Video is an excellent way to communicate your message, tell a story, and share engaging content in a digestible format. Businesses that use video marketing in their content funnel and overarching strategies see better results than those using static assets.
- Social media posts that contain video have 48% more views than those that don’t.
- According to Buffer, 25% of companies publish video content every week.
- Hubspot found that 93% of marketers who use video say that it’s an integral part of their marketing strategies.
Maybe you’ve dabbled in video content marketing before; perhaps you’re considering video for the first time — either way, if you don’t include video throughout the different stages of your content marketing funnel, you’re missing out on an effective means of growth. In this article, we’ll define the marketing funnel, detail the different types of videos that work well in the funnel, and provide you with the metrics you need to measure to ensure success in your campaigns.
What is the content marketing funnel?
If you’re new to the marketing game, or even a seasoned veteran, it pays to understand the content marketing funnel.
The content marketing funnel helps define and frame each stage of the buyer’s journey — from awareness to conversion. The funnel occasionally includes additional stages of post-conversion, including adoption, retention, and advocacy.
By coordinating your video marketing strategy with the marketing funnel, you can actively plan campaigns that hit every stage of the buyer’s journey and achieve better results.
Awareness Stage – Top Of Funnel (ToFu)
The awareness stage is an opportunity to recognize your brand or business by creating engaging, relatable content that informs and educates your target audience. As a target audience member begins to engage with your brand or company, they will move further down the marketing funnel, becoming a lead.
Consideration Stage – Middle of Funnel (MoFu)
The consideration stage is an opportunity to positively position your company as the best solution for the audience’s problem by creating content that solves a query, answers a question, or relieves a pain point. The middle of the funnel is also where your audience will assess how you compare vs your competitors.
Conversion Stage – Bottom of Funnel (BoFu)
The conversion stage is an opportunity to convert your lead into buying or signing up for your product or service. This is done by creating content that demonstrates how your product works, explains its features, and influences your lead’s purchasing decision.
How to position videos in the content marketing funnel
Awareness
Creating video content that informs and educates your audience is the key to success at this content marketing funnel stage. Your customer knows they have a problem that they want to solve — it’s up to you to create video content that shows you understand their problem and are the right person to help them solve it. You’ll need to make your brand stand out, create an impactful first impression, and position your business as an authority in its niche. But how?
How-to videos
At the top of the funnel, your audience will seek to understand their problem and begin to look for solutions. For example, let’s say you sell home brewing equipment. A potential lead might search for terms such as “how to brew beer at home” or “how to get started brewing your own beer.” This is your opportunity to create engaging video content that answers their query.
Explainer videos
Explainer videos are a fantastic way to give your audience a concise snapshot of exactly what your business does and help educate them on your product or service and position your business as the solution to their problem. Nobody has time to scroll through pages of text; explainer videos do the heavy lifting for you by presenting information in an easily digestible audiovisual format.
If you need some inspiration to get started, Dropbox added an explainer video to their homepage and, as a result, saw a 10% increase in conversions that contributed to an additional $48,000,000 of revenue over the next few years. Something to think about, huh?
Social media videos
Social media videos need to engage, educate, and entertain, all while grabbing the attention of your audience and stopping them from scrolling past your content. Post on the channels where your largest addressable audience hangs out the most, and remember that some videos are more suitable for some channels than others.
Agility use Lumen5 to create thumb-stopping social media videos for their campaigns. Check out an example below!
Awareness stage success metric: View count
A great beginner’s strategy to measure your video marketing campaign’s success — check if people are viewing your video or not. If you’re seeing a low view count, this is a signal that you need to optimize your title, description, or even change the static image that’s displayed before someone hits play on your video to help increase your view count.
Consideration
At the consideration stage, you’ll need video content that continues to build trust with your audience (now leads) and show them that you’re the best solution for their problem. Add in specific calls to action in your video content that will drive your audience further down the funnel and provide an opportunity to nurture them as a lead. The consideration stage is all about empowering the audience to make decisions based on the content you show them.
Product videos
A well-put-together product video will showcase your product’s unique features and explain how they’ll benefit the customer. Product videos are an ideal format to tell your prospective users how you’ll help them solve their problems in an easily consumable way. Remember that customers are up to 84% more likely to purchase after watching a product video, so it often pays to include this video format in your content marketing funnel.
You can share product videos across social media, embed them on product pages, or distribute them through email campaigns.
Landing page videos
Sharing key landing pages through email marketing campaigns and nurture streams will further push prospects down the funnel. Embedding videos on landing pages can help increase conversions, with some businesses seeing up to a 34% increase in conversion rates.
Consideration stage success metric: Click-through rate
To understand whether or not your video marketing is driving your leads further down the funnel, you’ll want to measure click-through rates. This means analyzing your calls to action and if your leads are taking the required next steps to the conversion stage.
Conversion
At the very bottom of the funnel is the conversion stage, where a user is ready to convert on a solution to their initial problem but needs a few more prompts to seal the deal. This stage of the buyer’s journey is a golden opportunity to position your product as the best solution, and video content can help with that strategy.
Customer testimonials
Video testimonials from your current customer base act as the ultimate trust signal and are a powerful way to help convert a user into a potential customer. A happy customer is your company’s strongest salesperson — so use them to your advantage.
Case study videos
Marketers and account executives understand the importance of case studies. They act as a trust signal and proof factor in closing deals. However, by incorporating case study videos into your content arsenal, you’re loaded with more easily digestible ammunition to support conversions.
Webinars
Webinars make your business feel more “real” and provide an opportunity for your team to interact with potential customers. The interactive format is a great way to engage with your audience and allow them to discuss any pain points they have with your brand or business directly with your team.
Conversion stage success metric: Conversions
Unsurprisingly, you’ll want to measure conversions as your success metric at the funnel’s conversion stage. You’ll need to set up an attribution model in your analytics platform to measure each video campaign’s results from each traffic source. This data will show you exactly how your bottom of funnel video content generates more conversions for your business.
Optimizing video for the content marketing funnel is no easy task. That’s why we built Lumen5 — to help make video creation fast, affordable, and easy. Test different formats, measure the right metrics, and find what videos contribute to leads, nurture prospects, and convert customers. Good luck!
