5 Strategies to Achieve Full-Funnel Engagement

It’s safe to say that today’s consumer prefers video. In fact, nearly 7 billion videos are watched on Facebook and YouTube each day, and 4 times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. Despite consumer enthusiasm for video,  marketers typically only use it at the awareness phase of the consumer journey and lose out on engagement opportunities throughout the rest of the sales funnel.

Savvy brands recognize video’s ability to influence consumer behavior, and when paired with Engagement Experiences like surveys, product explorers, or social sharing options, video can create deeper interest, interaction, and purchase intent. Marketers can also amplify messaging effectiveness by tailoring content to their audience’s specific location in the consumer journey.

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to plan and execute a video ad journey that will drive business results at every stage of the consumer journey.

Here are 5 strategies you can implement today:

1. Preparation Phase: Set the Foundation

Before you buy your media, carefully consider your goals, objectives, and how you’ll measure success. Successful campaigns impact a company’s bottom line and deliver results you can easily explain to a CEO.

Metrics such as CTR, VCR, and viewability are great ways to determine if an ad impression was served, but they won’t help you understand if your campaign drove any business outcomes.

To get the most out of your digital ad spend, consider using a blend of metrics such as viewability and time spent combined with business KPIs such as survey answers, website visits, and the number of qualified leads your campaign generates.

By tying campaign measurement and optimization to KPIs,  your brand will be able to better understand the customer journey while driving business outcomes.

Once you’ve set the foundation, you can move forward and build a campaign that will drive full-funnel results.

2. Awareness Phase: Build

The awareness phase is where marketers seek new customers, launch new products, and aim to keep their brands top of mind for existing customers. By using digital video during this phase you can draw insights that will help you build a campaign tailored to your audience. Here’s how:

• Measure: Create the message that generates the best response from consumers, and measure engagement with each video.
• Segment: Use your engagement data to build an audience segment of users who have expressed an interest in your brand by interacting with your video. Now you have a qualified consumer target.
• Target: Deliver a video ad that showcases your products, services, or features to your qualified consumer.  With a ViralGains Video Explorer, you can give your audience the ability to express which ads are most relevant to them.

3. Consideration Phase: Engage

Once you’ve built an audience segment of consumers who’ve expressed an interest in your brand, you can move them down the funnel into the consideration phase.  In order to keep their interest, create a deeper level of engagement with the following tactics:

• Engage: Using a ViralGains Engagement Experience you can deliver a CTA that drives specific business KPIs, such as email sign-ups, disclosure of product preference, or to drive attendance to a sales event.

• Inform: Based on Engagement Experience responses you now have insight into consumer preference that can inform your next set of messages. This data can also help create sub-categories of audience segments for further targeting.

4. Intent Phase: Discover

During the consideration phase, you’ll have established an interest in your brand. Now you can discover their purchase intent with a sentiment survey.

Sentiment Surveys allow you to ask the consumer a wide range of questions, such as:

• How do you feel about the video?
• Do you favor a competitor?
• What is your timeframe for purchasing?

Because Sentiment Surveys collect declared — not implied — data, you’ll have accurate information that you can apply to subsequent messaging. Armed with this knowledge, you can choose to either continue nurturing your audience with additional video content, or move them into the next phase of the funnel.

5. Conversion Phase: Empower

Having established audience engagement, interest, and even discovered their preferences, your audience is now ready to move into the conversion phase.

With the Product Preference Engagement Experience, you can ask the viewer which product he or she is most interested in and drive them to the appropriate landing page or checkout cart. By doing so you empower the viewer to take action, and hopefully, convert into a customer!

The benefits of using digital video to drive business results are clear. Video’s ability to engage consumers with sight, sound, and motion make it an unparalleled advertising medium. Use these five strategies in your media plan to drive high-impact results throughout the buyer journey.

Want to learn more? Download our free Video Ad Journey Ebook today for more tips and tricks to driving full-funnel results with digital video.