Video inbound marketing utilizes the buyer’s journey to create valuable, helpful, and meaningful video content to attract, convert, and delight your customers.
At the awareness stage of the buyer's journey, your potential customers have a problem, and you have a solution — you just haven't found each other yet.
Unlike the consideration or decision stage, your customers do not know about your solutions just yet. They have acknowledged they have a problem but are only beginning to research the right solution for them.
The goal for awareness stage content is to provide value and present yourself as an industry leader. Awareness video content should not be overly promotional but instead should be educational and valuable. This content should be very engaging, so much so that they will take action to learn more about you. This may be clicking on another article, signing up for an email list, or downloading a high-value content offer.
What is a Video Inbound Awareness Video?
First, let's watch an awareness video. The video below is for a nonprofit called Child360. Child360 is a leading nonprofit working toward a future where every child has the early childhood educational opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. They needed a series of videos from real parents, educators, and administrators to discuss the importance of early childhood education for all communities. These videos were part of a website redesign, and Child360 wanted its first touch with website visitors to focus on the stories of the people involved in early childhood education.
In this video, Dr. Heather Harris talks about the challenges educators and students faced in the Lynwood Unified School District. Recognizing the impact of high-quality early childhood education has on students, Dr. Harris worked with Child360 to successfully implement a robust early childhood education program for the district.
The video's goal was to inspire the viewer while also briefly mentioning Child360's involvement, so they are compelled to explore and learn more.
How to Get Started Creating Awareness Videos for Your Campaign
There are many different ways to create awareness videos, from doing it yourself to hiring a professional production company. But it is recommended to put more of your budget towards producing a high-quality awareness video. The awareness stage is the time to impress and create the right perception of your brand. Think about creating brand affinity. This is the time to make your audience a raving fan of your brand. Above all else, the content needs to be valuable and engaging. Below are a few steps about how to get started creating awareness videos.
Establish Your Target Audience
If you have documented buyer personas, this is where they come into play. Your campaign should target one persona at a time, so your messaging will be focused and effective. You should also define what success looks like at this stage.
Measure success by tracking metrics like:
- Video views
- Length of views
- Conversions on your CTA
Don't have documented personas? Get started and learn how to create them with our Definitive Guide to Buyer Personas.
Get your Buyer Persona
Definitive Guide Here
Decide What You’re Going to Say
Now that you have identified who the content is for, it's time for you to think about what you will talk about. Keep in mind that you'll need to provide helpful solutions to any topic or issue you want to discuss. Think about what your prospect might type into Google when searching for solutions to their challenges. Then create content to answer those questions.
Suggested article: 7 Tips to Create Engaging Content
Tips for an Effective Content Strategy
- Focus on the problem or challenge your persona experiences.
- Do keyword and competitor research to learn what people search for to solve their challenges
- Answer common questions related to your product or service.
- Establish authority and be confident.
- Tell the viewer what they should do next. Include a next step article or content offer in the form of a CTA. A helpful guide, eBook, or webinar are often good next-step content offers.
Types of Awareness Videos You Can Create
- Explainer videos
- Whiteboard videos
- Vlog-style video that complements a blog article
- Storytelling video outlining a challenge and successful outcomes
Lights, Camera, Action
It's time to produce your video. Creating a video on your own does not have to be difficult or complicated. Below are a few tips to help you plan out the creation of your awareness video.
- Decide if you're going to hire a production company or go DIY
- Know who will be in your video and create an outline or script before you start filming
- Choose a location and identify production challenges
- Try not to film in a loud or crowded office to ensure you get good audio
- Think of ways to showcase your company culture or personality
- Get all the right stakeholders involved, including the marketing team, subject matter experts, and those who will ultimately provide approvals for the video
Here at Beacons Point, we use Wistia for our video hosting. Wistia offers many powerful marketing tools to get the most out of your videos. They also have a ton of great production DIY tips and resources to help you create professional videos using simple tools.
Develop A Distribution Plan
You have created a video that is tailored to solve a challenge your prospect is having, now let's talk about where you should post it. Again, you'll want to think of your target persona. What are their favorite platforms? How do they like to consume content?
Your content should be posted where your persona is most likely to see and engage with it.
Awareness Distribution Channels
- Social media: post content on the platforms your audience lives on to drive traffic to your website.
- Pillar pages: create multiple videos that speak to each section in your pillar page to add more value to the page.
- Blogging: post a short video explaining the blog topic.
- Landing pages: use video as a teaser to get conversions on a gated offer.
- Website: put videos on your highly-trafficked webpages to keep website visitors engaged.
Remember, when posting to video hosting platforms such as Wistia follow best practices for SEO such as adding:
- Meta descriptions
- Alt descriptions
- A video description with optimized keywords
- Video captions - This is important for social videos that play without sound. Captions have a significant impact on improving SEO.
Congratulations! You’ve created a strategy, shot your video, and put it out to the world. Now, let’s go back to why you created these videos and how you can measure their success.
Awareness video content objectives
- Attract new prospects to your website
- Increase brand and product awareness
- Increase conversions on your CTAs and content offers
- Increase engagement on social media
Measuring Success
- Monitor monthly website traffic to the page or blog
- Landing page or pillar page traffic
- Social media engagement
- Video views
- CTA or link clicks
To recap, awareness videos will increase your organic traffic, keep your prospects on your site longer, and help you become an authority in your industry.
If you follow these simple steps you will build a strong awareness video strategy that will make it easier for you and your company to create targeted content for your video inbound marketing campaigns.
