As a business owner, your goal is to generate more leads and drive more sales and build a thriving business. As a result, various marketing campaigns are put up to achieve this goal.
But did you realize that videos have emerged as one of the most used and most popular content formats for generating leads in recent times?
It’s because video content generates a higher level of engagement than typical text content.
Tubular insights showed that 64% of buyers purchased product/service after watching branded videos and business owners who use video marketing grow profits 49% faster than those who non-video users.
Even 51% of marketing agencies worldwide affirmed that video content has the best ROI.
Do You Know Why Videos Work?
Studies revealed that the human brain processes videos about 60,000x faster than text. Videos enable people to learn from the tone, expressions, body language, and other visual cues used in the video, in addition to the content itself.
More so, Google search bots look more for content with video. According to Forrester, web pages with videos are about 54x more likely to rank higher on Google SERPs — videos improve organic traffic by 157% according to Brightcove.
However, if you have been using video content as part of your marketing strategies but not getting the desired result, chances are you aren’t maximizing your video marketing for lead generation.
In this guide, you will learn some video marketing methods that will help you use your video marketing to its full potential – lead generation. Let’s take a look.
Gate Your Video Content
People perceive video content as more valuable than written content – no matter how well-written the article is. Therefore, people would always prefer to opt-in for video content.
Did you know that this is a possible way for you to collect contact details for lead generation? You can easily achieve this by gating your video content.
Don’t get it wrong! Gating means that people would have to submit some kind of info before they can access the video, which in this case is your marketing video content.
Before now, gating was predominantly used with downloadable content like whitepapers or eBooks. But nowadays, gating is not restricted to downloadable assets alone anymore but can be used with video content too.
Business owners use gated video content for lead generation by providing people with valuable information in exchange for their contact details like name, email address, etc. Currently, about 80% of B2B video marketing content is gated.
You would first have to curate video content that interests your viewers e.g. a product video demo, a detailed explainer video, a how-to video, etc. then gate the access to it.
This will not only help you to generate leads but also have statistics of how many people viewed your videos, which is a helpful way to evaluate the quality of your top-of-funnel video content.
The best way to gate your video content is to include a subscription form for readers to get a link to your video in your eBooks, newsletters, blogs, and webinars, etc.
Sometimes, the time and place for gating matters. You may choose to gate your video content where you are providing deeper value to viewers, for example:
Infusionsoft made good use of this strategy, the company offered a video demo of their product to prospects who complete their subscription form.
With the gated video content, Infusionsoft was able to reduce friction and increase the number of leads generated.
Strategically Insert Calls to Action
The next method is carefully inserting calls to action (CTA) into your videos. What most business owners don’t know is that there is more to CTAs than just being a phrase within or at the end of an article.
CTAs can also be used in video content to generate leads. This method has been so maximized on YouTube.
The YouTube annotations and cards can be strategically placed anywhere in your video and with them, your viewers can easily subscribe to your channel.
Your CTAs can also be linked to other content that relates to the video or possibly to the web page where you sell a related product or service or to a subscription form, where viewers are requested to submit their emails for more videos.
You can add a CTA like “send us an email at,” “click this link,” or “follow this form,” etc. at the end of your video. If your viewers see it immediately after watching a video, they are more likely to subscribe.
Please note, make your CTA short and concise and always put yourself in the viewer’s shoes.
Make Use of Video Landing Pages
Did you know that you can increase lead generation and conversions by about 80% by simply adding a video to your landing page?
It’s because viewers retain about 95% of messages they watch in videos compared to only 10% they retain when they read in written content.
Forrester recently revealed that a one-minute video is worth 1.8 MILLION WORDS. This shows how impactful a simple video is.
Using a video landing page is much more effective than adding the video to random webpages. This is because landing pages are specifically designed for conversion and are free from distractions like navigations and sidebars.
This will enable your viewers to fully concentrate on the video and watch it to the end without being distracted. Mistmedia stated that landing pages with videos are 53% more likely to show up on the first page of Google SERP.
Unbounce decided to try out the impact of a video landing page on its lead generation campaign. So, it created two landing pages – one with a video and one without a video – and tested the conversion rate of both landing pages.
The result was amazing – the landing page without video had an average conversion rate of 6.5% while the landing page with video had an average conversion rate of 13% with a 100% conversion lift.
Leverage Video Testimonials
Testimonials are a good form of word-of-mouth advertisement. They are positive and convincing words from those who had tried your product or service to prospects.
Normally, testimonials contain names, photographs, and a few short sentences praising your product or service. But nowadays, some dishonest business owners often write testimonials themselves with fake names and stock photographs.
