Use Sales Funnel Videos To Convert More Customers
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Your B2B business is facing new challenges in 2020.
You might struggle to drive traffic, or (once you do get someone to your site) struggle to convert them into leads or sales.
You're not alone. With so much competition, it's getting harder and harder to stand out and convert high-value customers.
Luckily, no matter what sales challenges your B2B buyer is facing, video can help you at every stage of the sales process.
In this guide, we'll give you a complete breakdown of how and where to use video in your B2B sales funnel to drive traffic, leads and sales.
What is a B2B Sales Funnel?
A B2B sales funnel is a systematic set of stages that a customer will experience throughout their buying process.
At each stage of a B2B sales funnel, marketers will deploy different lead nurturing marketing tactics to move the prospect along their buying journey.
Video is often one of the tactics that marketers use to nudge buyers closer to making the purchase. 70% of prospects watch a video at some point during their sales cycle.
Funnels help qualify prospects, so marketers will know exactly what lead nurturing stage they are in and what is the next best approach to moving them closer to conversion.
But what does a B2B sales funnel look like?
Typically, funnels have three broad parts: top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel.
Within each, there's a different funnel stage to define where the customer currently is in their customer journey. Those stages include awareness, interest, decision, action and loyalty.
But why is a funnel useful? It directs a B2B marketer to where they need to allocate more time and resources to specific aspects of their marketing efforts.
If they aren't getting enough new leads, then they need to focus on top-of-funnel initiatives. If they have a lot of leads that aren't closing, then they should focus on bottom-of-funnel campaigns.
B2B Sales Funnel: From Start to Finish
Let's go through what a typical B2B sales funnel might look like.
Top of Funnel
The buyer is first exposed to the company through top-of-funnel marketing strategies.
This is considered the awareness stage. In this stage, marketers deploy different tactics to showcase their product and increase brand awareness for their target audience.
Popular brand awareness marketing activities include paid ads, blog posts, social media campaigns, events, press, and direct mail campaigns.
For example, a prospect may discover the AdRoll blog post titled, "What is Behavioral Marketing?" after searching that same keyword phrase in a search engine.
Middle of Funnel
From there, the prospect would move into middle-of-funnel stages like interest and decision.
The interest stage involves more targeted tactics such as product landing pages, emails, or newsletters.
For example, a prospect might examine AdRoll's audience targeting landing page to learn more about the platform's capabilities.
Bottom of Funnel
After the prospect learns more, they might want to make a purchase. This is considered the decision stage. Decision tactics could be free trials, testimonials, or case studies.
Video testimonials in AdRoll's #DareToGrow stories series nudges prospects towards a decision.
Once the decision has been made, the prospect will move into bottom-of-funnel stages like action and loyalty.
In the action stage, the customer converts and makes the purchase.
Once a purchase is complete, they enter the loyalty stage. In this stage, you need to ensure that they are happy and want to continue to buy from you.
Loyalty tactics include product videos, customer support and added features over time.
For example the customer might be impressed with the resources and helpdesk AdRoll offers on its website.
They could be learning how to optimize campaigns through a video with a strategist that's hosted on the resources page.
Funnels provide a framework for marketers, but filling them is sometimes difficult. 31% of marketers think building a sales pipeline is the most challenging aspect of their job.
Let's take a look at the tactics used in each stage individually, so you know when video is most impactful.
Top-of-Funnel Video Marketing Tactics
Marketers need to leverage video in top-of-funnel tactics including paid ads, blog posts, virtual events, and more.
Paid Ads
Video ads have lower customer acquisition costs and can be more engaging for users who may have never heard of your product or service.
62% of people said they were more interested in a product after seeing it in a video ad on a Facebook Story.
Customer testimonials make effective paid ads. Take a look at Health Catalyst's video testimonial for Robin, the office scheduling platform.
In 15 seconds, you're introduced to Robin, how it can be used, and the value it has already brought to one of their clients.
This is a quick, effective ad that can be used for top-of-funnel paid media campaigns, because it raises awareness about the product and makes the prospects want to learn more.
Blog Posts
Blog posts (much like this one) with a video embedded in them bring concepts to life.
Optimized blog posts can rank high in search engines, resulting in more consumers discovering your website and owned content.
Readers will stay on pages with videos for a longer time. Approximately 88% of web users spend more time on websites that feature videos on their page.
