When I heard the term “buyer’s journey” for the first time, I envisioned bright-eyed, ambitious folk embarking on a long, meandering expedition in pursuit of something important. While that’s much more aligned with the “hero’s journey,” a common template in movies/film, the two actually do have a lot in common.
Made popular by Joseph Campbell in his book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” the hero’s journey details a hero who goes on an adventure and, in a decisive crisis, wins a victory, then comes home changed or transformed. Sound familiar? That’s because every movie, book, TV show, short film, and video game (mostly) follows this same format.
The buyer’s journey your customers go through in order to purchase your products actually mirrors those same steps. A customer goes on an “adventure” to solve a problem in their life, a “decisive crisis” as they research their options, wins a victory by solving that problem, then “comes home” with a new product that solves said problem.
It might be a silly comparison, but focusing on the similarities between the way we tell stories and the way we make decisions can help you better understand the psychology of your prospective customers—especially when creating and using video content to help your sales funnels. Video content helps you to better engage with your prospective clients along every step of the buyer’s journey, and better convince them to choose you over the competition.
Hopefully, you’ve already done your research and started to understand and define who your potential buyers are. By doing so, you can better map the video content you create to their individual buyer persona. The goal of the content you create will be to address the challenges and concerns your buyers face in each phase of their journey, and video content is the best content for the job.
Here is how you can integrate video into each stage of your marketing funnel to engage your buyers on their own journey towards buying your product.
Act One: Engaging Your Prospective Customers in the Awareness Stage
The buyer’s journey begins with the awareness stage. This is the stage where your prospective buyer first learns that they a problem.
For your company, this would be the phase where your future customer needs to become aware that they have a problem they need to fix. Your job is to help them realize that they have a problem and attract them back to your website or landing page to learn more and develop an interest in your company or product as the solution to this problem.
For this stage, you will want to focus on creating an industry video or educational video. An industry video is a video that highlights the opportunities within your industry as a whole, while not necessarily promoting your brand. In these videos, you’re targeting people that do not even realize they have a problem. You can feature stats, trends, or industry news usually meant to highlight the magnitude of a “problem” in order to attract the right customer.
On the other hand, an educational video is meant to educate potential customers on how to take advantage of your products at large to solve their problem. So, where an industry video would highlight a problem in an industry, an educational video would aim to share educational content to fix said problem. For example, if you run a marketing company, you would make an educational video called “how to advertise on Facebook” to educate potential customers on how to solve the problem of reaching new audiences with Facebook advertising.
Speaking of advertising, you’ll need to promote your industry or educational videos with advertising dollars in order to attract your customers. Learning the right distribution channels for finding and reaching the right prospective customer is paramount to figuring out where and what to spend.
Pro Tip: If you’re still struggling to attract prospective buyers to your company website during the awareness phase, consider making a commercial. Commercials are typically short, attention-grabbing videos that highlight your company’s best features, either with a clever scene, gorgeous imagery, or a laundry list of exciting features to overwhelm the competition. Whether promoted digitally through Facebook ads or broadcast nationally on television, make sure your commercial has a clear problem-solution and a definitive call to action (CTA).
Act Two: Guiding Your Prospective Customers in the Consideration Stage
Your videos worked – you’ve educated your potential buyer, who now knows that they have a problem and will be looking for solutions. Don’t assume just because you’re the one to point out the problem that they’re going to choose you to solve it. This is where video content is critical to engage with potential buyers and address any and all questions or concerns they might have regarding your product or service.
Similarly, during the consideration and evaluation phase, a potential buyer will be evaluating the various methods available to them to solve their problem. Any video content you create should aim to address these same questions. Some of them include:
- What type of solutions are out there?
- Where else can I find information on potential solutions?
- What are the pros and cons of each solution?
- What are the deciding factors that will determine my decision?
In this stage, your content should give potential buyers the information they need to address how they’re going to solve their problem and make them aware of potential solutions, the best of which should include your product.
