How to Start Generating Leads with Video

If you’re already making videos for your business, and you’re looking for ways to generate more leads, read on. On second thought, if you’re even thinking about using video to grow your business, you should probably keep reading.

In our opinion, video is one of the most underutilized lead generation channels out there.

When we pulled data from the Wistia user base, we learned that less than 20% of our accounts are generating leads with their videos. Less than 20%!

This low percentage drives us crazy because we’ve seen firsthand the potential that video has for lead generation. So let’s explore how to up your lead gen game, using video.

How to use video for lead generation

There are two main ways you can use video to generate more leads for your business.

1. Add video to a landing page with a form.
2. Collect leads in the video player itself.

Both work, both are effective, and both will generate more leads for your business. Immediately. For this article, we’re going to focus on number 2 – collecting leads in the video player itself.

If you want to learn more about the impact of videos on landing pages, our friend Oli Gardner at Unbounce found that landing pages that contain a video convert at much higher rates than pages without videos.

Here’s the big secret: You can collect leads in your existing videos just by adding a form. That’s it.

For people getting started with using video for lead generation, you can honestly keep it this simple. Need leads? Add a form. At Wistia, we call this form Turnstile.

Choosing the right video

“I don’t know which videos to use … ” is the biggest concern we hear from customers/prospects about generating leads with video.

So, let’s talk about that.

Every video will have different goals. Some will be focused on educating, some on connecting, and some will be for converting. We have talked about how to apply lifecycle stages to your videos before, but the first step in identifying which videos to use is to categorize them by each step in the funnel.

For the highest quantity of leads: use your “awareness” or “top-of-funnel” videos. Those are typically informational or educational videos designed to appeal to a wide variety of audiences and use cases.

These videos might live on your blog or other educational areas of your website. One of our Library pieces, "Using Video Data for Better Sales Alignment," includes some videos of Salesforce’s Mathew Sweezey explaining how to use video data strategically. We placed a Turnstile 22 seconds into the second video, and it generates a high volume of leads for us every month.

For the highest quality of leads: use your “decision” or “bottom-of-funnel” videos. These are typically product or purchase related and designed to appeal to users deeper in the buying process.

These videos might live on your product or purchase pages. For example, take this explainer video about Wistia’s integration with Marketo. This video lives on a product page. It doesn’t get as many leads as the Mathew Sweezey video, but the leads we do get are much more qualified.

Where in the video should you place the form?

This is the second most common question we hear. The real answer is, it depends. It depends on the content of your video, its goals, and where it lives on your website.

With that in mind, we do know certain points in the video will have higher conversion rates. In fact, we analyzed thousands of Wistia user videos to see exactly which had the highest conversion rates, and why. Here’s what we found:

Those videos with a form 10–20% into the content typically convert best, and generate the most leads. Use this as a guide, not an instruction manual. You’ll want to test and iterate for yourself.

Start generating leads using videos today

At this point, you’ve got all the information you need to start experimenting with Turnstile in your videos, so what are you waiting for? Start generating some leads with your videos today! You’ll wish you started doing this months ago.

After you collect these leads, check out our Video Marketing Automation Guide. It’ll cover how to send the leads into your CRM software of choice for nurturing and lead scoring. If you’ve got a sales team, they’ll thank you.