When you’re thinking about purchasing a product, what sort of factors affect your decision? Do you spend a lot of time researching various products that might meet your needs, or do you stick with one particular brand?
Potential customers have to consider many things as they embark on their buying journey. Aspects such as product and price affect whether or not someone will make a purchase.
The path that potential customers follow before making a purchase is known as the marketing funnel.
A video sales funnel can be a valuable resource to guide customers through each stage of the buying journey. This involves creating evergreen video content that will engage and educate prospects, eventually driving conversions.
The video sales funnel will provide a visual component to each stage of the buying process, building brand awareness in a more interactive way. Simply put, video attracts customers.
What is a Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel refers to the steps describing the sales process. Much like a funnel, your marketing strategy will start out wide to reach as many customers as possible and then narrow to find the right customers for your business.
We’ll explain the stages of a buyer’s journey below and discuss what they mean.
- Awareness–here, prospects gain familiarity with your brand or organization. At this stage, customers are not fully aware of the value of your product, so it is important to focus on demonstrating that. Provide specific details that will build a relationship with potential customers.
- Interest–during this stage, you build a stronger relationship with your customers as you learn more about them. Learning more about their habits and needs will allow you to provide a solution to their problems.
- Consideration–during this stage, leads become seen by companies as prospective buyers. Companies can send out additional marketing materials at this time, such as email campaigns, targeted content or even free product offers.
- Intent–at this stage, prospective customers have demonstrated an interest in purchasing the product, whether they put it in their shopping cart, or fill out a form. Here, companies will want to make a strong case for why a customer should buy their product.
- Evaluation–this is the final step before buyers commit to a purchase. They may still need nurturing to make the ultimate decision.
- Purchase–the final step, or bottom of the funnel. This is where a lead becomes a customer and may generate future leads for the business. This will start the sales funnel all over again.
In order to keep customers on the path to the desired conversion, it’s important to optimize your marketing funnel, making it simple for interested leads to convert into customers. Video is an excellent way to explain your business or product simply and make an emotional appeal for why your product is the one that will best serve someone’s needs.
If you want to have a successful video sales funnel, you’ll need to deliver the right content at the right moment. Not every type of video will be the right type for that moment, so it is important to have an aggressive video strategy, using the right marketing videos to deliver your message.
Top-Funnel Videos: Creating Awareness
You’ll want to capture potential leads and educate them as much as possible on your business. At this stage, you can identify their challenges and understand their basic needs. Use any of the following to do so:
- Webinar content–keep your audience engaged with recorded webinar videos. Highly shareable, you can reuse them again and again.
- Branded Storytelling Videos–these are intended to tell your story, creating awareness of your product.
- Explainer Videos (Evergreen content)–these take complex ideas and simplify them for users, showcasing all the ways your product or service can solve their problems.
Mid-Funnel Videos: Nurturing Action
At this point, you should introduce your product as the best option out there, while giving buyers the tools to make an informed decision. These types of video will help to do just that.
- Testimonials–showing others discussing the product is an excellent way to build trust by showing the real stories of your clients. These testimonials will offer product discussion as well as the buyer’s own experience.
- Case Studies–a good story will draw you in, but a video of someone telling their story will truly move you. You can see their facial expressions, hear the inflection in their voice. Case study videos build trust, as leads get to hear existing customers speak about the impact your product has made on their lives.
- Animated How-to Tutorials–these demonstrate how the product is used, along with all the steps involved. Users can watch them as many times as necessary until they fully understand what to do.
Bottom-Funnel Videos: Encouraging Action
This is the final stage of the sales and marketing funnel, the stage where users are encouraged to make a conversion, such as making a purchase or signing up for a mailing list. Use any number of videos here to retain customers and attract new ones.
- Instructional Video–offer specific instructions related to the purchase, such as what to do post-sale, or how to store the item. Offer a discount code for future purchases as you personally invite the customer back.
- FAQ Videos–Use this as a sounding board to answer customer’s most frequently asked questions about your product, or your business.
- New Product Announcements–announce new products to your most loyal customers and invite them to purchase right away. Discount codes can be used as an additional loyalty bonus.
- Company-Culture Videos–these are a fun way to show the more human side of your business, inviting the public to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes.
Finally, you can use the list of videos in an email campaign and advertising to retarget customers. This is particularly common with social media, where ads pop up in a person’s feed.
Ripple Animation Can Create Your Video Sales Funnel Content
At Ripple Animation, we thrive on creating animated videos that drive business growth. Using a combination of specialist teams, data-driven insights, proprietary processes, and cost-effective pricing, we create winning video strategies for companies like yours. Tell your story, and drive more leads with the team at Ripple Animation. Contact us today.