Video has become an important marketing tool and that’s why it must be a part of your marketing automation strategy too.
Nearly 86% of businesses now use them as a marketing tool with a resounding 93% of marketers saying that videos are an important part of their marketing strategy.
Image via Wyzowl
Now, marketing automation in itself is a highly effective way of promoting your brand online. By leveraging the power of automation, you can quickly execute simple and complex tasks and take the load off your team.
Various marketing automation platforms such as open-source test automation platforms help in the test automation of webs, apps, and APIs.
For example, plumber and roofing service provider agencies use automation-enabled instruments to handle emergency leaks.
Automation is a crucial part of our life and business operations nowadays.
So, what if you could pair up videos and marketing automation?
This would be a combination that would help you get the best of both worlds. It improves user experience and boosts your business ROI.
But why is marketing automation with videos so important? And how can you do it well?
To answer these questions, we’ve put together this blog.
However, before we get into all that, let’s try to understand what marketing automation is all about.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation involves leveraging the power of automation to execute tasks quickly without much effort. This, in turn, helps improve your operations and drives your business growth. In a recent study, sales data comparisons between brick and mortar vs eCommerce stores, brick and mortar generated more sales as compared to the eCommerce model.
For example, automation creates a revolution in the inventory management process. Automatic cloud-based inventory management software such as eSwap makes smooth to the inventory system.
So, which are the various aspects of marketing that can be automated?
Pretty much everything.
You can automate email marketing, social media marketing, conversational marketing, and so on.
Packaging automation changed the way of packaging premium products such as CBD products. QR codes labeled CBD product information can easily be traced by the tracking software. QR codes for CBD products can easily create with the help of QR code-generator tools.
And the best part?
Marketing automation doesn’t have to be robotic and impersonal. Instead, you could still remain just as personal with your marketing by using marketing automation. You’d essentially simplify the buyer’s journey through your sales funnel.
Also, it helps your employees to manage their work-life balance in an effective way. Automation helps them to save time and they finish their work in the office time and left the office in the evening with a tension-free mind.
So, how does video fit into all of this?
Let’s find out.
Why Should You Do Marketing Automation with Video?
As mentioned previously, videos are critical components of any marketing strategy and marketing automation is no exception.
Automation with video is the key factor that helps in live stream shopping. Marketers and businesses are now using the best live video shopping marketplaces to sell their products and services by organizing live shopping events.
After all, videos help you at nearly every stage of the b2b sales funnel right from generating brand awareness to driving b2b sales.
Don’t take it from us, hear it from marketers themselves:
- 86% of marketers say that videos have boosted traffic to their website
- 84% of marketers say that video has helped them generate leads
- 78% of marketers say that video has helped boost their sales
- 83% of marketers say that video has helped boost their average time on site metric
- 87% of marketers say that video gives them a good ROI
Image via Wyzowl
And guess what?
The reason behind this is consumers.
- 94% of them have watched videos to understand a product or service
- 84% of people are convinced to buy from a brand after watching its video
- 69% of people prefer videos to learn about a product or service
Marketing automation already has numerous benefits that can help you grow your business. Pairing it up with videos will only help amplify these benefits as consumers love videos. You can spread your amazing video over the best digital marketing tools to get the best results for your business.
And the best part?
Videos can be used in pretty much every area where you’re doing marketing automation be it social media or emails.
You can create a professional video for your services such as professional roof inspector, tax consultants, and other local services. You can post them to social media and other marketing platforms to get good sales leads for your business.
All companies want to generate qualified leads in the sales funnel campaign for the growth of the business.
So, let’s take a look at the various aspects of marketing automation where video can help.
1. Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of the best channels for promoting your brand. With a massive audience of over 4.48 billion users, social media platforms give you the potential to reach nearly half the population of the world.
Image via We Are Social
So, if you want to connect with your audience and engage them on social media platforms, it’s essential that you create high-quality content for them. You can create social media videos using different cartoon filters to get more engagement over different social media platforms.
