Nowadays, video content is a must when it comes to increasing conversions — especially when it comes to eCommerce. After all, these marketing-optimized videos provide the most reliable way to help potential customers reach a shopping decision.
However, that can only happen if you build a solid video strategy tailored to your marketing objectives.
There is a wide variety of marketing video types, and each style is meant to fulfill a different goal in a sales funnel. Meaning that your marketing video content only reaches its entire potential work if you know exactly when and where to use them.
To help you do just that, let’s focus on some of the most critical marketing objectives in an eCommerce funnel and see what types of videos are ideally suited for the job.
It All Starts with Trust Building
Building customer confidence makes your audience far more likely to commit to your products or services. Undoubtedly, trust is one of the elements that can make or break a potential customer’s purchase decision. If you want people to trust you and your products, you need to humanize your brand and nurture empathy among your customers.
That’s what culture videos and testimonials come in. Let’s take a look at these two successful marketing videos styles.
Culture Videos & Making Your Brand Shine
This video content may not highlight any specific products or services, but it tells your customers what they can expect from your business and what makes your brand different — which is a decisive differentiating factor in eCommerce and social media marketing.
They are great at building a foundation of your brand’s identity, voice, mission, and goals.
A great way to develop a compelling culture video is to tell the story around your business origin, how it grew and what struggles it had to face. That said, culture videos built around your internal processes (“a day in the office” type of video) or covering special events can be equally as appealing.
Put the people behind your brand in the forefront, focusing on the stories your employees have to tell. A happy employee makes for a great brand marketer, and people are more likely to trust your brand if they know your employees and believe in them.
The addition of this human touch to your sales funnel will make your target audience more likely to get invested in your offerings. So, use this type of video to reflect your brand values and make customers fall in love with your story!
Customer Testimonials: People Trust People
Have you ever looked for reviews before making a purchase? Yeah, who hasn’t? Customers naturally respect other customers’ opinions and experiences. That is why review sites and word-of-mouth advertising are so effective, even today.
Customer testimonials are all about having people share their experiences with your product or service and how it helped them with a particular issue. In an effective testimonial, you have to create a whole journey — from establishing your happy customer pain points to the moment your product or service runs into their lives to change it all.
There are few things more convincing about the value of your brand than a satisfied customer sharing their experience. By adding a touch of spontaneity and frankness to your marketing campaign, these videos will help your brand establish credibility and reliability.
Above all, a good customer testimonial has to be earnest and can’t seem scripted. They need to be built around real customers with real problems and showcase the real solutions you helped them with. Otherwise, your video will come through as disingenuous and might end up hurting your strategy.
Clear Communication is Crucial!
One of the biggest hurdles of online shopping is that customers can’t interact directly with your products — unless we are talking software and digital goods. That means eCommerce platforms need to find other ways to bring shoppers as close to the product as possible. Let’s take a look at these two types that manage to do that exceedingly well!
Making Your Offerings Shine with an Awesome Product Video
Ask yourself: what would customers care to examine if they were shopping in-store? The inability to physically dig into a product can build uncertainty among many customers. This type of marketing video addresses that issue by helping consumers gather as much information and familiarity with a product as possible without having it in their hands.
Now, your product videos’ effectiveness lies in how realistic and accurate they feel as they showcase the product features, traits, and benefits. Great product videos, then, are perfect to list the qualities of individual products or services quickly and concisely and are ideal for enhancing your e-shop’s product listings and conversion landing pages.
If a potential buyer is unsure whether the product would match their expectations or not, offering this type of video can make the difference.
Last but not least, one of the best ways to craft powerful product videos is to show your product or service in use. So, whenever it makes sense, go for real-life scenarios that showcase the benefits people can derive from your offerings.
Keep It Fun but Useful with Whiteboard Animations
By providing both educational and entertainment value, this hugely popular type of explainer video will help you present your brand, product, or service in a way that sticks with the viewers.
The whiteboard animation style is all about showing the viewer animated images being drawn on the screen. Their simplicity and entertaining style are why they excel at grabbing the audience’s attention.
With their capacity to synthesize and condense information effectively, whiteboard videos work particularly well when your products are intricate or if you need to convey a lot of data to your customers.
Having said all that, if you decide to use a whiteboard video, know that sticking to the formula is vital. Having a simulated hand drawing the images on a white whiteboard is not negotiable. They are a staple of the format for a reason. The former adds dynamism to the whiteboard animated video and helps create a sense of closeness with the viewer; the latter helps with information retention and makes color a tool to drive viewers’ attention and reinforce positive associations with your product, solution, or brand.
Having said all that, know that customization is a big deal in whiteboard videos. Otherwise, you risk having your video feel stale and generic. Make sure to brand your whiteboard appropriately (include your brand colors and logo at critical moments, use your company jingle, etc.) to make them unmistakably yours.
Addressing and Overcoming Customer Concerns
Effective communication – that is, to listen and respond – is a crucial ingredient in any relationship. Customers are way more likely to stay with a brand that cares about and addresses their doubts and concerns. Now the real question is, which types of videos can help you do just that?? Simple: FAQs and educational videos.
Shorten Your Sales Cycles with Meaningful FAQ Videos
A well-made, relevant FAQ video can play a critical role in how you communicate with your customers and prime them to commit to a purchase. However, making great FAQ videos is easier said than done.
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that tackling real customer questions is actually really important. It might sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many companies develop this type of video using generic or non-relevant questions and then complain the piece is not yielding results. Treating your FAQ videos as marketing mouthpieces – using questions just for the purpose of highlighting a product, feature, or brand message – is a bad idea and will only result in potential customers walking away dissatisfied with your content in light of their unanswered questions.
Your goal is to provide truthful and relevant answers to your customer’s concerns, and ideally, do so even before they have a chance to ask.
Having FAQs videos as part of your sales funnel – even if you deploy them in social media spaces like Instagram or Facebook instead of your eShop platform – can help generate conversions at the latter stages of your funnel. They can also help you with challenging marketing goals, such as overcoming last-minute resistance.
Use your FAQ videos to educate and assuage your audience’s concerns, and you won’t be disappointed with the results.
Use Educational Video Content to Become a Go-to Reference
Using educational videos as a marketing tool is a great way to boost sales. They strengthen your brand reputation and awareness, turning you into a reliable source of information your potential customers will stumble upon and come back later when ready for a conversion.
Your primary goal with educational videos should be to provide helpful information that delivers value to your existing and potential customers on topics that relate to your brand and products. For that, you should always choose topics or tackle problems that your audience suffers from and provide the information they can benefit from.
What’s great about these videos is they can cover any subject matter — as long as it ties to your business — and benefit your customers and your brand alike.
When using this type of video, try to leave the salesy tone aside, but always add subtle branding hints. You want your audience to go back to you when it’s time. Your content marketing strategy should feel unique and branded to accomplish that; so that your audience knows who to call later on.
Summing Up
As seen, despite a large number of marketing videos, not all of them are suited for the same purpose. Their levels of success rely on matching the right video type to a specific moment of your buyer’s journey.
A solid understanding of their difference in practical uses will accomplish the extra nudge your customers need to close the deal. At the end of the road, video marketing is all about increasing conversions.
