Video and the Marketing Funnel: The Complete Guide

If you are struggling to turn your target audience into loyal customers, you should make creating a marketing funnel with tailored video content a central part of your marketing strategy. After all, video is powerful at both connecting with potential customers and persuading them to not only make a conversion but also become strong advocates for your brand.

Blueprint Film has helped a diverse range of businesses and organisations to strengthen their messaging at different stages of their marketing funnels through engaging video content.

In this guide, you’ll learn what a marketing funnel is and why your marketing funnel needs quality video content. Then you’ll discover which marketing videos work best for each funnel stage. Lastly, I’ll walk you through our 5-step plan for creating a video-centric marketing funnel to get the right results for your business.

WHAT IS A MARKETING FUNNEL?

A marketing funnel (also known as a sales funnel) is a marketing tool that helps you to understand the journey of your potential customers/clients and to successfully guide them from awareness to conversion and retention. Generally, this journey involves four stages. And each of these four stages has different goals.

1. Top of the Funnel (ToFu) — the awareness stage. Get your audience to know who you are and what you do. Introduce a problem you can help them solve.
2. Middle of the Funnel (MoFu) — the consideration stage. Educate your audience about your product/service and differentiate yourself from the competition.
3. Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu) — the decision stage. Give them the final push to purchase/make a conversion. Reassure with social proof, and create a sense of urgency.
4. End of the Funnel — the retention stage. Inspire existing customers/clients to stay loyal to your business and become brand advocates.

VIDEOS TO USE FOR EACH FUNNEL STAGE:

An effective way to direct potential customers along the right path is to use video. You can use video at every stage of your marketing funnel. But before you jump into creating a video marketing funnel, let’s look at which video types (and metrics) are most relevant for each stage…

TOP OF FUNNEL (AWARENESS) VIDEOS

For top of funnel videos, the aim is to create brand awareness with your target demographic. Brand videos do a great job of introducing people to your brand — your approach, story, personality, values and more. Alternatively, awareness videos help customers become aware of a problem or challenge that may be facing that your business can solve. For brands targeting people based on lifestyle/interests, a lifestyle video will work best for this stage.

Key metrics: pay attention to the view count of your video(s), as this is a good indicator of exposure.

Tips for ToFu videos:

• Don’t include too much information, as this can overwhelm viewers.
• Video SEO is especially important for this stage because you are targeting new audiences.
• Include a strong hook within the first few seconds to get the viewer’s attention.

Grammarly shows how office workers like ‘Tyler’ can benefit from using their writing software in this snappy 70-second video. It manages to be fun and relatable while also introducing viewers to Grammarly’s features.

MIDDLE OF FUNNEL (CONSIDERATION) VIDEOS

‘Middle of funnel’ videos are an opportunity to get more in-depth about what you offer and what makes you different. Explainer videos are a natural fit for this stage. Another option is product videos, which let you detail the features and benefits of your product or service.

The key metric to pay attention to here is video watch time. Why? Because this indicates how valuable the content is to viewers. If viewers seem to be dropping off too early into your video, that means you aren’t giving them the information they need fast enough.

Tips for MoFu videos:

• Keep your content (and presence in general) relevant and consistent in quality and branding.
• It’s tempting, but avoid overly selling at this stage. Too much self-promotion can turn potential customers off before they arrive at the all-important decision stage.

Microsoft uses an animated explainer video to explain to viewers how Microsoft Azure works in an easy-to-follow and visually engaging way. This is part of a series of explainer videos available to people curious about the cloud computing platform on Microsoft Azure’s YouTube channel.

BOTTOM OF FUNNEL (DECISION STAGE) VIDEOS

How can video marketing influence decision making? One way is through providing social proof to give potential customers enough reassurance to act. That means creating video testimonials and case studies that show how existing customers are benefitting. This is also the time for creating promotional videos to highlight any offers or discounts.

For the decision stage, focus on key metrics such as click-throughs, conversions, sign-ups and sales.

Tips for BoFu videos:

• Add a human touch to your video content — emotions play an important factor in decision-making.
• Having clear and effective CTAs in your video is especially important for this stage.

Here is an example from our video portfolio. We spoke to Flow 56‘s existing client, Fitted Mirrors & Glass, to provide their viewers with social proof about the benefits of using their service.

END OF FUNNEL (RETENTION STAGE) VIDEOS

The videos you create for this stage of the sales funnel should continue to add value to existing customers/clients. An effective option is to show them how to get the most out of your product/service through tutorials, demos and how-to videos. Also, keep your existing audience up-to-date with your brand’s latest offerings through videos detailing new product launches or software updates.

Similar to the consideration stage, video watch time is an important metric to look at for the retention stage. This will signify how successful you are at holding the attention of existing customers.

Adobe Creative Cloud frequently posts video resources to help existing users get the most out of their applications. Their library ranges from short tips and tricks (such as the above video) to detailed webinars and live streams to help users improve their skills.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR VIDEO SALES FUNNEL:

1. AUDIT YOUR EXISTING VIDEO CONTENT

Review your existing content for any outdated/low-quality content or gaps in content. Do you have quality content for each stage of the marketing funnel? For instance, if you lack any content targeted at the bottom of your funnel, then consider creating a how-to video for existing customers.

If you currently don’t have any video content (or you have a limited budget), think about where in the funnel you are currently underperforming. Generally, we suggest prioritising top of funnel/awareness videos first to build your audience.

2. RESEARCH

Before producing new video content for your funnel, do your research. An informed approach is an effective approach. You need to ensure you know your audience — their needs, desires, concerns and pain points. One way to do this is by creating marketing personas. Hubspot has an excellent free tool for this. Talking and listening to your audience (especially those who have been through the funnel) is also very informative.

3. SET GOALS & BENCHMARKS

We have given you specific metrics to focus on for different stages of the funnel. But these numbers mean nothing without context. In other words, you need benchmarks to measure your results against. If you have published marketing videos before, you can look to past results to establish benchmarks. Otherwise, you can research industry standards, or check how your competitor’s videos are performing.

4. CREATE YOUR VIDEO(S)

Now that you know the type of content you want, who you are targeting and the results you want to achieve, it’s time to create your content. How you go about this is up to you. If you are running low on time, resources or expertise, consider contacting our team of video production professionals.

5. DISTRIBUTE & PROMOTE YOUR VIDEOS

It is hard to overstate the importance of distributing and promoting your video content. When done right, you maximise your video marketing ROI. So take some time to think about all the places you might want to distribute your content.

Originally published at https://blueprintfilm.co.uk on January 18, 2022.