For example, Instagram Reels is the most effective feature of Instagram and you can use custom features of Instagram to get more engagement on your profile. Before this, you need to change the email ID on your Instagram profile if you are using the new email address for all other social media platforms. Using a single email address for all social media profiles is a good strategy.
Social media marketing is a good option for small businesses to sell their products. You need to create and run robust social selling campaigns to get the best results. You can analyze your social selling examples to learn more about the social selling process.
Apart from this, you can earn a good amount of money from video marketing by editing videos and posting them to social media such as YouTube and other video platforms. In this way, you can earn a good amount and live a pleasant life after your retirement.
And it doesn’t even end at creating content and sharing it. You must also be careful enough to share this content at the right time and also at regular intervals.
The reason behind this is simple — sharing content regularly would mean that your audience would remember your brand and engage with it. However, if you post at erratic schedules, many may feel that you’re inactive on the platform.
This is where marketing automation helps. Using social media marketing solutions, you can easily schedule your social posts for publishing on multiple platforms — all from a single dashboard.
Now, where does video come into the picture here?
According to the Wyzowl study mentioned above, people are 2x more likely to share videos on social media. So, using marketing automation tools, you can share video content with your audience
This, in turn, will help you generate added engagement and reach.
What’s more?
You can create an ad and tailor your video content for each platform too. For instance, some platforms automatically play the video on mute. In such videos, you can incorporate subtitles and drive engagement. Additionally, you can leverage hashtags for platforms like Instagram to further reach the right audience.
2. Email Marketing Automation
You need to email address for your business. Email marketing is perhaps the channel that finds the maximum application of marketing automation. You can potentially automate your entire sales funnel, right from the awareness stage until the conversions.
All you need is a handy email marketing platform that allows you to set up drip campaigns and email autoresponders.
There’s a variety of emails that you can automate. These include welcome emails, thank you emails, cart abandonment emails, and more.
And here’s how video comes into the picture here.
You could embed a video or two into each email that you automate and send to your audience. These videos could be aimed at answering the questions of your audience, providing them with accurate information, etc.
For example, you can use video automation for your seamless hiring process. This helps your recruiters in the hiring process seamless by sharping their skills and adding new qualities to their profiles.
As videos are short, engaging, and informational, the chances are that many receivers may end up watching them after opening your emails.
This, in turn, can directly drive them to click on your call-to-action (CTA) and boost your click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates (CVR).
Case in point — Marketo, an alternative to HubSpot, leveraged email marketing automation and video to drive their email campaigns.
The results were nothing short of amazing. They observed a 144% increase in CTR when they sent personalized video emails. This, in turn, increased the traffic to their website.
What’s more?
The email open rate got a boost too. Marketo observed a 36% increase in their email open rate due to the addition of a video in their emails.
Here’s a video they used for this campaign.
Image via Vidyard
3. Lead Nurturing
Sure, the marketing automation and video combination helps drive your lead generation efforts. However, you also need to nurture these leads well by engaging them and solving their problems.
This is the only way through which you can move them further down your funnel towards the conversion stage.
And how does video and marketing automation help here?
You can send automated emails to your leads based on their behavior and embed videos in those emails too.
As you’d be dealing with the middle and bottom of the funnel here, you could possibly incorporate video testimonials, reviews, and even case studies.
Presenting them in an interactive and engaging manner can nudge the lead to move further towards the conversion stage.
And guess what?
You don’t necessarily need to stick to email marketing here too. It’s possible to achieve the same by targeting the right set of people through automation on other channels like your website and social media.
For instance, Help Scout has a dedicated page for customer testimonials where they’ve put up videos of their customers sharing their experience of working with Help Scout.
Image via Help Scout
4. Influencer Communication
Influencer marketing is one of the other important marketing channels that helps you harness the power of social influencers. These influencers are experts in their niches and have a large and loyal following on social platforms.
You can leverage this influence to get your marketing messages to your audience. However, for that to happen, you need to first build a solid relationship with the influencers.
The reason here being that you need to convince the influencers that your product is genuinely good and right for their audience.
What’s more?
Building a powerful relationship with influencers also helps you develop more long-term campaigns with them. You need to build relationships with the influencers and deals in your niche. For example, if you deal in beauty products then you need to hire a beauty influencer marketing agency or beauty influencer to get good results for your campaign.
