2 Reasons Every Marketing Campaign Needs a Video

Ask marketers and they'll tell you one of the top priorities for the year is developing and using video more effectively to meet customer's expectations. In fact, according to TopRank Online Marketing, 70 percent of marketers use video regularly and 60 percent rate video as the most effective content tactic out there. The adoption and strong approval for video content is mainly because the barriers to entry for production are lower than ever before, and because video really works to convert. It's been found, for example, that the simple inclusion of video on a landing page can help you increase conversion by 80 percent. Not only is video highly shareable, "snackable" content your customers love, but it can be used to guide prospects through the entire sales funnel, and you can tie videos directly to the amount of pipeline they generate. 1. You Can Align Video Content to the Buyer's Journey The modern customer researches your products and services independently and in-depth before interacting with sales. Moreover, during their due diligence, they require an average of four to seven pieces of content before short-listing your solution. Considering they will consume a good deal of content on your site, it's your best bet to give them an expected and preferred content format, like video. I always recommend that customers create a video content journey as part of a campaign that will propel buyers through the sales funnel. For example, if you start with an explainer video, you can have the video's call to action point to the next video in the series, and so on and so forth, until there's an option to convert with trial or purchase. Not only do these videos easily convey emotion and showcase your helpful team, but they are quick to consume and your customers will appreciate a lean-back experience, where they can learn about your offering in a fast, engaging way. You can also create videos beyond your content journey. In much the same way, these should be designed to guide leads through the questions they'll have as they learn more about your product in the following stages: Developing Interest: Top-funnel videos like explainers and thought leadership interviews do well in this phase. Learning and evaluating: Mid-funnel videos, such as detailed product demos or customer testimonials, do especially well here. Justify and purchase: Nurture campaign reminder videos can help answer last-minute questions in this stage, or repurposed webinar content can help prospects get the most out of a product trial in these final stages. Overall, there's a video for each part of the funnel; you simply need to identify the gaps in your content offering. You can find more information on content that's appropriate for each stage of the funnel in this post. 2. You Can Easily Track the ROI of Every Video Campaign The most compelling reason video is a required component in every marketing campaign is you can connect it directly to ROI. Once you have a video marketing platform in place, you can connect your video viewing data to your CRM to see all of your leads' viewing history in Salesforce or another platform. What's even cooler is that there are already reports set up for Salesforce users to help you find out which videos are influencing the biggest deals and how many people converted after watching a particular piece of video content. This kind of data is incredible for marketers and salespeople alike, as it's a clear indicator of interest in certain products and you can score your leads based on how much video content they consume. For example, you'd be able to see that the project manager watched eight of your videos and repeated two of them all the way through. And when you follow up based on the high lead score, you'll have great context for what you should talk about, based on the content watched most. On a whole, video is a powerful tool and it can act as the centerpiece among all other assets (i.e., whitepapers, ebooks and infographics). These text-based or visual assets can point to your video as the heart of any marketing campaign, because video sums up the entire message in a memorable, quick-to-consume packet. Start building your video content journey today, and don't forget to check out your options for measuring the ROI of your campaigns with CRM. Michael Litt is CEO and co-founder of Kitchener, Canada-based marketing software provider Vidyard. Reach him at Michael@vidyard.com.

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2 Reasons Every Marketing Campaign Needs a Video

Michael Litt

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Michael Litt