Video and the sales funnel

Marketers are happiest at the top of the sales funnel where it is nice and wide, and there is lots of activity to keep everyone cozy. Moving their skills down the sales funnel to the land of where-the-rubber-meets-the-road is where they are most apt to find eager sales colleagues and even more eager CEOs and CFOs, beckoning them to show ROI. This is certainly evident in the use of digital video in marketing.

Late last year a Sharethrough study showed that 94.6% of marketers (you can round that up to 100%) use video to drive awareness. And why not? If someone watches a company’s video they must surely be more aware of the company than before they watched it, right? It’s hard to argue the opposite with all those eyeballs milling around at the top of the funnel.

Yet, as one moves down the funnel to things likes lead generation and customer acquisition things get a little murkier.

• one in five marketers can show a role of video in customer acquisition
• one in seven can show a role in generating sales leads

My betting is that, given the expense of high production value video, we are going to see one of two things: smaller budgets, or more activity nearer the bottom of the funnel.