Are your viewers ready to buy from you? Video metrics might reveal the answer. They don’t just track when, where, and how people are watching your videos. They can also offer insight into whether those viewers are ready to become customers. That’s why you should be using video for lead scoring. If you’re not already taking video into account, you’re missing out on valuable information. Just ask former Wistia Content Marketing Manager Meisha Bochicchio.
“Funneling our video data into our CRM has been a huge tool for our sales team,” Bochicchio said. “This allows them to easily understand where a prospect is in their journey and customize their outreach.” In short, it helps them track the sales journey.
Let’s take a closer look at how to use video for lead scoring and what it can do for your business.
What Is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring is a method used to evaluate customer intention. Are they ready to buy? It’s based on the individual’s level of engagement with your brand. This is known as purchase intent. Higher intent means they’re more likely to buy.
Obviously, measuring data on a user-by-user basis is a lot easier if you have the right tools for the job. Marketing automation platforms and CRMs like Hubspot, Marketo, or Pardot, give you the reporting you need to get started.
Wistia’s video hosting and marketing software also includes CRM integrations and lead scoring functionality. They felt that using lead scoring themselves would be the best way to encourage their audience to use it.
“We have tons of video assets across our web properties, so it made sense to make the most of these investments by feeding this data to other tools,” Bochicchio said.
Whatever tools you use, you’ll need to start by identifying what you want to know and how you plan to measure it. In short, you need a scoring system.
How to Create a Lead Scoring System
Traditional lead scoring assigns values to the different easy prospects interact with your marketing and sales offerings. Different interactions may be more valuable than others depending on the level of engagement they signal. Each interaction is “weighted” (assigned a number of points) based on its level of importance.
“A how-to video on a blog has a much different intent and value than an in-depth webinar or product demo,” Bochicchio said. “We also consider how much of the content was actually consumed. Did the viewer bail after a few seconds, or did they stick around for 75% of the video? These two variables help weight each lead appropriately based on interest and intent.”
Your lead scoring system should tie numerical points to each interaction along the customer journey. The more points a prospect has, the more qualified they are as a lead. Each new point threshold carries the viewer to the next step on the customer journey. Then sales and marketing teams can take the right action to deepen the prospect’s engagement.
“Our sales team is more informed and empowered during outreach,” Bochicchio said. “They cater their pitches and additional resources based on a complete picture that includes all website activity–not just pages visited or downloads. This complete picture is really powerful and makes our approach to sales more personalized and relevant.”
Every company has different needs, and different ways of evaluating their customer journey. Sales and marketing teams should work out a lead scoring system that delivers the insight they both need. That requires metrics.
Using Video Lead Scoring Metrics
Hopefully, you’re already tracking video metrics to measure the success of each video you make. To use video for lead scoring, you map these metrics to your scoring chart. Each metric indicates a different level of engagement, which signals where the customer is on their journey. For example, sharing a video might carry a higher score than simply watching it. Similarly, watching several videos in a row indicates greater engagement.
Tracking viewer engagement is most valuable if you know that particular actions are signals for specific levels of interest. Ideally, you can look back at past data to see how your current clients behaved along their customer journey. Luckily, many of the marketing automation platforms are providing increasingly sophisticated tools to help you do that.
For example, you might notice that most of your existing customers started by watching the occasional video. Then they shared one with a friend. Next they left comments on some videos. Finally, they clicked on your call to action link. By understanding this progression, you can make informed decisions about the weight of each action in your scoring system.
If you’re a new business without a huge client base, start with a basic scoring system. You can refine it as you grow your customer list and gather more information about customer behavior.
Video For Each Stage Of The Customer Journey
You can use video at all stages of the customer journey. Many businesses use it to build awareness, but video can also help with consideration, conversion, and even nurturing of existing customers. Let’s look at examples for each level and how they can fit into your lead scoring formula.
Brand Awareness: Top-of-Funnel Videos
Top-of-funnel videos introduce your audience to your brand. This is your first chance to make a good impression, so use it. Hook the viewer and invite them to engage.
Explainer videos can help educate new audiences, and give them an overview of what you’re all about. Use them for broadcast commercials, OTT ads, and social media video.
Wherever you place them, brand awareness videos need to prove value. Try to answer core questions like:
- What makes your company different?
- What makes you better than your competition?
- Why should I listen to you?
- How can you help me?
A viewer at this level of the funnel is only just discovering your brand. They may not be ready to buy just yet, so these videos carry the lowest lead score. But they’re still important. They’re where customers enter the sales funnel. The video embedded below is a good example of a top-of-funnel video.
Consideration: Middle-of-the-Funnel Videos
Once you have prospects interested in your brand, it’s time to prove your value. Videos at this stage should provide more in-depth information. Think long-form videos, webinars, case studies, how-tos, and customer testimonials. These offer added perspective for customers who want to learn how your product or service will directly benefit them.
More in-depth explainer videos tailored to certain products, industries, or services, can also give audiences detailed answers to specific questions.
A video like the one embedded below shows how the product works, rather than simply introducing the viewer to the brand. It might carry a slightly higher lead score, because a viewer interested in this level of detail is closer to purchasing.
Sales: Bottom-Funnel Videos
Bottom-funnel videos give the final push to turn viewers into customers. They may be used on sales calls or during demos to answer any lingering questions the prospect may have. Consider in-depth product walkthroughs and topic-specific webinars. These aren’t the kind of videos a casual viewer is likely to watch. Instead, they answer specific questions to push the customer from consideration to conversion.
The lead score for these videos is high. A customer who watches one, or several, bottom-funnel videos is very likely to convert. Consider a video like the one from Wistia embedded below. It covers a specific way that Wistia’s customers might want to use their products. So it’s the kind of thing you probably wouldn’t watch unless you were ready to convert.
How Video Lead Scoring Informs Sales and Marketing
With a lead scoring formula in place, your sales team can make smart choices about what information to give leads and when. They’ll know whether it’s time to provide more information, or to ask for the sale.
Lead scoring can also help marketing teams create more targeted videos and choose more relevant CTAs. Your CTA on a top-of-funnel, low-score video might ask users to leave a comment. While higher-score, bottom-of-funnel videos might invite them to contact a salesperson.
Getting Started With Lead Scoring For Video
Bochicchio recommends starting at the bottom of the funnel and working your way up when you implement a new lead scoring strategy. Webinars and demo videos are a good starting point because they’re likely to carry the most weight for scoring leads.
“This will also give you a chance to play around with the scoring system to find a formula that works,” Bochicchio said. “From there, audit and organize all of your other video assets using your proven method, with adjustments for where the video sits in the funnel and video engagement.”
You’re already committing time and resources to making video. Lead scoring can help you get the best return on that investment. For help making videos that engage and convert your audience, contact the video marketing experts at IdeaRocket.
