Why personalised video is key to boosting your business

Video is a common facet of many modern marketing campaigns. But for many marketing professionals, it can often feel like an addendum rather than a focal point. Video views are easy to track — and can serve as a useful metric when you’re looking at the successes of a campaign — and there’s no question that they increase sales overall when they’re used effectively. But the direct impact viewing a video has on your customer’s actions? Well, that isn’t always as easy to trace. 

That’s where personalized videos are beginning to make their power known. They’re not only an effective way to attract customer attention and keep your brand top of mind. They’re easier to track in real-world terms too. Retail research from Infosys notes that 59% of shoppers report that personalization has a noticeable impact on their purchasing habits. Although you may not be selling in a retail environment directly, many of the lessons are still applicable — making the human connection is critical for making sales, and personalization is a key part of that process. 

The power to create personalized videos isn’t particularly new — various social media outlets and novelty websites have been utilizing it for years to mark occasions like anniversaries or the end of a year. But in 2020, the medium would begin to come into its own as a tool for sales. 

Digital fatigue emerged as a significant issue for salespeople, in no small part due to the increased amount of emails, instant messaging, and video calls that were occurring as many people found themselves in some form of lockdown. 2021 has brought more of the same, and arguably heightened the issue even more. Traditional cold calling and emails aren’t bringing the edge that’s necessary to land sales. 

Personalized videos for sales and prospecting showed promise, though. Prior research has already shown that personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50 percent, lift revenues by 5 to 15 percent, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10 to 30 percent. They’re tried and tested techniques from the world of direct selling, so why couldn’t they work in the world of video too? 

Given their power to connect directly with people in a time where a direct connection was lacking, it was soon evident that personalized videos could be an effective sales tool. Breaking through digital fatigue was suddenly within reach for many businesses.

One of the big barriers to creating personalized videos is that it’s both resource-intensive and time-consuming. And certainly, if you’re using live-action actors and on-set locations to make a video that’s individual to each of your clients, that’s true. 

But the good news is that it’s possible to work smarter rather than harder in these situations. That’s where tools like Elevate come in. Personalized video tools enable you to personalize particular sections of a pre-existing or custom-made video, allowing it to have a personal feel. It can cater directly to the viewer without feeling formulaic and prefabricated while not needing multiple videos to be created from scratch. 

It’s a far more cost-effective approach, as you’re not creating each new video from scratch. Then once the videos are complete, you’re able to use automation tools to distribute the videos to clients on your existing mailing list, while still invoking minimal cost and effort in the process. 

Perhaps most importantly, tools like Elevate don’t require specialized training to utilize. They help walk you through the process, and can also be accessed on multiple devices via an app so that you can use the device you’re most comfortable with to create and send your personalized videos.

One of the foremost advantages of investing in personalized videos for sales is that personalized content and CTAs are immediately going to attract more attention than their generic counterparts. It’s a long-time proven technique that has evolved from direct selling and is already commonplace in other forms of digital marketing, like emails. 

At a very base level, people like to feel individually addressed and special — utilizing personalized video is a very simple way to do that. Personalization is also heavily underutilized. Research from Econsultancy has also indicated that 38% of companies weren’t undertaking any form of personalization in their marketing. It’s a staggering figure, which gives an indication of just how easy it can be to stand out when you invest in the right personalized video content. 

It also helps to keep your business at the top of mind among your customer base. If you’re reaching out with content that’s easy to engage with, is more substantial than a simple email, and is personalized, that’s going to capture their attention far more effectively than the usual sales prop. Even if it doesn’t generate a sale immediately, it keeps your services at the forefront of your customer’s consciousness. 

Just as importantly, from an internal perspective, it’s a technique that can also scale your business effectively. Scaling your outreach is key; sales is a numbers game, so the more potential leads you have out there, the more likely you are to get a hit for responses or meetings.

This means that trying to create completely individualised videos isn’t a cost-effective or time-efficient way to further your business’ outreach. Would you be better off getting your sales reps to write a script from scratch for each client and then potentially spend hours on each one? Or would you be better off using Shootsta Elevate so that they can get back to what they do best — selling?

With a templated script, branding, cutaways and music, one video only takes 3 minutes to create with Elevate. It’s an attractive prospect for sales reps who want to stand out from the crowd, as well as for Heads of Sales who are looking for effective ways to scale up their sales outreach.

Looking to learn more about how you can use personalized videos for your business? Shootsta’s Elevate is an AI-powered app that uses fully-automated processes to create hundreds of personalized sales videos within minutes. With its power, you can create content that will connect with your clients in a whole new way!

Speak to the team today for a free consultation on how you can leverage personalized video to improve your cold outreach strategy — and see your response rate increase by up to four times your previous results.