Video and podcasts are incredible tools for your inbound marketing strategy—drawing in qualified leads and moving them through the marketing funnel with efficiency.
The possibilities with video are limitless—so how do you know what kind of videos to make, and where to distribute them?
Here’s how to generate leads and nurture prospects by using four types of videos and podcasts in your marketing strategy:
1. Use Explainer Video Podcasts
When executed well, explainer podcasts are the perfect lead-generation material. Explainer podcasts offer a high-level overview of your products or services and the problems they solve. This type of content at the top of the funnel can even help explain some pain points to the audience that they may not have considered.
The key to a good explainer video podcast is to present something in a digestible way, without going into too much detail. Often, this is accomplished by adding creative animation to help the audience visualize the information.
Explainer podcasts may sound dry and educational, but the most effective explainers use storytelling, music, and visuals that appeal to viewers’ emotions. An emotionally invested prospect is more likely to take actions that move them along in the buyer’s journey, such as consuming additional content or providing contact information.
2. Use Webinars
Webinar podcasts that explore issues and pain points that are relevant to your industry and your audience. Like explainer podcasts, they’ll help your viewers understand more about a subject. However, webinars go much more in-depth and are significantly longer in duration.
One challenge of webinars is that they require a significant time commitment from your audience. While this is great for leads that are in the middle or bottom of the funnel, this commitment will not appeal to a lead at the top of the funnel.
To make a webinar consumable at any area within the marketing funnel, you can break it down into “snackable” pieces, called micro-content, that can be distributed in your top-of-funnel lead generation channels, like social media, YouTube, and your website.
Breaking your video podcast into micro-content takes some planning upfront. You’ll want to deliberately plan your subjects and your timing so that you can pull coherent tidbits from the long-form content.
Strategic topic mapping will allow you to address the challenges your audience may have across all the steps of the buyer's journey, while only having to actually record ONE video.
3. Using How-To Video Podcasts
To understand why how-to video podcasts are such a hot commodity within your marketing strategy, you’ll need a little background on SEO. Search engines LOVE queries, so including “how-to” in your video and podcasting content gives you a great opportunity to show up in search results.
Another reason how-to video podcasts work so well is that they allow you to take advantage of the second-largest search engine behind Google: YouTube. YouTube receives over 3 billion searches per month, and “how-to” is one of the most popular search terms. If you don’t have how-to videos on YouTube (or any videos at all, for that matter) you’re missing out on a big slice of search traffic.
How-to videos are also an effective bridge to CTAs such as lead magnets and content offers, making them a powerful tool in guiding leads through the marketing funnel.
4. Using Product Reviews
Product demonstration videos are integral to your bottom-of-funnel content. This type of video details very specific features and functions of your products and services, which is very important for the leads that are getting close to a sale.
It’s not hard to see why product demonstration videos are more effective than photos and written content. Videos allow your leads to see something in action and visualize how it would solve their own pain points and challenges.
You can also help set expectations using product demonstration videos, which can benefit customer satisfaction and retention. Great demo content assures that the sales you close are with clients who really understand what they’re getting, so you’re less likely to deal with disappointment, bad reviews, or a returned product/severed business contract.
From top to bottom, videos and podcasts are key elements to attaining and impressing your prospects. If you could use a little more guidance on how to generate leads and nurture them through the buyer’s journey, please don’t hesitate to send any questions our way.
