Videos are inte­gral to our dai­ly lives. For most of us, they are the pre­ferred medi­um for learn­ing new infor­ma­tion and being enter­tained. As a result, busi­ness­es across most indus­tries are lever­ag­ing the pow­er of video con­tent to achieve their goals, includ­ing the pur­suit of effec­tive lead generation.

The ver­sa­til­i­ty of video con­tent means it can serve a wide range of pur­pos­es. Whether it’s show­cas­ing prod­ucts, shar­ing cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als, or pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, videos can be tai­lored to fit the unique needs of any business.

When engag­ing videos are com­bined with attrac­tive CTAs, busi­ness­es can attract poten­tial cus­tomers, cap­ture their inter­est, and guide them through the sales fun­nel. With the right strat­e­gy and exe­cu­tion, cre­ators can encour­age view­ers to take the next step, whether it’s sign­ing up for a newslet­ter, request­ing more infor­ma­tion, or mak­ing a purchase.

So, with­out fur­ther ado, let’s dive into our top tips for embark­ing on a video con­tent strat­e­gy that gen­er­ates leads:

How to create video content that generates leads

As you begin to strate­gise, con­sid­er these ten ques­tions to guide your plan:

1. Who is your target audience?

Your tar­get audi­ence is at the heart of your strat­e­gy. As such, you need to get to know them. Think about their needs, inter­ests, pref­er­ences, and pain points, as these will impact not only

the type of con­tent you cre­ate, but also the chan­nels you use to dis­trib­ute it.

Learn about your tar­get audi­ence by:

• Con­duct­ing mar­ket research and com­peti­tor analysis
• Exam­in­ing indus­try reports and cus­tomer feedback
• Analysing sales data and data from CRM systems
• Look­ing at social media insights and web­site analytics
• Build­ing a buy­er persona

2. What are your objectives?

Before div­ing head­first into a new cam­paign, ask your­self what you want to get out of it.

What are your pri­ma­ry goals for cre­at­ing video con­tent? Here are some examples:

• I want to increase brand awareness
• I want more peo­ple to vis­it my website
• I want to pro­mote my prod­ucts and teach peo­ple how to use them
• I want to edu­cate cus­tomers on my niche
• I want to build a YouTube channel
• I want to boost my social media following
• I want to grow my mail­ing list

Sim­ply writ­ing down your main objec­tive is the per­fect place to start. From there, you can fig­ure out what it is you have to do to achieve your goal. The next thing you need to do is ask, “what action do I want users to take after watch­ing my videos?” It could be one of the following:

• Like, share, or save my videos
• Click through to vis­it my site or prod­uct pages
• Fol­low my YouTube chan­nel or social media account
• Sub­scribe to my email newsletter

The direc­tion your strat­e­gy takes next will depend on the action you choose here. For instance, if you want your videos to be saved and shared, you should opt for fun­ny or edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. On the oth­er hand, if you want users to join your mail­ing list, you’ll need to pro­mote it and pro­vide some­thing users want to watch on a reg­u­lar basis.

3. How can you make your video content engaging?

At this point, you might have a loose sketch of what you want your videos to achieve and an idea of who your audi­ence is, but how can you ensure your videos are effective?

There are count­less ways to make your videos more engag­ing. How­ev­er, whether you go for the infor­ma­tive, fun, inter­est­ing, shock­ing, or humor­ous angle, you’ll still need to put work into engag­ing viewers.

Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing tech­niques to ensure your videos draw in the atten­tion of your tar­get audience:

• Hire a pro­fes­sion­al scriptwriter to craft tru­ly com­pelling or fun­ny voiceovers.
• Film in unique or inter­est­ing locations.
• Col­lab­o­rate with famous faces to attract a dif­fer­ent viewership.
• Add cap­tions to increase the acces­si­bil­i­ty of your content.
• Hire a pro­fes­sion­al video­g­ra­ph­er to film and edit your videos effectively.
• Use sto­ry­telling tech­niques to make your con­tent more memorable.
• Incor­po­rate visu­al effects.
• Respond to and join in on cur­rent trends.
• Use eye-catch­ing thumb­nails and video titles.
• Ensure your open­ings are strong, clear, and attention-grabbing.
• Cre­ate a series of videos that keeps view­ers com­ing back.

4. How can you optimise your calls to action (CTAs)?

Your CTA needs to be com­pelling, which should come easy once you’ve worked to increase video qual­i­ty and meet the needs of your tar­get audi­ence. How­ev­er, you need to make it easy for view­ers to fol­low through.

