Video is an ideal marketing tool throughout the SaaS customer journey, as SaaS sales can often require quick explanations of complex topics. Video will help you raise awareness and maintain brand loyalty, as well as announce product updates and share testimonials to inspire new business.

Here are 10 ways video can help sell SaaS…

These videos work brilliantly to outline your potential customers’ problems and offer solutions, and often have pride of place on the product homepage. Animation is really useful here to break down complex concepts, as well as being future-proof. For many SaaS companies, animation can also step in when the platforms are not fully built but they want to take the SaaS to market. Here’s one we made for YouSmartThing.

These ‘hero’ videos act as an introduction to your software – what it is all about, how it can help the customer and why they need it in their lives. In short, outline the benefits. They are similar to explainers but not animated and not necessarily on the homepage. In this example created for Anthropos Digital Care, the focus is on how their system helps older people stay in their homes for longer, and gives relatives peace of mind.

As the name suggests, the goal here is to interest the prospect enough by showing them key features, that will make a difference to them, so that they request a demo. Adding such videos to specific landing pages can really boost conversions. Feature videos can also be used to show existing customers on free or lower tier subscriptions, to encourage them to upgrade or purchase add-ons to the basic subscription they have.

Having these on social media can work well to improve your reach. Paid video ads need to be highly targeted, focus on solving pain points and aligned with different stages of the sales funnel.

These handy clips take the viewer on a walk-through of the software. Using them as a lead magnet – where the viewer must fill in a sign-up form to view the demo – brings extra marketing benefits. Why not ask staff to introduce the video to bring in a human element? And don’t forget to make sure short teaser videos to promote these demos.

These are ideal for staff onboarding and recruitment or showing customers how get the most out of your app or software via screen captures. Shorter videos that lie within a ‘training hub’ playlist are a great idea here. You can also educate on new features and add-ons, providing video content for regular product updates – an effective way to show continual customer engagement and that there is ongoing value to the SaaS subscription.

These are marketing winners when it comes to converting leads into customers. Check out our previous blog on how to turn your customers into your best sales people. These videos can talk about working with you or be more inspirational and show off ‘the story behind the makers’ as Shopify do, for example. Check out this testimonial video we made for SKUtrak.

You could promote future events via a ‘coming soon’ video, record speeches and seminars for those that couldn’t attend or want to recap, or grab vox pops for customer testimonials. In-person events are visually appealing and have the potential to show you are an industry leader.

Help cement your position as a leader in your field with these authoritative pieces to camera. Bring in collaborators and discuss key topics with a video series; providing instantly shareable content potentially reaching a wider network. Think about your events; keynote speaker presentations can be repurposed as thought leadership pieces.

Address the most common questions and concerns troubling your customers and prospects. Ask sales and customer services teams which issues they regularly encounter and create short, snappy videos with the answers.

You can create social media snippets from all of the above. Plus, blogs can be filmed as vlogs to help your YouTube channel grow. Encouraging shares and comments underneath videos is a great way to build a customer community within your brand.

Remember to also think about where you host your videos and what metrics you can use. Wistia or Vidyard provide advanced analytics to monitor who is watching, what they are watching and how much, along with lead capture tools and cards. If you’d like to know more about how to measure the success of your video marketing strategy, check out our blog.

Talk to us now about how we can help develop your video marketing strategy. Contact Martin on 01789 416990 or info@definitionmedia.co.uk.