Jul 14, 2020
Videographers, audio professionals, and content creators of all kinds rely on showcasing their talent to drive conversions.
Focusing your landing page around high-quality video content lets you show users exactly who you are, what you do, and how your service works in an engaging way.
In terms of raw data, you could see up to a 56% increase in conversions just by putting a video on your landing page. This one-two punch is one of the best-converting assets in digital marketing, and they are doubly useful for audiovisual content creators.
If you do it right, a great video landing page can guide users all the way from awareness to decision in a matter of minutes.
In this post, we’re going to cover five ways you can improve your video landing page to drive more conversions and land more clients.
What Makes a Video Landing Page Special?
It’s pretty clear that videos drive leads better than other kinds of content. 99% of marketers who used video in 2019 say they will continue investing in video content in 2020. That’s probably because video generates 66% more leads per year than other content types.
Putting a video on your landing page is just a common-sense extension of what makes video content so valuable in the first place: it's a quick, memorable way to break down a complex service in a simple, entertaining way.
When users get to your home page and see a compelling video thumbnail that promises to solve their problems or answer their questions, they click. The better you optimize that video content, the more likely you will gain a new customer every time someone watches.
This concept is especially important for content creators.
If you often find yourself answering the same questions or taking time to explain your processes to clients, you have a perfect opportunity to commit your response to video and address their concerns from the very start. In this way, landing page videos can act as a way to qualify leads who visit your site.
5 Things the Best Video Landing Pages Have in Common
Not all landing page videos immediately generate mountains of new leads. It’s not a magic bullet.
You need to optimize your video (and the page itself) for success. To help you do that, let’s cover some best practices being used by successful marketers and content creators today.
1. A Compelling Thumbnail Image
Your video thumbnail is the first thing people see when visiting your page. If your video doesn’t have a compelling image, that all-important click may not happen. And don’t fool yourself with autoplay: people can and will disable the feature.
Thumbnail images don’t have to be static images taken from the video itself. The best-performing thumbnails use personally relatable images to drive users towards the play button.
In fact, you may have already noticed a trend towards video thumbnail images that prominently display a human face. This approach is backed by psychology and has been shown to drive conversions better than video thumbnails that do not include a facial closeup.
2. A Front-and-Center Page Position
When optimizing your page, you want to put your best foot forward. In terms of web page assets, that means making your video the star of the show.
Putting your most engaging video above the fold of your landing page will lead to greater numbers of visitors who’ll end up clicking on it. If done right, your video will be the strongest lead magnet in your arsenal – make sure it is immediately accessible.
But beware; many marketers and content creators make the mistake of focusing entirely on that one above-the-banner video. There is no rule that says you only need one video per page.
Picking a good video hosting platform will ensure you can embed multiple videos without slowing down web page load times or overwhelming your users with unnecessary advertising.
Place your most important messaging above the fold, and then support your case with video content going all the way down to the bottom of the page. This can make your landing page into a mini-gallery showcasing your very best work.
3. Proportionate, Content-Appropriate Sizing
Just because your landing page video is the crown jewel of your landing page does not mean it has to overwhelm the space you dedicate to it. Large-format videos are great for some kinds of content, and completely over-the-top for others.
Bigger isn’t always better, especially if you are putting multiple videos on a single page. You want to make sure that the proportions between your videos are sensible and consistent.
Every video’s format, placement, and size makes implicit statements about the content it contains. If you have a huge, banner-sized video followed by a row of tiny cube-shaped video players, you are essentially telling viewers, “I have one important thing to say, and lots of less important things to say.
Everything on your landing page should be important. Qualifying your video placement, formatting, and sizing will help you deliver valuable information to viewers without distracting them from the main point.
4. A Combination of Content Types
Video is certainly the best content format you can invest in, but it cannot be the only one. Your landing page will need copy that reinforces key points and drives the main idea home to viewers.
Ideally, your landing page video should serve as the easiest and most accessible entry point for your product or service, but not the only one. If your video contains important items of information that every user should know, you will want to make these available in text form somewhere else on the page.
You can also put text and video together in a single piece of content. Animations frequently do this, because the depth of the visual experience is less overwhelming than it would be with professionally edited footage caught on camera.
5. The Right Message for the Individual Viewer
As a creative professional, your job is making content for individuals – not demographics, buyer personas, or marketing checklists. Optimizing your video landing page strategy might mean creating multiple pages that serve different roles for different website visitors.
This is a common feature of enterprise landing pages. A large company that offers a wide range of products and services will get the best results breaking down their offerings into smaller, easily-digestible chunks, each headed by their own video. This way, a single video can offer hyper-targeted, laser-focused guidance on what the company does for specific customers.
This is a great rule-of-thumb for product demo videos, but it applies just as well to tutorials, explainer animations, and demo reels. Fine-tuning your video content’s messaging also keeps you from running the video too long – you should try to keep it short and to-the-point in order to capitalize on quickly distracted website users.
Remember, Never Stop Testing
Optimization is a process, not a goal. There may never come a time when you can look at your video landing page and say you are done changing it. There will always be new ways to drive conversions, boost user engagement, and make your creative business that much more successful.
Commit some of your time to routine web page auditing and run frequent A/B tests on new ideas you get. (You'll need a solid content marketing platform to pull this off, but the investment is worth it.) It’s often the best way to get rid of that last obstacle standing between you and a higher conversion rate.
About the author:
A passionate video marketer, Oren is the CEO of Cincopa, a digital asset hosting and management solution. With in-depth analytics, powerful integrations, and unique video features, Cincopa enables users to untap their videos’ true potential.