How to Create a Video Marketing Funnel to Improve Conversion

The top corporations and businesses spend a lot of time, brainpower, and budget building intricate, multi-step marketing campaigns all with one end-goal: conversion. Getting that conversion is ever-increasingly harder and harder with only so much time on people’s hands and so many things vying for their attention. That’s why it’s key that your marketing budget is allocated properly, ensuring you not only get viewers for your marketing campaign, but you retain them, and convert prospective customers.

That’s where funnel videos come in. In this article we’ll not only explore what funnel videos are, we’ll also go into an in-depth discussion on how to make a marketing funnel, explore things such as YouTube clickfunnels, and break down different types of marketing videos and how they can be effective tools in creating your marketing funnel. We’ll also look at the many benefits of working with the expert team at Explainify to help build your video sales funnel for your marketing campaign, and by the end of the article, you’ll be well on your way to learning how to make a marketing funnel for a plethora of different social media channels, how to tie it all together, and ultimately, how to use all of these pieces to get more conversions.

What Is a Marketing Funnel?

Sometimes, the simplest concept really is the best, and a marketing funnel, or video funnel, is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a multi-step process that takes a consumer by the hand and guides them along a journey with the ultimate end-goal of conversion—which often means buying something.

Picture a real-life funnel: it starts out wide at the top, then narrows towards a tiny opening, and it’s often used to guide something into another receptacle safely. Like when you’re baking, you make “funnel cakes” by literally squeezing batter through a funnel, and the act of actually squeezing the batter through the funnel is what makes the tasty dessert into what it is: it’s literally only made possible through the process of funnelling.

Or consider tunnels: not only do they rhyme with funnels, but they are literally funnels. They act as a means to funnel people through the sides of mountains—through impossible geometry so that we can go where we need to go. They do so by cutting everything else out—narrowing their own pathway through an immovable obstacle and cutting a path through the impossible so you can get where you need to go.

A marketing funnel works on the same principles: they start out wide, and get narrower, and narrower, in focus, with the ultimate end goal of funnelling the prospective customer towards the other side—and in this instance, the “other side” just means that the customer has been converted—they’ve made a purchase.

What’s the Importance of a Video Sales Funnel?

By the very nature of funnels, they catch the most material at the top where they’re the widest, and marketing funnels are the same: you’re going to start off with a huge number of prospective customers, and numbers will drop off—but with a strong message, and a strong video sales funnel, you can still retain a huge number of customers and improve your conversion rate. For example, let’s say you started off with 1,000 prospective customers watching a marketing video, and had a conversion rate of 10 customers. With the right video marketing funnel plan you could drastically improve that number.

That’s why it’s so vital to set up an effective clickfunnels video campaign, and that’s why we’ll explore how to build a marketing funnel. The link between great video content and sales is clear. According to WyzOwl, 76% of marketers say they’d sell less product without video. The audience is eager for content—the same study also found the average person watches more than an hour and a half of online video content per day, with around 15% averaging more than three hours.

That means there’s a lot of people watching a lot of video content, which means a lot of opportunities to get a lot of eyes on your marketing campaigns, and with an effective video marketing funnel, and convert those people to customers.

Using a video funnel to help strategize, and guide your marketing campaign will also keep you working towards a defined, easy-to-see goal, and end up saving you a lot of time and budget in the long-run.

A video funnel approach to your strategy is also effective because it helps build trust, and a relationship, with prospective customers over time rather than inundating them with demands to buy, buy, buy immediately. If you build trust with your customers over time, not only will you scare less off to begin with, but you stand a better chance of retaining more in the long run as well as converting more and more of them into repeat customers.

Different Types of Marketing Funnel Videos

With the groundwork laid, let’s start to break down different types of approaches to video funnels, and in turn, you’ll learn more about how to build a marketing funnel that works for you and what you’re about—what to do, what not to do, examples of different styles of videos for different types of products, brands, and so on.

This may seem like a lot, but at Explainify we’re here to help every step of the way, from consultation to execution, to putting the final touches on things. That’s why we create articles like this: to help you better understand concepts like marketing funnel videos so you can take your marketing campaigns to the next level.

Luckily enough, a lot of tips we’ll be covering can be applied to almost any kind of video marketing funnel campaign, so keep that in mind as you read along, whether you’re creating a massive, multi-step video funnel for a luxury car, a new inexpensive brand of toothpaste, or an e-book for a niche audience.

