If you’re a business owner struggling to generate leads through word-of-mouth referrals, cold calling, or cold emailing with minimal results, this article is for you. In just one month, our business generated 140 quality leads using a video marketing system. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how we did it, why video marketing outperforms traditional cold outreach methods, and how you can replicate our success.
Why Video Marketing Outshines Traditional Outreach
Traditional outreach methods like attending networking events, relying on word-of-mouth referrals, and cold calling are often time-consuming and lack scalability. Let’s examine why these methods fall short and why video marketing is a superior alternative.
1. Networking Events: Limited Scalability
Attending events to network and convert attendees into leads is a common strategy. However, it’s inherently a one-to-one approach. You’re limited by the number of people you can physically meet at an event, and the process requires your presence, making it difficult to scale. For example, speaking at or attending an event may allow you to connect with a handful of prospects, but reaching thousands would require attending numerous events—an impractical solution for most business owners.
Verdict: Networking events get an “X” for scalability.
2. Word-of-Mouth Referrals: Unreliable Consistency
Word-of-mouth referrals are valuable because they come from trusted sources, but they’re not a reliable lead generation strategy, especially for new businesses. For referrals to work effectively, you need a large client base. If you’ve only worked with a few clients, you’re banking on those few to refer others, which isn’t sustainable. Even with a strong referral incentive, word-of-mouth leads are inconsistent—one month you may get several, the next, none. Scaling this method requires an established client base, which many startups lack.
Verdict: Word-of-mouth referrals also get an “X” for scalability.
3. Cold Calling: Time-Intensive and Inefficient
Cold calling is another one-to-one method that’s both time-consuming and emotionally taxing due to frequent rejections. While you could hire a team to make calls, most early-stage businesses don’t have the budget for this. As a business owner, your time is better spent on strategic tasks rather than making endless calls. Even with persistence, reaching a large audience through cold calling takes days or weeks, making it inefficient.
Verdict: Cold calling gets an “X” for scalability.
The Power of Video Marketing: One-to-Many Outreach
Unlike the one-to-one methods above, video marketing allows you to reach a large audience simultaneously, making it a one-to-many strategy. For example, with just £10 spent on Facebook video ads, you can potentially reach 2,000 people in a single day. Compare this to cold emailing, where reaching 2,000 people would require multiple mailboxes and list-building efforts, significantly increasing costs. Video marketing is not only more cost-effective but also faster and easier to scale than traditional outreach methods.
How We Generated 140 Quality Leads with Video Marketing
Our video marketing system is built on two key components: creating a high-converting video ad and targeting the right audience. Below, we outline the four-stage process for crafting an effective video ad and share our targeting strategy.
Crafting a High-Converting Video Ad
To generate leads, your video ad must resonate with your target audience and compel them to take action. We use a four-stage framework to achieve this:
- Call-Out: Immediately address your ideal audience to capture their attention. For example, in a campaign targeting charities struggling to secure funding, our opening line was: “Attracting funding for your charity doesn’t need to be hard.” This call-out ensures viewers know the video is relevant to them.
- Address Pain Points: Highlight the challenges your audience faces to build empathy and trust. In the charity campaign, we acknowledged the difficulty of attracting funding, resonating with viewers who experience this pain point.
- Present a Solution: Introduce your solution without diving into excessive detail. The goal is to pique curiosity and encourage viewers to engage further. For our charity campaign, we briefly mentioned using video marketing to help charities secure more funding, hinting at a viable solution.
- Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Direct viewers to take the next step, such as clicking the ad to provide their information. A strong CTA is critical to converting viewers into leads. Without it, even an engaging video may fail to drive action.
Targeting the Right Audience
A high-converting video is only effective if it reaches the right people. We used Facebook Ads Manager to target our audience precisely. Here’s how:
- Detailed Targeting: In the Facebook Ads Manager, we selected options like “charitable organization,” “charity shop,” and “charity navigator” to ensure our ad was shown to individuals interested in charities. Facebook’s targeting tools allow you to refine your audience based on interests, behaviors, and demographics.
- Manual Targeting: For this campaign, we opted for manual targeting rather than Facebook’s Advantage+ option, which relies on its algorithm to find the best audience. By carefully selecting our target audience, we ensured our ad reached decision-makers in charities, resulting in 140 quality leads in one month.
Why Video Marketing Wins
Video marketing’s one-to-many approach allows you to reach thousands of potential leads quickly and cost-effectively. Unlike cold calling, which requires hours of effort to contact a small number of prospects, or word-of-mouth referrals, which depend on an existing client base, video ads can scale effortlessly. With a well-crafted video and precise targeting, you can generate consistent, high-quality leads without the grind of traditional outreach.
Next Steps for Your Business
If you’re tired of relying on inconsistent word-of-mouth referrals, enduring the rejections of cold calling, or spending time at networking events with limited results, video marketing offers a game-changing solution. Start by creating a video ad using the four-stage framework outlined above and leverage platforms like Facebook Ads Manager to target your ideal audience.
For more insights, check out our follow-up guide on how we used retargeting to generate an additional 130 leads at three times less the cost of our original campaign. With video marketing, you can transform your lead generation strategy and grow your business efficiently.