Anyone can make a great video.
You can whip out your phone, hit record, and tell a great story in a few minutes.While you can do it a few times and get some engagement, you're relying on yourself to come up with the ideas constantly, which eventually will lead to burnout and won't translate in additional sales for your products.
That's where a video strategy comes into place.
The idea is to understand your customer psychology so you never have to guess again what type of content to create, and you'll ultimately, you can make your product launch a success.
In this blog post, you’ll learn how to create a killer video strategy to drive sales of your SaaS products in 2023. You’ll learn how to:
By the end of this blog post, you’ll have a clear roadmap for creating videos that will help you crush your product launch.
Let’s get started!
Let me show you some stats:
But why is video so powerful?
Video taps into a basic human instinct: listening to stories. Stories are how we perceive the world, how we learn from others, how we form emotional bonds.
And video is the best way to tell stories.
According to Tyler Lessard and Marcus Sheridan in their book, The Visual Sale, video has four superpowers:
Now that sounds like a great marketing tool.
However, there's a few misconceptions about creating videos that you might have heard of, and that we need to get out of the way today.
Typically, people think that creating good videos requires a big budget with all the equipment, professional editing, etc.
If this sounds familiar, then I want to show some examples that Vidyard has collected about has helped other marketers and sales professionals achieve their goals faster with videos they created on their own.
Yes, there’s a place for videos that look awesome and super polished.
But the main goal, especially when launching a product, is to build trust.
Through video, a prospect may hear from a marketer they met at an event, or directly connect with a sales rep, taking your enablement to a whole new level.
True, the amount of time that it takes me to create a video is way longer than what it would’ve taken me to write a post or a slide deck.
But if the videos are able to build trust with your audience, and reduce their perceived risk of your product, then it’s worth it.
You can easily repurpose your existing product narrative as a video script as a starting point.
Depending on your product, there's a lot of other places to put your launch videos that will be even more effective: including your website, e-mail campaigns, product, or events.
So with these misconceptions out of the way, there’s no excuse to start building videos for your launch.
Now that we know why videos are key, let’s dive in.
The truth is that you need to show your videos to the people who are going to see most value from them.
Depending on how familiar they’re with your brand, they will need different information to as they journey from strangers to buyers.
The buyers’ journey is a map of actions a consumer makes before they buy from you. Understanding it is key, because it gives you access to your users’ psychology.
Traditionally, it’s made up of three stages. I’ll be using an example of a productivity app:
As you can see the information people need to make these decisions is totally different.
By mapping your buyer’s journey, you’ll be able to create videos that match each stage of the journey and guide your leads towards becoming customers.
There’s also a fourth stage that comes after the purchase:
This stage is often overlooked by marketers, but it can be a massive way for increasing customer retention and reviews, especially at the early stages of the launch.
Now that we know the different stages of the journey, let’s take a look at the channels to place the videos.
Choosing the right channels to distribute your videos is crucial because it helps you reach your target audience at the right stage of the customer journey, giving them information they need at the right time.
Here are some of the most popular channels for each stage:
Social Media: This channel will reach a huge audience, though most of them won’t know your product. That’s why clarity and consistency are key.
Keep in mind the following:
Blogs: Using videos in your blog posts will attract more visitors to your website. Consider the following factors:
Website: This channel is suitable to show your software in action and explain how it works. Consider the following factors:
Emails: A great channel to increase conversions with current leads, especially since they’re familiar with your brand. Consider the following factors:
Well that was a lot, but now, you understand the mindset in which your customers are, and how to reach them.
By choosing the right types of videos and channels for each stage of the journey, you’ll be able to create a video marketing strategy that reaches your target audience effectively and efficiently.
A promo video is a short and catchy video that introduces your software business to new audiences, builds curiosity, and drives action.
It is ideal for the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, where you want to capture the attention of potential customers who are looking for solutions to their problems or opportunities.
But how do you create a promo video that works for your software business?
Here are some best practices that you should follow:
By following these best practices, you’ll create some banger promo videos that will boost your software business in 2023.
The second type of video that you need is an explainer video. An explainer video is a short and informative video that explains how your software works and why it’s valuable.
An explainer video is ideal for the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, where you want to educate your potential customers about your software and how it can solve their problems or help them achieve their goals.
Here are some best practices that you should follow:
By following these best practices, you’ll create some awesome explainer videos that will grow your software business in 2023.
A testimonial video features your happy customers sharing their success stories with your software.
It is ideal for the decision stage of the buyer’s journey, where you want to boost your credibility and trustworthiness with your potential customers and persuade them to buy from you.
Here are some best practices to follow:
By following these best practices, you’ll create some awesome testimonial videos that will boost your software business in 2023.
A support video teaches your customers how to use your software effectively by focusing on the software features (finally!)
It's ideal for the post-sale stage of the buyer’s journey, where you want to help customers see most value from your product and stay with your company.
Here are some best practices:
By following these best practices, you’ll create some awesome support videos and product demos that will retain your software business in 2023.
There’s many goals you can set for your videos, but the most common ones for a product launch are:
Once you have a clear goal in mind, and an understanding of your buyers’ journey, then you’ll have clarity in the content you need to create.
Now let's put it into practice!
Say you want to increase trial sign ups for a new version of your productivity app.
So how you get people to try it out?
The first step is to identify the audience for your videos. If you have prepped the launch collateral, you already know this.
Say for example it’s professionals who are juggling too much work, probably working as one-man bands in a startup or a new team. They go to YouTube for actionable hacks, morning routines, and they follow X,Y, Z creators.
We know that some possible channels for reaching them are YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Let’s write them down.
If this new product is going to be supported by a series of blogs, then let’s have videos there too.
If we have currently users in the product, we can even put the promo video in the product itself as a modal and redirect to the landing page.
Now we’ve covered the awareness stage. -> Social media and Blogs.
Now, people who watch those videos might be curious to see what the product is about, but they don’t want to fill out a form or book a call just yet.
That’s why we’re going to provide them with an explainer video showing why they should consider the product.
We’ll put it in the landing page.
Then we can have a testimonial of a customer from the beta stage who saw success from the product. This will help visitors trust our product even more.
You can see it all laid out in a visual form here:
This combo is a basic strategy to get people to take an action (in this case sign up for a trial), but it can also be expanded to get people to take more complex actions, like booking a call with your sales team.
Video marketing is one of the most powerful ways to reach and engage your potential customers at every stage of their buyer’s journey.
By creating videos that align with their needs and preferences, you can attract more leads, educate them about your offer, persuade them to buy from you, and retain them as loyal customers.
All of which are key for a successful product launch.
Once you know the fundamental steps, then putting them together is very easy. Let’s do a quick recap of what we just covered. You’ve learned how to:
Now comes the fun part: planning and creating a video strategy for your product.
If you need some help, we’re here for you!
We’d love to hear more about your goals and help you design a plan to achieve them with video
Thank you and see you next time!