Guiding your leads through the sales funnel can be a challenging task – you need to deliver the right message at the right time, track your metrics, and keep adapting to the situation.

To get the best results, you might want to start with your content strategy. What types of content are you using, and are you doing your best to meet your customers’ content needs?

Many modern businesses use video content to address these questions. It allows them to engage their users in an interesting way while giving them a chance to tell longer stories without boring the audience. Think about it: it’s much better to tell your brand’s story through a one-minute video than a whole page of text.

But, what kind of videos you’ll use largely depends on the stage in the sales funnel you want to target.

In this article, we will go over different types of videos you can add to your conversion strategy to convert more marketing leads.

Different types of leads

Let’s start with the basics – What is a lead in marketing?

In simple terms, a lead is any potential customer that you plan to convert. And, what is a website conversion? It can be any action you define, from subscribing for a service or signing up for a free trial to making a purchase.

Depending on whether or not that customer has already had contact with your brand, we can split those leads into several categories:

• Cold leads. People who have no prior knowledge of your brand, haven’t visited your website, and aren’t familiar with your product offering. A list of emails you extracted from Facebook or LinkedIn group from your industry is a typical list of cold leads.
  

• Hot leads. These represent the people who had significant contact with your brand and maybe even displayed purchase intent. Someone who created an account on your webshop or created a product wishlist is a typical example of a hot lead.
  

• Marketing qualified lead. We consider someone marketing qualified or sales qualified lead when they show an interest in your brand through a marketing channel. So, if someone downloaded your pdf guide, subscribed to your newsletter, or visits your site often, you can consider them a marketing qualified lead.

You’ll also find terms like “warm leads”, “information qualified leads”, and “nurtured leads” online but these three groups cover the most significant categories.

Each of these lead groups needs to be addressed with different types of messages. The leads that are closer to the beginning of the funnel (cold leads) usually need some education or introduction to your brand and offer. Hot leads, on the other hand, already know about your products. They may respond better to promotional, salesy content that provides them value.

Why do you need video content?

Is video even necessary? Can’t you engage users with simple photo+text content that you’ve been using so far?

While you certainly don’t have to use video, research tells us that it can perform much better than other types of content. According to HubSpot, users want to see more videos: more than half of consumers want to see more of this type of content from the businesses or brands they support.

Source: HubSpot

Furthermore, this preference for video content was more prominent among the younger audiences than among those aged 55 and older.

According to other studies, video can even play an important role in influencing purchasing decisions. Wyzowl found that around 80% of users were convinced to buy a piece of software after watching the brand’s video. 

Now that we know what difference videos can make when it comes to lead conversion, let’s see which types of videos you can create to get marketing lead to the end of the funnel.

#1: Tutorial videos

If your product or service requires some time to set up or get the hang of, you might want to consider making a tutorial video to make things easier for your users.

By using a combination of voiceover, animation, and practical instructions, you can create a useful video that helps your customers get started with your product. Typically, a tutorial video involves a person going through a process in detail, describing what they’re doing every step of the way.

In many cases, tutorial videos use techniques like screen recording, subtitles, and chyrons to bring a subject to life and cover all aspects of an issue so that the viewers have as few questions as possible.

This example from IKEA perfectly sums up what a tutorial video should look like:

As you can see, this video uses chyrons and practical instructions. They go into great detail, making sure everything is covered – they even zoom into particular actions so that the users don’t miss even the smallest things.

You can use tutorial videos for those users that have made their first purchase or just signed up for a trial. With the help of these videos, they can quickly set everything up and start exploring their new product/service.

#2: Product-centered videos

For those users that need to be introduced to your product and its features, you can create product close-up videos.

These videos allow you to describe your product/service, its USPs, and key features. There are many reasons why a brand might decide to create product close-up videos. For example, you can use this video format to show off your great craftsmanship or top-notch design.

On the other hand, you may want to use it to demonstrate a feature or function that needs to be viewed from up close.

You’ve probably seen a lot of product close-ups in traditional advertising. Fast-food chains, skincare brands, and the automobile industry all use these videos to display their products. That’s because all of these industries rely on the way their products look and they want to show it.

Here is how Fossil did it for their new smartwatch:

The video focuses on the design of both watches – for men and women – and displays some of its most important features. It’s only 30 seconds long but it shows you enough that you’re intrigued about the product, its design, and its capabilities.

