How to Drive Sales at Every Stage of the Customer Journey
Marketing
Getting time with prospects is more challenging than ever. When it comes to communication, there are few mediums more powerful than video. Brands that strategically use video for marketing distinctly set themselves apart in marketing performance from those that don’t. Video creates a 66% greater increase in MQLs delivered to sales (11.2% vs. 6.7%), 2.5 times the growth in marketing’s contribution to revenue, and 54% more growth in brand awareness year-over-year (10.5% vs. 6.8%).
But that’s only the beginning. Your sales team can use video to better engage prospects and communicate value at every stage of your sales cycle. With relevant content, you have a good reason to follow-up and stay top-of-mind with prospects, keep them engaged, and accelerate the sales cycle. Sales guides the customer journey as marketing qualified leads (MQLs) become sales qualified leads (SQLs), and as SQLs are converted into buyers. Ditching the sales-marketing divide and using video strategically throughout the entire customer journey creates a holistic approach to outreach and provides a seamless customer experience that delivers business results.
Marketing’s role in leading the customer journey during the Awareness stage, and the Interest phase of Engagement, is well-understood. What might not be understood widely is that for your sales team, the opportunity lies in using video to complement the team’s calls, pitches, and proposals. In fact, video-enabled salespeople outperform those without video in critical success metrics like customer retention rates (72% vs. 66%), lead acceptance rates (56% vs. 47%), and percent of reps reaching quota (54% vs. 50%).
But first, for career marketers, let’s make sure we’re all using the same language. How can we make the traditional funnel or pipeline that sales uses and turn it into a continuum that matches the customer journey?
| Sales Stage | What Happens in the Stage |
|---|---|
| Awareness | Prospect has made initial contact with your brand but has not engaged. No sales action is required at this stage. |
| Qualification | Vet opportunities with prospects who have engaged with your brand at a high level (e.g. took a phone call with an outbound sales rep or viewed marketing video/downloaded collateral). |
| Discovery | Vet opportunities with prospects who have shown interest in your product to determine if your solution might be a best fit and if the prospect is actively looking to buy. |
| Solution Evaluation | For opportunities considering your product as an option, create a vision of value for how your solution and brand addresses their business pain, and how it's different from competitors. Build a business case. |
| Proposing/Closing | For opportunities that have committed to purchase your solution, finalize the contract terms, provide proof-of-concept, and address any lingering reservations the prospect has. |
| Deal | The contract is signed and the deal is closed/won. |
Video Marketing with Sales and Customer Success Teams
At Brightcove, we often educate our prospects and customers on using video across the customer journey, integrating video into a multi-channel strategy. Strategically done, video is just one of the mediums prospects interact with across the stages: awareness, engagement, conversion, retention, and advocacy. And while we’ve charted the journey, there are nuances within this process during which sales becomes involved. Have you planned for these interactions? Without appropriate foresight your video marketing can become disjointed.
After all, all three teams—marketing, sales, and customer success—share focus on the customer journey and contribute to each stage. Which department leads the journey changes as the customer moves across the stages is displayed below, with video content suggestions.
| Sales Stages | Awareness | Qualification Discovery | Solution Evaluation | Proposing and Closing | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Success Stages | Client Health Loyalty | Brand Recommendation | ||||
| Marketing Stages | Awareness | Engagement Interest | Engagement Consideration | Conversion | Retention | Advocacy |
| Department Leading the Stage | Marketing | Marketing, Sales | Marketing, Sales | Sales | Customer Success | Customer Success |
| Types of Video Content that Work in Each Stage | -Brand promotion videos -Infographic videos -Expert interviews -Thought leadership presentations -Teaser videos -Interactive video | -Explainer videos -Tips series -Business use case videos -Webinars -Self-guided demos -Interactive video | -How to/tutorials -Webinars -FAQs -Micro-demos created by sales reps | -In-depth product demos -Technical demos -Customer testimonials -Case studies -ROI videos -Contract overview videos | -"Meet Your Support Team" videos -Onboarding videos -Knowledge base videos -Training videos -How to/tutorials -New product videos -Troubleshooting videos -FAQs -Brand videos promoting your values and culture | -Customer reviews -Testimonials -Case studies -User-generated videos -Customer panels at events (live streamed and recorded) -Executive videos (live streamed and recorded) -Employee-generated videos |
With this change to customer-journey alignment, brands are improving the customer experience by communicating in one seamless motion as the prospect becomes the customer becomes the advocate. With marketing, sales, and customer success teams focused on the journey, the only question becomes which group leads at each stage and how the hand-off between these organizations is handled. It’s worth sitting down with your sales and customer success teams however (your greatest source of content in my option), to brainstorm and figure it all out. Your organization has everything to gain: reduced sales time for converting prospects to customers, higher customer satisfaction, and more loyal brand advocates who make repeat purchases and recommend the brand’s products to others.
