When customers get to your website, most of them don’t buy on their first visit. Like “regular” shoppers, even if they know what they want (which is rarely the case!), they often don’t buy until weeks, or months, later.

Sadly, many of them don’t buy anything from you, ever. What can you do to convert as many casual visitors as possible into loyal customers – reliably?

To do that, you need a solid marketing funnel.

A funnel is just a simplified representation of your customer’s journey from “not interested, couldn’t care less” to “loyal customer, who tells about your products or services to everyone who would listen”.

A classic marketing funnel follows these stages:

  • Awareness – learning that your brand even exists.
  • Consideration – actually realizing how your product or service could help them.
  • Conversion – making the decision to buy (presumably rational, but usually emotional).
  • Advocacy – (ideally) buttonholing everyone in need of a similar solutions and sending them your way.

Whiteboard animation videos can be helpful marketing tools at every stage of your funnel, helping you move customers further along their journey.

Today, we’re going to look at how you can use different types of whiteboard videos (not just ads) to make it happen. Let’s dive in!

Marketing Funnel

 

Awareness

What everyone else does

Regular video ads. There’s nothing wrong with running adverts to make people aware of your offer – but relying on ads alone won’t cut it.

As more and more people are using ad-blocking software, advertising as an acquisition strategy becomes more costly and much less effective.

Besides, most people who click through to your website (a small percentage to begin with) won’t buy anything or come back, remember?

Let’s explore what else you can do to generate more leads without spending too much of your marketing budget on conventional ads…

What you can do

Retargeting campaigns. Unlike regular video ads, retargeting ads are directed at the people who have already visited your website. That way, you can be reasonably sure that they:

  1. Know that your brand exists.
  2. Are potentially interested in what you sell.
  3. Won’t take much persuading to check out your website again.

All these factors make retargeting ads a low-cost, high-return option to generate and qualify valuable leads for your business. And whiteboard videos are great for retargeting!

Content marketing with video. Remarkable content will help your brand stand out when nothing else seems to work – especially if you’re in a boring industry, but still managed to come up with something funny, or valuable, or both.

Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

  • Animate a fragment of an engaging talk or keynote on a topic relevant to your industry. Just make sure that you either own it, or it falls under a “fair use” license. Or get permission from the source.
  • Repurpose your popular content (blog posts, infographics, etc.) into whiteboard videos – you know it did well before, so why not give it a new lease on life?

Consideration

What everyone else does

Product demos. Most product demos are flawed, because they focus on the product too much. We know, it’s counterintuitive – but it’s true!

Remember: at the Consideration stage, your potential customer needs a valid reason to care about what you’re selling… And the way to their heart doesn’t lie through talking about your product or service.

Instead, there’s a better way to make them care about your offer…

What you can do

Explainer videos. To be more precise, we’re talking about explainer videos that are focused on the problem or the outcome that your prospect is looking for – not the offer itself. Remember: overt selling is very often incompetent selling.

With an explainer video, your goal is to explain (what a shocker, right?) to potential customers how your product or service can help them.

Instead of launching into an inspired rant about how awesome your solution is (we know you could!), shift the focus on your customer’s problems, needs, hopes, and fears.

Spend 40-50 per cent of the time talking about those, only directing your narrative to the offer when your customer understands completely that they need something like that in their life. Once they do, it will be much easier to get their business!

Conversion

What everyone else does

Video sales letters and product demos. Again, there’s nothing wrong with either of these, and you should use them in your sales process. But we’re not here to tell you what you already know, are we?

We’re here to tell you how you can do better: improve your conversions, get a competitive advantage, and grow faster.

The two types of whiteboard videos we’re about to reveal will help you do just that…

What you can do

“Differentiation videos.” You know that your offer is by far the best option for your target customer, and it easily beats out the competitors (if it’s not the case, you should re-think your business model). Out of everything else they could possibly try, your solution has the best chance to work for them.

But your customers don’t know that – and it’s your job to show them. You can use a whiteboard and cartoon animation video to talk about why exactly they should go with you, and give them hope (or better yet, certainty) that “it will work this time”.

Here’s how you can make it happen:

  • Comparing your solution to competitors and demonstrate your USP. You don’t have to name names if you don’t want to… just illustrate what makes your product or service better than everyone else’s.
  • Think of the bigger picture – what else can your customers do to try and solve their problem? For example, if you sell an online course about business, why should they buy it instead of, say, getting an MBA, or hiring a business coach, or just figuring it out through trial and error? Then, articulate your answers in a whiteboard video.

Upsells. Upselling is a vastly under-used strategy that works for any type of business, in any industry. When a customer buys from you, the moment just after the purchase is the perfect time to offer them something extra.

It doesn’t have to be a long video, or a complicated offer – remember the most famous upsell of all time: “Do you want some fries with that?”

If you need some ideas on what type of offer will work best as an upsell, check out this post for inspiration.

Advocacy

What everyone else does

Surprisingly… nothing! Retaining customers, getting repeat business, and attracting more people through word-of-mouth (the most important marketing channel) is essential for running a profitable business.

So how come so few brands pay any attention to this stage of the customer’s journey? We’re not sure, to be honest. But one thing is clear – this is a massive opportunity for your business to boost sales, all without chasing more customers.

Let’s see how you can do that with whiteboard video.

What you can do

Onboarding videos. After they buy from you, people need validation that they’ve made the right decision. Their interest in your brand – which at this point is (surprisingly) not that strong – needs to be nurtured and stoked.

Here’s how you can use video to accomplish just that:

  • Create a “thank you” video that your customers see right after they buy. Validate their decision, let them know what happens next, and direct them to some more useful content.
  • Make a quick video encouraging customers to leave a review of your product, or rate their service experience. Encourage them to interact with your customer support.
  • Create bite-sized explainer videos that teach your customers to use your product in new and useful ways to improve retention.
  • If they want to unsubscribe, or get a refund, create a quick video acknowledging that you must have done something wrong. Remind them that they can always re-subscribe, and offer them an option to do just that with one click. If they want a refund, let your customers know how the process work, and give a farewell gift of some kind (anything works, even sending them chocolates).  

Referral-focused videos. To encourage loyal customers to tell others about you, you need to:

  1. Make it as effortless as possible (build referral functionality into your offer from day one).
  2. Remove all risks associated with recommending a product or service to someone they know (nobody wants to be responsible for someone else’s bad experience).

Create a video about your referral program: why it’s awesome, how it works, and what your customers – and the people they refer to you – will gain from it.

And there you have it – now you know quite a few easy and extremely effective strategies to make your funnel even higher-converting with whiteboard and cartoon animation videos. No need to implement all of them right away – just pick one to start with, and brace yourself for more customers!

Note: For more video marketing ideas for improving your funnel – ones that cover more than just whiteboard and cartoon animation videos – check out our post from June.

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