A guide to video content marketing.
Part 2, how to use video in your inbound marketing strategy

By Woven Agency, Tuesday September 3, 2019
11 Minutes

In part one of our guide to video content marketing, we talked about why and how you should create video for your marketing channels. In this part, we’ll discuss how you should use the video within your inbound marketing strategy.


Companies often fall between two extremes when it comes to creating video content marketing. Some will spend lots of money shooting a showpiece brand video or slickly edited showreel and then… nothing. They’ve ticked their video creation box and now they can move back to doing their usual marketing activity.

Whereas other businesses will have a conveyor belt of video content ready to go, churning out social video because they’ve read that it’s something they have to do.

But too often, in a bid to get ‘stuff’ out there, they sacrifice quality – namely, they don’t use video to address their audience’s concerns. They’re more interested in the medium than the message.

Before spending valuable time and resources creating your video, your task is to figure out how to make every second of your video content marketing count. And you do this by creating a content plan that fits hand-in-glove with your inbound strategy. 

Inbound marketing – a quick reminder

Inbound marketing is the act of attracting, converting, closing and delighting leads and customers through content, SEO, landing pages, CRM, sales automation and other activities.

Inbound makes you the solution to your audience’s problems, makes it simple for them to find you and makes it easy for you to keep customers coming back for more.

You need to create video content for each stage of the above process. Why? Because your audience will have different considerations, different problems they are trying to solve and different expectations at each of those stages.

Which means the type of video that you produce, and the message it conveys, needs to vary to reflect that. 

Remember, your content – video or otherwise – has to be focused on your audience’s circumstances. So when they change, your message changes.

Your videos need to speak to the audience at that particular phase of their buyer journey and prompt them to go onto the next. The end goal is to turn your leads into loyal customers and promoters of your brand.

With that in mind, let’s have a look at how your video content should work at each stage of the journey.

Video content that attracts

In the attraction phase, your video’s job is to turn strangers into visitors.

Consumers at this point in the journey are identifying their challenges and deciding whether it’s worth their time and money to seek out a solution. So the videos you create should empathise with their problems and introduce a possible solution in your product or service.

Attracter videos are about creating buzz around your brand to increase reach and build trust.

But be wary of pushing too hard on the salesy stuff at this stage. These are early-stage browsers and their attention is fleeting. The aim is to engage them and gently lead them on a journey. 

Attracter videos need to expand reach and build trust. You want to create buzz, generate shares, whip up social engagement. So you need to entertain and be emotive. 

Don’t be scared to be creative, to stand out against the competition with messaging that grabs attention. Remember, you’re not just competing against rival brands, you’re competing against everything else in people’s social media feeds and email inboxes. 

At the same time, make sure you present yourself as an authority on the topic so they consider you a resource of useful content, worthy of further exploration.

Examples of attracter videos include short, sharp videos that show off your brand personality, like this inspiration and inclusive video from Reebok:

Thought leadership videos are another way to attract people by positioning yourself as an industry voice worth listening to. 

Now, you can do the usual talking head-style video that’s all polished and painstakingly scripted. Or you can be a bit more rough-and-ready, like Social Chain owner, Steve Bartlett. 

(Notice how Bartlett interweaves his personal branding throughout, so this isn’t just a typical opinion piece – it works just as well as a brand development piece.)

Whatever type of video you use – and we recommend a mix of the two – make sure you have a call to action at the end that compels visitors to sign up to something, to call a number, to visit a website.

Remember, attracter videos exist to grab attention and get people to the next step of the buying journey – conversion.

Video content that converts

Attracting video viewers and website visitors is the important first step; now it’s time to convert visitors into leads.

With most inbound marketing content, this means collecting some sort of contact information via a form on a landing page or a conversational marketing chatbot. 

Video expedites this process by positioning yourself as a potential solution to a buyer’s problem. This convinces viewers to visit your website and fill in the enquiry form, drop you an email, pick up the phone or leave a message with your chatbot.

Converter videos position you as the solution to your audience’s problems.

Examples of converter videos include a webinar or trainer video filled with tactical advice, product demos sent over email, case studies and how-to videos.

Remember, though, that your content still needs to grab and hold attention, so whilst your primary aim is to provide value, make sure you’re also kinetic, enthusiastic, humorous, emotive – or a mix of all four.

Don’t forget the buyer’s journey, either. Think about the topics your attracter videos have covered and make sure your converter video relates to them in a way that sells your product or service.

So if your attracter video tells your audience how to write the perfect email, your converter email should break down the benefits of the inbound marketing methodology you just happen to be an expert at. 

