We at IMPACT are huge fans of using video to drive engagement with our customers. Video has become one of the single most important modalities of content we produce, and we produce a lot of content.
Video gives us the ability to access our audiences in ways we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. Not only has video brought us better engagement and higher conversion rates in our sales team, but it has also brought us closer to our customers by giving us the ability to create an experience that’s far more personal.
Our goal with our customers and community is to feel as one-to-one as possible. Video enables this one-to-one relationship by allowing our customers to access us in ways that are far more relatable than a newsletter or even a post in a community forum. They can see our office, our homes ( a lot of us work remotely ), our pets, and of course our faces and the emotion housed within.
To help you drive better engagement and increase those conversion rates, here are four ways to use video as you create one-to-one experiences with your customers.
Set the Tone with Video
Video offers a unique way to build trust with your customers. That trust is the foundation for preventing B2B account churn; loyalty is the driving force behind retaining – and expanding with – your customers.
Use video to welcome your customers and introduce them to you and your company. A welcome video sets the tone of the relationship and allows your customers to see and hear you. This insight introduction gives context and insight into who you are and helps to convey inflection that would otherwise be difficult to convey in writing.
Pro-Tip:
Unless folks actually watch your video, it can be hard to drive the engagement you need to build and foster your community of customers. Here are two quick tips to make sure folks click or tap that play button.
- Set an interesting thumbnail: Thumbnails are the gateway to viewership. The more your thumbnail grabs the attention of your audience, the more likely they are to watch. The highest performing thumbnails include faces and use color to pop off the page.
- Include captions: A casual 92% of people are not using audio as they scroll through their feeds on mobile devices. Lookin’ at you, person reading this on the train or, more likely, the toilet! For accessibility to all audiences including the deaf and hard of hearing, make sure you include captions underneath your videos.
Send Video Updates via Email
Putting it bluntly: no one has time to stay on top of all of your company updates. To assume that our customers and community members are able to stay on top of the latest and greatest is just unrealistic.
To ensure that your content is as ingestible and easy to consume as possible, use a short video to update and/or recap what your customers may have missed since your last email update. Not only is a video update a great way to stay personally connected, but you’re also meeting your customers where they are every day all day: their inboxes.
We have an agreement with our IMPACT Elite members, to keep our video updates as close to 60 seconds as possible. Beyond keeping our group informed with the latest and greatest, this approach demonstrates a respect for their hectic lives and forces us to evaluate what information will drive the most impact on their week.
Encourage Others to Share Feedback in Video Form
They say that “feedback is the breakfast of champions,” but oftentimes written feedback isn’t as constructive or productive as it could be.
When shared in writing, feedback is missing two important ingredients to make it impactful: context and tone. Without context and tone, feedback from your customers in open forums can be taken the wrong way and could lead to inflammatory situations. With 63% of CX professionals using customer feedback to prioritize investment in better products, services, and customer experiences, you can’t afford to leave that valuable feedback subject to interpretation.
To avoid any misinterpretation, encourage your community members to use video to give their feedback. This elevated experience not only helps to provide insightful context and tonality, it also brings you closer to your customer and helps you capture a glimpse of a day in their life. The closer you get to your customers, the easier it is to build trust and drive loyalty.
Show People How to Use the Features of Your Product
Sometimes the simplest things can be difficult to find in a platform. I can’t tell you how much time I have lost over the years trying to find a button or a menu I was used to using on a daily, if not hourly, basis.
One of the most important variables to driving customer loyalty is a reduction in customer effort. To orient your customers to new features or product updates, use video to go on a virtual tour of your platform. Video walkthroughs will help to reduce confusion and prioritizes their most precious commodity: time.
Build Rapport, Earn Trust, Drive Loyalty
If you learn one thing, and one thing only from this post let it be this:
Using video to drive engagement with your customers is the key to driving loyalty.
While it’s an important investment to make in your relationship, meeting with your customers in person face-to-face isn’t always possible. Video is the best best way to bridge the divide between screens. It’s a bi-directional resource perfect for being more personal and ultimately more effective in driving trust and loyalty with your customers.
Photo by Thomas William on Unsplash