That’s to say all of these examples will have different approaches and methods, and even different scales/scopes. It is easier, for example, to get someone to simply “blindly” buy toothpaste than it is to buy an expensive luxury car—you’re going to have to do more investing, so to speak, in building up your relationship with your potential customer to convert them to entrust you. You need to appeal to them on an emotional level, and earn their trust.

After all, only 23% of people trust brands, and most people like it that way, so you have a lot of work cut out for you to ensure that you’re a brand not only trust, but come back to. And in the example of an e-book for a niche audience, you don’t have a physical product, so you can’t rely on something flashy like a car ad to win over your audience. But you do have less of an inherent risk for an audience, and if you can win over the right people, you can build strong word of mouth, which can go a long way. Knowing your audience as you figure out how to create a marketing funnel is absolutely vital.

Regardless of how big or large your marketing campaign is, though, most video marketing funnel campaigns roughly follow this structure:

The Four-Part Structure of Video Funnels

 

1. Awareness:

This is the first part of your video funnel strategy and it can go one of several ways depending on what you’re selling.

For example, are you a brand new startup or a new brand that not many people have heard of? Then a brand explainer video is a great way to introduce your brand to a new audience, and possibly make them aware of your existence for the first time.

Explainer videos are especially effective for brand awareness, or, really any kind of “first step” approach because their sole purpose is to explain. They distill everything about a concept, a brand, or a product, down to the most vital parts and highlight them in the best way possible with eye-catching, dynamic visuals, and a simple, easy-to-follow narrative for audiences.

Take a look at this brand explainer video for Tyson Foods.

And this video for Privy

From these short videos, you have no questions as to what these two companies do, and it’s because they’ve used bold, striking visuals and married them with simple, easy-to-follow narratives about the two brands so that people are made aware of them.

Awareness doesn’t just relate to brands, either. It also can relate to products and services that you can provide to potential customers.

Product videos are explainer videos for products, and can act just like brand videos do: as a way to introduce potential customers to your product, and also, possibly, to introduce them to a solution for a problem they may not even know that they had—what comes next, if your video marketing funnel strategy is on-point is the beginning steps of swaying those potential customers towards conversion, and possibly even becoming brand sirens.

Let’s explore how you do so.

2. Engross Your Audience

So, you’ve got your audience’s attention with a catchy opening few lines and striking visuals, and you’ve made them aware of your brand. Or you’ve made them aware of a problem—a problem they maybe never even knew they had before. Now you’ve got to retain their attention, and make sure that their eyes don’t wander—that they’re not looking up the competition on the side or are simply completely uninterested.

A great tactic is to offer up whatever it is that you’re trying to sell as an incredible solution, or alternative for consumers. It’s at this point that you need to forge a bond with people, and get them on your side. There are many ways to do so.

Let’s take a look at this example of an extremely effective product video. This is a great example of a cheap, easy approach to a product video that doesn’t need to be overly fancy: a simple video for a simple product offering a simple solution.

This video is extremely short, and doesn’t feature any narration, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a perfect product video for a YouTube clickfunnel—short enough that it could run as a pre-roll video or mid-video adbreak. It gets its point across with motion, simple words, and an easy-to-understand demonstration while it presents a very relatable, and real problem: increasingly, hygiene is not only a worry for people but a matter of public health, and this product video does all it needs to do without overstaying its welcome to simply spell out its simple message: we have a product for you that can solve your problem immediately.

Do you have some kind of new pesticide that’s proven to be safer than competitors? Or an alternative laundry solution that’s much more eco-friendly? Demonstrate it to customers with animated breakdowns of how your products actually work. Are you going head-to-head in an ultra-competitive market? Maybe take a subtle or not-so-subtle dig at a competitor. A huge, huge, huge swaying factor is lifestyle—your product isn’t simply a product, but it can be part of a lifestyle. No one wants to experience FOMO, after all.

Consider pitching the community aspect of your product. Are you working on a marketing campaign for a new video game? Consider showing off the incredible passion and engagement of your passionate community. Engage with them and encourage them to engage with you. Go beyond simply selling them a product.