With that in mind, you need to ensure that all the out­go­ing links on your video con­tent are work­ing cor­rect­ly. Plus, any sign-up forms need to be short and simple.

Don’t for­get that cre­ators who include too many CTAs tend to over­whelm their users, lead­ing to low­er click-through rates. In addi­tion, you don’t want to over­sell them – view­ers can sense need­i­ness and can be put off by an excess of pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al. Keep it sim­ple and let your con­tent’s qual­i­ty shine through.

Don’t wor­ry if your CTA isn’t per­fect first time around. It’s very com­mon for cre­ators to test out dif­fer­ent ones over time until they find the CTA that’s most effective.

5. How will you distribute your video content?

The answer to this ques­tion depends great­ly on your audi­ence’s pre­ferred channel.

You’ll know from your ini­tial research whether your tar­get audi­ence prefers to con­sume video con­tent on Insta­gram, YouTube, Face­book, or Tik­Tok. From there, you can alter your video cre­ation process to suit the giv­en platform.

Things like video length, for­mat, and res­o­lu­tion all vary across plat­forms, so don’t for­get to fac­tor these into your strategy.

You might choose to release videos on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent medi­ums. For instance, you might pub­lish a full, long-form video on YouTube and edit it into a one-minute clip for Insta­gram Reels. This is where your email newslet­ter comes in handy. You can use this to pro­mote your con­tent and dri­ve users towards the plat­form they like best.

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with influ­encers or famous faces can do won­ders to expand reach, espe­cial­ly when you’re just start­ing out. How­ev­er, if this approach isn’t work­able, you can always use paid advertising.

6. How will you optimise your video content?

Sim­i­lar­ly to the SEO work we per­form on blog posts, video con­tent also needs to be opti­mised. This involves using tar­get key­words in the video title, descrip­tion, and tags to

improve search­a­bil­i­ty. Addi­tion­al­ly, you’ll want to cre­ate com­pelling thumb­nails and meta descrip­tions to increase click-through rates.

Don’t for­get that many peo­ple will be watch­ing on their mobile phones. With that in mind, you’ll need to ensure your videos are opti­mised for mobile view­ing and that you test play­back on var­i­ous devices to ensure a smooth view­ing experience.

7. Will your video content be interactive?

Inter­ac­tive con­tent has an edge over reg­u­lar videos, engag­ing view­ers on anoth­er lev­el. You may con­sid­er adding inter­ac­tive ele­ments like click­able links, polls, or quizzes that nudge view­ers towards the next stage in the sales fun­nel. Insta­gram is great for fea­tures like this, but you can make any­thing interactive.

One fool­proof way is to cre­ate videos in response to com­ments and queries from view­ers. Then, view­ers know that their com­ments are a direct line to your videos, encour­ag­ing them to leave their thoughts and ques­tions with you. This way, you can cre­ate an aspect of inter­ac­tion with­out the need for fan­cy features.

8. How will you foster trust and credibility?

Cred­i­bil­i­ty is so impor­tant when it comes to online con­tent. When view­ers find your con­tent for the first time, they’re feel­ing you out on sev­er­al fronts – one of them being your trustworthiness.

One way to fos­ter cred­i­bil­i­ty is through tes­ti­mo­ni­als and social proof, but you might not want to ded­i­cate whole videos to tes­ti­mo­ni­als, although they are effec­tive. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can place social proof with­in your reg­u­lar videos.

For exam­ple, mere­ly say­ing at the start of a video, “we had loads of com­ments ask­ing us to do this video”, gives the impres­sion that your con­tent is watched and liked by lots of people.

Anoth­er way of pro­tect­ing your brand’s rep­u­ta­tion is by using qual­i­ty cam­eras and micro­phones, edit­ing your videos pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and shar­ing user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent (UGC) that endors­es your business.

Don’t for­get to main­tain a con­sis­tent brand voice and style across all your videos and devel­op a reg­u­lar post­ing sched­ule to keep the audi­ence engaged and com­ing back for more.

9. How much will your video content cost?

The bud­get is impor­tant in any new cam­paign. You’ll need to deter­mine how much you can afford and work back­wards from there.

Qual­i­ty is def­i­nite­ly more impor­tant than quan­ti­ty when it comes to video con­tent. You’ll want to meet your audi­ence’s expec­ta­tions of qual­i­ty at first, even if that means releas­ing few­er videos initially.

