In this blog post we break down the three videos that every business should have and how they fit into the consumer journey stages of awareness, consideration, and conversion. While there are numerous video archetypes you can tailor to each stage of the consumer journey, we've focused on the ones that will have the most impact and longest life.
Awareness: The Brand Ad
In order for people to find your brand you need to be seen. After all, it doesn't matter if you have the greatest product in the world if nobody knows about it. Given that this is the start of most consumer journeys, a video that creates awareness should be your first priority. The most versatile asset you can create is a brand ad that can be used across social, TV, and online. While every brand ad is different, we've created five guiding principles that will help ensure the best results:
- Stand out: Capture the viewer's attention within the first 3 seconds
- Make it relevant: Clearly communicate the key benefit your product or service brings to your customers
- Be authentic: Be honest and use emotive language to engage viewers
- Tell a story: Build a story arc with a clear beginning middle and end to keep viewers engaged
- Prompt action: Tell viewers what action to take next
To maximise the efficacy of your brand ad you should also consider creating bespoke creative for each platform. For example, wide screen 15 or 30 second spots for TV and YouTube, and vertical and square variations for Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Adding these to your brief won't cost much, but the benefit of tailoring them to each platform is significant.
To summarise, creating a brand ad should be a priority. With the right placement and promotion it will generate awareness of your product or service and progress people along the consumer journey towards becoming paying customers. Your brand ad should stand out, be relevant, be authentic, tell and story, prompt action, and should be tailored to each platform.
Consideration: The Explainer Video
Once people have progressed from the awareness stage they usually either decide your product or service isn't right (for now) or they'll move into the consideration phase. During this phase your priority should be answering questions and removing barriers to purchase (or remarketing, which we'll cover in a separate blog post). The most important video during this phase is the explainer video as it provides all of the information a prospect needs to make a purchase decision.
Explainer videos are a powerful tool when it comes to answering the most common questions about your product or service. According to HubSpot, 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video. They can streamline the path to purchase online, and offer a scalable tool your sales team can use when presenting to prospects. We recommend the following process when creating an explainer video:
- Identify questions to answer: Speak to your customers and sales team to uncover the most common questions on objections customers have when considering your product.
- Write a draft: Draft or bullet point a script that directly addresses the most common questions or objections you uncovered in your research
- Find a reference video: Allocate an hour to finding a creative reference of another explainer video that would work well for your brand. Generally, you'll have four options: animation, film, stock footage, or a combination of any of the three
Once you've identified the questions, drafted your script, and found a reference video you like you'll be able to brief out your explainer video. As a general rule animation is best for explaining and visualising complex information and data, while film and stock footage are best for conveying authenticity and showing tangible products and services. If the budget permits you can even use a combination to create a more compelling explainer video.
Conversion: The Testimonial Video
Once a customer has found your brand and had their questions answered they may still need some assurance that you will deliver what you say you will. Testimonial videos are a powerful and authentic tool to address this.
The best way to approach creating testimonial videos is to identify your key customer personas and create specific testimonials for each. This is important because it is highly likely that each persona has different needs for your product or service. By creating a testimonial video for each persona any new prospects of the same persona will have their specific needs addressed in the video. We recommend identifying and interviewing several happy customers before asking if they would be willing to be filmed for a testimonial video. This will ensure the people you select can provide the content you need for each persona.
While you can film testimonial videos without expensive cameras and lighting equipment you can also significantly reduce professional production costs by scheduling several testimonials in one day. Direction, great lighting, good exposure, and seamless editing ensure that your testimonials appear both professional and authentic.
In summary, you can create powerful testimonial videos by identifying your customer personas, finding happy customers that fit the personas, and vetting customer testimonies prior to filming. Production costs can be significantly reduced by scheduling several testimonies consecutively.