Hence, the conventional text testimonials are no longer very reliable these days anymore and only a few people pay attention to them.
But video testimonials are making waves and have lots of social proof value.
For instance, prospects see the video of a real person talking about their experiences with your product or service – how your product or service solved the problem they had. This can create a sort of emotional connection in prospects and convert.
A very good example of a company that used video testimonials is CodeAcademy. CodeAcademy has on its website a video of their course’s alumni telling their success stories. The video testimonial was reportedly effective in adding more students to the academy.
Make Use of Video Case Studies
Video case studies are similar to video testimonials but are more practical and provide a more in-depth application of your product and service to the problem.
Video case studies focus on and describe a situation where your business used its product to solve a problem. They are real-life stories of how your method, product, or service solved or improved a problem or situation. Video case studies mostly include factual information and statistics to prove it.
The truth is showing real results achieved by your business can go a long way to influence the decision of your prospects and persuading them to sign up.
Leverage Your Video across Multiple Social Media
You don’t need to limit your video content to your website or landing pages alone, you can also leverage your website your video across multiple social media. Videos on social media generate 12 times more shares than text content and images combined.
So it’s time for you to start maximize social media platforms to drive traffic to your website and generate more leads. Here are the big four platforms to try out:
- YouTube: Upload your interesting, engaging, and viewer-centric video to your YouTube channel. Optimize it with a great title, a clear CTA, and a URL in the description. Use the YouTube annotations and cards effectively for extra traction.
- Facebook: Share your engaging video in the status update with a clear CTA. You can set up Page Post Ads or Promoted Posts to target more people.
- Twitter: Twitter is not strongly associated with video yet. Nevertheless, you can tweet your YouTube link and a link to your subscription page.
- Pinterest: Most people only know they can pin their pictures on Pinterest. Only a few know they can pin their videos as well. In case you don’t know, videos play right inside the Pinterest platform too. This makes the platform yet another place to spread your video content.
Before you start marketing your video for lead generation using the methods above, there are a couple of things I would want you to understand:
1) Define Your Target Audience and Produce the Right Kind of Videos for Them
If you want your video marketing to be very effective, you must first define your target audience and understand what they need as well as what their demands are.
When you define your target audience, you would get an idea of the kind of videos to create for them in terms of attracting and engaging them.
More, defining your target audience would help you to create specific and highly-targeted videos that contain simple but impactful messages for your audience.
For instance, where webinars and whitepapers are very effective at converting some people, others find them overwhelming. So, if you want to grab your prospects’ attention, create a video that is entertaining to your audience.
A good example was the case of Interthinx. The company wanted to offer fraud-detection training for the mortgage industry and decided to use a video as the training medium.
To make the video more interesting to prospects, Interthinx made the video to mimic the popular film “Charlie’s Angels” and TV franchise “CSI.”
The premier of video at the trade show alone got 700 orders and Interthinx was eventually able to get 1,200 qualified leads even before the DVD was released.
2) Decide the Correct Length for your Video
The second thing to consider if you want to boost lead generation with your video marketing is the length of your video. Ensure that your videos are of the optimal length.
If you’re creating a video for your YouTube channel, the optimal video length is between two to three minutes.
Though some people claim that the optimal video length depends on the purpose of the video, it is recommended as a general rule of thumb to keep the length of the video between two to five minutes.
However, you can break the rule if your video is engaging enough. Some videos on YouTube are longer than 5 minutes and yet got over 50 million views. Did you know why? They are rich and super entertaining.
While one-off videos are well and good, we are in the go-live era. A live video marketing strategy is most successful with a regularly scheduled series that can provide value and keep viewers coming back.
Buzzfeed is a great example of a brand using a regularly scheduled live video series to enhance its online presence. The popular “Exploding a Watermelon, one rubber at a time” live video series has generated over 11 million views.
3) Create a Live Video Series
Finally, try to create a live video series if possible. Though one-off videos are sometimes good and effective, video marketing with live video series can be the most effective and successful strategy, especially in the go-live era we are now.
A live video marketing strategy does not only provide value for viewers, but it also keeps them coming back.
Conclusion
One of the most effective forms of lead acquisition is video marketing. By including video marketing into your marketing strategies, you would be improving your lead generation as well as your business sales.
Did you know that videos not only help in attracting your prospects’ attention but also helps in building awareness and trust about your business?
Therefore, if you want to attract more prospects and generate high-quality leads, the potential of video marketing must not be overlooked in your marketing campaigns.
The methods listed will help you translate your video marketing into a valid tool to generate leads for your business. And in no time, your video marketing will generate the lead generating result your business has been looking for.