The buyer’s journey really is unique to every business according to what you offer, your customer types or personas, and the time it takes your customers to weigh all the options before making a purchasing decision. It’s important to understand videos aren’t one-size-fits-all, and you can’t expect to just put out a video and watch the new customers start rolling in.
Using Video for Inbound Marketing
Here at Beacons Point, we’re a video-first inbound marketing agency because we believe video has the power to make an instant personal connection with your prospects. But we get a lot of questions about creating videos and figuring out where to start.
We always start by asking two questions:
- Do you know your buyer personas?
- Do you understand their buyer’s journey?
If you can answer those two questions, you can start planning a video marketing campaign. Let’s say you do a good job of attracting leads but need something to convince them to buy your product or service. Try creating a compelling case study video.
Check out this video case study we created for our client, 1070 Architecture, and then continue reading to learn how we did it.
5 Easy Steps to Creating a Convincing Video Case Study
1. Decide on Your Target Audience & Goals
Remember that question we asked before: “Do you understand your buyer personas?” Well, now is the time to decide which customer type you’re going to target. You probably offer a variety of things and a convincing sales message that works for one won’t necessarily work for another. Get very specific and focus on one single persona.
It’s also time to think about goals. You need to have a clear vision of what success will look like for this video. Think about measurable goals like views and engagement, converting leads, or booking more sales calls.
2. Define the Problem and Your Solution
You’ve decided on the target audience, now it’s time to make your messaging clear in defining their problem and providing a solution. Settling on the core message that addresses your customers' core problem will help drive the story of the case study. Focus on the major reasons your customers buy from you.
In the case of the 1070 Architecture case study, it works great during the decision stage. One of their personas is people who are interested in modern architecture, want to hire a high-end modern architect to remodel their existing residential property, and live in the Coastal Zone of San Diego. They put out a lot of videos for general awareness and consideration aimed at people who are interested in remodeling their homes. Examples of these include educational videos showing construction process and codes, permitting, general architectural design, and how they approach modern design.
3. Craft the Story
A great video case study relies on an interesting story with compelling results. Go back to the problem and solution, and think of a customer that fits that situation, and also matches the defined persona.
Based on your experience in working with that client, you should start to outline the story following this basic structure:
- Establish the starting situation
- Define the problem that drove the client to work with you
- Detail your solution
- Showcase the outcome
After outlining the story, you should conduct an informal interview with the client to understand their perceptions of the experience. This will also help you get a sense of how well they'll do talking on camera. If you do decide to interview the client on camera, it will be important to provide coaching and reassurance so they know what to expect.
Throughout this process, keep in mind what tone you want the case study to have and how you want the viewer to feel. Is it an emotional story? Do you want to inspire? Demonstrate confidence and expertise?
Finally, decide how you will demonstrate a successful outcome for this client. Are metrics or data important? Is it about saving money or increasing revenue? Or is it something less concrete or tangible?
4. Develop a Video Production Plan
Now’s the time for the important step of developing a production plan. Who is going to actually create the video? Do you have an internal resource at your company or do you need to hire a video production company?
Who’s going to be on camera? Where are the filming locations? What about music and editing?
It’s so crucial to have a solid plan in place before you begin filming to make sure you involve all of the right stakeholders and have the necessary resources in place.
5. Get Your Video Case Study Out There
You’ve done it! Production has wrapped and you have a killer video you're ready to share with the world.
Now, all you have left to do is get your video case study in front of your target audience. Think about distribution channels as where your persona lives. Looks at any metrics you have about where you see the best engagement on social channels. Depending on your audience, it might not be helpful to post everywhere if you really only have an audience on LinkedIn and very little engagement on Instagram. You can also put together a digital ad buy on your preferred channel to boost engagement.
You should look into video hosting platforms like Wistia that provide better tracking analytics, and offer more tools for data collection and integrations with other marketing tools.
Finally, don’t forget to analyze the results against your goals and objectives. The video and distribution plan is not set in stone, so don’t be afraid to make changes and adapt your plan. Consider re-editing the video if engagement is inconsistent throughout the video, and adjusting the ad parameters. You can test the video further by setting up an A/B test to find out what version performs the best.
It’s pretty simple but not always easy to create the video you envisioned from the start. Beacons Point has a lot of helpful video resources to get you started down the right path. And we’re always happy to talk and share ideas about what might work best for you.
