Since you started using video marketing, you have seen a lot of interest from potential customers. Lots of them are watching your whiteboard and cartoon animation videos, considering your product or service… but few of them are buying.

Why? What are you doing wrong? And more importantly, is there a way to fix the situation, and convert more viewers into paying customers?

Right away, we want to reassure you: it’s (mostly) not your fault. By definition, not many viewers will become buyers right away. Sure, some of them will purchase from you on the spot. Others will buy at a later point, once they are more familiar with your brand. And some will never buy — and that’s OK, too.

The good news is, as long as you have systems in place to encourage your best prospects to buy as soon as possible, and follow up with those leads who didn’t buy right away, you’ll get more customers for your business… without having to attract more viewers.

In today’s post, we’ll share 3 strategies to help you accomplish just that! Read on.

1. The evergreen funnel strategy

Usually, when somebody has watched your whiteboard and cartoon animation video, they are facing three options:

  1. Buy immediately, which very few customers are prepared to do. If their only two choices are to buy something and to walk away, most of them will leave. Or, as we like to imagine it, they will exclaim, “Oh no, I’m being sold to!” – and plop down on a nearby fainting couch.
  2. Subscribe to you via email, or follow you on social media. At some point after that, your offer will catch them at the right moment, and they will buy.
  3. Contact your company on their own. Sure, you can make reaching out a no-brainer, but it still demands a degree of effort and commitment most casual viewers don’t have.

But there’s a fourth option. An effective, low-maintenance strategy that most brands aren’t using – an evergreen marketing funnel.

When you capture a lead, what if you could nurture them from being vaguely interested to becoming a serious buyer… on autopilot? That’s what a well-crafted funnel can do – gradually turn leads into customers 24/7, with little to no involvement from you or your sales team.

Your whiteboard and cartoon animation video can become an entry point to said marketing funnel. Now let’s discuss what you can do afterwards to make sure that as many viewers as possible become your customers.

How to apply it:

Marketing funnels work in several ways. First, they identify and qualify the most eager prospects, who are likely to be interested in your offer. They also create interest and demand in your product or service among those leads who weren’t “hot” to begin with. Finally, they present both groups with an offer at exactly the right time.

One of the simplest funnel structures imaginable can look something like this:

  1. Viewers watch your video and get a call to action at the end to opt into your email list.
  2. Once they are subscribed, they receive a sequence of 5 emails.
  3. The first two emails are designed to help them overcome a problem they’ve been struggling with.
  4. Then, the third email introduces your paid offer to them… while still giving away something helpful and valuable.
  5. Finally, the last two emails unapologetically sell your product or service to those prospects, who by that point are warmed up and ready to take advantage of it.

And now we’re going to pick an intentionally boring example, and examine how the funnel strategy works in the real world. Let’s pretend that you’re selling bookkeeping software for freelancers – is that boring enough? We hope so!

To attract potential buyers, you create a short explainer video about how much money they can claim in tax deductions for their freelance business. At the end of it, you invite them to subscribe for a short 5-day email course that would teach them even more about how to do this.

Then, in your email funnel you would give your potential customers a couple of practical lessons to try, that might save them a few thousand bucks. Maybe in email #1 you talk about 5 little-known things they can claim as business expenses. And in email #2, you give them ironclad answers to some of the tricky questions the IRS might have for them.

At this point, your leads have received a lot of valuable advice, and you still haven’t pitched them. So in email #3, you would give them one more lesson – but also introduce your software, and explain how it makes keeping track of potential tax write-offs incredibly easy.

And then in emails #4 and #5 you would sell the software guilt-free, knowing that you already provided tons of value, and that your paid offer can help people even more.

Note: marketing funnels can get more complicated than timelines in superhero comic books. If you haven’t done one before, go with the most straightforward structure you can find – like the one we just gave you.

2. The retargeting strategy

The vast majority of viewers who come across your whiteboard and cartoon animation video, and your offer, will promptly leave and never come back. We know, we know: how dare they?!

It’s terribly discouraging to watch a stream of excellent, highly-targeted visitors come to your site, watch the video partway through, or even halfway through, and then flutter away to the next online distraction.

Normally, it would mean thousands of dollars in revenue slipping through your fingers. You would eat the opportunity cost, tweak what you’re doing, and throw more traffic at your whiteboard and cartoon animation video to make up for it.

But the good news is, you can fix the situation. Those people are still high-quality leads. Your message just didn’t happen to connect with them at that point in their customer journey.

