How can brands get the best ROI from video content used along the audience journey
A Guide to Producing the Right Content at the Right Time
Introduction
You’re already using video, but now it’s time to maximise your ROI.
By employing video marketing strategies at different stages of your audience journey, you’ll be able to get the most out of your overall campaign.
In this guide, Bold Content Video shares some tips for keeping costs low and quality high, to ensure your video content is working hard for you.
Bold Content Video
Bold Content is a video marketing agency who create promotional, explainer and animated videos for a variety of sectors. Having produced video content for many brands, Bold Content knows how to get the most out of video marketing campaigns.
Produce content that counts
Redundant content can be an expensive and time consuming process that ends up costing more than just time and money. Negative impressions can be hard to change, and when you’re working with limited resources you need to make sure that your content is relevant and making an impact.
Making video content that’s geared towards your target audience at each stage of the sales cycle is a great way to ensure that your video marketing is successful. In this guide we’ll walk you through the best types of video content to produce at each touchpoint with your clients, to make sure you get great ROI on your content creation.
Using the Client Lifecycle
Marketers around the world have different approaches to the concept of a client lifecycle, also commonly known as the sales cycle. Although the phraseology might change, the principles (on the whole) stay largely the same. We’ll be using these basic principles in our video marketing strategy.
In this guide we’ll use the Client Lifecycle – which is essentially an extension of the AIDA framework (Awareness > Interest > Desire > Action), just with more relevance to brands’ longer term goals of retention.
The Client Lifecycle is a valuable tool to identify key touch points your brand has with prospective and existing clients. You can then use these touch points as a guide for your content creation.
If every piece of content you create is targeted at one stage in the cycle, then you’ll ensure all your content and video marketing is relevant for your target audience and their relationship to your brand – thus helping to nurture potential business into loyal clients.
The Six Stages
We’ve broken up the Client Lifecycle into six stages that cover all of the important touch points a brand will have over the course of a clients lifetime:
Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Conversion
Retention
Loyalty
Creating content at each of these stages in the cycle will help to enhance client experience and increase ROI. That’s because your content will be tailored to their specific needs and interests at different parts of their journey with your brand. If their questions are answered and their needs are met, they’ll progress to the next stage of the cycle.
The Tent Strategy
Your content marketing strategy should be working together towards a common goal.
Content marketing covers everything from your blog, email newsletter, copywriting, infographics and video. It’s important that all elements work together to communicate your message.
We like to think of a content marketing strategy like a tent. For every major piece of content you produce (the “tent pole”) you use “tent peg” content, such as blog posts, to lead audiences from other sources to your central content.
This tent pole / tent peg principle is an effective way to ensure that your marketing strategy is buoyant and cost-effective. We call this “Halo Content” as it surrounds your pillar content, which you’ve invested a lot of time and money into – such as a promotional video.
This guide will walk you through the six key “tents” that we think your brand could benefit from.
Video Content Creation Along the Audience Journey
Tailoring your video content to where your audience is in relation to your brand is key to a successful campaign. The more relevant your video content, the more resonant it will be. So it can be helpful to use the six stage customer segmentation as a guide for creating videos that support long-term lead growth.
So let’s look at our Client Lifecycle and consider what type of video should be used when, and what halo content we can produce to support it.
This funnel we’ll also suggest how your video marketing budget could be broken up, to ensure that you’re investing money at the right touch points.
Awareness
Awareness is the discovery phase where a potential client learns about your brand, what you do and what your ethos is.
This is where a brand video or promotional video can have the most impact.
Promotional videos should be a creative introduction to your brand. Keep it short (around 30 to 45 seconds) and try to make it entertaining or rewarding to watch.
Budget allocation: This is where most of your budget should be allocated (we recommend allocating 50% of your video marketing budget here) so make sure you invest in producing a high quality video that can be used as evergreen content on your website, socials and as ads on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. This might be the first time that a prospective client engages with your brand so you want to make a good impression. Allocating enough budget to make a high quality piece will give a good first impression. Making something that connects with the viewer on an emotional level or in an entertaining manner is a great way to get them to engage with content in the next stage of the client lifecycle.
Halo content ideas: print ads, mail drops
Distribution channels: homepage, TV, paid social, dark social
Interest
Once you’ve got the interest of your audience, they’ll most likely start to research your brand.
Maybe that’s reading multiple articles across your website and reading reviews.
Producing content at this stage of the client lifecycle is all about answering customer questions. This could come in the form of an About Us video, an FAQ video, or explainer animations.
