When’s the last time you’ve taken a deep dive into your customer journey? The last time you thoroughly examined each stage and carefully crafted content to follow suit? Creating original, compelling content that encourages the user to engage further with your brand can ultimately turn visitors into potential customers. One of the best forms of content to implement within the customer’s journey is video. While people are confined to their homes, video consumption rates are at an all-time high. Whether it’s video searches for “how to make a homemade mask” or even “best quarantine activities for my kids,” the demand for engaging, educational, and entertaining video is greater than ever.
Understanding the Buyer’s Journey
What is the buyer’s journey? In its simplest form, it’s a snapshot of the entire purchasing experience; beginning with the moment they begin to become aware they have a problem your product can help solve, running all the way through to the eventual purchase. Ultimately, the buyer’s journey can be broken down into 3 stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Crafting video content that is specific to each stage of this journey can ultimately assist in raising the percentage of consumers that make it from the awareness to the consideration stage, and then from the consideration to the decision stage. It’s important to make sure that you are using the right type of video in each stage to most effectively guide potential customers through the journey, while simultaneously keeping them engaged with your brand’s marketing content. In order to better understand what type of video content you should be looking to create, it’s important to gain a deeper understanding of each of the three stages of the customer journey.
3 stages of the Customer Journey
1. The Awareness Stage
The first stage in the customer journey is awareness. At this stage, the customer realizes they have a problem, at which point they begin to Google it, reach out to friends, or even, and I say this with skepticism, take out a book at the public library! (The horror!) But seriously, once a consumer thinks they may have a problem, they try and learn about it. This inevitably leads to the decision as to whether or not pursuing a solution is really worth it.
Use Video to Educate
Implementing educational videos at this stage will allow your audience to better understand your services, and visualize the ways your business can solve their problem. With the number of people working from home, internet traffic is at an all-time high. This means businesses that need IT help to video chat clients, homeowners whose leaky faucet starts to drive them crazy by that afternoon meeting, and parents who can’t take one more minute of homeschooling, are desperately searching for answers. Depending upon your industry, a lot of these people could be potential customers. Using informational video content to educate these audiences about their problem, and expose them to the repercussions of leaving it unsolved, can ultimately push them into the consideration stage.
2. Consideration Stage
The next stage in the customer journey is the consideration stage. At this point, that business with the IT issue has now dropped one too many Zoom conferences, and the working-from-home-employee with the faucet driving him insane has shut their water off. They have decided that they do, in fact, have a problem. When a customer enters this stage, they begin looking for the right company to solve it for them.
Communicate Your Brand
Off the bat, explainer videos and company “Hero” videos are great consideration stage video content. Both of these videos ultimately aid potential customers in getting a feel for your company’s brand, give an impression of the overall quality of your products and/or services and specifically highlight how your company can solve their needs.
While the final video content of, say, an explainer video, will ultimately depend upon your business, one facet remains consistent- explainer videos can highlight specific, relevant features of each of your products. Ultimately, these videos are both created to educate the customer and demonstrate value. Company “Hero” videos, on the other hand, give potential customers an insight into the brand, culture, and range of services your business provides. They’re a great way to engage customers, while simultaneously communicating your company ethos. While effective ‘About Us’ videos can be made from stock footage, it’s best to work in the original footage, showing your actual team, doing real-life work. Videos like these ultimately help communicate a brand, which could play a major role in deciding whether or not someone chooses your business or the one down the street. This leads us to the third and final stage of the customer journey.
3. Decision Stage
By now, potential customers have thoroughly conducted research about their problem. They’ve looked into potential solutions, vetted multiple companies, and are ready to pay money to solve it. Often, customers treat this stage as a sort of “interview,” and may even reach out with specific questions regarding your products. While the questions can greatly differ depending on the industry, they can generally be anticipated based on what your business does. For instance, if your company sells physical products, phone calls or emails may start to come in about pricing structures, color options, and sizes. If your company is a service company, the questions may revolve around deadlines, budgets, billing options/retainers, and lines of communication. Regardless of where your business stands in this scenario, effective and compelling video content can help answer these questions.
Showcase Past Success
Ultimately, this is exactly what video content at this stage can do; answer questions, and demonstrate value. Two common types of videos that can be helpful in the decision stage are case studies and testimonials. These show off your company’s work while showcasing satisfied customers. You can also create quick FAQ videos, designed to address any specific questions potential customers may have regarding your products and services.
Effective Case Studies
Case studies demonstrate validity, process, and results. They show real instances of how your company solves real problems, which helps real potential customers visualize themselves giving you their business. When creating a case study video, make sure to highlight impressive statistics, and cut down on any ‘fluff,’ or potentially irrelevant content. People care about how you can solve their problem; not their neighbor’s.
Compelling Testimonials
Testimonial videos provide real satisfied customers. Not only does showcasing customer success stories generate trust, but it strengthens brand identity to a consumer. One important factor to keep in mind when creating testimonial video content is repetition. A potential customer looking through your videos doesn’t necessarily want to see 20 testimonial videos about the same brand of shoe you sell, or your favorite material to use for entry door replacement. They want to see a range of customers, satisfied with a range of your products, presenting their stories in different ways. One way to add a personal touch to each testimonial video is to make sure to include personal anecdotes. This can help make the satisfied customer feel more genuine, while also assisting in content variation to keep your videos from being too similar. Testimonial videos are also another great way to convey brand ethos, to communicate what your company is all about. One way to do this is to feature the individual employees or teams that worked on a specific project. Another would be to highlight how each customer’s problem was uniquely different.
Effective Content Creation and Content Marketing
Forge Apollo specializes in visual and digital storytelling, we specialize in creating content that gets seen. If you think video may be an effective way to improve your existing customer journey, or if you have any questions about how effective video and content marketing can generate more customers, feel free to contact us anytime for a custom video quote to match any stage of your customer journey. We can also help with overall marketing audits and strategy plus digital marketing services. Make sure to follow Forge Apollo on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We welcome the opportunity to show you firsthand how we can help your business grow.
