5 Ways Video Marketing Can Help You Meet Your Q4 Sales Goals

As the Holiday season rapidly approaches, that means one thing for pretty much every business.

That’s right, the 4th Quarter is descending upon us! And as a company, you’re probably in 1 of 3 places:

You could be nailing your goals and sitting back contentedly.
You’re right on the edge of your goals looking at those not terrible, but not great either, numbers wondering how to make sure they swing the right way the last part of the year.
Or, you may have severely overestimated growth this year and you need to recapture some serious mojo to reverse your fortunes.

No matter which of those 3 you are, Q4 is still a vital time of the year!

Whether you’re sitting up and realizing you could make bonus numbers, you want a bit more stability through the end the year, or you need to shift strategies quickly and efficiently, we want to ask a question posed by one of the great thought leaders of our time:

“Have you met video marketing?” – Barney Stinson

Before we go any further, let’s be real for a second. Video marketing isn’t magic – but it is powerful. It’s not a Harry Potter wand that you can point at your problems – it’s more like eating some of Popeye’s spinach.

When used correctly, it’s more than capable of securing your year or it can be the ignition button to powerfully shift your company’s marketing strategy. Take these juicy stats, for example:

Videos can increase purchase intent 97% and brand association by 139%.
The average user watches 16 minutes of online video ads every month.
Dr. James McQuivey says that one minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words – pictures everywhere wept when told this. Sad, huh?

So, we feel pretty confident promising that video marketing will make your Q4 better than it would be otherwise. Only one problem. To get results now, you don’t have time to test and optimize. You need to know what works and you need it now. Unlike pretty much any movie made by DC Comics, we can deliver what you need.

Here are 5 of key video marketing trends that are dominating

1.) Landing Page + Video Marketing = Venus Flytrap

Okay, you’ve probably seen this “trend” before and wonder what we’re doing repeating this. We counter by asking you to go count how many of your landing pages have videos on them. Go ahead. We’ll wait…

Not very many have videos, you say? That’s because a lot of people still don’t use this strategy!

Once people have landed on a page, educating them with engaging video content is not a nice to have – it’s a must have. There’s case study after case study demonstrating how effective videos are at communicating your UVP to prospective customers. Once you have them hooked on video, the supporting content on your landing page can drive them towards the desired conversion.

One company – CaseComplete – put an explainer video on one of their main landing pages and saw a 23% increase in conversions on that page almost overnight! Think about what your sales team could do with 23% more leads.

If you think that CaseComplete is an isolated case, major brands like Neil Patel’s CrazyEgg saw a whopping 64% conversion lift, resulting in $24,000 in extra monthly income – all thanks to video. And Dropbox increased signups by 10% with an explainer video!

Landing pages also have much better metrics with videos on them. Whether it is a lower bounce rate, increased unique visitor count, or more conversions, video is a key component to an excellent customer journey.

Video marketing is working for small SaaS companies and big brands alike – and it will work for you!

2.) Round Out Your Video Marketing Game With 360 Degree Videos

Ready to add some depth to your video marketing game? The answer is literally add depth to it. Change the game with 360 degree videos! As one of the most immersive ways to engage your consumers online, these videos have some breathtaking results. Hint: Make sure you look around in the video below!

Tell me you don’t want to take a vacation right now. By adding literal depth to a video, you completely immerse the viewer. This is perfect for showing off destinations, products, events, and much more. Best thing about it all is that the technology is affordable and you can produce videos like this on a relatively low budget. As if you needed more convincing, early case studies for these videos are showing mindblowing results!

Percentage of people who watched 360 degree videos versus fixed videos goes up 28.81%
Doubles the amount of people who watch the video until the end – because we know you’re not interested in those people who start your video and pause it 5 seconds later.
Cuts CPM costs in half and drives up CTR by almost 9x – tell me you’re not drooling. We are.

In addition to making your landing pages even more effective, these videos are amazing towards skyrocketing social strategies into the future. By making videos more interactive, and thus even more engaging, companies get to cheat and make videos a bit longer than the dreaded 2 minute mark – after which 60% of users normally drop off!

3.) Video and Email Marketing – An Unsung Love Story

Great, so now you’re rolling out some videos onto your landing pages. Maybe you’re even pushing the envelope by making some of them 360 degree videos. Now it’s time to marry your new videos with one of your oldest online strategies – email.

Whether it be in the form of gifs, links to actual videos, or some other creative form, the benefits of videos in email is exponential.

