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8 min
Videos are a great way to relay information to prospective and current customers. Global trends show year on year, the viewership of digital videos continues to increase. This trend displays the growing receptiveness to relaying information in this format. Re-formatting existing text tutorials into videos might be a time-efficient first step if you aim to grow user engagement within your applications.
This article will focus on engagement and adoption stemming from two sources. The first is the video’s content strategy itself. The second is the contextual and strategic use of that content. It begins with creating a viewer-first approach.
Segmentation is the process of looking at the main features of your audience that matter to your business. Then, separating them into personas. A persona is an artificial personality you assign to each segment. For example, this could start simply with two identities based on their place in the marketing funnel:
At this stage, you can target them with video tutorials that make sense based on that persona.
First, in analytics, identify the prospect who has watched the final introductory video in the free version of your app. Use this as a trigger to have them enter your cloud phone system for small business to start a sales call, seeking to begin the onboarding process.
Similarly, a customer who has watched the final tutorial in their current price tier might trigger a separate call. This aims to upsell them to additional features and benefits.
Free to use image from Unsplash
The analytics available to you will vary depending on the platform you use to host your app. However, suppose your app allows users to log in to a personal profile before usage. In that case, your analytics dashboard should be able to visualize your videos’ usage and interactivity stats on a user-by-user basis.
These users should be identifiable either as paid users or free users. These are your initial user segments. Here, you can view the performance of our video tutorials and make decisions accordingly.
You might see that free users submit many support requests around an inability to use a particular function of your app. This is an opportunity to create a video tutorial to answer the question in bulk. It will also answer future users’ questions, decreasing the support team’s workload and freeing up their time for other important tasks.
Likewise, if the customer segment generally views the first 3 minutes of a particular instructional video multiple times, this might raise two questions. Do people need help with this aspect of our offer? Or are people primarily interested in this portion of our offering? This is an opportunity to send a questionnaire to the customer segment as a part of an email marketing strategy to get the answer to this question.
If the answer is intriguing, then the opportunity to expand on this part of your product in the future becomes more viable as a potential path to increased profitability.
It might be due to needing to understand how to use a specific part of your app. This is an opportunity to provide another video tutorial to improve the user experience.
The recommendations above would be tests based on the findings. If they are well received, then the test was successful. If the stats show low interactivity with the new tutorial or product offer, further questionnaires might be deployed to get to the issue’s root.
Building on the analytics, triggers can be based on the users’ actions in your app that can begin, continue or end their place in their journey. The cues are the visuals you use to provide the message relevant to the trigger.
For example, let’s say a new prospect has clicked to download your app. This trigger can be used as a signpost to send that user an onboarding email. In it, you might include an introductory tutorial on what your app is, its main benefit, and a link to set them up on their new profile.
A click on this link in the email is the following trigger that might cue your automated marketing system to bring them to a landing page that welcomes first-time viewers with a tutorial viewed only on this occasion.
Using these examples, you can build upon this by sending reminders at a time that does not rush users who might have yet to open the initial email. Setting reminder emails after three days of an introductory email should improve the click-through rate.
Perhaps there are better places to contact them than email. If the second email is not opened, this might trigger a phone call after an additional two days to help answer any questions or address concerns.
As you can see, the context and activity around the video tutorials within the app are crucial. Using triggers to identify issues based on behavior before tutorials are watched and in-between tutorials is a great way to determine why engagement might be low. This is an opportunity to draw and engage them by addressing concerns. Then, this engagement can be heightened within the video tutorials through gamification.
Free to use image from Unsplash
Gamification uses a reward system to maintain and increase engagement. An introductory example would be to leverage your business’s phone services VoIP to use a voice-over on written instructions.
This makes the content more accessible to a wide range of users with specific needs and enhances the content’s ability to engage those individuals. However, video tutorials can take this further by incorporating gamification.
Rewards: Using a badging system for users to collect when they complete a video. Progress bars to display accomplishments are also great for feeling a sense of accomplishment.
Adding a social dynamic to the app that allows users to show their accomplishments to others is also a strong motivational element. These are all used in games that can be applied to reward users for engaging with your tutorials.
Challenge: As the complexity increases, so should the rewards. This can be as simple as providing higher-level badges as users progress. This is all building towards maintaining engagements. It is also building towards Product adoption for free users.
Balancing the Two: Making sure the challenge increases, video by video, via small enough increases to be achievable, is fundamental to help people feel a sense of progression while obtaining rewards to maintain that engagement. After prospects feel a sense of accomplishment and engagement, this emotional momentum can be leveraged to increase product adoption.
Here is an example:
This can be triggered with the completion of the final introductory tutorial, and a pop-up notification can then be sent via the app to reward their achievement with 10% off for a limited time.
The design of the video content itself, its steady increase in complexity, and entertaining content is only half the story when building engagement and sales. It won’t work unless you show the right video, to the right person, and at the right time.
This is where using analytics to segment and target your audience comes in. Using relevant videos via triggers and cues brings it all together. Combine content with content, and your engagement will grow through a mindset focused on testing and refinement.
