Video Content for Every Stage of The Customer Journey- Part 1

Content is no longer king: video content is! And getting ourselves engaged in a long chat around the importance of video content, about how it completely reshaped the digital landscape and companies' content marketing strategies is as relevant as chatting about the sun's vital role in our lives.These days the need for creating video content has evolved into a need for crafting the most suitable types of video content to integrate in each stage of your potential buyer's journey.

Effectively integrating this type of content into your digital marketing strategy and adapting it to each one of its key components, now this is the “puzzle” that you should strive to solve these days!

“Just” video content, with no deep thought about the context of your customers' journey won't get you too far.

And you should consider context-adaptability, if you give enough credit to all the digital marketing “gurus” talking about the future of content marketing. Judging by their content marketing predictions, it will get increasingly challenging “There’ll be fewer winners with much bigger jackpots” ( Larry Kim, Wordstream).

Now let's get to the “core” of today's post and reveal to you the types of video content that you should consider using on your site:

Types of Video Content for The Beginning of Your Customer's Journey

It's that step of your website visitors' journey where they have already experienced a problem, where they do “sense” a certain need, but they can't quite identify it yet. And it's your “job” to help them put a name on it.

1. Video Documentaries

This type of video content is a “newcomer” and you should consider being an early adopter since its potential in turning prospects into customers loyal to your brand is huge. Here's why:
 

• its enhances its educational/informational role with its emotion-targeting, storytelling side 
   
• its highlights particular (otherwise banal) features of a product/service and with the help of storytelling (it's precisely the stories that these product/service features get “wrapped in” that make all the difference) and stunning imagery it succeeds to intrigue and captivate the watcher
   
• its makes a wonderful “tool” for you to portray your brand as a leader in your market (carefully craft the story behind it!) and to reinforce the values of your brand   
         

To exemplify this type of video content, here's a remarkably effective video documentary from Patagonia! They succeed to inform their audience about their products' top features through a highly compelling documentary-like story that sticks:

2. Brand Films

Branding plays a key role in 2017's digital marketing context, too. Successful brand stories continue to be the decisive factors that turn visitors into fans/followers (and ultimately into customers).

And what better medium to use for getting your engaging story across to your audience, for getting them familiarized with your brand's values and mission, than video, right? 

And so, brand stories and videos “gave birth” to this type of highly effective promotional videos: brand films.

People don't buy “just” products/services. People buy the shared values that come along with a particular brand's services, products!

And if you manage to master the video's toolbox of visuals, storytelling and sound for portraying your brand as one that they can easily resonate with (while, of course, you're discreetly showcasing your services/products' top features and benefits), you'll manage to banish most of their doubts. 

3. How To's and Whiteboards (or ChalkBoards)

Remember that we're still at the very first stage of your customers' journey! Therefore, it's only logical that from all the types of video content available you should go for one that helps you win their trust.

Illustrating your brand as a trustworthy one and, moreover, as an authority in its industry, is crucial for speeding things up. For giving your potential customer the right impulse to get to the next stage of his/her journey.

And what better way to win trust and to portray your company as an expert in its field than through an educational/how to video/whiteboard type of video content?

It delivers value they can leverage, expert advice free of charge, and it's a tremendous means for you to build trust. 

Now here are 2 tips, coming from our team here, at our web development company in Toronto, to consider when making your chalkboard video:
 

1. make it short and simple, easy to “digest”
    
2. add an entertaining, personal touch (no need to go for a monotonous, academic tone in order to share your knowledge as an expert)

 
Now if you want to learn from the very best, those from MOZ, with their famous “Friday Whiteboard” series, definitely make THE best source of inspiration. They already are an authority in the “art” of educational video crafting:

4. Explainers or Explainer Animations

Explainer videos make such effective overviews of the key problems that your product/service comes to solve for your customers!

Whether you opt for an animated explainer or for a video explainer, it enables you to focus on presenting your product's features (rather than on your brand, like the other types of video content aforementioned), on putting them in the context of your customers' already identified needs and in relation to the solution that it delivers them.

Here are just a few reasons why explainers make such an effective and handy tool for ensuring that your potential customers move on to the next step of their journey:
 

• they're centered around your website visitors' needs/problems that they need to solve
   
• they're quick overviews, succinct presentations of your products'/service's features
   
• they briefly present your product “in action”
   
• they make a handy tool for you to present your solution to your customers' “problems”
   
• they discreetly familiarize them with your brand's tone and values
   

Types of Video Content for The Middle of Your Customer's Journey

Your potential online shoppers have, by now, manged to put a name on their needs/problems. It's now that they move on to the next stage of their journey where they engage in research.

They now start to scan through the available solutions to their problem!

1. Videos in Email 

It's such a handy, yet effective means for you to reinforce your brand. A large, eye-catching image and a “play” button might be the simplest way to engage with your potential customers.

If you:

• add the surprise factor, too (since the “dull”, conventional emails are still the norm) to the equation
   
• then the win-win nature of this type of video content (you'll be simultaneously ensuring your brand a “top place” in their minds and “luring” them to come visit your site and check out other products, too)
   

… you'll instantly get one of the most effective types of if video content that shouldn't miss from your content marketing strategy.

2. Product Videos

This is such a powerful type of video content! What it does (if it's masterfully created, if it manages to trigger the need for sensory feedback) is no just present your product/service while it's being used, but making the watchers imagine them using that particular product.

It's a “tool” that will help you “plant the seed of desire” in your video's watchers: visualizing themselves trying on your products will automatically make them want to turn this “vision” into reality.

To be continued, in our next post, with other types of video content you should use...