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When it comes to marketing a successful business or organization there are two areas to focus on: product and brand.  You’d be surprised at just how little these two overlap.  While people tend to believe that branding is about how customers experience your product, it’s really about how they feel about your company.  On page and on screen, this is an extremely important difference, and I’ll tell you why.

But let’s be clear:  a product doesn’t have to be a physical object. Your product might be a service, like a maid service, or wetland preservation. It’s whatever your customer or client gets when money exchanges hands. The concept of product—and brand—applies to objects, services alike, brick and mortar businesses and nonprofits.  That “whatever” that exchanges hands, is also a feeling.

Which is the simplest definition of brand. Brand is the feeling customers purchase when money changes hands.  Even though they get it when the buy an object (or donate to a cuase) it’s attached to your company, rather than your product.  Let’s take one of the world’s most valuable brands as an example:

Beyonce.  You probably thought I was going to say Nike.  That’s too easy.  In their stores, Nike sells shoes, shirts, hats, and sports gear.  But in their ads they sell celebrities, events, and the sense of being a part of the athletic community right along side of Michael Jordan.  Their product may be clothes, but their brand is sports perfume.  What one of their shoe commercials and you won’t learn what they’re made of, how they’re made, or even what colors they come in.  They’re not selling shoes.

But let’s get back to Beyonce.  Even you’re not familiar with her music, you know her name, her place in the music world, and something about her style.  And she has no font, color scheme, or logo.  That’s branding.  And in an industry where everyone is vying for the same level of name recognition, the same placement, and the same style, it’s a huge accomplishment to rise to the top.

There are a lot of ingredients that go into one’s brand:  logos, events, sponsorships, and advertising are just a few.  In this internet oriented, social-media connected world, video has become the most powerful tool for selling products, ideas, and brands.  And we’re a video production company, so I’ll focus on how video helps create brand (since it’s what we know best).

There are a number of different types of videos that exist to support your product and your brand.

• ~ Product oriented videos include Product commercials, How To, Explainers, and Product Reviews.
• ~ Brand oriented videos are: Company profile, Brand videos, and Company Culture videos.

Successful businesses align their video content to match their sales funnel marketing strategy.  But before we parse how that matching happens, let’s get on the same page on the concept of sales funnels.

Generally, customers go through three steps in the buying process: product/service awareness, consideration and decision. There are several models for how this works (marketers love to name and re-name concepts) but those three steps remain constant.  While all buyers go through the same three stages in the sales funnel, sellers have to shape individual messages for their product or service.  Every business, big and small, is constantly fine-tuning and adjusting their messages to better align with their customer’s buying process.

In each stage of the funnel, customers are asking a question, and you need to know what that question is and how best to answering it.  Let’s say you sell ballpoint pens (no, I’m not kidding).  Your customer needs a gift for his spouse, a professor.  He wonders what type of gift he should purchase.  In the awareness stage, you might highlight the brand’s elegance, and craftsmanship.  In the Consideration stage, the buyer wonders if the cost is justified, and the dealer illustrates how easy it is to swap the ink—multiple pens in an elegant package.  In the Decision stage our almost-pen-buyer, asks if this is the best pen for his partner, and you enlighten him on all the famous writers who use your brand.  In this hypothetical transaction, the you know what questions the buyer has at each stage of the funnel, and the most compelling response.  Now, all you needs is the customer for the customer to find you.

“Location. Location. Location” used to be the traditional mantra of small business.  Locate your store well, and customers will arrive at your door.  But nowadays, people may never walk into a physical store; they become Aware, Consider, and Decide what product they want online, often without taking into consideration the info on your website. Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and customer reviews tell them everything they need to know your product… as told by other people and other businesses. These online platforms are extensions of your shop, and they’re being managed by other people.  Competing salesmen have snuck into your shop and are talking to people in the aisles.

Marketing and branding are, in many respects, your tools for regaining control of your shop.  The sales funnel becomes the framework for creating a strategy.

As I said, most businesses believe that video is one of their most powerful tools.  But that’s a simplification, because different types of video are more or less effective at each stage of funnel.  So let’s look at what is effective:

 

~ AWARENESS: Brand videos, Product commercial, Behind-the-Scenes

~ CONSIDERATION: Testimonials, How to use,

~ DECISION: Tutorials, Testimonials, Product commercial, FAQ, Comparison videos

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

These types of videos have unique characteristics that related to each stage of the funnel.    When you understand the specific characteristics of each type of video—and the individualistic needs of each stage of the funnel process—it’s easy to see why marketing experts 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 all the outside managers of your shop have their say.

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