Inbound Marketing 101: 4 Tips for Creating Video that Converts

In order to create a successful inbound marketing flywheel, it’s crucial that video content is a part of your company’s content marketing strategy. In fact, landing pages that contain videos increase conversion rates by up to 80%.

Video has been widely adopted by companies as the next best way to attract, engage and delight their customer base. According to HubSpot, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands—which significantly outweighs any other type of content.

Not only does video help nurture customers throughout their buyer’s journey, it also builds trust with your audience, helps to improve your SEO efforts, provides easily digestible content and greatly reduces the bounce rate of your website.

Below are four tips for leveraging video to attract, engage and convert leads throughout the inbound marketing process:

1. Create a Long-Term Video Strategy

A big mistake a lot of companies make when it comes to producing video is pumping a lot of time and money into creating a high-quality brand or social media video—and then never utilizing it again. Creating video content takes time and, more importantly, consistency.

To produce video content that consumers will actually want to watch, ideally start planning your video ideas months in advance. This will give your team the time they need to research, write, record and edit the videos. The more you plan, the less that can go wrong. There are many hidden variables in each video production project, and taking the necessary steps to anticipate these speedbumps will go a long way.

For example, let’s say you plan on releasing a content marketing guide four months from now. To further promote the guide, you should create a video that explains why developing a content marketing strategy is a good idea. Both the guide and video would be launched simultaneously to maximize your launch efforts.

To make this a more manageable feat, focus each of those four months on completing one step that brings you closer to your final end-product. Take this timeline for example:

• MONTH 1: Research best practices in content marketing and write video script
• MONTHS 2-3: Film video footage
• MONTH 4: Video editing and finishing touches

When it comes to any type of content creation, planning long term is the most effective strategy for delivering high-quality results every time.

2. Provide Value at Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Creating video for each stage of the buyer’s journey is key to converting—and retaining—new customers. This means you must create video content that effectively attracts, engages and delights your customer base.

Prospective customers in the “attract” stage are at the beginning of their buyer’s journey. They are actively identifying the challenges they face, and how they can best solve them. In this stage, you want to avoid speaking too much about your product. Instead, focus on sharing how you can help solve their biggest problems.

In the “engage” phase of the buyer’s journey, the videos you create should focus on developing lasting relationships with your potential customers, and help your audience visualize themselves using your products.

Finally, the “delight” phase is all about providing a remarkable customer experience and converting your customers into brand advocates who will be delighted to tell their network all about your company. A great post-purchase experience offers the ability to upsell another product and/or service and gives users the chance to embrace your brand.

The below graphic depicts a few examples of video content that you can create for each step of the buyer’s journey:

3. Develop Content About Your Industry, Not Just Your Brand

If you’re attempting to attract new business leads, you will have to do more than just create a video about how great your company is. By utilizing educational videos that demonstrate your deep industry expertise, you can build trust with your prospective customers and establish yourself as a leader in your given field. After all, we are constantly bombarded with generic marketing tactics, and it can get tiring. Instead of being “sold” to, your target audience would much rather witness your brand’s value through the content you create.

Just like with blog posts, videos should be created to support the content on your website to which you’re trying to drive conversions. For example, a private equity firm that is looking to be an industry leader in small-business growth should create a video that delves deeper into this topic by showcasing their industry expertise.

4. Use Emotion Where Appropriate

Emotion is a powerful tool used across all marketing campaigns, and video content is no exception. In fact, videos offer one of the best ways to make your audience feel a certain way toward your brand, product or service. A great example of employing emotion in your video content is by using a mix of brand and customer testimonial videos.

Testimonials provide a first-hand look at a real-world application of how your product and/or service has benefitted the customer. Just like reading reviews for a product you want to purchase online, watching a customer testimonial about your brand says more about your trustworthiness than your own marketing ever could.

Brand videos, on the other hand, give insight into the type of company you are. By using brand videos, you develop a real relationship with your customer and eliminate price shopping. Even if customers could get a similar product somewhere else, they can’t replicate your company’s brand. Your friendly customer service, 24/7 technical support or working relationship is often even more important than the product you’re selling.

Due to the ever-growing demand for more video content, companies can no longer solely rely on written content to engage their customers. Video may seem intimidating at first, but free educational and production tools exist to help make the transition easier.

Keep in mind that you’ll have to shift your focus to measuring different metrics. Much like SEO, video creation has more moving parts to the process, so make sure to set reasonable expectations for what your business can achieve.

By leveraging these four tips for crafting powerful inbound marketing videos, your company will ultimately build greater brand awareness, increase brand loyalty, and drive more conversions for your product and/or service offerings.