THE PENNY PARABLE.
It’s interesting how life often boils down to details. As a studio that primarily creates animated videos for marketing, it’s probably a bit taboo that we’re talking about this.
Video marketing is only a fraction of the customer’s journey.
Without the proper marketing infrastructure in place, you might unknowingly be bleeding money. The best way to explain this is with The Penny Parable.
The Concept
Imagine your business has a theoretical maximum amount of revenue it can generate in a year. This includes converting every single inquiry and maximizing every sale, while keeping costs at the absolute lowest, with zero waste. Sounds impossible right?
This imaginary number is your company’s perfect year, and I honestly believe it is impossible to obtain.
For some businesses, this may be $50,000 while others may be over $100 Million. The exact number does not matter, we only need the idea. With our hypothetical number in mind, let’s reduce it to a metaphor by visualizing that perfect year as a pile of 100 pennies.
100 pennies to represent our company’s maximum yearly potential.
Throughout the year, your business will face different challenges, or “Moments of Friction”. For every Moment of Friction you can identify, we’re going to remove a coin from your pile. After every Moment of Friction, the remaining coins represent the actual revenue your company produces in a year.
Moments of Friction
We face Moments of Friction throughout the year, and while I don’t think it’s possible to hit our full potential, it is possible to identify and reduce how frequently Moments of Friction pop up.
Sometimes, they are outside of your control. The economy was slower this year, and hard costs went up. You can’t control it, but it hurts your potential. Remove a penny.
Sometimes things just don’t line up. An inquiry comes through that’s not a good fit. Though it wasn’t a sale, it still cost resources to acquire and vet that lead. Remove a penny.
Sometimes things are within our control. but we have internal issues: missed inquiries, miscommunication, or lack of strategy. These moments often become the reason for lost pennies. And while we can't control the external factors, the internal ones are completely within our reach. Yet, we still need to remove a penny for each Moment of Friction. So how do we stop losing pennies?
Understanding The Customer Journey
We can't control everything, so it's important to fix what we can control. One way to identify Moments of Friction is by thinking through each step of the customer's journey. This is the process of moving customers through a pipeline having never heard of you to raving about you. Here's my favorite terminology of the journey:
Awareness: “I’ve never heard of this company before”
Perhaps the customer found you through organic searches, recommendations, or sponsored content.
Attraction: “I like this brand”
When a customer finds you, what keeps them? Your content quality, product relevance, or engaging videos?
Action: “I am ready to interact with them”
Is taking the next step easy for them? Whether buying, subscribing, or sharing, this is crucial for conversion.
Advocate: “I need to tell people about them”
The pinnacle. Happy customers don't just bring business; they bring more clientele.
With the Customer Journey mapped out, we can start to identify the areas where Moments of Friction can pop up.
Preventing Moments of Friction
Imagine you hired our studio, Hyperfocus Motion + Design, to create a 2-minute animated explainer video where we talk about the products your company offers.
We’ve found ways to maximize the budget by repurposing the illustration work for branding materials, static social posts, and breaking the full video into multiple 5-second micro videos.
One of these short videos is about a product you sell. Let’s say it’s spark plugs. With this new content, we can post 5-second video ads targeted toward car people looking for a cheap way to get better fuel economy and horsepower.
Yay! We’ve found a bonus piece of content that wasn’t originally considered in the marketing plan and expanded our potential reach.
So, where does that ad link direct to?
Thinking about your customer’s journey – This video about spark plugs stopped someone’s doom scrolling and intrigued them enough to follow the link. If that customer is sent your website’s homepage, remove a penny because this customer just experienced a Moment of Friction. Why? That customer had to decide if they were engaged enough in the topic to take action by searching for the information on your website.
If they land on a specific landing page where they can continue their journey, we can gently move them closer to taking an action that accomplishes our goals, which may be the purchase of a spark plug, or signing up for a newsletter. If you’ve had the foresight to provide the information that intrigued them, keep a penny.
Is this example basic? Yes - absolutely. But as we begin to map out the customer’s journey, we can start to identify how video marketing can be used to it’s fullest ROI potential.
How does this relate to Video Marketing?
With the key points of our customer journey mapped out, we can start to identify the areas where videos naturally make sense. Videos, especially motion graphics, are excellent tools for grabbing attention, educating, and motivating. When used with other marketing tools like email campaigns, content marketing, and social marketing, they become a powerhouse.
Here are just a few kinds of content that Hyperfocus Motion creates to help round out the customer’s journey.
Brand Storytelling: Convey your brand's mission using the emotional pull of moving visuals.
Social Media Ads: Tailor short, captivating videos for platforms like TikTok or Instagram.
Explainer Videos: Break down your product's functions or complex ideas engagingly.
Content for Retargeting Ads: Target previous visitors with promotions or reminders of viewed products.
Customer Testimonials: Showcase authentic feedback interspersed with product demonstrations.
Product Demos: Walk a customer through the features and educate potential buyers.
Infographics: Simplify complex procedures with the aid of graphics.
Bumpers: Quick 6-second snippets for platforms with fleeting attention spans, like YouTube.
End Slates: At a video's conclusion, guide viewers on what to do next—visit a site, watch another video, or follow on social media.
Branding consistency is paramount across all these video types.
With a sound strategy in place, video marketing can be transformative. I've witnessed its impact firsthand as the co-founder of Hyperfocus Motion + Design. It's not just about crafting a captivating video but also ensuring it complements your broader strategy.
Beyond Motion Graphics
In our “Have A Process” blog article, I briefly mentioned the advantages of animation and design over live-action video marketing. The beauty of animation, whether through 2D illustrations or refined 3D models, lies in its adaptability. Such content can effortlessly be repurposed and integrated across every touchpoint of the customer journey, from simple social media posts to grand tradeshow displays. Let's delve into several ways these animated assets can be strategically utilized:
Website Headers: Use the illustrated assets to create eye-catching headers for your website.
Email Campaigns: Incorporate illustrations or animated GIFs into your email marketing campaigns to improve your branding experience and make them more engaging to improve click-through rates.
Social Media Posts: 2D content and 3D models can be used as visual content for regular posts, like a retargeting campaign!
Profile and Cover Photos: Use stills or snippets of your animated content as profile photos or cover images on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter to enhance brand consistency.
Interactive Presentations: Whether it's for a sales pitch, a webinar, or an educational presentation, incorporating illustrated and animated elements can make your slides more captivating.
Trade Show Displays: From banners to table tops to handouts, bring your illustrated elements to your tradeshow display for an instantly recognizable brand. Use a loop of your animated content on screens or digital displays at trade shows to attract attendees to your booth.
QR Code Campaigns: Direct users to an animated video or interactive experience when they scan a QR code on your physical products or promotional materials.
Augmented Reality (AR): If you have 3D models, they can be incorporated into AR applications, allowing users to interact with them using their smartphones or AR glasses.
Out Of Home (OOH) Marketing: From billboards, to park benches, OOH marketing is a way to continue to reach your audience offline. Repurposing the motion assets as static imagery is a quick and easy way to connect with a local audience while keeping your brand top of mind.
Merchandise: Assets from animations or 3D models can be printed on merchandise such as T-shirts, mugs, and posters, providing a tangible connection to your brand.
…and this is just the tip of the iceberg
TO WRAP UP
Video marketing is undeniably a powerful tool in today's digital age. But like any tool, its efficacy depends on how it's used. By paying attention to the customer's journey and constantly refining the strategy, you can ensure you’re not just gathering views but also retaining those precious pennies,
And if you want to maximize your video marketing budget, Hyperfocus Motion can help.