Video content that closes a sale

You’ve attracted strangers to your brand. You’ve converted the right visitors – i.e. your target buyer personas – into leads. Now it’s time to turn leads into customers. But, as odd as it may sound, most businesses overlook this crucial element of their video content marketing strategy. 

At this stage in the buyer journey, the consumer has done the majority of their research and is now weighing up options before deciding to purchase.

Ideally, your closer video should encourage them to visualise using your product and the great benefits that they would enjoy as a result. 

This is where video content marketing really comes into its own, as, according to HubSpot, four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. And with good reason. Video is an immersive medium that’s perfect for explaining complex functionality and emoting about product benefits.

Testimonials are perhaps the most obvious kind of closer video, such as this one from independent financial advisers Robertson Baxter:

Notice that despite being a testimonial, Robertson Baxter has created an aesthetic and tone of voice that encapsulates their brand and is designed to resonate with the affluent, sophisticated target audience.

Other ideas for closer videos might include in-depth product demos showing before-and-after scenarios, or showcasing the difference your product has made to previous clients’ businesses.

As part of an account-based marketing approach, it can be extremely effective to send personalised videos to specific contacts that you would love to work with.

Highly personalised video messages have been proven to provide cut-through, where a bog-standard email may just land you in a spam folder. 

Video content that delights

The buyer journey doesn’t end with a purchase. In fact, you’re hoping this is just the beginning. 

Having attracted, converted and closed, you will want to keep those hard-won new clients coming back as repeat customers. After all, it’s five times more expensive to win a new customer than it is to keep an existing one.

In the “delight stage” of the inbound methodology, your goal is to continue providing remarkable content that makes their interaction with your product or service as memorable, easy and effective as possible. 

The iconic impact of the Ikea bag.

In this way, you not only please your client and convince them to stay with you, you greatly increase the chance of them referring you to others.

This means the aim of a delighter video is to encourage customers to become advocates; clients so bought-in to what you do that they do your marketing for you.

Word of mouth is one of the most effective and underused business development strategies available. Turn your clients into fans of your brand by continuing to surprise and delight them at every turn. Even – or especially – after they sign on the dotted line. 

An ideal opportunity to delight customers is after they make a purchase: a personalised thank you video welcoming them to your community could pay dividends by generating warm, fuzzy feelings toward your brand. It’s the kind of seemingly small thing people just might tell other people about.

A property development company might produce a video explaining everything the local area has to offer – perfect for new homebuyers. Yes, repeat business in property is a long-term game, but that doesn’t mean such efforts should be overlooked. Everyone has friends and colleagues they can talk to about your business.

Don’t overlook the power of these small ‘moments of delight’. This could well be what your brand becomes most known for. 

Video content tutorials

Are you selling a product that is complex, has multiple uses, or whose users might benefit from access to expert user tutorials? Then consider product training videos that let people first get to grips with the product and then become masters of it. 

Brands selling technical products such as cameras or software really benefit from such content. Not just because you educate customers to get the most out of their purchase, but because you get them used to ‘your’ way of doing things. This reduces the risk of them switching to a rival for fear of having to learn a whole new user interface.

Also, don’t be scared to make lengthy product videos. At this point in the buyer’s journey, your customer is heavily invested in what you offer and wants to get the most out of it. As such, they won’t baulk at the idea of sitting through a half-hour tutorial, like the one below, if it means enhancing their product experience for years to come. 

In fact, increasingly, longer-form video is outperforming shorter videos, as demonstrated in this article by Google

Defining your video content marketing goals

We discussed setting effective video content marketing goals in part one but it’s worth briefly recapping here. Just as with any marketing campaign, before you get going with your video content marketing, it’s vital that you determine your primary goal. Typical aims might be:

  • Increase brand awareness
  • Drive web traffic
  • Improve social media engagement
  • Take people to a landing page
  • Offer a free trial

Pick just one or two objectives to ensure your video content is focused and leaves the viewer with a clear action you want them to take.

Keep your buyer persona in mind at all times. How old are they? How much do they earn? What media channels do they engage with? How do they speak? What are the daily challenges that you can solve? And, of course, what stage of the buyer journey are they at? 

So, before you do anything, define why you want to make your video and define who you’re aiming it at – because this will define what kind of video you create.

Analysing results

As we’ve discussed, video content marketing isn’t just about creating and distributing content. It doesn’t end when you press the ‘Upload video’ button on YouTube or Vimeo. You need to look at measuring the success of your video through agreed metrics that align with your business objectives.

Metrics to consider include:

Reach and impressions
Reach is the number of people who saw your video as part of their social feed or on a blog post. Impressions is the number of times it was seen in total and will include multiple views by the same person. As such, the number of impressions is always higher.

