A video is only as effective as its ability to be seen and strategically placed.
Before you come up with a story, script it, and produce it, you need a strategy to distribute these videos into the world and to integrate them as part of your sales process.
For the uninitiated among you, a funnel is simply a desired customer flow from ‘not knowing you at all’ directly to being a ‘paid customer/client.’
Funnels are structured so that, after completing each step of the funnel, your potential clients move one more step closer to a conversion.
Traditional Digital Marketing Funnel
Traditionally, sales funnels can be broken into multiple steps:
- Top of Funnel (TOF): This is your potential client’s first contact point with you. It can be an ad on social media, blog post, or your website via search.
- Middle of Funnel (MOF): This is where your new contact gets to know you a bit more. They learn about your business, solutions, and offerings. Perhaps they do some research and get to learn about you as a provider of a solution.
- Bottom of Funnel (BOF): This is where you offer a specific product or service, and your potential client decides whether to buy or not.
- Depending on the size (and decisiveness of your potential client), they may cycle through the MOF and BOF multiple times before buying.
I recommend you use videos in each of these parts of the funnel.
However, I realize that isn’t always practical. We’ll get to some options for more resource-strapped campaigns later.
Now, let’s look at how we’d place video in a funnel in the ideal world–where time, money, and talent are abundant.
Videos for the Top of Your Funnel
With my clients, I focus heavily on creating standout TOF videos, because I believe it’s the area where most businesses fail and also the most important step in the process.
You need to create standout videos that are different than the status quo and don’t reflect the shlock your competition is putting out. TOF videos are all about entertaining your audience, while aligning them with your values and beliefs.
This is a pretty tall order, especially for small businesses, who may not have crazy creative talent or agency resources to ideate and execute their video campaigns.
Because of these limitations, I wrote a book on leveraging story structures to consistently create unique, standout videos. I recommend you check it out, if you’re stuck on how to make these kinds of videos.
It’s possible you already are part of the community and are here looking for more information on how to apply these videos.
The important thing to keep in mind is that a TOF video needs to invite attention, but it won’t be particularly powerful, unless you know how to direct it, regain it, and transition it into action. This is why MOF and BOF videos are powerful allies to the TOF video.
Videos for the Middle of the Funnel
By the time your potential clients reach the middle of your funnel, you have their attention, and they want to learn more about you. They already align with you in some way.
Therefore, your videos can take on more of an educational format. Most businesses can do a satisfactory job in the middle of their funnels by using traditional direct-address videos, or mini-documentaries that talk about the company’s history, brand and beliefs.
At this point, your potential clients want to learn more about what you believe, if you’re reputable, and if you’re unique in any way from other providers they’re considering.
Mostly, however, they’re looking to see if you’re like them.
This is a great place to speak directly to your potential client’s concrete needs and aspirations. Show them that you understand them, have been in a similar place, and have a reliable solution to help them improve their state.
While they will have picked up some of this from your TOF video, the MOF video, which can be hosted on your website, social accounts, or elsewhere, can be a more direct, personal presentation. MOF videos likely don’t require a great deal of deviation from the norm, in terms of video storytelling or format.
Videos for the Bottom of the Funnel
Similarly, BOF videos tend to be highlight reels or product demonstrations for physical or digital products, or testimonial videos and description of process for services.
These formats work well at this point in the funnel, because your potential clients don’t want surprises when they’re considering making a purchase. They want to find information to justify their emotional impulse with logic.
Most video freelancers can create decent videos in these formats without much guidance, because they’re recognizable formats with simple narratives.
So, yes, using video in the MOF and BOF are can be a powerful approach, since it helps your potential clients get to know you and your solutions in much more depth.
They increase brand awareness and invite your audience to learn more about you–to dive deeper into the middle and bottom of your funnel, and, ultimately, to become paying customers/clients.
An Example: My eBook Funnel
Let’s take a look at the funnel that I currently have running to my eBook on TOF video story structures as an example:
- The video marketing campaign is currently testing multiple TOF videos in social media ads. Each ad points to a lander page (MOF).
- Each lander features a MOF video where I personally invited the visitor to purchase the training and share more specific details about it. In this way, the MOF video also serves the BOF, as well. This condensed funnel structure can work with lower-cost items, like the eBook. I would expand the funnel to feature separate BOF videos, if I were selling a more expensive product.
