What you’ll learn about optimizing conversion with video marketing:

• Video is still emerging as a mainstream marketing effort
• You can use video marketing to help promote conversion in five ways:
  • CTAs and end-screen optimization
  • Email campaigns
  • SEO optimization efforts
  • Aligning video with sales pipeline
  • Reformatting written content into video format

Conversion is a vital metric for any marketer. But how do you get it right? One key element that’s still establishing itself as mainstream marketing tool is video. In this post, we’re going to share five strategies for using video marketing to drive conversion efforts. 

Here they are.

#1 Focus on CTAs & End-Screen Optimization

Take a look at any of your favorite YouTube channels and count the number of times there is a form or a call to action to engage viewers. This can be a request to leave a comment or subscribe, or an end screen button that directs viewers to another resource. You’ll see that the best video producers do it seamlessly and throughout their content — not just at the end.

Although it may seem obvious, these points of optimization are often overlooked or poorly executed. A lot of end screen optimization is cluttered with too many choices. Worse? It points to content that isn’t related to the same topic, which is a guaranteed way to say goodbye to your lead.

To make the most of your CTAs, optimize your end screens strategically to keep warming your lead with related content. You can direct them to a gated resource, for instance, or have them subscribe to your channel. Strategically place ‘subscribe’ buttons or video links within the video, particularly where the value summaries are. Better yet, study your analytics and look at your audience retention stats — the spot that’s a few seconds before your viewers usually drop off might be a perfect place to add a subscribe button.

#2 Include Videos in Your Email Campaigns

Your email campaigns are likely packed with visually stimulating content that reinforces the value you’re providing to your audience. This approach lends itself well to including video. Once you have a solid catalog of video content, you can plug videos into where you’d normally put static imagery — and that can go a long way towards driving conversion. For example, you can include a time-stamped segment of an evergreen video that really speaks to the topic you’re addressing in your email. And the following video might play perfectly into your B2B lead generation email campaigns:

Video marketing in emails increases click-through and conversion rates. In fact, studies have shown that campaigns with “video” in the headline have a higher open rate and campaigns with thumbnail links increase the click-through rate even more! Not only will your email campaigns gain additional traction from your video marketing efforts, they can also direct viewers onto your website (or YouTube channel) where you can further nurture the lead. 

#3 Don’t Ignore SEO

We see this a lot. People will add meta descriptions, title tags, and alt texts to every image on their website, but will completely forget to optimize their videos in the same way.

Now that Google’s search engine provides a video results page, it’s a very good idea to create an engaging title that showcases the topic you’re covering — just make sure you keep it to 70 characters so you can see the full title on the search page. And, just like you add a captivating title to your content pages and videos, you should also include a description that the search engines will display as well. This gives crawlers a better understanding of the context of your videos and makes indexing a lot easier.

Again, just like you would for your website pages, images, and posts, you should cater to the one thing that trumps any search engine algorithm — user intent.  If you’re providing valuable information that viewers want to see, your video marketing content should generate more leads for your business!

#4 Create Video That Aligns with Your Sales Funnel

Let’s say you have a lead that’s reached the bottom of your funnel. You’ve done the work of attracting them with educational content around the value your product brings, and you’ve shared case studies to showcase the success of your offerings. Now, they are close to becoming a valued customer. Sharing a video that provides an overview of a different product in your suite — one that doesn’t align with this prospect’s use case — could do more harm than good here. 

Your video content needs to land at the right stages of your audience’s journey. Getting this right opens up a world of opportunity for value-adding content that drives conversions at the end of the funnel. This means you should consider each stage and develop video marketing content that aligns with where the individual is on the customer journey.

Here’s an overview of each stage of the funnel and the type of video marketing content you should consider using:

Top of Funnel:

Your content is instantly captivating — more entertaining than educational, but still relevant.

Examples:

• Thought leadership
• FAQ videos that relate to the industry you’re in
• Company products and introductions

Mid Funnel:

This is where you’ll convert a user from being interested to engaged with value-add resources (and offer them gated content).

Examples:

• Case studies
• Webinars
• Explainer videos

Bottom of Funnel:

You’ve shown the prospect your product and provided case studies of how you implement it. Now you still have competitors to beat out:

Examples:

• User-generated content
• Testimonials
• Product walkthroughs and advanced features

#5 Convert Past Resources into Video Marketing

We get it, creating video content is just another task on your already overflowing to-do list. To help with that, here’s an easy way to create content that can be repurposed across social media, target various stages of the funnel, and more!

Re-use your gated resources. If you have a walkthrough guide or a template that you’ve shared, converting these assets into video will help your audience access your content in a more digestible manner. It will also help you update your evergreen content, boosting your relevancy. Creating these videos to supplement your written content or as stand-alone resources that are also email gated can generate leads across several social media platforms. 

When it comes to video marketing and using it to optimize conversion, we’ve been all-in for a while now. That’s why we’ve featured content on how to develop a sound YouTube strategy, repurpose existing video content, and employ short-form video formats. Read those and other posts on our blog to learn more.

Photo by Vanilla Bear Films on Unsplash