7 Fantastic Marketing Video Styles that Can Help with Your Sales Funnel

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Nowadays, you can’t talk about digital marketing without touching on the buyer’s journey and content marketing funnels. On their path to purchase, potential buyers go through three different stages that describe their disposition and interests at any given time. They are awareness, consideration, and decision. Fully understanding your buyer’s journey and how to approach your viewers in each stage with relevant content will make the difference between a potential lead and a new customer. And marketing video content plays by the same rules 😉

The basic premise is simple. Creating valuable content — tailored to your audience — that attracts and engages your target audience. This makes it much more likely that like you’ll lead prospects to a purchase decision. 

This article will dig deeper into these stages and the types of videos that work best on each, helping you make video marketing funnels that help your sales!

If you know how to place it strategically, that is.

Awareness Stage: educate your audience and familiarize them with your brand!

At the beginning of the customer journey, your goal is to solve a problem. There’s no pushing products or going hard after a sale at this point. Your potential customers realize they have a problem or face a need and seek answers and information surrounding that pain point. 

Your job here is to provide content that delivers on that demand while asking for nothing (or little!) in return.

Videos of this nature are great for social media shareability, driving traffic to your online presence, and nurturing brand awareness. It’s your moment to cast a wide net that reaches the masses and gets you into your potential customers’ minds.

Educational Videos and How-tos

At the top of your funnel, you benefit from providing potential customers with deeper insights into topics related to their pain points (and your products), and educational videos are perfect for the job! 

Their purpose is not so much to overtly promote your brand or sell a specific product. Instead, it is to make a particular topic easier for people to understand (clarity and simplicity are key). At the same time, you’re giving them a peek at what your brand is all about.

Think of it as paving the road for people to get to know your brand by creating valuable, educational, and free content that will have them coming back later on.

How-tos are a specific type of educational video that can be a great marketing tool to avoid coming across as too formal or uninspiring.

This traditional type of video is designed to generate buzz around your brand, product, or service without giving too much away or demanding too much from viewers. That’s why you want to use it at the top of your video funnel, as they can quickly engage potential customers and let those who might not be aware that you exist and mean business 😎

They serve as great attention-grabbing content that aims to excite your audience and introduce your brand into their lives.

Any platform supporting paid advertising is a great place to use your commercials. Still, sites like Facebook and YouTube are worth mentioning, given their large audiences and fondness for video content.

Social Media Videos

Social media videos take elements from other types of marketing videos, like commercials, culture, etc. They are in a class of their own because they’re customized to perform well on a specific social media platform.

The large amount of time people spend using social media nowadays makes posting and promoting videos on social channels one of the best ways to reach potential customers at the early stages of their journey.

Social videos should be not only entertaining but also informative and inspiring. This mix is what you need at this point in the buyers’ journey to get them thinking about your brand. Another important aspect is to keep your social videos short and understandable. Go with a “straight to the point” kind of feel, as attention spans on social media tend to be short.

Consideration Stage: time to start selling, but don’t overdo it!

At this stage of the funnel, you have to focus on nurturing your leads and prime them for the final stage of their journey. Your potential customers have identified their problems and are looking for solutions, so they research products or services that might help them out. 

You need to communicate to your audience that what you offer meets their needs and then some. Viewers compare you with competitors, so it’s your time to shine. Your content here has to help your brand stand out from the crowd while moving viewers further down your funnel to close the deal!

So, consideration stage videos build trust, connect with viewers, and make the correct impressions in their minds.

Explainers Videos

Since we are now at the middle of your funnel, we are no longer talking about leaving subtle messages about our products but introducing them in the best possible way. Explainers are ideal for that task. They are short videos (usually 90 seconds or less) that follow a narrative formula designed to help potential customers understand what your product or service is about charmingly and memorably. Starting with your audience’s problem and then presenting your product as the perfect solution, explainers are excellent to move potential customers from the consideration stage to the decision stage.

There are a variety of explainer video styles, from live-action to whiteboard animations, and each brings a different flavor and focus that you can pick and choose to fit your overall strategy.

Product Videos

In the era of e-commerce, where people can’t have hands-on experience with your products while shopping online, pre-purchase doubts are a common challenge to overcome. Fortunately, product videos are built to circumvent that by conveying your product’s features and characteristics in a detailed way.

They excel at showcasing uses and benefits, avoiding ambiguity, and ensuring your potential customers understand what to expect from your products once they buy. This showcase can be as simple or technical as your target audience allows; just remember that product videos are all about communicating to your viewers what your product does and how it can help them in practical scenarios.

Decision Stage: almost there! Just one last tiny push.

We have come to the end of the funnel. It is finally the time to close the deal and make that sale!

Our potential customers have finally decided on a solution to their problem or need and are now deciding whether to take the plunge or not. 

At the end of the buyer’s journey, you have to ensure that users feel confident about buying your products and sure that they’ll satisfy their needs. 

Testimonial Videos

Testimonials let viewers identify with their peers’ success stories and positive results after doing business with you. They reinforce your claims and make your offer irresistible, which can be crucial at these latter stages of a funnel.

No doubt you already know that customer stories make for really effective promotional tools when converting prospective customers into buyers. Testimonials also excel at nurturing trust in your brand while boosting conversion rates and inviting other potential buyers to commit to a purchase.  

Place your happy customers front and center and build strong credibility by letting buyers see themselves reflected in their success. 

It’s simple: people trust people, so use that in your favor!

FAQ and Q&A Videos

Both of these types of videos are perfect for showing that your company cares about its customer’s experience beyond the immediate sale and is ready to listen and attend to their concerns even before they buy. They are built around the things your customers and potential customers ask about and can be the silver bullet that alleviates their concerns and convinces them to buy. 

Your job is to anticipate potential doubts that might keep them from finishing their journey and facilitate a sale. After all, why spend time waiting to ask something they can just go to your site and watch a video about? 

FAQ and Q&A videos should deliver information accurately and professionally and can even improve your site’s traffic by ranking on search engines on their own. But remember that the most effective FAQ videos are dynamic and entertaining! So keep it fun!

Summing Up

Have you ever heard the phrase “in the right place at the right time”?” It entirely applies when it comes to video marketing and sales funnels.

If you need to boost your sales, it’s essential to map out the buyer’s journey and understand it. Cultivating a deep understanding of how, where, and when to use the correct video type. 

Framing video marketing in the context of the funnel will help you plan your videos around specific goals. So, get your pencils ready and start figuring out the type of audience you are after and the stage of their journey they find themself in. Then, choose which videos will be most suited to the task. 

We promise you won’t be disappointed with the results! 😁

Guest Author Bio: Victor Blasco

Victor Blasco is an audiovisual designer, video marketing expert, and founder/CEO of the explainer video production company Yum Yum Videos. Besides running the business, he’s a lifelong student of Chinese philosophy and a passionate geek for all things sci-fi.