The Exact Videos You Should Use in Each Stage of the Buyer Funnel
Combining video marketing with your sales funnel forms a very strategic combination.
January 24, 2020 10 min read
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Everyone knows that video marketing and sales funnels are two powerful tools in the quest to capture buyers, but what about combining the two to leverage the effects of video marketing within your sales funnel? Together, they can form a very strategic combination that helps your prospects identify a problem, build trust in your brand, and see your product or service as the solution. But to do it right, instead of just throwing together your current efforts in each, take the time to match specific video types with each stage of your sales funnel.
In each step of the funnel, you’ll get unique consumers with unique motivations, so a successful marriage of these two marketing tools requires highly tailored content. First, we’ll review the steps of a standard sales funnel, then suggest a few video options you can use to optimize your video sales funnel.
What is a sales funnel?
First let’s do a brief refresh on the steps, or stages, in a standard sales funnel. A sales funnel is the path you create for potential customers — in other words, the marketing experience — that is intelligently designed to turn prospects into leads, then leads into sales. With curated content that tailors your messaging to where your prospect is in terms of the buying decision process, you can improve your conversion rate and boost your sales and revenue.
Related: What Is a Sales Funnel? The Guide to Building an Automated Selling Machine.
While many companies attempt a sales funnel approach, it takes skill and planning to create an efficient sales funnel that works. One of the primary keys to success is understanding and matching your messaging to the three stages of a sales funnel — the top, the middle and the bottom. If you picture an actual funnel, the stages represent the number of consumers you’re dealing with as they travel down the pipeline, from the wide audience that sees your initial video ads at the top, to the ones who continue on to the bottom to make a purchase.
Top of the sales funnel: awareness and discovery
The top of the sales funnel is where prospects first meet your brand. At this early stage, they are likely “just browsing” topics of interest and probably haven’t even identified the problem or challenge they need solved yet. They’re curious and looking around to educate themselves, and hoping to define the questions they need answered. At this first point of contact, the content you expose them to should educate and inspire them on topics that matter — essentially, you want to provide the “why” for them to move in your direction. Blog posts, videos, quizzes and “did you know?” type language helps feed their interest and hone in on the problem. Help them become more aware by bringing attention to an issue, offering helpful advice and establishing your brand as a trusted resource.
Related: 5 Steps to Building Your First Online Sales Funnel
Middle of the sales funnel: researching solutions
By the time prospects reach the middle of your sales funnel, they’ve defined their personal problem or challenge and are actively researching solutions. As your prospects morph into actual leads, you can start to build a strong case for choosing your brand. Since they’ve lasered in on what the issue they’re trying to solve is, you can answer more specific questions and demonstrate the advantages of becoming your customer. This might be a good time to offer free trials or an intriguing promotion, in-depth guides or actionable checklists. Your prospects aren’t quite ready to commit to a decision just yet, so aim to feed their eagerness to learn more by giving them something that involves little to no investment on their part.
Related: 3 Tweaks That Dramatically Improve Your Sales Funnel
Bottom of the sales funnel: making an educated purchase decision
This is the step where, if all goes well, your leads will choose your brand as their best solution. This means providing them with educational materials that’ll help them incorporate your incredible solution into their daily lives. This final push of information will guide your lead in making a decision that suits their exact needs and addresses their specific problems. This final section of the sales funnel is usually a great place for content such as FAQs, product feature and demonstration videos, bundled packages, insider tips or follow-up email campaigns to get them to commit.
Related: 3 Signs Your Sales Funnel Is Broken (and How to Fix It)
Now that we’ve reviewed the sales funnel stages, let’s dive into what types of videos are perfect for each part of the funnel.
Step 1: Create awareness at the top of the funnel
During the introduction step, this is your opportunity to help consumers see the light and recognize a distinct struggle or challenge they need to remedy. Before you can start selling yourself as “the solution,” you’ll need video content that effectively leads them to a conclusion about what’s missing from their lives first. To properly educate this audience, try the following types of videos:
Explainer animations
Explainer animations are terrific tools for capturing the interest of prospects who are searching for how to do something. They aren’t necessarily looking for your product or services just yet, but are focused on trying to get to an end result. The explainer animations are an engaging way to show them how to get there with a problem-solution story, and then demonstrate how your product or service makes it possible. Use this video to open their eyes to how your brand does things better and you’ll start to gain their trust early on.
Educational videos
Educational videos are perfect for the top of the funnel because they allow your company to capture the attention of someone before they know to even look for you. Since consumers are frequently searching Google and YouTube for solutions to problems they are facing, feature an educational video to provide them with an easy answer. Use it to introduce your brand, product, or service and place yourself as a thought leader in their mind.
