There’s an old saying that, in business, your job is either to support the customer – or support the person who does.
This ethos doesn’t just offer a reassuring sense of simplicity – particularly in today’s businesses which are often structured in siloed, complicated ways.
It should also be music to the ears of sales professionals.
Working in one of the most pressurised and competitive niches around, they tend to welcome – more than ever – tools, input and support from others in the organisation, to give them the cutting edge they need.
Of course, there’s long been a problem in businesses when it comes to alignment between sales and marketing. This causes all sorts of different problems, too diverse to list here, but – the bottom line is – it holds back sales teams from unleashing their full potential.
There’s good news, though: one way we’re increasingly seeing sales and marketing work together is through the creation of sales enablement content.
The overwhelming majority of marketers have adjusted to a new reality whereby content creation is fundamental to gaining audience attention and explaining products and services.
But when it comes to using that content within the cut-and-thrust of the sales process – with content designed to build trust, secure credibility and overcome objections – the takeup has always, bafflingly, been lower.
This is something that does, slowly but surely, seem to be changing.
And, in this article, we’ll run through 4 organisations who’ve used video in various ways, to help support – and supercharge – that sales function in their business.
Let’s get into it!
1. Wikilawn
Increased conversion rate by more than 5% with educational video content.
WikiLawn is an online marketplace that connects people with the best local residential and commercial lawn care companies in 4,000 cities across the U.S.
They decided to use video to simply offer another way for their customers to learn about their products and services.
Dan Bailey, President of WikiLawn, explains:
“There are many people who prefer short form videos over written content, and it feels neglectful to just ignore that aspect of content creation.”
“We chose video because it was a great platform to communicate what we wanted to communicate: Helping homeowners eliminate the common pain points associated with maintaining a yard.”
“So far we’ve only made video content in the form of how-to and guide videos.”
“We use videos as part of a sales funnel. They’re promoted via social media, offered for free, and link to other videos. Gradually, we expose those watching to our brand and begin to introduce our services. “
“I can say we have a much higher conversion rate from CPC ads using video versus text-based content. We were seeing a conversion of 9-13% at the best previously, but now it’s much closer to 18%, which is a huge increase for us.”
2. Better Proposals
Cut new sales rep onboarding time in half by using video as an educational/training tool
Better Proposals is an easy-to-use proposal software that helps send professional proposals in minutes instead of hours, and CMO Olga Mykhoparkina is a big advocate for video as a sales tool – particularly for training and onboarding new salespeople.
“Because videos show you all the details – in our case, we recorded our sales reps and the demos that they were showing, as well as the customers’ reactions.”
“These are instructional videos that show new sales reps (as well as the rest of the team) how we do sales and what to say to the customer to get them to say yes as early as possible.”
“We used the videos as part of the onboarding process for new sales reps. Also, we used them to show the other departments what the usual sales process looks like.”
“The major result that we achieved was that we now take two weeks to onboard new team members instead of four. That’s huge for us.”
3. Alex Williams
Increased sales conversion rate from 2.5% to almost 20% with nurture videos
Video as a sales tool isn’t the preserve of big and illustrious brands. It’s also a great tool for individuals and small businesses.
Alex Williams, for example, website builder and owner of Hosting Data UK, credits video with massively supporting the sales cycle in his business.
“Prior to launching our new strategy, we found ourselves successful in generating new leads, but we were hugely struggling to convert these leads into sales.”
“There is massive competition in our industry and it often came down to cost, but by implementing our video sales strategy, we were able to tap into our clients’ need for saving time when it came to buying and using web hosting products and services.”
“Our clients are normally busy launching new businesses, they don’t have the time for a sales pitch, let alone follow up calls and other salesy processes.”
“By launching a video sales strategy, we provided potential new clients with a clear, easy to follow message about what we do, how much it costs, how we can customize our services and how we intend on providing ongoing support.”
The video is short, but full of all the right information. It’s engaging without being too salesy.”
“The reaction was incredible, we went from converting around 2.5% of leads into sales, to converting nearly 20% of leads into clients.”
“The feedback we received was extremely positive, our clients were looking for web hosting support and web design but trawling Google looking for the right fit at the right price.”
“By creating and sharing our sales video on social media we were able to tap into a huge audience of potential customers. We have been able to cut our lead generation efforts by around 50% as we’ve found word of mouth marketing has increased and due to the massive difference in our sales conversion rates. It has truly revolutionized the way we approach sales, cutting costs and increasing revenue. It’s a total win win.”
4. Eu Natural
Increased CTR by more than 10% by using video advertising on social media
Eu Natural is a retailer selling herbal supplements – and they strongly advocate video as a tool to help sales. CEO, Vinay Amin explains…
“Social media is becoming much more video content concentrated. We recognized this and decided to utilize video accordingly.
“We’ve created all sorts of video content, from informational videos to customer stories/testimonials.”
“We’ve used them as TOFU content, for the most part, introducing new people to our brand and our products.”
“We’ve seen an increase of more than 10% in our CTR using video in ads over static images.”
Thanks for reading
These are just four stories that exemplify two much wider points. One – video is a compelling tool that really drives beneficial results for those who use it. And two – it can be used in so many different ways.
Whether you’re educating and informing people about your products, using video pitches to shorten the sales cycle, educating and onboarding new hires , or advertising on social media, video is a sales tool that’s really taking hold in the industry!
Check out our sales video page to find out more about using video to supercharge your sales process.
