June 29, 2016 \ Geoff Birmingham
Lead nurturing for businesses and nonprofits using video

Sales FunnelLater this summer we are going create a series of videos for lead nurturing, also called marketing automation. We had never really considered using an automated system for our lead nurturing, until we came across a piece of data from Marketo. It found that companies using good marketing automation created 50% more sales-ready leads and at 33% lower cost.

This makes sense to us. While we have an email list, most of our real leads are nurtured in-person or via the phone. This has proven effective, but our sense is that a piece of video that shows who we are and what we do could potentially be just a valuable. And if the video can be delivered with a click of a button, then we’re obviously saving time, which then saves on cost.

Like many businesses, we think of our prospects as existing within a section of a sales funnel:

  1. Unawareness – they have no idea who we are
  2. Awareness – they know who we are
  3. Interest – they like they idea of video, but are not committed to it
  4. Desire – they are committed to producing video, but haven’t chosen a video partner
  5. Buy – they choose Reflection Films as their video production partner

Our goal is to create 2-3 short videos that can be delivered to leads that we have, whatever stage they might be in. So, for Unawareness, maybe an introduction to Reflection Films could be helpful. Or, for Interest, a video on how to do video marketing and its benefits.

Our hunch is that if this applies to businesses, it should also apply to nonprofits. While a prospective client is not the same as a prospective donor or supporter of a nonprofit, both need nurturing. A prospective donor/supporter is also going to pass through stages before she “buys.”

The typical marketing or fundraising video for a nonprofit is to help educate and build awareness. But if you go further down the nonprofit sales funnel with a prospect, it makes total sense to share short, little nuggets of video with them to help build that relationship until they are ready to give you their support.

Those videos could be any number of things delivered over time – stories told by a nonprofit’s clients, staff talking about why their work is meaningful to them, an executive director speaking about the impact her organization has had. Video can often deliver this information more effectively than an email alone.

It’s marketing 101, but it’s worth repeating: the key thing, whether it’s a business or a nonprofit that’s doing the the nurturing, is that the content must be valuable or of interest to the audience. It also must be relevant to the stage of the funnel they are in.

Image: Joe the Goat Farmer