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Here’s the punchline: Video can be a powerful tool at each stage of your sales funnel.

Most small businesses have a general sense of their customer’s decision-making process when it comes to making a purchase, but they don’t always examine the nitty gritty that makes it happen.

Before the internet, marketing focused almost exclusively on the awareness stage of the process, leaving it to the salesperson to do the rest. The idea was that if you could get your customer to come into the store, you could talk them through the rest of the process. Print and TV ads dedicated themselves almost exclusively to stimulating desire. But nowadays, people may never walk into a physical store; they research their product online, often without taking into consideration the info on your website. Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, and customer reviews tell them just about everything they need to know–unless you can add something new on your product page. These are just the platforms where they get information; the newspaper, magazine, and TV ads of today. What’s different is that the platform is now the shop. It’s where the funnel process happens. You can either leave it to other companies to guide customers through the decision-making process, or take control. Let others do the work, and you’ll save some money… but miss the opportunity to greet them at the door.

Generally, people go through three steps in the buying process: product/service awareness, consideration (or evaluation), and decision. Each stage has its own video opportunities:

1. AWARENESS: Brand videos, Testimonials

2. CONSIDERATION: Testimonials, Product commercial, How to use,

3. DECISION: Tutorials, FAQ, Comparison videos

~ BONUS STEP: RETENTION: Brand Love videos, Thank-you video, Brand videos… and we’re back at the beginning.

Now you can see why production companies and marketing agencies recommend that you create more than one video. No single video can address all the stages of your customer’s process. This doesn’t mean you have to create every type of video, but you do want to insert yourself into their thinking before they reach the “shop for the lowest price” stage. For more on how to use your sales funnel as the basis for your marketing strategy, check out our post, Video Ideas for Your Sales Funnel.

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