These videos can be longer, up to 2 minutes in duration, so you can give your audience a clear overview of the work you do and core values.
Budget allocation: we suggest using 25% of your budget at this stage. You can keep costs low and quality high by using motion graphics and animation to cut down on expensive shoot days and casting talent.
Halo content: research papers, blog posts, statistics, about us webpage, history webpage, ethos webpage
Distribution channels: website
Consideration
The Consideration stage is designed to encourage your leads to start engaging with your brand.
Engagement might be via following on social media, liking, commenting, and sharing posts; attending events and listening to podcasts.
Here, videos with real stories can get your audience thinking about the other clients your brand helps. Think about producing case study videos that get your audience engaging with real people and the difference you make.
Tell human interest stories about your beneficiaries instead of facts and stats (that comes later).
Videos can be as long as 3 minutes, as long as social media cut downs are also created for shareability.
Budget allocation: These case study videos don’t require a huge amount of investment. Consider allocating just 5% of your video marketing budget to this stage, as you encourage customers to start engaging with your brand on an emotional level. These films can be simple interview set ups, with subtitles and a few motion graphics to keep costs low but audience retention high.
Halo content: podcasts, magazine articles/PR, influencers, YouTube channel vlog, blog posts
Distribution channels: specific landing pages, social media, Vimeo and YouTube
Conversion
A crucial stage where your prospective client becomes a client for the first time.
Your call to action is an unusually tough one in the world of online video. So in order to get someone to make a purchase you need to have taken them on a journey that will lead to that change. The journey could be the story arc of a character who was helped by your brand. This could be in the form of a testimonial from an existing client. Hearing a short message from another person who has decided to work with your brand is often all that’s needed to nudge a passive viewer into action.
Budget allocation: Think about allocating 10% of your budget here. It’s about affirming the messages they’ve already seen and making them feel comfortable about donating.
Halo content: written case studies on website, interviews, filmed speeches from events
Distribution channels: YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, newsletter
Retention
This brings us to the Retention stage in the client lifecycle. Once you’ve converted them it’s now about how you encourage the client to bring you repeat business.
Retention is all about satisfying their needs and cultivating a relationship with them through feedback and trust. We think one of the best ways to retain clients is by telling a story, because triggering emotion has the power to change perspectives. Whether you’re telling an uplifting or sad story, human-interest narratives are vital components of conversion.
So, tell a human story. Keep the video under 2 minutes but make sure they are entertained or moved.
The Retention stage is all about triggering action. Getting your customers to feel a part of your community and a valued customer to your brand. These videos can be up to a minute long and filled with positivity on social outcomes and how it comes back to help the individual.
Budget allocation: You don’t need to set aside a big chunk of time, energy or money here. Keep investment low by using user generated content (UGC) – share videos of your customers and use behind the scenes images and footage. Just keep about 5% of your budget aside for post production costs like editing and adding motion graphics to the video to keep it dynamic and professional.
Halo content: sharing stories on social media, charity event advertising, newsletter
Distribution channels: YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, newsletter
Loyalty
Finally, we’re at Loyalty, the stage where your clients become a brand advocate for your business.
Hopefully if your clients are satisfied, they’ll be recommending your products and services and leaving positive reviews and feedback.
At this stage you might want to consider creating interview videos with existing clients, designed to encourage loyalty from your existing clients.
Budget allocation: If you’re an eager mathematician, you’ll realise that you’ve only got 5% of your budget left to spend on video content.
Halo content: newsletter, mail drop, direct email
Distribution channels: direct mail, specific landing pages
Answer Client Questions
Each stage of the funnel is really about answering audience questions. For example:
Awareness. Who are you?
Interest. What do you do?
Consideration. What impact do you have?
Conversion. How can you help me?
Retention. What else can you do for me?
Loyalty. Am I a valued client?
If every potential question that a client might ask is answered in your video marketing, you’ll be able to build brand trustworthiness which will ultimately convert to brand loyalty.
Tip. Make a list of every question a client or prospect has ever asked. Do you answer these questions in your marketing? If not, is it something that can be addressed in blog posts, FAQ pages or video content? The more information you can provide to your clients about what matters to them, the better placed you’ll be for converting your leads into lifelong supporters.
Distributing Your Video
Once you have your plan for what videos you need to produce, you’ll need to work out the best way of distributing them. Here, we’ll go into more detail about the possible ways you can distribute your video content at each stage of the audience journey.
Awareness
Type of video: Brand video
Audience Question: Who are you?
