If you’re looking to improve your customer retention, start with increasing your customer engagement. We’ve talked about it before: engagement makes up a huge piece of the retention puzzle. Engaged customers make purchases 90% more frequently, they spend 60% more transaction and they are 5X more likely to indicate that they would be exclusively loyal to a brand.
Think about it this way. If you had to pledge your loyalty to a particular friend, would you choose the friend you speak to regularly, who adds value to your life and with whom you have a strong relationship? Or would you choose the friend you haven’t spoken to in forever and really have no idea what they’re up to these days?
When it comes to building relationships, sharing information and providing resources, there’s really no better or more effective channel for brands than video marketing.
Here are 5 ways video marketing can improve your customer retention strategy and have you benefitting from a loyal customer base in no time…
1. Share Information People Actually Remember
You know what’s annoying? Sharing a whole bunch of information about new policies, services, products or other vital facets of your business, only to have your customers totally ignore it. On one hand, no one wants to spend their time reading a bunch of fine print. On the other hand, that fine print might be really, really important and the success of your customer relations strategy might depend on people actually hearing and remembering what you’re trying to tell them.
What’s a marketer to do? Turn to video, that’s what. And here’s why: 90% of the information humans take in is done visually and visual info is remembered 40% more reliably than text. When both audio and visual senses are stimulated, as is the case with video content, the rate of recall jumps to 68%. In fact, 80% of people recall a video ad they viewed in the past 30 days.
Plus, video’s an inviting medium. 4X as many customers would rather watch a video about a product or service than read text about the same thing. If you’re looking to make a lasting impression, do it visually and do it with video.
2. Build Brand Transparency
The great thing about having people engage with your content through video is that, besides the fact that they remember what you say, they grow to become actively informed about your products and services. And when customers feel like they’re being kept in the loop as changes and shifts occur, they’re more likely to think of your brand as being transparent and trustworthy.
3. Offer Self-Help that Actually Helps
I’d wager that nearly everyone has had a frustrating experience trying to find help within a company’s labyrinth of call centers and online forums. We’ve all grimaced after being asked to “please hold” and have wondered why it can’t be easier to just find quick, easy answers somewhere.
The last thing anyone wants to do is further disappoint a customer who is already likely unhappy – after all, they wouldn’t be looking for a solution unless they have a problem. In fact, 86% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer service.
Empower your customers by giving them better tools to help themselves. This means creating resources that are highly-visible, cross-channel, easy to understand and very visual. Videos that are strategically created to align with FAQs can correspond with written solutions so that someone has the option to also literally see how they can easily right what’s wrong.
Imaging building a piece of furniture, having the assembly manual in front of you and also being able to watch the building process in action. The same principle can be applied for situations where customers are asked to set up accounts, enroll in services, use a new feature or fully learn about a new product.
4. Put a Face on It
Think about the brand Geico and it’s very likely you immediately think of a gecko with an English accent. Though insurance and geckos have nothing in common, the Geico Gecko has managed to become the cute, cheery face of the auto insurance giant. What better way to warm people to a relatively cold industry than through a friendly mascot?
Progressive took the same effective path when they launched their sales agent mascot, Flo, who even has her own Twitter page where she shares cultural observations and exchanges bon mots with customers.
Creating a spokesperson opens the door for a deeper level of brand recognition, engagement, cohesion and familiarity. Whether you’re in a less flashy industry like insurance where it can be tough to engage customers, or you’re the coolest kid on the block (even Apple has put a face on their brand), video marketing strategies can benefit from featuring the same face or faces.
What’s more, when those video personalities appear over and over, especially at crucial junctures, customers begin to form a relationship with the brand via the personality.
5. Get Personal for Crucial Relationship Junctures
Let’s take what we talked about in the last point – putting a face on a brand to humanize it – and bring it a step further. What if that face could speak to customers personally? What if it could recall purchase histories, preferences and other individualized data points at scale to deliver 1:1 communication? And then what if you could deploy Personalized Videos during critical junctures in the customer-brand relationship? On-boarding would feel personal and simplified, transaction follow-ups would be relevant, up-selling and cross-selling would be individualized.
It’s not only possible, companies are already doing it. Barclays bank, for example, launched a Personalized Video marketing campaign that welcomed new clients and helped them feel comfortable navigating their recently opened account. Take a look at the video:
The campaign engaged customers and gave them confidence to interact with Barclays’ offered services, resulting in a 14% uplift in usage and activation across online banking, as well as an increase in text alerts and mobile banking enrollment.
Make personalized video a part of your video marketing strategy.
