Using Video Marketing and Landing Pages for Lead Generation

Lead Generation Gold

This blog post is part of a series responding to findings from the B2B Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America. This B2B marketing study from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, sponsored by Brightcove outlines the most common methods utilized by digital marketers.

The B2B Content Marketing report shows that lead generation success is the leading 2016 marketing goal for content marketers. Typically, effective email and landing page conversions are considered the most prominent success drivers for lead gen.

Luckily for today’s marketers, video has been proven extremely effective for driving success with email and landing pages. Email click-through rates increase up to 55% when video is mentioned in the subject line, and landing page conversion has been tested as low as 33% and as high as 86% higher than pages without video. Whatever the actual numbers are for your particular use case, it’s safe to say simply using video as part of your email campaigns and on your landing pages will help you achieve your marketing goals.

We covered email best practices and tactics in an earlier post this year. For this post we’ll cover some easy to follow landing page best practices.

Immersive landing pages and microsites, in tandem with smart conversion tactics, can engage audiences and convert quickly. When you use video in landing pages, keep these things in mind:

1. Simplify landing page copy. Position products or services, but keep it brief. Also, mention how long the video is, so that easy to digest content isn’t ignored.
2. The play button is very enticing CTA. However, it is important to guide your audience, whether by in-video or on-page directions, to the landing page’s conversion goal. Include your CTA in both the video and on-page.
3. Resist fluff and give away some information for free. Test an un-gated video player by teasing out some essential elements of a piece of content. Upon completion, viewers will see it as an even exchange to give their contact information.
4. Anchor your video with additional, valuable content. Consider text-based content assets such as ebooks, whitepapers, or a blog series. This will help add even more analytical information to your customer profile.
5. Enable your marketing automation or CRM system to push notifications around lead activity, like percentage watched, or time spent on page. Automate emails to engaged leads or establish triggers to send a qualified lead directly to sales.

One of our many customers using video effectively for email and landing pages, is travel company Overseas Adventure Travel. E-mail performs strongly for them and is an integral part of their overall marketing strategy. The example below is from an email campaign they ran for a Vietnam excursion.

Some things to note in this wonderful example:

1. The visual ties between their email (on the left) and landing page (on the right) create a streamlined user experience moving from email to landing page.
2. Both the email and landing page are built around a strong central video that is surrounded by other types of content that lend further details to the story of the Vietnam package.
3. The thumbnail on the email demonstrates it’s a video via use of a play button. When clicked, it takes the viewer to the landing page where the video is set to auto-play.
4. The landing page player features a playlist with related video content including itinerary, trip experiences and introductions to the trip guides.
5. The text under the player gives expanded itinerary and trip detail. The cherry on top is that the video player is placed directly next to buttons leading the viewer to the next steps on the way to conversion: viewing dates and prices, and requesting a sales call.

As marketers prepare for 2016, video marketing should be at the top of their considerations in order to deliver on their goals not just in the email and landing pages of the engagement stage, but throughout the customer journey.