Your promotional video or brand video needs to be placed on your homepage as a welcome introduction to who you are. What’s great about featuring video on your website is that it will also pop up in the SERPS because video is great for SEO.
Brand videos can also feature on paid social and dark social, or even on TV or as a YouTube ad. Wherever you decide to upload it, keep the message clear and make sure it leads to your website for viewers to find out more information about your brand.
Interest
Type of video: About us/Explainer/Company history video
Audience question: What do you do?
When your audience has been led to your website, it’s all about having content that supports their “research” phase.
As well as having a detailed About Us page and plenty of statistics that readers can access, think about what more you can tell your audience about what you do.
Video will let you communicate tons of information in a fun and memorable way, so make sure you’re loud and proud of what your brand does and get your audience excited about it too.
Consideration
Type of video: Case study video
Audience question: What impact do you have?
This is a great client question for social media content. Connect real people with real stories.
Case study videos can also appear on specific landing pages to ensure that your website users can find real life examples of what impact your brand has.
Conversion
Type of video: Testimonial video
Audience question: How can you help me?
Use Facebook and YouTube to share people’s stories and opinions. These two platforms will help your message spread.
These videos don’t necessarily have to feature on your website too, it’s more about getting people to start engaging with your brand through social media.
Retention
Type of video: Human interest stories
Audience question: What else can you do for me?
Presenting compelling stories in video format will be a strong way to communicate exactly what you do and the impact your business has.
What’s more, at this stage, videos are all about affirmative action and spreading messages of positivity to encourage your clients to keep working with you.
Loyalty
Type of video: Interview video
Audience question: Am I a valued client?
Once you have repeat business, you want to nurture them into loyal clients. Videos produced at this stage of the client lifecycle need to be about celebrating what’s been achieved so far, and what can continue to be achieved.
Maximising ROI
Repurpose Content
A great way to save time and money is to repurpose old video content. By reusing and adapting existing video into different formats, you’ll be able to target your audiences again in different ways or on different platforms.
Look at the outtakes and the content that wasn’t used, as well as the material featured. You’ll have tons of footage from the filming day and possibly some behind the scenes footage that could make some great B-roll for new videos, halo content, or be used on social media.
What is B-roll?
B-Roll is an industry specific term that refers to footage shot in addition to the main action. B-roll refers to footage that shows the general atmosphere of the location, event, shows specific elements of what the interviewee is talking about, establishes the setting of the video etc. These are shots to which the editor can cut while making the edit.
Use animation and motion graphics
Adding animation and motion graphics to live action content is a cost-effective way to add visual flair to a video, without having to capture B-roll or use expensive and generic stock footage.
Motion graphics add a touch of quality and dynamism beyond the usual opening titles and lower thirds. Kinetic typography is often used as a form of motion graphics to add energy to your video and keep your charity’s brand at the forefront of your viewer’s mind.
Use video on landing pages
Using video on all of your pages that customers interact with will also help them to pop up in the SERPS because video is great for SEO.
Video attracts users to stay on your platform for longer, helping to drive up your conversion rate by up to 80% (Invisia Technologies). So presenting high-quality video content on your website is an easy way to keep potential customers engaging with your brand, learning about your products and helping to encourage sales.
SEO optimisation for video is just as important as any other content marketing, so you need to make sure that your video title, description and tags are optimised for your preferred search queries.
Sites like YouTube read closed captions (CC) to better understand the context of your video and help your SEO ranking. So if you can, it’s great to go in and update these automated captions manually to make sure it accurately transcribes your script.
More and more social media users watch videos with no sound too, so this is a key reason to ensure that your videos have subtitles so you are not missing out on communicating your message.
Pick the right story to tell
Compelling marketing is moving away from cliched, staged or overly dramatic images and messages but focusing on creating authentic emotional responses.
Let’s take climate change as an example, who are moving away from melting ice caps to telling true stories about people who are affected on a day-to-day basis by global warming.
Seeing how a child is struggling to breath due to poor air quality is going to have far greater emotional impact than facts and stats. It’s all about telling human-interest stories to bring important issues to the fore.
The more your video content can be visual representations of identifiable emotions, the stronger your message will be communicated.
Conclusion
If you are looking to get the best ROI from video content, producing video content along the audience journey could provide meaningful opportunities for your brand to engage with your clients at key touch points. This will lead to increased business and will help to build a sense of community around your brand. High quality communications lead to good interactions and clients will feel valued as they view content tailored specifically to them.