Pingboard, an organization chart software company, uses short gifs in their blog posts to make the content more animated and jump out from the page.
The videos they feature in blog posts showcase different product features like their spreadsheet import function that's available.
This makes the blog easier and more engaging for the prospect to read.
Virtual Events
Virtual events are a popular awareness tactic to expose your brand to new potential customers.
In order to do one effectively, you need to have a video component. Customers want to be immersed in video at virtual events.
In addition, the videos can be packaged up post-event and shared or hosted on the business' website as lead magnets.
73% of B2B marketers believe virtual events and webinars are powerful lead generation tools.
ServiceNow, an IT, employee, and customer efficiency software, hosted a virtual event called Knowledge 2020.
After the event, they packaged the video content up so prospects could watch it on demand.
In order to access it, you had to provide an email which is what the company will use to retarget you with additional B2B marketing assets.
By gating the content, you can capture customer information that's valuable for your company.
Vidyard helps marketers host videos on their site in a way that unlocks valuable prospect insights including name, email, company, time spent watching, and more.
Middle-of-Funnel Video Marketing Tactics
Middle-of-funnel video marketing tactics like video testimonials and case studies can nudge prospects closer to the decision stage.
Video Testimonials
Testimonials are a perfect opportunity to let your customers do the selling for you.
Two of the most popular ways to leverage video testimonials include publishing them on your website or sharing them directly with prospects in targeted emails.
More than 63% of customers said they're more likely to buy from a site that has customer reviews on it. Video testimonials can bring those customer reviews to life.
Robin, a conference room scheduling platform, had Datto film another testimonial for them.
They used it in various B2B marketing materials and also published the video right near their "Request a Demo" button on their website.
This strategy is often effective. Research shows that landing pages with videos can lead to an increase in conversions by 80%.
Video testimonials are a valuable asset that every business should have ready to move prospects further down their sales funnel.
Case Studies
Don't just have your customers share their thoughts about your business. Ask them to share top-line data in a case study, too.
How are case studies and testimonials different? Case studies go deeper, analyzing a specific campaign from start to finish.
Look at this video that shows how Decathlon uses NewStore as their POS system.
Ashley Benson, Senior Product Manager of Decathlon, outlines how the NewStore Associate app was instrumental in their shift to a model that allows their associates to check out customers from anywhere in the store.
The video is approximately two minutes long and outlines the product's use case and a real-world example.
When it comes to producing this type of middle-of-funnel content, you're not alone.
Testimonial Hero can help work directly with your clients to write, shoot, and produce high-quality testimonials that you can use in your B2B sales funnel.
Bottom-of-Funnel Video Marketing Tactics
At the bottom of the funnel, marketers can use videos to re-engage customers and turn them into active salespeople for the brand.
Product demo videos and engaging customer service are two bottom-of-funnel tactics that drive loyalty.
Product Demos
Most companies use video to enhance the customer experience. By adding product demos on your website and sharing industry insights, you'll provide customers with knowledge.
Plus, customers may need a crash-course in your product even after they buy it. 71% of consumers think video explains the product better.
Why? 55% of customers pay close attention when consuming videos. This is a higher rate than any other form of content.
Publishing videos with product insights is a great way to engage customers even after they've made a purchase. By continuing to provide useful content, you'll improve customer loyalty.
Zepl, a data science company, had their client Yonder film a testimonial showcasing the product's features in action.
There were scenes of the dashboard bringing the data to life and employees accessing the insights across the whole organization.
Zepl also has a videos page on their site that includes testimonials as well as webinars and product demonstrations.
Creating product demo videos isn't hard.
Screencastify is a useful tool that can help you record, edit, and share videos of your screen.
All you need to do is hit record and walk through your product. The file will be saved on your computer, so you can edit and publish it for your audience.
Engaging Customer Service
Companies that proactively reach out to their customers to see if they can help improve their experience are winning customer loyalty.
One way to do this is to deploy video calls as a mechanism for customer support. 48% of customer service teams use video support as an option to resolve customer issues.
This makes the customer service experience more personal.
By facilitating face to face communication, the company representative can get to know the customer on a deeper level to truly understand their issues.
Conclusion
Video needs to play a significant part in your B2B sales funnel. Customers are looking for more video content, and you need to give them what they're looking for.