They’ll understand your brand better and you can count on them to create and distribute your content well. Influencers can leverage an online marketing video maker to create effective marketing videos. It can also open opportunities for them to become your brand ambassadors.
And how do marketing automation and video fit into this?
Marketing automation plays a major role in helping you communicate and engage with these influencers.
For instance, you can send them automated emails regularly with the latest happenings in your industry. You could also share things related to your brand such as new product/service launches, promotions, etc.
In fact, you can even automate the sending of your influencer contract by using modifiable templates.
It’s possible to weave videos into these automated emails too. You could share videos of your new products, promotions, and even informational ones.
And guess what?
The scope of automation in influencer marketing doesn’t end there. You could also help influencers automate their content posting schedule by giving them access to your social media automation tools. This way, their video content will be published at the right time.
Pro Tip: Video plays a crucial role in online learning and tutorial system. With the help of live stream digital whiteboards, it creates a revolution in online learning. The automation feature makes it more user-friendly.
5. CRM Automation
A business can thrive only based on the sort of relationship it has with its customers. You need to attend to every question and problem of theirs to ensure that they are satisfied with your brand.
Types of CRM platforms can, of course, help you with this. They can help you collect, store, and manage customer data. You can even remain in touch with your customers using these platforms. You can read this SmallBusinessHQ detail post on different types of software before choosing a CRM tool for your business.
But guess what?
The utility of CRM software solutions doesn’t end there. In fact, when you bring video in, CRMs can help enable video communication with your audience at scale.
Also, you can integrate CRM with NPS software to conduct surveys about your service and products from your customers.
And how can they do that?
Figure this — CRMs collect loads of data related to your customers. This data, in turn, provides you with the opportunity to understand your customers better than ever.
The reason?
Using this data, you can derive insights and understand the various likes, dislikes, and preferences of your customers.
This, in turn, can help you create more tailored videos that will strike a chord with your customers.
What’s more?
You can create these videos for each stage of the buyer’s journey based on these insights and directly drive up your conversion rates.
But where does automation come into the picture here?
In deriving these insights, of course. CRM platforms, armed with the power of automation, can provide you with powerful insights about your customers. Which, otherwise, would require a lot of manual data analysis.
6. Website Automation
Website creation is a long process and it requires you to create good quality content, landing pages, forms, and more. However, website automation software solutions and AI-based apps and software can simplify this process for you.
Using them, you can easily create landing pages, blog posts, contact pages, and more.
And the best part?
You could also incorporate images and videos into your website using such automation tools.
Video, in particular, can be very helpful here as it can engage your audience and keep them hooked on your website.
Some of the videos you can add:
- How-to videos
- Product explainer videos
- Testimonial videos
- Employee engagement testimonials
The only caveat?
You shouldn’t overuse videos in a bid to increase the time spent by visitors on your website. Instead, use them rationally at places where they’re the most necessary. The goal should be to add them such that there’s a particular purpose behind every video.
Guess what?
The combination of video and automation doesn’t end here.
In fact, using automation, it’s possible to create engaging videos too. Numerous AI-powered video creators like Synthesia and Rephrase.ai can help you with it.
Image via Synthesia
Website data security and making it safe for your visitors is also crucial. You need to install the best antivirus software on your Mac laptop so that your website doesn’t infect your and other team members’ system who are involved in maintaining the website.
Final Thoughts
The combination of marketing automation and video is a powerful one. Videos are loved by consumers and are highly effective forms of content.
Marketing automation, on the other hand, helps you amp up your marketing efforts on social media, emails, websites, and so much more.
You can use this combination to drive lead generation, nurture leads, and even power up your influencer marketing campaigns.
What’s more?
You can boost your website engagement and even improve your conversion rates using it.
So, what are you waiting for?
Start incorporating marketing automation and video into your overall strategy to drive real results.
Sienna Sofia is a Freelance blogger. She is a current contributor to publications on tech, marketing, business. She is passionate to write and share on the latest trends in business and technology.