Product-centric videos are great for target users who are in the beginning stages of the sales funnel. These users need educative content that can introduce them to your product and focus on the key issues it solves.

#3: Welcome videos

When your users make their first purchase, your job isn’t over – you now have to transform them from first-time buyers into returning customers.

This is what we call the onboarding process, and it can be of huge importance when first introducing a customer to your products or services. We all know that the first impression is hard to shake, so the first experience a customer has with your business needs to be stellar.

A good step towards a powerful onboarding process is creating welcome videos. As their name suggests, these videos allow you to welcome your customers to the business and give them a few pointers on how to find their way around and where to seek useful information.

You can use welcome videos when your customers start their trial, as an attempt to increase trial conversion rates. That’s exactly what Luxe Fitness did – they greeted their trialists with personalized videos from fitness instructors and saw their trial conversion rates boosted by 29% in one month!

#4: Brand story videos

Storytelling videos can be a great tool to claim your position on the market and present your brand to the customers.

Companies that have long histories often use storytelling videos to highlight values like tradition, expertise, and brand love. However, your brand doesn’t have to be hundreds of years old to tell a story. It can be simply a company with an interesting background or origin story that’s interesting to share with the public.

Whatever your story may be, a brand story video should never be used only to educate the customers and tell them your brand’s history. Behind these videos, there should always be a message you want to convey, a USP you want to promote.

So, if we make a video about a family-run bakery that’s been around for 100 years, we aren’t teaching our users a history lesson. No – we’re showing that, as a company, we live for baking, we love making people smile, and we’re proud to be from the neighborhood our grandparents helped build.

This video from Levi’s also takes a historical route:

But, again, it’s not about history – it’s about how Levi’s has played an important role in the working class for decades. It’s also about how denim (and Levi’s) are durable, reliable, and rebellious.

#5: “Thank you” videos

Honesty and direct communication are always appreciated in the commercial business – perhaps because they’re not used very often.

That’s why reaching out to your customers with a “thank you” video after they’ve made a purchase could take them off-guard and help you create a more meaningful connection with them.

There’s no need to complicate here – simply show your face and show appreciation to your customers by thanking them for their donation, purchase, subscription, etc. Few users won’t be impressed by a salesperson or, even better, the head of a business who is so directly involved with the customers and takes the time out of their day to make a connection.

The best thing about these videos is that you don’t have to invest a lot of resources into expensive effects or filming equipment. Just remember to be honest and genuine, and filming yourself with a phone or laptop camera will be more than enough!

#6: Video testimonials

Social proof still carries a lot of weight, especially in the B2B industry. If you want your potential clients to trust you without trying your product, you may want to use some form of social proof to get their trust.

Video testimonials are among the best tools to effectively capture social proof. They enable your satisfied customers to share their stories and really illustrate how your product/service helped them achieve their goals.

These videos can be a big part of your LinkedIn lead generation strategy, as they essentially serve as recommendations from previous clients.

This short video from Codecademy is a good example of how you can use your customers’ experiences to inspire others and show them everything possible to do with your product:

It takes less than a minute for the protagonist to tell his story and give us an interesting story about what he achieved with the knowledge he got from Codecademy.

#7: Animated explainer videos

If your product/service is too abstract or you just need a fun way to show your users how to execute something, you can consider animated explainer videos.

A lot of young SaaS companies use these to demonstrate how their product works in a simple, short, and quirky way. Animation eliminates the need of hiring a camera crew – all you need is a smart script and talented animators that can bring things to life.

In many cases, businesses already have video editors and designers with video editing aspirations in-house, so creating an animated video can even be an interesting challenge for your team.

Here is a simple example from Microsoft:

Converting a marketing lead through video: the conclusion

No matter your conversion rate calculation method or your lead qualification system, video can be an effective tool for engaging marketing leads.

The most important thing you need to take care of is to reach the consumers at the right stage of the marketing funnel with the right content. Once you know which users are getting which types of content, you can get started and execute these videos to perfection.

And, if you want to create awesome video content without splashing the cash on expensive production studios or filming crews, try Bonjoro. With us, you can make these videos on your own and have fun while doing them!

Register for a free trial of Bonjoro now.