You can make those viewers come back, and get a precious second chance to present your offer to them – at a relatively low cost. That’s where a retargeting campaign comes in.

“Retargeting,” also known as “remarketing,” is a form of advertising where you serve ads specifically to the people who have already visited your website, or opted into your list. Let’s talk about how exactly you might use it to convert video viewers into customers…

How to apply it:

There are two types of retargeting campaigns:

  • Pixel-based, focusing on anonymous visitors. Anyone who lands on your website gets tagged with a special browser “cookie” a.k.a. retargeting pixel. Then they are served ads on social media and on the web (or just one of those) that bring them back to your offer.
  • List-based, designed for your current contacts and customers. To do that, you will want to upload your email database to the retargeting service, and they will cross-reference your leads’ emails against social media accounts and identify people to show the ads to.

In general, the retargeting strategy works best when you have a specific paid offer to promote on your site. Let’s say someone viewed your video for a specific product, but abandoned the page afterwards – or bounced midway through checkout.

That said, you can run a retargeting campaign to a landing page with a free offer, if your goal is to gain more qualified leads for your business. But you’d better have a great funnel set up that will turn those subscribers into customers down the line!

Here’s how any retargeting campaign works on a high level:

First, you want to get an account with a retargeting service – AdRoll and Retargeter are the most popular options. Alternatively, if you know exactly where your target market hangs out, you can set up a campaign through a specific platform like Facebook.

Second, you need to set up a retargeting “pixel” on your website. Set up a rule only to “tag” people who watched the whiteboard and cartoon animation video on your website. You can also target those visitors who attempted to buy your product, but abandoned halfway.

Finally, you will want to craft your ads, determine your daily budget, and launch the campaign. You will also want to limit the frequency of the ads shown, to make sure you don’t exhaust your advertising budget immediately.

If you want to read a more detailed guide on how to create your first retargeting campaign, check out this Hubspot article about Facebook retargeting. It’s also relevant for Instagram, since both platforms are owned by Facebook, and you can serve Instagram ads through your Facebook account.

3. The live chat strategy

The live chat strategy is great for ecommerce, information products, courses – in short, any offers where the bounce rates are high, and purchases need to happen on the spot.

When an offer is made, most of your potential customers will experience buying resistance. There will be objections, excuses, and questions. We are mostly interested in the latter.

Let’s say that someone landed on your product page, and watched your whiteboard and cartoon animation video explaining what it can do for them. If that viewer is a serious buyer, they will have 1-3 legitimate questions before they commit to making purchase. By answering those questions as quickly as possible – ideally, before they leave – you can massively improve your conversions.

Live chat is the best way to do this in a way that’s seamless, non-intrusive, and attention-grabbing at the same time.

According to eDigital’s Customer Service Benchmark survey (featuring data from 2,000+ consumers) live chat has the highest levels of customer satisfaction. Add to that the proven ability to drive on-site sales – and you’ve got a compelling case for using it!

How to apply it:

On the surface, the live chat strategy looks like you can apply it immediately: just install a live chat app on your website, plop someone in the chair to answer customer questions, and wait with bated breath for conversions to soar!

It’s not quite so easy. For live chat to make an actual difference in your sales, you will want to do a bit of work upfront:

  1. Pick a live chat service that’s easy to use for your team, and has helpful customer-friendly features – like the ability to get a transcript of the conversation. Here’s a great list to choose from, comparing top live chat apps by price and features.
  2. Train your team to interact with customers over live chat. You can take someone with deep knowledge of your product or service, and give them a basic sales training. Alternatively, choose someone with sales experience, and train them on your product.
  3. Create resources that will make live chat duty easier: cheat sheets, answers to most common questions, custom scripts or commands to reduce response time, etc.
  4. Determine a live chat schedule that works for your business. It wouldn’t be a great use of your company resources if a sad customer service rep keeps watch during periods of low activity… while nobody is there when you get a spike of interest from customers.

Win a FREE whiteboard and cartoon animation video

Let’s face it: not all viewers of your whiteboard and cartoon animation videos are going to become paying customers. That said, this format has unique advantages for marketing, even compared to other styles of video. With the 3 strategies we discussed in today’s post, you can make the most out of every whiteboard and cartoon animation video you create.

And until April 21st, you have an opportunity to win a custom-made whiteboard and cartoon animation video, made for you by The Draw Shop (valued at $1,500)! Do you want one?

Then check out the contest rules – and 2 more awesome prizes – here