Pop quiz - name the one fundamental change you must adopt to keep your sales funnel filled in the age of mobile ads and micro moments? Answer: move from intuitive to data driven marketing video content development. You’ll never guess the four reasons that you’ll be happy to make that change.
Traditional marketing strategies place a premium on your artistic talent and educated intuition. A team of smart and innovative folks like you come up with advertising video concepts that will catch a buyer’s attention. Then video companies develop the creative media that will engage potential customers and make your product or service memorable. This is the Mad Men vision of intuitive gurus creating leading edge marketing and advertising. It is a romantic notion but the sad truth is, no matter how talented you are, intuition driven marketing has a very low success rate. There is a much better way you should be marketing with video!
Have a look at this Video Learning Moment™.
So why is this fundamental change so essential? Here are four of the core reasons.
Reason #1 – The Marketing Strategies Guru Has Left the Building
If you want to rely on gurus, especially if you want to be one, you may not like what I am going to say. The leading marketers in the world today rely on much more than basic customer data along side their intuition and creativity. They tap a constant stream of data about their customers. Knowing who those customers really are, where they are and what they want is the foundation of all successful marketing strategies.
You could continue to guess what the most successful strategy will be for your next campaign, but you might want to add a little levitation to your act. That seems to have helped a few gurus in the past.
Reason #2 – Your Internet Advertising Could Be a Whole Lot Easier
The good news is, if you want consistent results from your web video marketing and advertising, these are the best of times. Never in the past have there been so many reliable, accessible and inexpensive ways to learn about your customer. Data is available and constantly updated on all aspects of a buyer’s path to purchase. Not just superficial market research but deep data on actual buying interest and behavior.
Today it is relatively easy to tap into information about what exactly your prospects are searching for online. You can learn the questions they are asking and where they are in their buying process. The old sales driven process where a buyer can feel defensive and cautious about revealing too much is dying. The customer feels comfortably in control of their journey. Your advertising video and sales conversion process has the ability to be helpful without seeming manipulative. Interpreted correctly, the data smooths the relationship you are building.
It’s not just that there is more data, but thankfully there are more online marketing companies focused on helping you access and interpret that data. That’s essential because with the firehose of data now available it’s easy to feel like you are drowning rather than surfing.
One valuable step you can take is forming relationships with online marketing companies that specialize in using data metrics. We’ll be developing a post about that soon, but for now, look for ways you can segment and focus the data to reveal key characteristics about your customer.
Reason #3 – You’re About to Become a Seductive Conversationalist
Marketing has always been a conversation – now you have something interesting to talk about. After all, who determines what is interesting to your customer? They do of course. By meeting them where they are and understanding the questions they are asking, you become great to talk with.
You’ve heard it said many times that what people appreciate most about good conversation is the feeling that their partner was actively listening. Just imagine how seductive you’ll be when your marketing video seems able to anticipate every question. Whoa…let’s reign that in a bit! Let’s make it less about seduction and more about demonstrating expertise when you are marketing with video.
In the world of learning we have seen a permanent shift from Sage on the Stage model to the respected Guide on the Side. The guide is an expert at leading the learner to deeper knowledge and understanding. Guides stand by ready to adapt to the speed of the learner and the depth to which they want to go in understanding the subject. As an informed marketer you stand ready to provide this same type of guidance as the customer learns how to make the right buying decision.
Reason #4 – This Looks Like the Start of a Beautiful Long Term Relationship
The self-educating buyer makes closing easier. After all, you have been there for them in web video marketing conversations about things that really interest them. You were timely and helpful. Best of all they never felt pressured or taken for granted. In fact, you seem to be an expert they can rely on to help them reach the best decision.
More than likely you have created a deep connection with a strong foundation on which to build your future relationship. When it comes time to short list the organizations they will engage to provide the solutions they need, you will be top of mind.
Why You Must Make the Shift!
You need to be sure you are actually in the game when customers define their short list of organizations to formally connect with. The reality is that buyers now do extensive general research before reaching out to connect with specific organizations. The percentage of the path to purchase which is going on behind the scenes in your industry will vary. But you can bet it’s happening and more than you should be comfortable with. You must start developing a mobile ads strategy to address it.
If your marketing video is not showing up as a valuable answer in that research conversation, you will be left on the sidelines – unaware of the Invisible Sale opportunity. If you’re not sure what we mean check our recent post on the subject.
Why We Recommend Video Learning Moments™
As one of our friends over at Snaptech Marketing said to us, “I’d like to think that the next time someone in an organization that should be your customer is sitting in a meeting and pulls out their mobile phone to look up the answer to a question which just came up, you will be there with the answer.”
Mobile access to the net is exceeding desktop access by an ever widening margin. There is a better than 51% chance that the research your potential customer does will be on a mobile device. Your Internet advertising must be there, be quick, valuable and mobile friendly. There is no better way to accomplish that then with Video Learning Moments™. Google reports that nearly 70% of millennials agree that they can find a YouTube video on anything they want to learn[1]. And don’t think that you can afford to ignore millennials, even if they are not currently the decision makers in your prospect organizations. That will be the topic of a future post.
Video Learning Moments™ provide the benefits of quick learning that is easy to find on any device at anytime.
How to Get Started
There are lots of Internet advertising resources out there about how to use customer data more effectively but here are a few quick thoughts about how to get started that we particularly like: https://channelinstincts.com/2015/11/16/four-steps-to-better-data-driven-marketing/. Tell Greg we sent you.
And of course, stay connected with us at MomentStorm. We will be providing lots of practical info and training on exactly how to bury the fading advertising video guru and get the winning edge by adding Video Learning Moments™ to your mobile marketing with video strategy.
Until next time, here’s to striking up profitable, data driven conversations!
[1] https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/video-micro-moments-what-do-they-mean-for-your-video-strategy.html