads

If you haven’t considered incorporating video into your inbound marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a powerful opportunity to provide real value to your target audience, form connections with them, and ultimately convert them into leads for your sales team.

In a recent video marketing study by Wyzowl, 90% of marketers surveyed said video marketing has helped them generate leads. Eighty-seven percent said it helped them increase sales and increase dwell time on their site. Video marketing has the potential to be highly effective, but like anything else, you need to do it right to maximize your results.

Fun, Fun, Fun(nel) of Video Marketing

Like any marketing effort, it’s important to consider the entire sales funnel when creating relevant video content to generate leads. Each funnel layer plays an essential role in courting a new customer and forming a relationship between them and your company.

No surprise, it begins at the top. As we explained in our TOFU article (no, not that kind of tofu), marketing at this stage “targets a wide audience to generate qualified leads and raise awareness of your product or service. The idea is to introduce potential customers to your offering, demonstrate its value, and hopefully attract more business.” Video is perfect for this stage because it allows you to quickly and effectively hook your target audience. In 2018, Wyzowl found “Where both video and text are available on the same page, 72% of people would rather use video to learn about a product or service.”

Video is also ideal for the middle of the funnel for this reason. You might recall from our MOFU article that “middle-of-the-funnel marketing aims to nurture potential customers and educate them about your product or service. You want to subtly demonstrate that you offer the best solution to the problem they are already aware of, even though they are not yet ready to make a purchase.” Consumers seek out videos from brands for this purpose. Wyzowl found that “96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.”

Finally, and unsurprisingly, video also finds a successful home amongst bottom-of-the-funnel strategies. Wyzowl shares that “89% of people say watching a video has convinced them to buy a product or service.” Bringing it home with our BOFU article, “the main goal of bottom-of-funnel marketing tactics is to demonstrate your value to inspire action. Doing so requires you to showcase why your features, benefits, and offers are the best.” What better way to do that than with video?

If You Film It, They Will Come

To get your potential customers into the sales funnel, you have to start by getting their attention. We’re going to assume you’ve already done the research to identify your target audience and where they’re most likely to be found. With that foundation already in place, you can move on to identifying the type of video ads that will most effectively capture that group’s attention.

At this initial stage of attraction, remember you’re dealing with strangers. They don’t know your company or your product/service. HubSpot describes this group as “identifying their challenges and deciding whether they should seek out a solution.” It explains, “the videos you create should empathize with their problems and introduce a possible solution with your product or service. This kind of video aims to expand the reach and build trust.”

Short-form video is a great solution here. These ads should be quick and straightforward, rooted in expressing your brand’s personality and purpose. They can be used to drive traffic to other TOFU videos, like thought leadership topics, explainers, how-tos, and mini-films that explore your brand’s values and mission. At most, your ads probably have half a minute to capture viewers’ attention and convince them to click through to one of those videos, so keep your brand’s personality at the forefront and focus on entertaining and evoking emotion. Learn more in our ‘How to Use Short-Form Videos for Social Media Success’ article.

Like What You See

Alright, you got them to sit up and take notice. Now it’s time to focus on content that will continue to guide them along the funnel and ultimately convert. Across both short- and long-form videos, a few key elements have a proven track record when it comes to converting customers through video:

• Calls to action (CTA): While having a CTA users can access from the video itself (think clicking on the cards at the end of a YouTube video) are the easiest option for viewers, even incorporating a URL or phone number into your video can have a powerful effect. However you incorporate it, a CTA is a must. If you make your customer guess or search for what to do next, most of them won’t. They’ll find someone who made their lives easier by providing that next step for them.
• Gated content: When your videos are compelling, placing additional content behind a “gate” can help draw customers in (or weed out the leads that aren’t as strong). Requiring viewers to share their contact information, such as an email, to access additional content can be highly effective in knowing which of your viewers are genuinely interested in your brand.
• Optimization for SEO: Videos decked out with catchy titles, thoughtful tags, and complete transcripts will perform better on search engines and thus be easier for viewers to find, rising to the top of the endless noise of the internet. Never underestimate the power of SEO when it comes to aiding your quest to convert customers.

Did It Work?

Eleven percent of video marketers surveyed by Wyzowl claimed they don’t track ROI on their video content. Our suggestion? Be like the 89% who do. Generating leads as effectively as possible means spending less money and less time to convert each one, and you can only do that by eliminating the content that doesn’t move the needle. Without monitoring your content’s performance, how could you hope to know which pieces to keep (or cut) definitively?

In our article on using video marketing to increase brand awareness, we covered a handful of important KPIs to track when grading a video’s performance. For lead generation, though, one of the most important is click-through rate (CTR). CTR is found by dividing the total video views by the number of viewers who clicked on the video/CTA. This will tell you if your video has an engaging title, if the thumbnail draws them in, and if your CTA is clear. If one of your videos results in 50 viewers completing your contact form and another only results in 15, chances are you need to modify something about the latter (or remove it entirely).

It’s also important to use these learnings when determining what type of content to make moving forward. Experiment, but focus on the traits that prove successful.

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Your Video Marketing Experts

So you’re convinced video is the key to generating leads but aren’t sure what to do when it comes to strategy, content, or execution. Never fear, Ideas Collide is here. We work with brands of all sizes across multiple industries on all things video and content marketing. From our skilled strategists to our in-house video team, let us help you maximize your lead generation with video. If you’re ready to start, then drop us a line and let’s go!

90% of marketers surveyed said video marketing has helped them generate leads.

The videos you create should empathize with their problems and introduce a possible solution with your product or service. This kind of video aims to expand the reach and build trust.