Samantha Ferguson
Want to increase your sales? Stupid question - of course you do! Here's how...
If getting people to your site is a sprint, then increasing sales is a marathon. It takes constant effort and a lot of stamina from your website!
But:
Do you ever feel like you’re trying everything to get people to convert, and it’s just NOT working?!
We’re often told what to do to increase sales:
- Raise awareness on social media
- Use visual content
- Keep important information above the fold
…the list goes on. What we are very rarely told is HOW to increase sales.
In this article, we’re going to show you how you can increase sales with video – because, in case you didn’t already know, we’re bonkers about video!
We’re also going to look at some examples from 4 smart brands that have increased sales with video to see what we can learn from their video marketing efforts.
1. ao.com Increase Sales with Product Videos
ao.com is an ecommerce site that specialises in household appliances. When purchasing a household appliance, you’re spending a lot of money on a product that you hope to get a lot of use out of, so you need to know that you’re making the right choice.
ao.com’s product videos are engaging and informative, showing consumers every nook and cranny of the product.
Honest product videos like this have delivered incredible results for ao.com. According to their head of conversion, Matt Lawson:
“Video gives us the opportunity to WOW our customers. We have tested and proven that when someone watches our videos they’re 120.5% more likely to buy, spend 157.2% longer on the site and spend 9.1% more per order.”
How to Increase Sales with Product Videos
So, how can you increase sales with product videos?
- First you need to take a look at your products and decide upon the features you want to highlight in your video.
- From there, you should write a script and stick to it. This way, your video will look polished and professional – you don’t want to be bouncing from point to point and confuse your customer!
- Then just hit record! Record a live action video of your product to show users exactly what they will be getting for their money, or mix it up a bit by creating an animated video to increase viewer engagement and generate excitement about your product(s).
When it comes to posting your product video on your site, it shouldn’t take over the entire product page. Instead, make sure you have a prominent thumbnail image on display that customers can choose to click. ao.com, like many other sites, include their video thumbnail alongside product images:
A good way to find out if your product videos are really increasing sales is to A/B test them. You can do this by creating web pages with and without a product video and testing which increases conversions more.
2. Cadbury Increase Sales with Personalised Videos
Although it is the second largest confectionary brand in the world, even Cadbury has turned to video to increase sales. Cadbury wanted to increase sales in India where the market for gift chocolate is only 5-7%, compared to 15-35% for the rest of the world, so they created a personalised video campaign.
The campaign encouraged users to buy a box of Cadbury’s Glow chocolate with the incentive that they could create their own personalised video for the recipient of the gift.
The campaign was a huge success, resulting in a 96.89% conversion rate! It also generated a large amount of buzz on social media, with the hashtag #MakeTheMomentGlow reaching around 1.6 million people.
How to Increase Sales with Personalised Videos
The demand for personalised video is steadily rising among customers and brands alike. Your brand can increase sales through personalised videos in a number of ways. Here are a few ideas:
- Renewal Reminders
- Birthday Greetings
- Product Launches
It all depends on the data you have collected on your customers and how you can use that data to improve customer experience and sales for your business.
Creating a personalised video is quite a complicated process, so it’s best to consult a video marketing company to help you out with this. A good place to begin would be our free eBook: How To Get Started With Personalised Video
3. Ramada Plaza Increase Sales with Explainer Videos
Ramada Plaza is a chain of hotels operating under the larger umbrella of Ramada. Ramada hotels operate worldwide and each one, from town to town, differs in the experience offered to guests.
The Ramada Plaza in Southport, UK, came to Wyzowl for an explainer video that would give potential guests who landed on their site an overview of the hotel and ultimately encourage them to book. So we created this colourful, engaging, 60 second animated explainer video:
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The video highlights the reasons to stay at Ramada Plaza Southport, including the facilities of the hotel and the unique benefits. After placing the video on the homepage of their website, the hotel manager, Edna Rylands, reported:
“We have had a great couple of years business-wise, resulting in record profits last year.”
How to Increase Sales with Explainer Videos
So, how can you emulate this success?
An explainer video is basically an engaging overview of your brand that potential customers can watch and digest in less than two minutes (anything over two minutes may cause them to lose attention). Explainer videos usually all follow the same formula: Problem. Solution. Benefits.
First you illustrate the problem of your ideal customers, then you demonstrate how your product or service solves that, going into the specific benefits. So this in itself is a great way to increase sales by welcoming people to your website and letting them know all about what you do and how you can help them.
You can further increase sales with an explainer video by using it as a marketing tool. Post your explainer video to social media, send it around to the people on your email list (more on that in a second!) and create a YouTube ad. Essentially, do everything you can to make sure the world can see your explainer video!
We created a video about this recently. Check it out:
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4. P&O Increase Sales with Email Videos
When British/American cruise line, P&O, wanted to raise awareness and encourage bookings for their ‘Grand Event’ back in 2012, they turned to video and email marketing. Combining the two, P&O created a ‘video in email‘ campaign that, compared to a Grand Event email sent seven weeks earlier without a video, resulted in a 950% increase in bookings and a 679% boost in revenue!
Email marketing is a popular way to increase sales because it allows you to reach people that have already shown interest in your brand. When adding video to your email marketing campaigns, there are a few things you need to consider…
How to Increase Sales with Email Videos
An important factor in creating an email video is telling people about it. By this, we mean literally calling it out in your subject line! Studies have found that just by including the word ‘video’ in your email subject line, you can increase click-through rates by 65%.
Another important consideration when you’re looking to increase sales with email videos is whether to embed your video into your email or not. There are pros and cons to each:
To Embed:
The most obvious pro is that it looks pretty cool. You’re able to grab peoples’ attention quicker and easier because your video is right there for them to see. This will create a better user experience that will hopefully get people talking.
The con to embedding videos directly into your emails is that not all email clients are able to support video. Those that do make up around 62% of the market, but that still leaves a sizeable chunk of recipients who won’t be able to watch your embedded video at all. For them, this will create a negative user experience and can change their perception of your brand.
To Not Embed:
If you don’t embed your video into your email, and include a clickable thumbnail instead, then you are asking users to take action to watch your video.
On the one hand, this could be seen as a negative as you are giving the user the choice of whether to watch your video or not, and the risk is that they could choose not to. On the other hand, users who do click the thumbnail will improve your click-through rate and they will also be taken to a page where your video can live permenantly.
Closing Thoughts
As we’ve seen from the above examples, there are lots of different and creative ways to increase sales with video. Hopefully you can learn from the 4 smart brands in this article to boost your video marketing strategy, and your sales!
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