Video content is useful at nearly every stage of the funnel.
Top-of-funnel video content should be deployed in ads, blogs, and virtual events.
Middle-of-funnel video content should focus on testimonials and case studies on landing pages and in email nurture campaigns.
Bottom-of-funnel video content should focus on building customer loyalty through product demo videos and engaging customer service.
With a focus on video, you'll attract and convert new customers that will grow your business.
Dan shares on:
Brokers no longer need to spend hours each week tagging conversations manually and adding notes after each call—ZRA does all that for them.
During customer calls, brokers, salespeople, and customer success agents can easily see AI-generated notes from previous interactions and continue the conversation, whether it involves offering the customer more information about a particular token or solving a simple troubleshooting issue like two-factor authentication.
Using ZRA has streamlined customer processes, from sales to customer service calls to onboarding. “When we go through a customer onboarding process, we need a lot of information from the customer to remain compliant,” Dan explains. “With Zoom Revenue Accelerator, our onboarding team can easily see what’s been collected and what’s missing.”
After each call, ZRA will automatically create a summary and generate a list of the next steps to complete the onboarding. “Our onboarding team can now save time. When engaging with a customer, they can focus and prioritize that customer conversation.”
With automatic, AI-enabled insights into customer calls, Caleb & Brown now uses the intelligence gathered from conversations to guide business decisions. “When we want to start a new customer acquisition campaign or explore a new business line, we have insights into what matters most to our customers,” Dan says. “We can adjust our acquisition strategy and the key messages we use in our comms to match what we see.”
ZRA makes data sharing between teams easier, so brokers can share customer feedback with product and engineering teams—something they couldn’t do easily before. “In the past, it was quite clunky to pull a clip or audio file to share with other teams. Now, they can easily search through transcripts and provide those snippets as text snippets. It’s been a huge improvement to our workflow,” Dan says.
The enhanced collaboration—furthered by the adoption of Zoom Chat and Zoom Meetings—has also improved security. Teams can communicate faster and use ZRA to share data and call recordings to identify bad actors and confirm client identities quickly.
"Our teams can look at the data and make sure the voice and conversation style matches previous conversations. The auto-generated transcript that ZRA provides makes it much easier to search previous conversations." — Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
In addition to tightening security, ZRA has made it easier for Caleb & Brown to track potential compliance issues and conduct quality assurance.
Along with ZRA, Caleb & Brown adopted Zoom Phone.
As a distributed company with global teams, it was important to ensure that distance didn’t impact customer experience. According to Dan, their previous provider “had significant latency issues and delays in the conversation. It made conversations quite disjointed and felt very unnatural.”
Switching to Zoom Phone solved those issues, and with the seamless integration of ZRA, they’ve gained data analysis capabilities they didn’t have before.
Since they’ve started working with Zoom Phone and ZRA, Caleb & Brown has gathered valuable data from every single customer call. “Previously, only a fraction of those calls were analyzed and reviewed. Now it’s 100%, and our team doesn’t have to do anything—the software does it for us. It’s quite magical,” Dan says.
This analysis has led to significant time savings and given the team a deeper understanding of their customers.
“Understanding those conversations and what topics matter most to our customers at scale has been absolutely phenomenal. We can’t put an exact number on it, but days, months, years of work have been saved.” —Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
Caleb & Brown have gotten so much value from Zoom Phone and ZRA that they’ve expanded their Zoom ecosystem.
One such integration involves Salesforce. ZRA integrates directly with Salesforce, which means agents no longer have to spend time searching for the information they need. When a customer calls, their profile pops on the screen, allowing agents and brokers to swiftly navigate through that customer's data for additional context for a particular request. “If a customer wants to update their address, for example, the agent can click see and change that information directly in Salesforce. The useability is phenomenal,” Dan says.
Another addition is Zoom Contact Center, which provides a better way for the global support team to service customers. Rather than having support team members to have unique phone numbers, they leverage intelligent routing to streamline call volume through a single phone number. This capability makes reporting much clearer, as it's easier for leadership to understand the types of conversations being had and who is having those conversations.
With so many solutions to offer, Zoom enables Caleb & Brown to improve productivity, know their customers better, and get deeper deal insights to drive more revenue.
“One of the biggest benefits of working with Zoom is their complete product line. Having one provider that you can go to for many solutions makes things quite easy.” —Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
