5 Ways a Video Strategy Can Fuel Your Sales Team Endeavours

There is marketing, and then there’s sales. And their purposes are different, to be sure.

Marketers are charged with developing content that engages and entices potential customers to have a look at products and services that are offered. It’s called lead development.

Sales staff must take those leads and turn them into actual customers.

Unfortunately, in many business operations, these two departments are considered separate, and there’s not a lot of alignment between them. But there should be. After all, the marketing team should be showing the sales team what content has been working to bring those leads in. And the sales team should be informing the marketing team of what content strategies appear to be closing the most sales. Both need each other, and both need to have an intimate understanding of what the other is doing.

Enter the “World” of Video Content

Marketers have known for some time that video content has a much greater impact than text and even still photos, if only for these two reasons:

• Consumers and business decision-makers are busy people. They want information quickly and efficiently.
• The human brain processes visual information 60,000K faster than the printed word, and the retention rate is greater too.

It’s a matter of showing, not telling. And so, on the company websites, in blog posts, and on social media platforms, marketers are increasingly using videos to educate, entertain, and inspire potential customers.

But how aware is the sales staff of this video content, and do they understand how they can use these videos in their sales efforts? Probably, they aren’t.

So here are a few tips that will coordinate the use of videos between marketing and sales departments and help to ensure that video content becomes part of an overall strategy, rather than just a tactic used by company marketers.

1. Share, Share, Share

Every time a video is created by the marketing department, it should be immediately shared with all sales staff. Beyond that, there should be an archive created, containing all of the videos that have been used as marketing tools. Sales staff should have full access to this archive.

You never know when a video produced six months ago might be the exact one that a salesperson may need or want to show a specific current lead now.

Think about it. You may have created a great video that shows exactly how a product or service can be used. Rather than a salesperson having to verbally or textually explain everything about this item, he can send over a video that does this far more effectively.

2. Hold Combined Meetings

Even if these meetings have to be virtual, there must be a collaboration between marketing and sales staffs. Marketers need to inform salespeople what content they have produced in their efforts, and salespeople need to be able to use that content when they speak with potential customers.

They need to know who the intended audience is for each piece of video content, why it is being crafted, and when it will be released. They need to see previews of that content, so that they can tell their leads exactly what they will learn in each video, before sending it over.

3. Organise and Maintain a Video Library

Over time, the marketing department will accumulate a volume of videos. And, some creative salespeople may even want to create their own, which of course, is easy to do with the right video creation tools.

Perhaps there are a few members of the sales department who, in collaborations with a few creatives from the marketing department, can create an engaging video that tells the company’s story or that features specific products and services. These types of videos personalise the organisation for customers, and that’s a great way to establish relationships.

4. Craft Email Templates for Follow-ups

Once marketing staff have created videos and published them on the company site, social media platforms, or on the blog, the campaign is not finished. It’s time for the sales staff to use those videos in their sales activities.

Marketers should provide templates that will allow salespeople to personalise emails to potential customers, and that will include a link to a specific video.

Email recipients are far more likely to open a message that contains a video rather than just text, so that video should be mentioned in the subject line. And this is especially true of customers who are on their mobile devices.

5. Track Success

This is a job for both departments. Some videos will hit the mark; others will not. It will be important for both the marketing and sales departments to track the responses to each video that has been published or sent to a lead or a current customer.

• What is the open rate for each video?
• What is the rate of response to email videos?
• What is the response rate from videos published on the site, blog, or social media?
• How much time are viewers spending viewing a video?
• What is the rate of sales relative to the views of a video?

In the End…

Marketing videos can do many things. They can define and reinforce a brand; they can tell stories; they can feature products. And, most of all, they can result in sales, if the sales staff can utilise them as effective tools.

Particularly, to get those videos out to the leads that may not have viewed them at the time of publication, and to provide feedback to marketers on the effectiveness of the videos they have produced. Indeed, this is a great symbiotic relationship—one that has the potential to significantly impact a company’s bottom line.

Author: Dorian Martin is a professional writer and editor. He started his writing career at a university, providing his fellow students with college essay help. Now, he mostly writes articles about business technology and runs his own blog about agile business transformation.