3. Conversion

If you’ve done everything right, at this point, you’ll have prospective conversions on your side, and then it’s just a matter of your customers actually pulling the trigger, and making the final decision to purchase.

Sales videos, which are very similar to product videos, and another step in the video marketing funnel, often end with a crucial step in converting your prospective customers: making it clear how they can actually act, and buy your product.

4. Customer Advocacy and Brand Loyalty

It isn’t enough to simply make one sale, or even a number of one-time sales from customers. Ultimately, your end-goal ought to be building a strong sense of community and trust in your customers so that they can become advocates on your behalf. Oftentimes you’ll see video marketing funnel campaigns end with a call-to-action. This goes beyond just engaging with customers to possibly buy a product. It encourages people to engage in a sense of community. It can involve integrated marketing with other arms of your marketing team/campaign like using hashtags, or calls to follow Twitter, Instagram, and the like. The end goal is to ensure that your video funnel doesn’t simply end—after all, funnels are meant to guide someone towards an end-goal. And that end-goal isn’t simply buying a product. It’s engagement. Which is why strong calls-to-action are so important.

Many marketers have also said that video funnel marketing doesn’t work in a traditional way of a funnel—it doesn’t just trickle down and stop. It’s more cyclical than that; starting over again with new campaigns, and potential new customers, and that’s why having brand sirens, and people who are loyal to what you are selling can be so important.

So, let’s bring things back out on a slightly larger scope, summarize, and then take a look at some more examples.

Video Sales Funnels in Action

Great video funnels can really make or break a marketing campaign, and what makes them so incredibly powerful is that your video sales funnel project could be done with one video—again, it can completely depend on the circumstances, and the project.

Video marketing funnels can be a simple one-and-done for a simple project or product that doesn’t need anything more than one video—the product, or the message could simply sell itself. Or maybe the investment is so low that, really, it’s not a huge multi-step project to take on. Or you’re lucky to have a brand, product, or message so ubiquitous that a lot of your work is done for you. Sometimes you get lucky, and you can get instant results with just one video funnel, with all of your steps being executed in one video.

Sometimes, that isn’t the case—or even if it is, your marketing video is part of a much larger video marketing funnel, and just overall marketing blitz that sees print ad campaigns, in-person product demonstrations, written articles, and so on, and so forth.

The end goal still remains the same: funnel, funnel, funnel.

Let’s take a look at a handful of fantastic explainer videos below that manage to cover everything we’ve talked about in just a few short minutes, and absolutely nail it out of the park when it comes to audience engagement, and absolutely crushing their engagement goals.

PR videos are another form of explainer video, and often are used to explain complex issues to people, or address an ongoing social issue, or to deal with controversies in the public eye. The campaigns often end with effective calls-to-action, and strive to let people know that they’re part of a community, and an ongoing discussion.

You Can’t Stop Us by Nike

This is a perfect example of an amazing PR video, and in a way, a brand video as well. This is an example of a video that isn’t explicitly trying to sell anything, really. But it’s a great example of a video in a video marketing funnel that acts as a great reminder to endear a brand to people, and to build trust with them.

Not only is it amazingly well shot and edited with its contrasting and near-symmetrical shots, but it also smartly features normal, real people alongside world-renowned athletes, immediately connecting them in our minds.

An amazingly powerful marriage of words and visuals is the line “And if we don’t fit the sport, we’ll change the sport” with a visual of a young girl skateboarding with her entire body veiled by a burqa—an act of rebellion, and not the stereotypical “vision” of not only a skateboarder, but a young woman in a burqa. As she skateboards, on the right side of the screen the shot transitions to a person skateboarding with a trail of rainbow-colored flares, or something similar, in a powerful acknowledgement of LGBTQ+ rights, activism, and inclusion in sports.

The ad then transitions to references to the ongoing global pandemic, and features shots of people playing sports at home, as well as shots of athletes in solidarity of social and political movements such as Black Lives Matter. LeBron James and Meghan Rapinoe say “We have a responsibility to make this world a better place”, and in showing that, Nike also acknowledges that they have that responsibility, too, and they’re with us, global citizens, to do that. And they’ve done that by contributing monetarily to social movements, as well. This wasn’t just an empty campaign. What this video does so effectively is show just how powerful sport can be for social change and how vital it is to human connection, and Nike is a part of that.

