Video is a powerful way to attract, engage and nurture your audience, with many advantages over other forms of content.
Marketing is all about delivering the right content to your audience at the right time, and when done effectively, you can quickly advance prospects through the buying cycle.
With video, people are more likely to listen to your business’s message and to retain what your business has to say. Video also affords you the opportunity to connect with your audience on a deeper, more meaningful level, which pays dividends in both tangible and non-tangible ways.
Video can give your marketing campaigns the extra oompf they need to get your prospects closer to a buying decisions, but the types of marketing videos that will be most effective for your business will depend on your business goals, and where they align with the needs of your audience.
Explore the resources below to learn how marketing videos can be used most effectively in your business.
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Creating Marketing Videos that Work for Your Business
Before you go and start recording your marketing video or hire a company to do it for you, it’s important the you have a clear understanding of your audience and what you want your videos to accomplish for your business. With these things clearly defined, you’re much more likely to get the marketing videos your business needs.
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What Goals Do You Want to Accomplish with Your Marketing Videos?
Video is an effective marketing tool across the buying cycle, from attracting an audience to closing sales, and beyond. The marketing videos you should use in support of your business will depend on your specific marketing goals. To identify the videos that will be most effective for your business, start by selecting what you want to accomplish with your videos.
Video to
Attract an Audience
The engaging nature of these marketing videos make them great for attracting a targeted audience and making them aware of your brand, content, products and services.
Video to
Nurture Prospects
These videos are effective at educating prospects and demonstrating the value of your products or services, so they can make an informed decision when it comes time to buy.
Video To
Close Sales
Buying is all about trust, and these videos (those with a human element especially) are useful for overcoming objections and making customers confident in their buying decision.
The types of marketing videos listed below are categorized based on what they’re most effective at doing for your business. There are no rules saying you can’t use these videos outside of their purpose, as defined in these three categories. Video testimonials, for example, can be used to attract brand new audiences and purely entertaining content can be enjoyed by your customers, just as much as anyone else.
Marketing Videos for Attraction and Awareness
Each of your customers’ journeys started by becoming aware of your brand and solutions. As a marketer, it’s your job to find out where your ideal audience spends their time, and get content in front of them that entertains, informs, or problem-solves.
Your top-of-funnel video content shouldn’t be all about your business and the products or services it offers. Individuals at this stage may not even realize they have a problem that needs solving, let alone that you’re product is their solution, so promotional content isn’t likely to be appealing this early in the customer journey.
At this stage of the marketing funnel, focus on creating content that’s broadly appeals to your target audience, helps them understand the problem or struggles that your product or service solves, establishes your brand as a trusted source of information, and subtly provides the “why” that encourages them to dig deeper into your content for solutions.
Thought Leadership Videos
Thought leadership videos can be used to attract an audience, while proving your expertise and understanding of the industries you serve. Executed properly, videos for thought leadership have potential to draw broad engagement and traffic, because they’re not focused on your business, but rather the needs of your target audience.
Thought leadership videos feature a “talking head,” or sometimes multiple spokespeople, sharing their expertise with your target audience, helping them contextualize the challenges they’re facing, even if they’re not 100% related to your product or service. By providing genuinely useful content, the subject matter experts in your videos (and your brand by proxy) will be positioned as a trusted source of information that they can rely on. Which is a very valuable position to be in once they start looking for solutions.
Behind-the-Scenes Videos
Behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos are a great way for audiences to become more familiar with your business, and forge a more emotional connection with your brand and solutions by giving them a look below the surface level of your organization.
Behind-the-scenes videos give prospects a better understanding of what exactly you are known for, what you pride yourself on, and all the work that goes into serving your customers. They also provide a different lens through which to view your business, that other forms of content just aren’t as effective at.
A well produced behind-the-scenes videos can be fun and entertaining way to attract a larger audience, while also introducing them to your brand, culture, solutions and members of your organization.
Marketing Videos for Nurturing and Education
With an attentive audience, you can start helping them contextualize the problem your product or service solves, understand the different solutions available to them, and prepare them to make an informed decision for when they’re ready to buy.
Your middle-of-funnel video content should build on the good will you earned in the previous stage by providing honest, genuinely useful content that empowers members of your audience to choose the best solution for their specific needs.
In addition to helping people at this stage understand the challenges and solutions in front of them, now is also the time to go more in-depth into how your solution works and start making the case for why it’s the most fitting choice. Your audience isn’t ready to buy at this stage, but your content should help them determine whether your solution is a viable option for them.
Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) Videos
Before prospects can make an informed buying decision, they are likely to have many questions. FAQ videos give your business an opportunity to answer questions commonly asked by potential customers, making it clear that you not only understand their needs, but also that you have solutions.
Through a question-and-answer video format, you can provide prospects with all the information they need to make an educated buying decision, in a more engaging, self-directed manner. FAQ videos can broadly-appealing questions that are of interest to your audience, or answer questions specific to your business, product or service – anything that brings them closer to making a confident buying decision.
Frequently asked questions are often searched for in large numbers on search engines like Google or YouTube, giving FAQ videos potential to drive high volumes of search traffic, while establishing your brand as a solution provider.
Animated Explainer Videos
Animated explainer videos use visual aids to teach prospects top level concepts related to your business that would otherwise by difficult to explain with text and still images alone.
These videos are typically short in length, and quickly convey to viewers how your solution or particular features of your solution work, without overwhelming them with details and ideas they may not be ready to engage with yet.
Animated explainer videos are a great way to introduce your audience to your products or services and the value they can provide, in a light and engaging way.
Marketing Videos for Convincing and Closing
Those that reach this stage will be familiar with your brand and solution, as well as some of your competitors. They now have a clear understanding of their needs and the features of various solutions, and may have even narrowed their selection down to a few key choices.
At the bottom of the funnel, prospects will be doing their due diligence to ensure their making the best decisions for their business. While making sure the features of your product or service align with the needs of their business is important, making a buying decision involves so much more.
Here, you can use video to answer questions specific to your product or service, establish trust and an emotional connection, and make it clear to prospects that of all the ways to solve their problem, your solution is the best choice for them.
Video is an efficient way to convey detailed information about what your business offers, while demonstrating the value it adds in a more tangible and emotional way.
Product Demo Videos
Product demonstration videos are an effective way for your business to show off your solution in action and how it solves problems for your customers.
A well-produced product demo video can provide a viewer with an intimate knowledge of your product much faster than any other from of content. Thanks to the visual assistance that video affords, after watching a product demonstration, the viewer should feel like they’ve already taken your product “for a spin” and know what it’s like to use in the real world.
Product videos are a great way for prospective customers to engage in some self-directed learning about your product, and determine if it’s a good fit for them, before reaching out to your sales team or making a purchase.
Customer Testimonial Videos
Before anyone makes a buying decision, no matter how big or small, they have to trust that the product or service they’re purchasing will deliver on its promises. Video testimonials provide potential customers with unbiased, third-party evidence that your solution adds real value to your customers’ lives.
Authentic, engaging customer testimonial videos establish a strong emotional connection with the viewer, making it easy for them to grasp the value of your solution in a very tangible way. When prospect hear about the benefits of your product from a customer like them, it’s easy to for them to imagine how your product or service can improve their lives too.
If you need to establish trust and authority with your audience, to help you convert leads and close sales, there’s no better tool than the video testimonial.