Personalized sales video: how to stand out from the crowd

Let’s get right into some statistics on what makes personalized sales video something marketers cannot ignore:

– 94% of video marketers say video has helped increase their audience’s understanding of their products and services (hubspot.com). 

– 78% of marketers said video directly helped increase sales (wyzowl.com).

– Using videos in the immediate pre-sale stages increases customer response rates by about 60% (vidyard.com). 

– According to a survey this year, more than 70% of sales leaders who are not yet using video in their strategies plan to do so soon (vidyard.com).

We could go on and on: all of the data point in the same direction. But these four points in particular are very significant.

Let’s take a small step back and start with some initial definitions. 

Sales videos are communications that are built to facilitate sales processes. They are sent by the individual salesperson (or sales department team) to a potential customer with whom they aim to build a relationship, to an actual customer to finalize a sale, with the goal of retention, but also to target upselling or cross-selling strategies.

Sales videos – when to use them?

So, at what stages is it appropriate to use a sales video? 

The answer: in all stages where you aim to increase conversions and response rates, to close deals faster, and where you want to build an even stronger relationship with your customers.

Sales videos are an important tool for B2C. 

But they are even more crucial in B2B, especially when it comes to personalized video.

What about the different channels?

Typically, sales videos are inserted into a previously designed sales process. They can be included in an email campaign, targeting new customers whose contacts have been acquired. 

Also via email, a sales video can be used to recap after a meeting, conference, or corporate event. 

They can be reminders. 

Or demos for specific products or services that are designed to pique the interest of the recipient. 

They can also be conveyed through messaging apps.

In any case, they must have two main characteristics: simplicity (both in terms of communication and fruition) and personalization. 

These two elements are essential if you want your video to be effective.

Before moving on to the best practices for creating personalized sales videos that stand out from the crowd, let’s briefly look at the power of personalization.

Personalization – The video marketing breakthrough that comes a long way

There are endless ways to tell the story of the power of personalization in marketing. Let’s try to do so by drawing on a common experience. 

Think, for example, about how we address the people around us.

If we want to convey something to a child we would use very different language and ways of communicating compared to how we would communicate with a colleague. 

And, if we’re talking about our work experiences over lunch with friends, we would talk about those same experiences quite differently if we were in a  job interview. 

The truth is, we never tell the same story in the same way: we instinctively modulate it based on who we’re talking to, and his or her characteristics, mood, context, and our relationship with that person.

It’s something we do all the time, almost without realizing it. 

For what reason? 

The reason is simple: because we want our messages to reach the listener in the most effective way possible.

Naturally, this has been translated into the realm of commerce since the dawn of time: knowing your customer is the best way to do business with them, to their mutual satisfaction and on an ongoing basis.

Finally, how does this translate into the age of digital marketing and video marketing specifically? 

The channels and modes change, but the root remains exactly the same, with one difference: the reach is expanded by leaps and bounds.

First, customer insight no longer relies on the memory and intuition of the individual salesperson, but on data analysis. It’s about collecting the digital traces that each user continuously disseminates online, cross-referencing them, interpreting them. 

The result?

This allows you to gain in depth knowledge about the thousands or millions of people who make up your customer base. 

After acquiring this knowledge, you move on to tailoring communications to each person: this step, too, is handled in an automated way, thanks to data-driven processes. 

Finally, if you choose video, you combine the timeless effectiveness of personalization with the communicative power of the best performing tool when it comes to digital marketing.

How to start this process easily and guarantee a significant return on investment? 

By relying on video marketing platforms that specialize in personalization, such as Babelee.

For all the insights on how Babelee Video Platform works and the opportunities it offers, we refer you here.

Personalized Sales video – 5 best practices to stand out from the crowd

Combining the power of video with the boost of personalization is the ultimate breakthrough for producing the most effective sales videos.

But we want to go even further and share the 5 best practices you can use to make your personalized sales videos stand out from the crowd, to be memorable, and to achieve maximum effectiveness.

1) The importance of storytelling, even in B2B.

Even in B2B, the sale is the culmination of a journey that passes through several stages. It is the final goal of the Customer Journey. This “journey” must be consistent, but also useful and enjoyable.

First, you need to learn how to introduce yourself: it is not just a matter of “cold information” (who you are, what your company is, what it does), but sharing the deeper identity of your company. 

A personalized video is built based on the characteristics of the recipient, sure. But it must very clearly reflect the values and imagery (including graphics) of the person who produced and sent it.

Once this point is fixed, it’s a matter of designing a story that has an attention-grabbing beginning, a coherent and clear unfolding, a functional rhythm (not too tight nor too slow), and an ending that leads to conversion, with the actual business proposal.

2) Keep it short…but not too short.

It’s often said that the attention span of online users is becoming increasingly short. 

This is another reason why it’s so important to start with a strong, functional hook. 

Be careful, though: a personalized sales video is not snackable content to be posted on social media to grab the attention of a general audience. 

In a great many cases, it’s about “explaining things” to someone who already knows you and has already put themselves in a listening attitude. 

So, be concise and consequential in creating your sales video…but don’t fall into the mistake of choosing too frantic a pace, with provocations, twists, or suspense mechanisms that are too pronounced and out of place.

3) Call to action in the right way and at the right point

Every sales video must contain a call to action at some point: not necessarily aimed immediately at the sale, but it must always be there. 

Pay attention, then, to the consistency of this call to action: it must be in line with the style, tone, and themes of the video; it can’t just appear out of nowhere or out of sync with the rest of the content.

Also, it’s better to choose an approach that isn’t too direct or aggressive: it is often better to invite the viewer to “find out more” than to tell them “buy now!”

4) The strength of interactivity.

Personalization means breaking the pattern of one-size-fits-all communication. It means moving to one-to-one communication, to an ever-closer dialog with recipients. 

However, any good dialog is never one-way. 

It’s made up of exchanges, of moments that influence the path of the conversation.

Implementing interactivity in your personalized video sales is the best way to translate these aspects into the digital world as well. 

From the monologue where the viewer is always passive, we move toward a dialog where the viewer is an active player in the storytelling and conversation.

It’s no coincidence that the moment of the call to action in an interactive personalized video comes even more naturally. And, as a result, the conversion rate soars.

5) The optics must be omnichannel.

Let’s close with a more technical point that is absolutely essential. 

Good personalized videos must always be optimized for all types of devices and all modes of fruition, from different models of smartphones, to tablets, to desktops.

But also watch out for more specific aspects that concern an omnichannel approach. 

One example: according to a Verizon survey of U.S. audiences, 93% of people prefer to watch video without audio, especially on their mobile devices (nexttv.com). 

It’ss crucial to make your message clear and understandable even when it is “silent.”In other words, always include effective subtitles and text frameworks in your personalized videos.

Let’s end the article with a tip that applies to any marketing operation: measure the performance of your videos and your results carefully. They are the starting point for making your next campaign even more effective.