It’s often said that ‘we buy with emotion, and justify with logic’. We like to think that we make decisions based on logic and reason but in reality we are driven by feelings.
So if you want someone to buy from you, you must engage them emotionally.
That’s not to say that logic plays no part in our decisions. We need to satisfy the logical part of us by gathering the facts. Understanding the key features and benefits of a product gives us confidence that our emotional response is the correct one. It helps push us over the line to make our final purchase decision.
So it is important to appeal to both emotion and logic in your marketing.
If you’re strategic about the content you create, video can work very effectively to guide your customers through this decision making process, appealing to both their emotional and logical brain.
But what kind of video should you make? Identifying the stage in the customer journey you want to target it is a good starting point.
Awareness Phase
If your goal is to get eyeballs on your business and build awareness of your brand values, you need a video that appeals to people’s emotions.
A storytelling video is a powerful way to do this. This is a video about the ‘why’ of your business. Why do you do what you do? Why are you different from your competitors? Why do customers come back to you?
It could be your story – why you started the company? It could be the story of your staff – what drives and motivates them? Or it could be the story of your customers – why do they come back to you again and again?
A brand story video can sit on your homepage but also be shared frequently on social media to help build awareness of your values and get that all important emotional connection with your business.
Consideration Phase
At this stage people are aware of your brand and values. They have connected with you but they’ve not bought from you. Your goal now is social engagement to build an ongoing relationship with potential customers.
Producing helpful content such as FAQ videos, How-to videos or a regular vlog is a way to provide value for potential customers, giving them your expertise without expectation of return.
This builds that all important trust. Your goal here is for people to engage with you and eventually to make an enquiry.
It’s a good idea to decide what social platform will be your primary outlet (FB, Instagram, Linkedin) and produce content with this in mind. You can always repurpose videos for other platforms but it’s useful to have one main outlet in mind. So if Instagram is where you want to connect with customers aim to produce 1 minute square videos that will stand out on this platform.
Conversion Phase
The goal now is to get the customer over the line after they’ve made an enquiry. You do this by answering their specific questions and allaying the final barriers or fears that are stop them from making the purchase or working with you.
Some kind of on-boarding video sent via email is useful at this stage. This will be a longer video for a now captive audience. It might be a friendly welcome to the business, a more detailed walk-through of the product, or a personal explanation of the next step in the process.
Or it could be a customer testimonial video. Hearing from other satisfied clients in an email may be the final push needed establish trust in your company.
Advocacy Phase
Your customer relationship shouldn’t end at the point of purchase. It’s worth maintaining a relationship beyond this and video can be helpful here.
This could be a personalised follow-up video thanking customers for their purchase, reminding them of other services, or directing them to other access other content you’ve created.
Or, if you have a strong relationship with clients, it’s worth asking them if they’d be willing to be interviewed for a testimonial video.
We all know that video is a powerful marketing tool, but you don’t have time to create videos just for the sake of it. Applying some strategy and understanding the customer journey is an effective way to focus your video content and, most importantly, get results for your business.
