Aah, the lead generation funnel. The bread and butter of all business development. The concept of the funnel is constantly thrown around in the marketing world with many different iterations, and the funnel, regardless of the context essentially has the same idea.
All of these new tools and technological advances give you plenty of opportunities to best maximize the funnel, but even if it’s highly ubiquitous it doesn’t mean that people really know how to use it. In fact, in 2012 it was said that 68% of B2B marketers were incapable of identifying their sales funnel.
After looking at this sobering statistic it’s no wonder that the elusive funnel is driving people crazy in search for finding quality leads. But not all is lost: video is a versatile secret weapon that you can easily weave into your lead generation strategy to help close more deals. We know that 96% of B2B organizations use video in their marketing, and that 73% of those corporations that do use it report positive ROI.
So now, to walk you through how video seamlessly fits into your lead nurturing funnel, we’re going to use the TOFU-MOFU-BOFU model.
As you can see here in the diagram, breaking down content by which part of the funnel they correspond to is a good way to think about how video is part of the customer journey. And in this day in age, content is king. In fact, according to the Accenture State of Content 2017 study, 81% of senior businesses reported that content is instrumental in success in Content and Promotional Marketing. The study also reported that 84% of respondents believed that quality content motivates audiences to increase brand engagement. While you might argue that this could be more of a B2C context, we think that it truly strengthens the argument for great content. And video content can be there.
Omniconvert did a fantastic job divvying up different content strategies based on the TOFU-MOFU-BOFU model, and we’re going to do a walk-through how video works at each stage.
How To Use Video at the Top of the Funnel
Actions at the top of the funnel address the first and most basic step: awareness. What types of video actions you can do?
- Post videos on social media: The beauty of social media is that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram make it easy for you to harness the power of video in their different forms. You can post an abridged 15-second teaser version of one of your best sequences on Instagram, automatically upload a full video onto Facebook, or even harness the new trends of Facebook Live and Periscope to broadcast content out there to users and to gain influencers
- Embed videos: Given the diversity of TOFU activities, like blogs, digital newsletters, infographics, and your company’s own primary research, integrating video into TOFU can be as easy as embed. Blogging platforms like WordPress, as well as email marketing software like MailChimp, let you embed the videos you want for your users to access across all your communications.
- Bring facts to life with the power of video: Primary research and infographics can also harness the power of video. As a complement to a brief or a written case-study, primary research can be summarized in video form (and we here at Stark Crew can help you get it done) to help capture users and get the information to come to life. As for infographics, they’re certainly an engaging to make data come to life, but with video you can push it even further. Free online tools like Animaker, which has been used by The Huffington Post among others, can help you give your research or other elements of your value proposition a visual spark that can get people engaged and want to move farther into the funnel.
How To Use Video in the Middle of the Funnel
In MOFU, we’ve already tackled the getting people to know who we are part, and once we’ve lured them in, it’s time to teach them how to find the best solution for them. In the MOFU stage, video can help enrich the education process:
- Turn Your Education Resources Into Videos: As a complement to written case studies, ebooks, and other publications, you can adapt the content to video. Educating potential consumers about different aspects of services offered or factors in the industry can help empower potential clients to come to the best solution.
- Harness Live Video for Webinars: Facebook Live is becoming a big up-and-coming trend for marketers, the media, and more. Instead of using webinar software that may just endlessly buffer, why not host your live events or webinars on Facebook Live or Periscope instead?
How to Use Video at the Bottom of the Funnel
Now, in BOFU, this is the moment all B2B marketers have been waiting for: to get the lead to stay downstream long enough to capture the sale and have all of the efforts be worth your while. The actions in BOFU are perfectly suited to video. Having videos at this stage will get you to extend your average customer lifetime value, and if you’re already going to use video in TOFU and MOFU, it will certainly do no harm in having that consistency all throughout the funnel. How can video work in BOFU? Here are some suggestions:
- Customer Success Stories: Testimonials are the most surefire way to build your credibility with potential future consumers. Sure, having written testimonials from customer surveys are great and all, but how about giving a true extra spin to it by filming a video? Not only can you seize the opportunity to profile happy customers, you can also use it to give an inside look into your business as well.
- Demos/Free Trials: There’s a reason why there are so many YouTubers that have gained notoriety in teaching users about a whole slew of topics. There are the beauty videobloggers who school women on the latest beauty products on techniques, the viral videos from sites like Tasty that clog our Facebook feeds with incredibly tempting recipes…and the options go on-and-on. Having that visual can be much more engaging and effective instead of just having a mere written step-by-step guide.
- Mini-Classes: Besides other education materials, you can have an entire series of mini-classes related to your company’s area of expertise available online, as a tie-in to other future services.
Video and Marketing Automation
By going through all the content choices, you’re able to identify which types of video content are valid for certain points in the customer journey. So now that we’ve broken down where the content goes, we need to address how automation works in all of this. Wistia, while calling the stages by different terms than TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU, has lined out how video and marketing automation can work. This is how they think you should do it:
They give the example of their name-brand email capture software and cite that the conversion rate for the videos for their account videos that have the email capture form within the first 20% of the video’s length boasted a 43% conversion rate. This is fabulous for the top of the funnel but this doesn’t exactly address what you can do in the middle and the bottom of the funnel.
So, how do you organize all of the videos you’ve produced and figure out how to plant them throughout all the stages of the funnel as your initial leads become customers? Wistia recommends that you organize all of your videos on a spreadsheet based on where in the funnel the type of content falls as you map out the customer journey. As a result of this analysis, you can see which videos have the most views and are therefore the most powerful ones in your arsenal. If you’re then ready to move on to further steps, you can also add personas to their recommended spreadsheet
As you move up and down the funnel, the possibilities to integrate video into your lead generation strategy are vast. The more video you can have, the more present you’ll be in overall internet traffic. While we hate to be redundant, the fact that nearly 79% of all web traffic will be video by 2018 is a true testament to the power of video into your overall content marketing strategy. You may already using video at the top and in the middle of the funnel, but we highly recommend pushing strongly into video at the bottom of the funnel. This is where you can really highlight your company’s added value and competitive advantage on the market. And, for all of your video needs, we here at Stark Crew are ready to answer the call to make the videos you need to have the best lead generation funnel possible for your business.