Personalization marketing is more than just inserting a buyer’s name into an email. While this can be the start of building a connection, it’s not enough to pique significant interest in the customer.
To drive a purchase, personalization has to speak to who the customer actually is—their preferences, demographics, motivations, and more. Marketing that’s built around these factors shows buyers that the business can solve their unique pain points. They understand how the company can benefit them, so they’re motivated to engage further.
You can capture the power of this marketing with personalized videos—ones that focus on the concerns and interests of customers at each stage of the buyer journey. Watch this video for some quick tips, and keep reading to better understand personalization with video.
The Power of Mixing Video and Web Personalization
At any stage of the buyer journey, customers need a reason to stay on your site and continue engaging. Two tactics that continuously prove to capture people’s attention are video and personalization.
See for yourself with these stats on video engagement:
- Video content on average leads to a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines.
- Social video creates 1,200% more engagement than text and video combined.
- 52% of marketing professionals say video content has the highest ROI.
Or personalization:
- 81% of people want brands to get to know them and understand when to approach them.
- More than 78% of customers will only pursue offers if they’re customized to previous engagements with the brand.
- 93% of companies see greater conversion rates with website personalization.
Since both video and personalization have proven to boost engagement separately, it only makes sense to combine them.
Vidyard does an exceptional job at combining the powers of video and web personalization. The moment a visitor lands on their site they’re met with examples of how Vidyard can tailor any video to any prospect. Request a demo, and you will actually see this functionality in action in the form of a personalized video with your name in it.
Here at Vyond, using video that’s personalized for every stage of the buyer journey has brought incredible results. Engagement on our site has increased, and our bounce rate has decreased. Visitors are spending longer and more meaningful time on our site. By creating videos that are customized for your target buyers at different stages, you can boost engagement throughout the entire web experience.
How to Personalize Videos by Buyer Journey
Web personalization and video are relatively new marketing frontiers, so you might feel intimidated by the thought of combining them. To guide you through the process, we’ll cover different videos you can create at each stage of the buyer journey to offer a personalized experience for your target customers.
Stage 1: Build awareness
Imagine a visitor landing on your site who’s never heard of your brand. They’re only going to stay on your site if you quickly show them how your business can solve their unique pain points. To keep new visitors engaged, have a personalized video appear on your homepage that’s customized for your different target buyers’ unique problems. Seeing how your business is uniquely geared toward their pain points will motivate customers to engage further.
To begin, create several versions of a video for your homepage that address pain points for the industries of target buyers. Identify the specific problems that your company solves for each profession so visitors know exactly why they should care about your business.
On Vyond’s homepage, for example, we feature a video that clearly states our target buyers’ need for creating engaging video along with their challenge of dealing with difficult tools.
Stating these needs and challenges up front immediately lets our visitors know how Vyond is positioned to help them.
You want to create videos in this stage to address customer pain points. But here’s the issue with personalization at the early awareness stage: You don’t have any data on new visitors, so you don’t know which industry-specific video to present.
At Vyond, we use the data we already have available. Using form fills from past eBook downloads, event sign ups, or badge scans, we are able to better identify visitors landing on our site.
We combine this with our web personalization tool, Evergage. Evergage uses this data stored in our CRM to identify where visitors are coming from and their respective industry. Now they can be segmented accordingly and served a personalized experience on their next visit.
Another software company, Citrix, utilized a Clearbit Reveal to show different text on their homepage, based on the visitor’s industry. Health care industry visitors saw this version:
This personalized homepage builds an instant connection between new visitors and your business. These buyers understand the problems your business is solving, so they’re motivated to learn more and investigate how your product can benefit them.
Stage 2: Build interest
Once visitors have an introduction to your brand, they’ll be interested to know more about how, exactly, your business works.
To build trust, use demo videos to show buyers the specifics of how your product works. Learning about your products’ details will help leads get closer to deciding whether they want to purchase.
The spreadsheet tool Airtable, for example, features a demo video on their product page for leads who want to learn more about their business. The company skillfully turned the video preview into a GIF, so buyers are especially driven to click and watch.
Avoid displaying the same demo for all leads, though, as one video can’t address your different key buyers’ unique needs. It’s more engaging to create several demos for each of your target industries to appear for visitors on your product page.
With a customized demo, people clearly understand how your product helps them meet their specific professional goals. As in the awareness stage, you can use the tool Clearbit Reveal to detect which industry the site visitor belongs to and display the appropriate demo video for them.