The main costs you need to con­sid­er are:

• Full-time staff and freelancers
• Equip­ment
• Loca­tion hire
• Per­mits and licenses
• Adver­tis­ing
• Influ­encer fees

Remem­ber that you can off­set costs with ads on YouTube, spon­sor­ship deals, affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing, and brand­ed mer­chan­dise. You can also reduce costs by repur­pos­ing some of your old­er con­tent and work­ing with influ­encers who are hap­py to forego a fee in exchange for exposure.

Don’t for­get that some of the most pop­u­lar video con­tent cre­ators start­ed off in their child­hood bed­rooms. If they can cre­ate suc­cess­ful con­tent in a sim­ple way, so can you.

10. How will you maintain your video content’s performance over time?

Track­ing the key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors (KPIs) of your videos is essen­tial to secur­ing their per­for­mance over time. Keep­ing up to date with stats such as view count, engage­ment rate, con­ver­sion rate, and click-through rate will ensure you can react to dips in real time.

All video host­ing and social media plat­forms will have insights and ana­lyt­ics tools built in, but you may want to use some­thing like Google Ana­lyt­ics if you host videos on your web­site. Plus, the built-in tools tend to have less advanced fea­tures than tools like GA, Hoot­suite, and HubSpot.

To ensure you get the most from your ana­lyt­ics tools, be sure to check your per­for­mance against that of com­peti­tors to see how you stack up. You may also want to exam­ine the qual­i­ta­tive results of sen­ti­ment analy­sis to under­stand what view­ers are say­ing about your brand.

What type of video content will you create?

Over the years, the rise of YouTube and Reels has allowed the range of video con­tent to expand, pro­vid­ing users with an unlim­it­ed amount of unique and help­ful con­tent to choose from. How­ev­er, that means busi­ness­es have a hard­er deci­sion to make – what type of con­tent should they create?

The fol­low­ing is a list of a few of the dif­fer­ent types of video con­tent you can cre­ate nowa­days. You’ll find that there’s an audi­ence for all of them, but only a few will be suit­ed to your unique business:

Explain­er videos: short, ani­mat­ed videos that explain a prod­uct or ser­vice in a sim­ple and engag­ing way.

Tuto­r­i­al videos: step-by-step instruc­tion­al videos that teach view­ers how to do something.

Prod­uct reviews: videos where a per­son reviews a prod­uct, dis­cussing its fea­tures, pros, and cons.

Webi­na­rs: online sem­i­nars or work­shops con­duct­ed through video conferencing.

Vlogs: video blogs where indi­vid­u­als share their per­son­al expe­ri­ences, thoughts, or dai­ly life.

Inter­views: videos where one per­son inter­views anoth­er, typ­i­cal­ly about their exper­tise or experiences.

Doc­u­men­taries: non-fic­tion­al videos that pro­vide an in-depth look at a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject or issue.

Live stream­ing: real-time broad­cast­ing of events or activ­i­ties over the internet.

Short films: fic­tion­al videos that tell a sto­ry, typ­i­cal­ly last­ing less than 40 minutes.

Ani­ma­tion: videos cre­at­ed using com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery (CGI) or tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion techniques.

Com­mer­cials: short videos that pro­mote a prod­uct, ser­vice, or brand.

News reports: videos that pro­vide updates on cur­rent events and news stories.

Trav­el videos: videos that show­case trav­el des­ti­na­tions, expe­ri­ences, and cultures.

Unbox­ing videos: videos where a per­son unbox­es and reviews a new­ly pur­chased product.

Behind-the-scenes: videos that pro­vide a glimpse into the mak­ing of a film, tv show, or event. Nowa­days, busi­ness­es are cre­at­ing behind-the-scenes videos of their com­pa­ny’s process­es, such as pack­ing prod­ucts at warehouses.

Tes­ti­mo­ni­als: videos where cus­tomers share their pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences with a prod­uct or service.

Vir­tu­al tours: videos that pro­vide a vir­tu­al walk­through of a loca­tion, such as a real estate prop­er­ty or museum.

Pod­casts: audio or video record­ings of dis­cus­sions on var­i­ous top­ics, often fea­tur­ing guest speakers.

Video con­tent is a pow­er­ful tool for gen­er­at­ing leads and dri­ving busi­ness growth. With the right approach and exe­cu­tion, video con­tent can be a game-chang­er for your business,

help­ing you attract more leads, build stronger cus­tomer rela­tion­ships, and achieve your mar­ket­ing goals.

So, get start­ed on your video con­tent strat­e­gy today and unlock the full poten­tial of this ver­sa­tile and impact­ful medium.