Welcome to Airbnb

This video from Airbnb is, arguably, the quintessential brand video, and nails every part of what we were talking about before.

Airbnb quickly, and succinctly introduces potential customers to its brand: it spells out exactly what it does without talking down to people, but also without overcomplicating things. And it stresses the word “simple” because, really, Airbnb is simple. It also evokes a sense of community in several different ways, stressing that users of Airbnb aren’t simply booking rooms, but they can talk to people who they’re renting rooms from, ensuring that customers won’t be “meeting a stranger.”

Airbnb also brilliantly uses simple animation to convey not only that, yes, it’s about travel, and that really, someone can use the services worldwide, but it also conveys how connected people all are—and how Airbnb facilitates that with a few simple clicks, and stresses connections.

“Make yourself at home, anywhere” and “Belong anywhere, with Airbnb” are not only great taglines, but also great calls-to-action in very subtle, but effective ways. They shape our sensibilities in thinking that Airbnb can facilitate travel easily, and affordably, and also foster a sense of community.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like by Old Spice

Needless to say, this commercial is strange—and all of the Old Spice commercials that follow this motif are strange. Arguably they’re strange for the sake of being strange, and it works—it’s a brilliant way to build the brand, because they’re absolutely so weird that they become unforgettable. In a way, the product—deodorant—really sells itself. People start to talk about the commercials more than the product, and that creates brand loyalty. This doesn’t work for every product or brand, but it’s proof that sometimes going outside the box for your approach to a marketing video funnel isn’t a bad idea at all.

Genesis does what Nintendon’t! by SEGA

Let’s go old school for this one. Ignore the fact that eventually SEGA dropped out of the console-selling business. This is a great example of a sales video that directly addresses competition. Plus it shows off the product brilliantly. Way back in the day, these little snippets of gameplay were absolutely mind-blowing to little kids, and it was the talk of the playground. Kids were not only talking to their parents about buying the console, but also becoming brand sirens for the system, and the system sold amazingly well. There’s a reason people still talk about this ad campaign now. It’s a brilliant example of a sales video as part of a marketing video funnel—combine that with actual live demonstrations of games at stores, and you have a winning combination that made the system an incredible success.

Though all of these videos are for slightly different purposes, they share something vital in common: they know how to stay engaging, they’re simple to follow, and they don’t demand more than a few minutes of your attention.

According to studies, our attention spans have shortened to eight seconds, from 12 at the turn of the century. So needless to say, these videos had their work cut out for them in getting people’s attention, and keeping it—but they did. Every single one of them effectively draws the audience in immediately and keeps the audience drawn in the entire time—and from there, it’s knowing how to work a little word-magic and highlight the best things possible about your product, brand, message, PR strategy, or whatever else it is your video funnel’s goal is in the most engaging way possible—both visually, as well as sounding pleasing to the audience’s ears.

How to Create Video Marketing Funnel?

After reading through this article about how to create a video marketing funnel, it may seem like the whole process is a lot of work—and that’s because it can be. Even with a large team and a large budget, it’s a huge process with a lot of moving parts. You may have to create and edit a script, animate or shoot a video, cut and edit it, and narrate your video yourself. As well as possibly also do other parts of your job/be involved in other parts of the marketing funnel strategy that doesn’t involve video.

So what happens if you have to storyboard, then write, and narrate your ad? Do you have a proper audio setup, or recording software? Do you, or someone you know feel comfortable recording your voice to be used in a commercial? Do you have video editing experience, or experience using something like Adobe After Effects to achieve the kind of look you want for an animated explainer video?

Again, it’s a lot to ask, especially if you’ve got a lot on your plate at work, and not a lot of time, expertise, or budget. That’s why Explainify has your back: we do this for a living, after all—and we have whole teams dedicated solely to this kind of work.

Along every step of the way, we can be as hands on or hands-off as you need. Do you need us to do everything? Then come to us for an initial consultation, we can work out exactly what your grand vision is, and we’ll execute it. Do you just need to put the final touches on your masterpiece? We can handle that too. Do you have a multi-step, involved marketing video funnel in mind, and you need help bringing a consistent and cohesive voice and style to your marketing campaign? Yep, we do that too!

All you need to do is get in touch with us, and we’ll make sure you have a video marketing funnel that not only you can be proud of, but will no doubt improve your conversion rates going forward!