How to Use Video Content for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

As a small business owner, you undoubtedly know you can't dispense with video marketing for your business. Video is one of the leading forms of content online. 

People love to watch and share videos more than any content. And more businesses are investing in video marketing.

The good thing is that videos can work in all marketing campaigns. You can target a new or old customer with a video and enjoy tremendous marketing results. 

This buyer's journey video production guide reveals how to leverage video marketing. Learn how to make video content work for every stage of the buyer's journey. 

An Overview of the Buyer's Journey

To entice your target prospect, you must reach out to them with the right message. Your message must resonate with their interests, problems, and pain points.

The process before buying is usually a series of stages, including research, evaluation, and decision. Your prospects will often be in different stages, so you can't target them with the same message.

Buyer's journey video production aligns content with a prospect's exact stage in your sales funnel. The goal is to make each campaign relevant to every target prospect.

To understand the buyer's journey, consider your customer's interactions with your business. Earlier on, when they were unaware of your business, they'd search online for information related to their needs. 

Properly SEO'd videos will appear on the prospect's search results and help attract them to your website. They'll consume your content, and if your call to action is truly powerful, they'll subscribe to your emails. 

Your prospect's data is crucial, especially because it allows you to target them with relevant messages. You'll have a chance to engage and nurture them to boost their interest in your products and services. 

After that, you must find effective strategies to convince your customer to buy repeatedly. This is a key stage in the buyer's stage because the right strategy leads to customer retention.

You need different types of videos to attract, engage and excite your visitors. These three steps encapsulate a sales funnel. The right video at each stage is the key to leading your prospect from the awareness to the loyalty stage. 

Aligning Video Marketing with Your Sales Funnel

As you're creating videos, it would be best to consider aligning each with the buyer's stage in your sales funnel. Each video should help convince prospects to take the next step in your funnel. 

The type of content you'll share with a new visitor will differ from what you're sharing with an existing customer. This will mean aligning video marketing with the specific goals of attracting, engaging or delighting your customer. 

With analytics, tracking your visitors and establishing their prevailing needs is easy. That is why automating your sales funnel is essential. You'll have it easy when you have a system to match content with users. 

The challenge will likely be how to create the right video content for each sales funnel stage. Let's look at the various video marketing strategies you need in your marketing funnel. Discover the right types of videos to use in each stage.

Video Marketing to Attract Leads

Your target prospect is yet to find your business at the awareness stage. They have a problem, and they're probably busy browsing looking for a solution. 

Prospects in the awareness state are usually interested in learning about their problem. They're researching, so they're looking for in-depth, informative content. 

As a small business owner, your goal is to attract new prospects. So, you'll naturally focus on making your content appear online. Or be where your prospect is likely to look for information.

Videos that will help you attract prospects are SEO-based or social media videos. These will help improve your brand's visibility by strengthening your online presence. Then prospects can find you and visit your website to learn more about your business.

How to Include Videos in Your SEO and Awareness Strategy

An effective video marketing strategy can help boost brand awareness. It can make your business seem approachable, capable and credible. Here are some ways to integrate videos into your SEO and brand awareness strategy.

Show Your Company's Mission and Value

Videos can humanize and help your target audience relate to your brand. Create videos to share details about your brand's story. Or use videos to show your stand on a cause that matters to your audience.

Examples of videos to showcase your values include brand films and documentaries. Share stories about what inspires you to stay in business. Or showcase the things you're doing for a better planet.

Some other types of videos to help boost brand awareness include explainer and pre-roll videos. Share an interesting aspect about your business and target your prospects through paid ads. 

Empower Your Blog Posts

SEO-ready videos can make your blog posts searchable and also attractive. Proper captioned and tagged videos can make your blog posts rank higher on searches. 

SEO videos make your Google search friendly, helping to boost your rankings. People opening your links will find more reasons to read due to visual captivation. 

Educate Your Audience

Ask your video production team to help you create educational and how-to videos. Use these videos to answer your customers' questions and share actionable tips.

Your audience may find answers about a complex topic or understand particular features related to your products. Education and how-to videos will help because you can break down those topics. 

Video Marketing to Engage Leads

If a visitor actively interacts with your content, it means they're serious about finding a solution. At this stage, they know their problem well, and they're probably weighing up different solutions. 

The level where a buyer compares different solutions is the middle of the funnel level. It's a critical stage because a prospect can easily opt for competitors.

Leading marketers can agree that there's often a content mismatch in this area due to the transition from the awareness stage and the urge to create product-based content. 

Your role here is to showcase your product or service as the best solution. Develop information-rich videos to address challenges and show how your service helps.

Type of Videos to Engage Your Audience (MOFU Videos)

User engagement thus calls for an intensive lead nurturing strategy. Without a good team, you may have to outsource video production. Too many deals fall apart at this stage.

Here are the marketing videos to help you connect with your audience.

Thought Leadership Videos

Mid-level video marketing may help move prospects to the buying stage and reinforce your brand as an authority. Thought leadership videos are more like social proof. They back up your brand by demonstrating your expertise and helping reinforce credibility.

Thought leadership videos will make your site trustworthy in the eyes of search engines. They'll elevate your status to that of an industry leader or influencer on social media.

Your buyer journey video production team will assess to establish the best type of authority videos for your brand. These videos can be live streams or recorded and may involve hosting an industry leader. 

Customer Testimonials

If you're looking to establish trust, there's no better form of content than videos about your customers. Customer testimonials videos showcase your product's track record while providing social proof.

You'll stream or record customers narrating how your products improved their lives. They will shower your products with praise using words like affordable, efficient, convenient, and more.

Bottom of the Funnel Videos (BOFU)

MOFU videos will help you move leads to the BOFU stage. At this stage, your content has helped to tackle any misgivings your lead had about your services. 

Some popular BOFU video marketing ideas include:

  • Product videos showcasing your features and use cases. Cite specific use cases for your product and how it differs from competing alternatives.
  • Share a video course to help people understand how they can best use your product.

The buyer feels they're ready for the final decision and it's the perfect chance to close them. Your only job at this stage is to convince your leads to buy. The right videos at this stage can dramatically boost your conversions. 

Boost Customer Retention with Video Marketing (Delight Stage)

Your video marketing agency will recommend incorporating a customer retention strategy into your strategy. It's more cost-effective to keep customers than look for new ones. 

A 5% increase in customer retention can boost revenues by 25-95%. Satisfied customers are more loyal and will likely refer your business to their friends and families.

Some video marketing ideas to inspire your agency may include:

Ask your video marketing services to devote ample resources to delighting existing customers. Ask them to help you create creative, emotional, and engaging videos for this stage.

An Effective Video Production Marketing Strategy Can Help You Grow Your Business

Videos are one of the best marketing tools, but you're probably not using them effectively. You will generate more leads and drive more conversions by sharing the right videos at the right time.

You've learned how to align video marketing with the buyer's journey. It's time you revamp your video marketing strategy. Ensure you're getting the most value for your marketing budget. 

Media Masons offers you the resources to help you create the best marketing videos. Outsource your video production to us for quality that will set your brand apart. Contact us for more on getting started.