A video marketing funnel is a great way to get in front of future customers. They can be used at every level of a marketing to move prospects closer and closer to being customers.
You can create videos with a specific call to action to draw them in, have a video as a presentation to explain your offering, and have videos as retargeting tools to close and up sell.
Because of all these factors you might think all you need is a smart marketing funnel and it will be guaranteed to get you customers. But as any marketer knows, you can do everything right and you can still come up short.
Why? Because there are factors that a video marketing funnel can’t factor in, and you will undoubtedly get customers to drop off.
The Process
The Bait
So many marketing gurus today are offering the perfect funnel, or method to attract and capture prospects online.
It begins with a well-constructed and thought-out prospect profile. The kind of buyer you want to attract. Next, they show you how they typically behave and what they want. This leads to the perfect mousetrap. And that is the problem.
Your Prospects Leave to Research
The problem is people. They take their own ideas and want to jump out of the perfect funnel to check facts. This is probably why a whopping 79% of sales funnel leads never convert.
They can sense that they are in a funnel and want to see what this is all about. This is the point at which they open a new window and perform some google searches.
They google the company name, the last part of the email address (the URL), and they google the person that sent the email and see if there’s a Facebook page. They LinkedIn search the profile of the person that sent them the email.
Literally none of that was planned on by the funnel creator. There’s no way to plan for that. They take breaks in the normal flow of “click here to learn more” to see if they are being scammed or if this offer is for real, or if the company making these claims is legit.
Word of Mouth has a Big Influence on Decisions
Word of mouth plays a strange role in marketing funnels as well. That’s why 64% of marketing executives say it is important to their strategy.
People can jump out of the funnel, think about it, talk to a couple of friends about it, then jump right back in. Because of this, that process can vary between 2 hours or 2 years.
What is the Final Verdict on Video Marketing Funnels?
Marketing Funnels are Necessary but Flawed
When it comes to video marketing funnels, all we can do is make a plan and try to predict what will happen next. We work with a given set of outcomes and known variables.
Making a helpful way for people to connect with your company’s value is the heart and soul of marketing funnels. So, it is not evil, it’s just not a perfectly functioning machine, either.
Keep Your Expectations High but Realistic
A big takeaway is don’t expect marketing funnels to solve all your business troubles. Not everything is quantifiable. Not everything is cookie cutter. And if you actually believe your buyer is so ignorant that you can manipulate them with some call-to-action button colors and get what you want, you haven’t actually run a marketing program yet. This leads to the next takeaway.
Treat Prospects Like People
Don’t underestimate your prospects. They won’t go directly through your first version of your funnel. They won’t always do everything online. They may go offline and talk to some people. (imagine that.) They have instincts, and if something doesn’t feel right, they bail.
Inconsistencies in company branding, landing pages that do not go to the real website, and cumbersome link jumping to get to a promised piece of content don’t typically bode well for attracting sophisticated buyers. Ones that reward good marketing fundamentals with inquiries and pipeline opportunities do.
At the end of the day, marketing funnels are necessary because we need to make a plan to succeed. And we want to help people get to the information as easily as possible, while giving us the information we need.
Let’s all just be careful about underestimating their instincts, intelligence, and humanity. After all, isn’t that what would make them the perfect client?
If you would be interested in learning more about a video marketing funnel, or video in general, feel free to connect with us here.
You can also check out our video below, “Getting ROI Our of Your Video”
