Tyler Lessard believes video marketing isn’t just another way to tell the same story. It’s an opportunity to become irresistible.
That was the story Tyler shared with dozens of marketing and sales professionals this week in Portland, Ore. Tyler is the vice president of marketing at Vidyard, which is an integration partner of Act-On. We’re also a happy customer and participated in the Video in Focus events as guest speakers.
Whether they were local startups or billion-dollar global companies, everyone we met seemed sold on video marketing. They are not alone. Businesses on average are publishing 33 new videos every month, according to Vidyard’s 2018 Video in Business Benchmark Report.
Video leverages the power of sound, vision, and storytelling to bring your products and services to vivid life. Tyler calls this his 4 E’s, they are:
- Engaging: We’re hardwired to engage in storytelling
- Emotional: Opportunity to invoke emotional responses
- Educational: We process video faster and retain longer
- Empathetic: Can develop trust and human empathy
At Act-On, we use videos throughout the customer journey, from initial awareness to ongoing customer support and training. We use them embedded in product pages, in automated nurture campaigns and in 1-to-1 interactions with customers, prospects and partners.
Recently, Nina Church-Adams, our senior vice president of marketing, produced her first thought leadership video that she shared on LinkedIn. The results were amazing. She posted the video on Monday evening. About two days later, and she’s had more than 5,000 views and dozens of comments.
Not every video you produce is going to get thousands of views. But you don’t need thousands of views either. I wouldn’t care if only a few people watched my video if one of those few later became a customer.
Here are 3 places to make sure you’re using videos for more leads, more trust, more engagement and, ultimately, more revenue.
Landing Page Videos
Whether you are using them on a registration page for an upcoming webinar or on the download page for a new report or eBook, videos help drive higher conversions. We use this 60-second, ungated video below on a main landing page. Once finished, viewers can opt in to watch a longer, gated demo video; schedule a demo; or learn more about Act-On’s key differentiators.
Email Marketing Videos
We use videos in every automated nurture campaign that we’re running. They just perform better than text-only emails. And you can use all sorts of videos for these campaigns. You can use an explainer video for top of funnel campaigns, or a customer success video in a middle of funnel or bottom of funnel automated program.
Personalized Videos
These are videos in which you can add personal information about your viewer, such as their name or company name, in the video itself. This week, we’re sending a personalized video thanking our customers for being customers and suggesting they join Act-On’s online community (screenshot below).
We’ve had excellent results with our personalized videos, both in quantitative and qualitative feedback. In our happy holidays video we sent last year, we saw 2.5X increase in open rates, and 4x increase in clicks. And most folks watched nearly 80 percent of the video.
We also received a ton of quick emails, phone calls, and social shout outs (like the one below) about how our customers appreciated the video.
There are more places and strategies for using video, but we’ll save those for a future post. In the meantime, I would love to see the videos you’re producing or learn about the strategies you are using to win more deals with video. Leave your comments below.