The most popular type of video for this phase would be a brand video, also known as the explainer video. Brand videos offer a high-level overview of your company’s mission, which, if done right, should be uniquely tied to the problem your company is aiming to help fix. One added benefit of a brand video in this phase is that since customers will likely be introduced to your company through your website, a brand video will feel like a welcome and natural addition to your homepage.
Bar none, the best video to provide potential buyers with during his evaluation phase is the testimonial video. By showing prospective customers a testimonial video at this stage of his buyer’s journey, they can get the bulk of their questions answered from other potential buyers just like them, who had the same questions, concerns, and hesitations, but took the risk anyway and ended up satisfied. Testimonials let your customers speak to their satisfaction with your product or service in their own words, and nothing is more powerful than the power of a good recommendation.
Keep in mind – it’s critical to keep your prospective buyer engaged with content in your marketing funnel that answers as many of his questions as possible. By doing so, you keep him from needing to go outside of your funnel for further research and information. Education is a powerful tool, and video is a powerful medium to educate with. That’s not to say that prospects won’t look elsewhere for reviews and other options, but the more ammunition you give them in your favor, the more they’ll have to stack against less-equipped competitors.
Pro Tip: A fun video to provide prospects with in this phase is a day in the life video. Day in the life videos show how your company or a customer operates on the day to day, and can help the buyer to visualize themselves using your product, or endear them to your company to help build credibility for your brand.
Act Three: Leading Your Prospective Customers in the Decision Stage
The final phase of your prospective customer’s buyer’s journey is the decision phase. Once your potential customer leaves the evaluation and consideration phase, they have already determined the deciding factors that are going to influence their decision. The role of your video content in this phase is to help potential buyers realize the value your product or service provides them, and help them justify their purchase by addressing all of those deciding factors.
These deciding factors can be different for every buyer; however, you can make several key predictions, as most deciding factors come down to:
- Price – Which option is the most cost-efficient option?
- Quality – Which option seems to be of the highest quality/effectiveness?
- Reliability – Which option comes from the most trusted, reliable source?
- Efficiency and Ease – Which option can I get the fastest and is the easiest to use?
One great video you can create to address all of these questions is a before and after video. Before and after videos provide the viewer with an instant understanding of what you’re offering and helps them visualize it for themselves. By showing potential buyers their problem before your product, then once the problem’s solved after using your product, they can very quickly make a judgment call about your product’s effectiveness.
Plus, they can use this product video to evaluate the quality of your product and the efficiency and ease of use. Meanwhile, you’re building credibility by showing your product in action.
Also consider a product review video. With a product review video, you can work with a third-party source, be it a social media influencer, industry journalist, or known celebrity they know and trust, to review your product and give their take. You could even stage a product review that includes your product up against the competition and demonstrates who comes out ahead.
At this point, your product just needs to have a compelling sales point against the competition, and your potential buyer should have all the information they need to complete their buyer’s journey.
Pro Tip: When launching a crowdfunding campaign for a new product or gadget, you should use similar tactics to the above in your crowdfunding video. Crowdfunding videos must be engaging to help sell your company’s purpose and vision to would-be campaign backers and future customers. Your crowdfunding video should make the viewer aware of an important problem fundamental to your company’s core mission, provide them with specific information to evaluate and consider your product or service against potential other options, and inspire them into making the decision to back your campaign.
Want to really knock it out of the park? Create and cover your campaign page with multiple videos, like a day in the life, testimonial, product review, or before and after video.
Must-read: How to Incorporate Video Into Your Crowdfunding Strategy.
The Resolution
By creating and applying video content to your marketing funnel that addresses each individual phase of your customer’s buyer’s journey, you can use targeted, visually stimulating, creative content that engages customers better than words and pictures, helps them better retain the information you want them to remember, and answers their questions.
And like the hero’s journey, the buyer’s journey is universal. We all go through the same process when making the decision to buy, even if we don’t realize it. By using video, you’re able to capture the buyer’s imagination better than any other type of content. Why do you think we love the movies so much?
And if you’re interested in investing more in video content for your own sales and marketing funnels, book a call with one of our creative producers today to kick around some potential video package options.
* This article was originally published here