Problem/solution videos
Superior products or services often win customers by solving a problem that customers didn’t even know existed or improving some aspect of their lives in a way they never imagined. The top of the funnel is a great place to add video content focused on the unique problem your product or service is solving. You can use strategic messaging to help make sure the customers really feel the pain of the problem, so they will want to find a solution. (Hint: it’s you!)
Related: The 4 Pillars of Stellar Video Marketing
Step 2: Drive consideration at the middle of the funnel
During this middle stage, you’ll want to present your product as the definitive answer to the challenges you helped your prospects identify at the top of the funnel. Use their undivided attention here to focus on providing detailed information about what your product does, how it solves a problem, and why it’s a better choice than your competitors. To further engage your leads and keep them in the funnel until the end, try the following video types:
Product videos
Your viewers are now feeling the problem your product fixes on a very personal level and actively seeking out an efficient and effective way to fix it. Since they’re looking more closely at all of their options (including your competition), use intriguing product videos to drive home the very real benefits of your solution — making sure everyone watching learns how and why your product gets the job done.
Tutorials/how it works videos
What makes you love a product or company isn’t just about the product itself, but also because the experience of using it is a very positive one. With tutorials or “how it works” videos, you can tease the viewer with glimpses of an exceptional brand experience. What about your brand’s reputation, expertise, and experience makes you the no-brainer choice? Use these videos to let your leads know in no uncertain terms what makes you so special.
Related: 5 Low-Cost Ways to Get Started With Video Marketing
Step 3: Decision time at the bottom of the funnel
At the bottom of your sales funnel, it’s time to capture those leads that’ve followed your messaging this far. As you move in in an effort to close the sale, use smart, high-quality videos that are expertly designed to convert leads into customers. You might recount the features and benefits of your product or service, offer incentives, show happy customers and do whatever it takes to drive them home to buy. Try these two video types for an effective close:
Demos/webinars
At this point in the sales funnel, your viewers are very interested, so your video content should be direct and highly appealing. Since you have more of their attention, you can use long-form demonstration videos or webinars that dive deeper into features, sub-features, FAQs, etc., and serve to squash any lingering doubts they may have. These videos are fantastic for building confidence in your brand, further establishing you as a thought leader, and showing customers you care enough to help them really dig in and solve their struggle.
Customer testimonial videos
People like to be part of a tribe or group, and your customers are exactly that. Use these videos to introduce your viewers to inspiring or aspirational people who’ve had great success with your solution and love your product. Show them the benefits of the lifestyle you’re building — and remind them why they’re going to want to join. This is also a great place to show off unique use cases of your product or feature a specific type of customer or industry that really loves your product or service.
Related: 4 Ways to Get Over Your Fear of Video Marketing
Get started building your funnel
Now that you understand the reasoning for using different type of video ads for each phase of your sales funnel, you’re ready to get started constructing the funnel with informative, entertaining, can’t-miss video content.
To ensure you stay on track with your sales funnel video strategy, begin by creating an outline of your plan. Review the recommended videos for each stage of the funnel and decide what will work best for your brand, product and customer. As you map out your video messaging to match each stage of the funnel, the content should be broken down like so:
Top-of-the-funnel content (wide audience): 50%
Middle-of-the-funnel content (medium-sized audience): 30%
Bottom-of-the-funnel content (small pool): 20%
After you outline your plan and choose your ideal video styles, get it into action with an expert video production team. Best of luck on building your sales-focused video funnel!
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A can-do attitude and a good work ethic are commendable, but too many of us confuse busyness with accomplishment. If you are trapped in this mindset, you might be a work martyr.
“The work martyr is similar to a workaholic, but the work martyr is someone who wears that busyness as a badge of honor,” said Melody Wilding, an executive coach and licensed social worker. “They are someone that prides themselves on staying late, being the go-to person for everything.”
Work martyrs are always putting the job first, even when it means shelving their own vacations, mental health and career priorities. “They may complain about the amount of work they have to do, so they have almost a victim mentality about it,” Wilding said.
Work martyrdom is an affliction in which you cannot stop sacrificing your own best interests for the needs of others at the company. Your mind may be sending you warning thoughts that you are becoming a work martyr before you are ready to consciously acknowledge it. Here are five signs and some helpful reality checks:
1. “I feel special being the go-to for work problems.”