- If the viewer buys the book, they would be offered an additional, complementary BOF offer to increase the book’s overall impact on their business. This offer includes a video that describes its benefits in a direct-address style.
- If the customer doesn’t purchase the book, I then have additional videos that will be shown to them on Facebook and Instagram to provide them with more information and invite them to return and purchase the book.
- Each of these videos–TOF, MOF, and BOF– combined with additional video trainings in a follow-up email sequence–work together to attract attention, offer more information, make the sale, and, hopefully, nurture new members of the community.
In this kind of funnel, the TOF video invites the audience’s attention, but it doesn’t try to make the sale. Instead, it invites the viewer into your ecosystem, where each subsequent step is designed to lead them one step closer to a conversion.
Organic Customer Journey
With paid advertising, you can direct people into your funnel in this manner, and the funnel can be condensed into a single experience.
For organic (search or referral) visitors in your ecosystem, however, it’s a different sequence…
Namely, there is no sequence!
Yes, you can optimize visitors to click through certain parts of your website or from your social page to your site, but they, ultimately, control where they go. They have options.
The important part here is to match the kind of content with the location where your audience expects it. This way, they can move freely in your ecosystem and learn about you in the order they prefer.
Even better, you can re-purpose your paid TOF, MOF, and BOF videos for the organic customer journey. This way, your funnel content can be evergreen and serve you beyond your paid efforts.
An example of this may be:
So your paid funnel/strategy may look like this:
- TOF, story/identity-based video
- MOF, features-based video
- BOF specific offer video
- BOF retargeting video with alternate offer
And then you re-purpose the content:
- TOF video on social channels & home page of web site.
- MOF video on Social profile or channel page and About Us page on your site.
- BOF video on your product page, social post, and influencer email outreach.
This way, the same videos can be viewed in the order your audience finds you. They’ll know, intuitively, where to find the kind of content they need.
Not sure if you’re reputable? Go to the social profile or about us page.
Want to learn more about the specifics of your product? Off to the product page on your site to view some videos.
A New Customer Flow
In this way, you can maximize the impact of your video investment and provide your potential clients with a better experience.
By having videos that match the phase of the customer journey they’re in, they’ll have a much richer experience.
At this point, you may be freaking out– “I can’t even make one video, let alone three or four!”
Remember, this is our best-case, ideal scenario. You can aspire to this.
Depending on your approach– whether paid, organic, or a combination of both, prioritize one video first and then use text/images for the rest. Over time, you can replace them with more effective videos.
Where to Invest Now?
Do you sell a product or service? This will determine where to put your hard-earned advertising dollars first and how to invest in video, overall.
If You Sell Products
Product demonstration BOF videos are key. Get other influencers on YouTube, Instagram, etc. to review the product. People need to see and experience your product to weigh its benefits.
After this, I believe a TOF video would be your next best investment. Give your potential customers an emotional reason to want your product. Odds are, your product is very similar to another one out there.
Pick that best differentiating factor, find what emotional benefit it can provide that your competition can’t, and create a TOF video that helps your audience experience it. Then they’ll click through and look at the details of the product.
If You Provide Services
Here, I’d recommend creating a strong, but simple, MOF video to live on your website and social profiles. Your personality, trustworthiness, and overall energy is going to be the deciding factor of whether your audience will decide to work with you.
This MOF video doesn’t need to be crazy. Set up a shot with a nice background and clear audio, and then speak directly and authentically to your audience. Tell them why you’re different, what you believe, and how you help people like them to achieve their dreams and solve their problems. Plenty of videographer freelancers can help you with this.
The TOF video is the next most important tool in your video marketing kit. You need to get noticed, before anyone is going to sit through that MOF video!
TOF videos can help you create a strong connection with your audience by differentiating the personality, tone, and beliefs of your business AND help you get noticed, as opposed to your competition. This is the gateway drug to your authentic prescription.
Wrapping Up
This can all seem like a lot, but it really isn’t all that bad, if you have a clear road map in place.
Focus on creating those pillar videos. Place them where they’re expected, and then leverage them with paid advertising.
Get the best of both worlds.
If you want to learn more or are looking for assistance with your own video marketing efforts, don’t hesitate to reach out and schedule a call. I help small businesses craft video marketing campaigns with both consulting and end-to-end solutions.