These are useful metrics if your goal is improved brand awareness but because they include people who saw your video but didn’t play it, they shouldn’t be considered a primary metric of success.

Views
This is how many times people actually clicked to watch your video.

Just be aware that different channels have different criteria for what’s considered a view.

For example, on YouTube a user must watch a minimum of thirty seconds of your video to count as a ‘view’, but for Facebook and Instagram the minimum qualification is just three seconds. This gives you a clue about the differing user behaviour across channels and is something that should be factored into your planning.

Viewer behaviour differs according to the channel they’re viewing, so have your channel – and audience – in mind when creating video.

Where is your content most likely to be seen? Maybe there’s not much point uploading a 30-minute video to Facebook if the average attention span (especially on mobile) is much shorter. As always, the best approach is to experiment and find what works best for your audience. 

Play rate
Whilst knowing your reach is worthwhile, a video’s play rate is more important. This is the number of plays your video receives divided by how often the video is shown (reach), making it a more relevant measure of purposeful engagement.

If your play rate is low, it’s likely because you’re not targeting the right people or your content isn’t grabbing people’s attention with a strong start.

Video completions and completion rate
A video completion is the number of times your video is played from start to finish, and is the best measure of all in terms of viewer engagement.

Your completion rate is the number of people who saw your video all the way through divided by the number of people who played it. 

If your completion rate isn’t up to scratch, find out where people are dropping off. Is it at a similar spot? If so, experiment with your edits to see if you can make your video snappier. If this isn’t possible, no problem – take it as a lesson learned and make the next one better.

Social engagement
Social sharing, commenting and liking is a good indicator of how relevant your content is to your target audience. Shares amplify your content and therefore reach can quickly snowball.

This is the much sought-after ‘viral effect’ – an important aim if you want to rapidly grow your reach, awareness and social following. 

Click-through rate (CTR)
This is the number of times your CTA (call to action) is clicked, divided by how many times your video has been viewed.

This is a crucial metric if you aren’t just interested in soft measures such as views and reach. This is users clicking through to an offer or landing page in response to what they have seen and is a powerful measure of how appealing your offer is.

Measures like number of views and reach are fine, but pay more attention to harder metics like click-through and conversion rates.

In some campaigns, CTR is everything. In others, focused more on awareness and brand building, getting a user to physically click on something is less important, as we’re aiming to influence future behaviour.

There are a number of reasons a campaign might produce a lower-than-expected CTR, and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is, of course, a whole specialised field of expertise in its own right. But at a basic level, it’s always worth experimenting with the wording of the call to action.

For example, you might consider changing the copy to something more active or urgent. So you wouldn’t say ‘Click here for a free trial.’ Instead, you’d say ‘Grow your business with our free trial’. 

Conversion rate
This is the number of times visitors completed your desired action divided by the number of clicks on your call to action. If your goal is to have viewers complete an action like signing up for a free trial, try adding a video to your landing page to see if your conversion rate increases.

Bounce rate and time-on-page 
Before making any drastic changes to a web page, like adding video content, make sure you understand the existing usage patterns and analytics for the page in question.

You want to be able to clearly measure and understand what happens when you make changes. Did the bounce rate go up or down? Did time on site increase or decrease? If you don’t have a clear picture of where you’re starting from, measuring the effect of your changes is impossible. 

Lights, camera, action.
So, a lot to think about when it comes to your video content marketing, right?

Planning your content strategy, buying equipment, setting up your shooting space, writing scripts, filming, lighting, editing…

And once you’ve done all that you’ve got to market the content in the right way, producing certain types of video for certain user types (your buyer personas) at each of the different stages of the buyer journey.

Feeling daunted at the prospect of shooting video? Don’t worry. Start small with a smartphone, a mic and a tripod – and go from there.

Let’s face it, video content marketing can seem daunting.

But don’t be deterred, because with time and patience you’ll soon be creating scroll-stopping video that enhances your brand awareness, drives new visitors to your website and social channels, generates more sales and encourages repeat business.

And if you’re feeling hesitant, don’t worry – you can start small. Pick up a smartphone, a tripod and a mic and shoot a quick how-to video.

Do it in a quiet room or whilst you’re grabbing a post-work pint. Make it slick or make it rough around the edges – so long as your video content reflects your brand, understands what it’s trying to achieve and adds value to your target audience, you won’t go far wrong.

And, like anything, the more you do video content marketing, the more confident you’ll become. Trust us, you’ll soon be wondering what you were worried about.

Failing that, get in touch with us at Woven. Doing video work with brands like Albert Bartlett and Guild Living, we know a thing or two about the subject.

Speak to a member of the Woven team today Click Here to get in touch