Lisa Orbé-Austin, a licensed psychologist who focuses on helping professionals manage their careers, noted that work martyrs may also have signs of impostor syndrome. “The idea of being someone’s go-to is getting to be special in some way,” she said. “Searching for that external validation of being special is also indicative of a fact that you’re not internalizing on your own your accomplishments, your skills, your value.“
Reality check: You can’t take care of yourself if you are the go-to for everyone else. Orbé-Austin said it can feel good in the moment to be a colleague’s go-to for a work request, but it can create an inescapable loop because when the moment passes, you may even start to feel like, “Oh no, I’m not getting noticed, I have to do something.”
By overloading yourself with other people’s work requests to feel valuable, “you are creating a situation where you can’t care for yourself anymore,” Orbé-Austin said. You may come to work sick or turn down much-needed vacations, for example.
When you don’t need someone’s validation to feel valuable, you can be more strategic with taking on more work and even turn it down by realizing, “I’m not sure that’s going to do much for me other than them give me the accolade and I don’t need that, so no,” Orbé-Austin said.
2. “No one else can do this job but me.”
Work martyrs “see requests not as options, but as demands. They think that everything that comes across their plate is something they have to or must do,” Wilding said.
When you believe every request is your work problem to solve, you cannot relinquish control. When you are a manager of a team, this micromanaging mindset is destructive, and you can overgeneralize mistakes like “‘My direct report didn’t do this report right one time, it’s just easier for me to do it myself,’” Wilding said. “Just because someone doesn’t do it right that one time, it doesn’t mean they’re not capable of doing it. Instead, it might mean you need to give better instructions, or you need to reset expectations, or you need to give them more time.”
Reality check: Your work martyr behavior impacts others, not just you. When you are unable to delegate, you are doing your colleagues a disservice. “By over-functioning, you are robbing the people around you of much-needed growth opportunities, challenges that would be rewarding or fulfilling, or help them advance in their own careers,” Wilding said.
Not only will it physically exhaust you to be the go-to for everyone’s jobs, “it also sets up this dynamic where other people learn to become helpless because they are not empowered to figure things on their own, to solve problems, to get tasks done, because you’re always the one fixing it,” Wilding said.
3. “I need to be the first one in, last one out to be the best.”
For work martyrs, logging long hours is how they do a good job. “They equate their self-worth with how much they are able to do and their productivity. The two are one and the same,” Wilding said.
Reality check: Being available at all hours hurts you and your colleagues. Physical signs that you are overextending yourself include sleeplessness, migraines and burnout, Wilding said. “You may not be able to sleep at night, because your mind is constantly rushing with thoughts about work,” Wilding said. “Your relationships may be on the rocks because you’re prioritizing your workload over your family.”
If you are a work martyr with people who report to you, being too available for work can also set the expectation that your colleagues need to be available at all hours, too. “[Martyrs] send late-night emails and that creates anxiety on the rest of the team,” Wilding said.
4. “If I keep my head down and work hard, my work will be recognized.”
Workers sometimes receive positive feedback for falling on the sword, which can send the wrong signal that work martyrdom is good for their career. Orbé-Austin said although there may be “verbal supportive praise for the person who is killing themselves at work,” this doesn’t mean it’s a path to success.
“When you’re a work martyr, you can be blinded by where the opportunity is, you just think the that opportunity is in working hard,” Orbé-Austin said.
Reality check: keep your head up, not your head down. A large quantity of work is not necessarily quality work. “Because [martyrs] find their self-worth in working and being that go-to person, they tend to fill up their time with things that may be urgent but not necessarily important or high-impact,” Wilding said.
If you think doing so much work is all it takes to get ahead at your job, you’re not fully understanding how promotions happen. “A lot of what it takes to advance your career comes down to visibility, or internal and external networking, or strategic alliances,” Wilding said.
Instead of hoping your job will pay you back for your sacrifices, be strategic about where people find you as an asset, so you can advance. Find an ally outside of work who can put your career in perspective, Orbé-Austin recommended. They can be the mentor to advise you that “here’s the big players, here’s why people get promoted, here’s what you need to be thinking, here’s the relationships you need to build,” she said.
5. “I can’t take a vacation.”
A 2017 survey on vacation habits commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association, a travel industry organization, defined work martyrs as employees “who do not take time off because they feel no one else can do the job.”
Fear holds these employees back from taking breaks. A 2018 survey of 4,000 Americans’ vacation habits revealed that the top reasons workers said they weren’t using vacation days were a fear of looking replaceable and less dedicated, and a belief that they had too much work to take time off.
Reality check: Recovery is key to career success. To challenge the blanket assumption that you can’t take vacations, Wilding said one tip she gives clients who see time off as a weakness is to reframe rest as recovery. “Recovery is a much more active participatory word and better reflects what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re investing in your future self, you’re investing in your energy, you need that recovery time to recharge your batteries.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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