For these personalized demos, show scenarios of how the product would be used in the specific professional setting. Airtable, for example, could create a demo for health care professionals that shows how their product can organize patient information.
Your video can also refer to the industry-specific motivations of buyers as you describe how your product works. Health care professionals, for example, value privacy in data storage, so Airtable could stress the security features of their product in that unique demo.
Beyond the video’s content, you want to strategically place this demo for leads to find after the intro homepage video. You can either place this product video further down on the homepage or create a “Learn more” CTA below the homepage video that leads to the demo.
Watching this personalized product video gives buyers even more reason to be interested in your business. They see not only what problems your business is solving but also how it tackles their unique industry-specific pain points. With that knowledge, they’re ready to consider making a purchase.
Stage 3: Encourage consideration
Once buyers have learned about the benefits of your business, they don’t need to hear more about your product details. To push them toward making a purchase, they need to see a variety of evidence that shows how great it is to work with you.
To take personalization a step further, have your sales team create unique “voicemail” videos and follow-up videos for specific clients. For example, the sales team at the marketing agency Bluleadz will encourage new leads to commit to a phone call by emailing a unique video voicemail.
The company will even create an individualized “Meet and Greet” video for clients just as they’re about to close a deal.
These customized videos may seem time-consuming, but they can be made quickly, within an hour, using tools like Vyond’s animated video platform, or Wistia’s Soapbox, a free Chrome extension for filming. On a larger scale, you can also utilize Vidyard’s personalization feature.
These individualized videos differentiate your company in the eyes of customers. Even if the quality isn’t perfect, these videos show your customers that you care enough to create a unique video for them. Feeling appreciated, buyers are more likely to commit to purchasing.
Stage 4: Retain your customers.
Once the buyer commits and makes a purchase, your work isn’t over. To win more sales from established customers, you have to stay in touch with them after they place orders. To make sure they don’t forget about your business and move on to a competitor, show your customers how your brand can still provide value.
Email is the best medium for consistent contact with customers, because you can’t guarantee they’ll visit your site. With these messages, you can send buyers personalized videos on new products and features based on their past orders with you. Seeing these customized product announcements will remind customers of how much they enjoyed their previous orders, so they’ll be happy to reconnect.
By now you’re probably wondering how in the world you get started with your own email personalization journey. Rest assured, it’s not as scary as it seems. Following along with the personalization basics matrix below will help get you up and running based on the marketing resources you have available.
| Team Size | 1-10 | 10-20 | 20+ |
| Beginner | MailChimp | Emma | Emma |
| Intermediate | Emma | Pardot | Pardot |
| Advanced | Marketo | Marketo | Marketo |
To send these personalized announcements, you’ll first want to separate your past customers’ email info by their past purchases. You can use a tool like Customer.io to create segments of contacts based on what buyers have ordered in the past. Once you have these different categories in your email list, you can choose which customers would get the most value out of your different product announcement videos and should be emailed.
By sending buyers personalized product announcements based on their previous business, you can consistently remind customers of your brand’s value and retain their business.
Keep Buyers On Board with a Personalized Video Journey
Turning a lead into a loyal customer takes more than a quick-fix hack. Keeping someone engaged on your site and continually invested in your business requires a personalized customer experience. You have to show buyers that you understand their specific needs and wants at every stage to drive them toward repeat purchases.
As one of the most engaging mediums, video is optimal for guiding leads through a personalized buyer journey. You can address specific customer needs in the most compelling ways: visuals, music, movement, and more. By serving customers’ interests through powerful communication, personalized video drives engagement and long-term retention.
The most important thing for anyone considering getting started with personalization is to start small. There are so many moving parts when it comes to personalization that it can seem overwhelming to a beginner. Start small with a few bits of personalization through email and then work your way up to personalized videos and homepage. You will probably find you are able to accomplish quite a bit with the tools you already have at hand. Once you have build your foundation adding on more tools or ways to personalize will feel like a no-brainer.
About Vyond
Vyond allows people of all skill levels in all industries and job roles to create dynamic and powerful media. With features that go beyond moving text and images, you can build character-driven stories or compelling data visualizations that engage audiences and deliver results.
With Vyond, it’s easy to create video for your training. Get started making your own videos today. Start a free 14-day trial and sign up for our weekly webinar.
