Videos that speed up your customer’s buying process
The type of videos you decide to produce for your company depends completely on what you are selling, what your customers expect from you, and what you hope they will do with the information.
What you are selling
When selling is viewed from the buyer’s perspective, as a buying process, the amount of scrutiny the buyer applies to the purchase dictates how you should best use video in your marketing. All products and services, including yours, fall into one of these four categories:
Light Scrutiny: See it, ask only a couple of questions, and buy it. Impulse purchase. Inexpensive ($1 – $10). A single buyer. A candy bar at the checkout counter or a simple app.
Medium Scrutiny: See it, ask 5 – 20 questions, and buy it. A bit more serious purchase. Might involve another buyer. $10 – $100s. Clothing, appliances, more complex apps.
Heavy Scrutiny: See it, ask 25 – 50+ questions, and more than one buyer is involved. They talk to a salesperson and sign a contract. Very important purchase. Thousands to millions of dollars. Houses, cars, or very large and expensive IT systems.
Intense Scrutiny: See it, ask 100+ questions, and a number of buyers are involved. They meet numerous times with the salesperson and ultimately sign a contract. This is a massive purchase that often takes months or years to work out. Thousands to millions or billions of dollars. Very expensive custom products, medical services, professional consulting, or building an aircraft.
Looking at these descriptions, you know where your product or service falls. Now you are less likely to make the second most common marketing mistake: Selling a light-scrutiny product or service as if it is a heavy-scrutiny product or service, or vice-versa.
In other words, no one needs (or wants) to receive a monthly newsletter on how to chew gum, but a person buying a heavy-scrutiny product or service is hungry for any amount of helpful, truthful information the seller can provide.
(The first most common marketing mistake is making the assumption that you know what your customers are thinking when they set out to buy, without ever asking your current customers why they bought from you. That’s why we always interview a sample of your current, happy customers before we create your campaigns, so we can attract a steady stream of similar customers for your company.)
Here are the types of videos that would match the buyer’s level of scrutiny:
Light Scrutiny: Short, informative videos that show your B2B product in use, various ways you can use the product, how the product interacts or integrates with other products, and so on. If you are selling a service, take more of a presentation approach, outlining the steps taken as you provide the service.
Medium Scrutiny: Show others using the product or receiving the service. Focus on how the product is made or the service is performed made and why yours are better than the competition. Zoom in on the details that make your product or service special. There are quite a few “x versus y” videos you could make about the right way to use your product or to point out how well the product performs.
Heavy Scrutiny: There are so many opportunities to use video here. For products: How the product is used; how it looks and works, focusing on every detail—and why those details matter; showing the product in the context of its environment; the best ways to use the product; maintenance advice on the operation of the product; and why you made certain parts of the product the way you did. If you are selling a service, you can use video to explain how the services will be administered and what the customer can expect; how often the services are performed and why; the type of support structure you have built, and how that structure will benefit the customer.
Intense Scrutiny: These intense-scrutiny products and services require as much content as you can afford to create. Your entire product documentation should be “video-ized” and organized so that customers can quickly find a video covering the sections of your documentation.
What your customers expect from you.
People make money so they can buy things. People selling tend to forget that. They think they have to convince the person to buy.
But that’s not what customers want from you. By the time they come in contact with your search engine results, your ads, your social posts, or any other channel with your message, they have already decided that they want to buy.
The question is, who will do the best job of making it easy for them to make a purchase? Who will convince the buyer, the minute they come in contact with your message, that you understand what they’re looking for and what they need from you?
“What’s going to happen to me after I buy?” is one of the most important questions a seller can answer. For some reason, this is the question sellers are least likely to answer—which means that if you are the one who answers it, you’re going to get the order instead of your competitors.
Video is definitely one of the most effective ways to answer this question. If you’re selling a product, you can show the person how everything is going to work out for them as they receive, unbox, and then use the product. You can also do comparison videos, showing the differences between your product and that of a competitor.
Video also doesn’t have to be super expensive, thanks to the trend toward “authentic” videos. A simple how-to video can be taken in an informal (but clean and distraction-free) environment with a smart phone.
Sometimes it is appropriate to introduce a new product or service (or bring new attention to an established product or service) with a video that behaves more like a formal commercial.
