This article was written by Vidyard, a Salesforce partner.
Last year, Americans received 26 billion robo-calls — prerecorded messages from spammers — on their phones. That’s up 46%, and there’s a similar spike in unwanted email, texts, and — yeah — LinkedIn requests. Spam has reached a crescendo and if you’re in sales, marketing, or customer service, more noise means less attention.
For small businesses, that makes competition with larger, more established brands even harder. But you can turn this tsunami of unsolicited outreach into an advantage if you send stronger signals — like video.
Video is easier than ever to create and it’s one of the best ways to humanize your company. It takes a person to record and a person to watch, and when you receive a personalized video in your inbox, it activates curiosity. Who sent this? Did they really invest all that time just for me? You can harness this attention-grabbing and explanatory power to grow business in three vital ways.
1. Drive more pipeline
The majority of marketers (52%) report video is their most powerful tool because it’s fun and effective. Videos take less cognitive effort to watch than articles do to read, so buyers prefer them, and people are more likely to open emails or explore websites that contain videos. And that’s just getting viewers in the door.
Videos also simplify complex topics and help people retain information. According to Vidyard research, a whopping 90% of customers say that product videos help them make buying decisions and 64% say that watching a video makes them more likely to buy.
64% of prospects say watching a video makes them more likely to buy.” Vidyard | 2018 Video in Business Benchmark Report
Videos don’t have to be an expensive endeavor, either. Vidyard’s Chalk Talk explainer series cost one bucket of colored chalk and a couple of hours. But if you do invest in a video marketing platform, you can take things one step further by adding calls to action (CTAs) to videos to capture more leads and keep people engaged.
2. Close more deals
You might expect that video’s great advantage is it lets sales reps break through to cold prospects. But companies like League and LeadIQ have discovered that videos grow more and more effective as the sale progresses.
Their sales reps, like those at many other SMBs, use videos to:
Sales reps who send personal videos report that prospects recognize them at events, despite having never met.
Their prospects share videos with the entire buying committee and feel a greater personal attachment because video creates relationships. As a result, video earns 3x more responses and, in some cases, cuts deal cycles in half.
Getting started is simple, too. Your team can easily record and share videos with tools like this free GoVideo chrome extension.
3. Retain more customers
The fun, effective, and bond-building explanations that make video great for sales and marketing also make it a good fit for customer support.
Customer support managers at startups like Miovision and Dynatrace respond to clients’ questions with video walk-throughs and offer onboarding video libraries that increase renewal rates.
With video, support reps can answer questions quickly without sacrificing value, increasing customer satisfaction. Plus, each video is a quasi-face-to-face interaction that strengthens the relationship.
Customer service managers can use video to:
Grow further with video
The more customers learn to tune out spam, the more effective video becomes. Video allows you to signal that you’re a real person too, and to connect in ways that attract and retain more customers — no matter how many robo-calls they get.
Salesforce Essentials helps you find more customers, win their business, and keep them happy so you can grow faster than ever. Learn more about our small business CRM solutions by following us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
