Embracing video in sales and marketing

As sales specialist Chris Murray puts it: “The salesperson you’d ideally like to be and the salesperson you’d like to encounter as a customer should roughly be the same, shouldn’t they?”.

That’s a true, transparent statement that showcases the value of empathy and authenticity in sales and marketing. One means of making this a reality for customers is by introducing video as a channel.

Video goes beyond what’s possible when you’re only using voice calls, emails or online chat as sales and marketing mechanisms (or a combination), it presents an intimate, face-to-face experience that provides many opportunities for enhanced sales and service.

The figures

According to Mary Lister, 87% of online marketers use video content in the United States. 500-million people watch video content on Facebook every day, over half of video content is viewed on mobile, 51% of online marketing professionals cite video as having the best ROI and, tellingly, 59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video.

With data prices falling in South Africa, the digital nomads that are your customers are far more likely to be willing to engage with brands via video.

While Millennials are still named as the biggest audience, video can provide space to engage with an older audience, too.

Practical applications

Let’s say you sell software online; face-to-face live video chat allows for customers to engage with a consultant in much the same way as if they were face-to-face.

The consultant can talk a customer through products, key features, answer live questions, introduce static images or brochures into the live session and ultimately facilitate the transaction from the investigative research phase to the eventual product purchase.

Video can also be used for troubleshooting — a visual representation of a process could help businesses provide tech support more efficiently, for example.

Whether the medium is used to tell brand stories, provide more personalised face-to-face support, help customers through the purchasing funnel, or simply to entertain customers, the main aim is to tap into the opportunities for engagement that video provides.

Right now, we’re seeing a shift towards a multi-channel sales, marketing and customer service environment that can service customer interactions across a number of touch points, leading to a slick customer interface that can lead to an enhanced customer experience.

Examine what brands are doing with video via their websites to get an idea of how effective these can be. You could be putting your business into your customers’ hands via their devices and enjoying the personalisation that comes with that kind of interaction.

Best of all, your customer can encounter the kind of salesperson you’d want them to encounter, as Murray puts it.

Feature image: Sergio Alejandro Ortiz via Unsplash