Leads to a 200-300% rise in CTR – because you don’t care if people just read your emails.
60% of execs would rather watch video than read, which is vital! When you acquire good email leads, don’t waste their time. Entertain and engage them.
Using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26%

I want to reiterate how important it is to make sure that your email strategy is absolutely crushing it. You may acquire the best emails in the world, and none of it matters if you don’t send them the right thing.

Fortunately, you know that video at gets a lot of people to sit up and pay attention. Pair that with one of your year’s best messages and you’re starting to cook up a winning recipe! Not sure what a good video strategy might be on email? Here’s a few ideas for you to consider:

Animate a series of short and fun, but still educational, videos to release via a drip campaign. This can really help promote your brand in a new and positive way to those leads stuck at the top of your funnel.
Or maybe people are engaging with your brand messaging but haven’t bought yet. Get with a few of your best clients and try capturing some powerful testimonial footage.
If your brand is associated with a social movement, create a video that powerfully captures the issue(s) and then follow up with content promoting solutions. People will idenitfy you as an expert, which can lead to sales without ever actually pitching anything!

4.) Video Sales Letters (VSL) Increase Face Value

Alright, so let’s take a little break from the marketing talk. Let’s say things are clicking for you on the front end of marketing – whether you’ve used video marketing strategies or not. What do we do with customers a bit deeper down the funnel – specifically people who are close to buying?

There’s a pretty cool way video can assist you here as well. Yeah, we’re talking about trading out those boring, old sales letters for some swanky video sales letters! You want cool, then this is it. Research shows that a 3-6 minute long sales letter can perform up to 300% better than 20-50 pages of info.

While it’s not exactly a formal sales letter, Zappo has subscribed to a similar logic by putting videos on product pages, reviews, and other areas of their website to convert those considering buying. This has increased product sales anywhere from 6-34%. Um, I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a 6% bump in sales.

All of this just proves once more that consumers want info and they want it yesterday. There’s no better medium for providing consumers brevity while still maintaining a powerful message than using video to accomplish your goals.

Pro Tip: This is also a great time to mention that optimizing your funnel in Q4 may be one of your best uses of time. Rather than figure out a bunch of new segments of people to hopefully convert, how can video engage some of the people who come in and get lost in the middle of your sales funnel?

Think about that.

5.) Live Stream on Social Media To Find Rewarding Brand Moments

One of the worst traps marketers can fall into is spending so much time fighting upstream to gain market share and attention, that we forget there’s a lot of fish swimming downstream that are awfully appealing…

And a great way to find people like that is to see who is talking about you via live streaming on social media. Find places people are geeking out over something related to your industry and reward them for that. One of the best examples of this is Chewbacca mom. She goes on Facebook Live and shows how much she loves a Chewbacca mask with this video.

Kohl’s – who sold her the mask – sends her free masks to her kids, $2,500 in gift cards, and a bunch of other swag the next day and posted this to some of their social channels.

Boom!

Kohl’s sold out of the masks shortly after that. Sold. Out.

Because Kohl’s invested in being a client hero, they took an item that most likely would have become an eyesore that sits on discount racks in the middle of their aisles and turned it into a leading inventory item – and probably brought a lot of traffic that made impulse purchases. That’s the power of being aware of your social presence.

Obviously, not everyone can give away $2,500 in gift cards, but you can find people who love your brand and find some way to become the object of their affection. This is the future of creating brand evangelists.

Another cool way to use live streaming video is to show off your company. Use apps like Periscope to take consumers to company events, show off your company culture, go inside a meeting or a brainstorming session, and host discussions or Q&As.

Basically, if you don’t mind the public seeing it then stream it. It’s essentially free opportunities to test out video and see what sticks. For example, if you do a relaxed Q&A for topics you are intimately familiar with, your expertise will become very clear to prospective clients.

Not only are you gaining expertise though, you’re also building human connection by putting yourself out there in way that easily allows trust to build – and trust matters to clients. In a world where there’s probably at least 6 other companies pushing a very similar product/service to yours, trusting a brand cares about individuals is imperative to the consumer journey these days.

Finally, don’t undersell how great live streaming video can be for recruiting great employees. It’s becoming more commonplace for talent to be drawn to companies because they were able to build empathy and connection over video, and having elite employee talents pays huge dividends down the road!

There are a ton of ways that you can use video to drive results and we would love to help you with them. If you’re new to video, contact us at Explainify and let us know what you’re looking for!

We may be able to get you the video you need, or we may be able to send you on your way to the place where your needs can be satisfied. Either way, don’t let another day pass without talking to us to see how we can help!