Your Pipeline is Ready for Primetime: Using Videos as Part of Your Prospecting Plans

The revolution may not be televised, but adding videos to your prospecting plans may feel like a total transformation. If you are looking for new ways to boost your prospecting efforts, you may want to consider adding videos. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
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Back in early 2021, we noted that many clients loved getting financial information via YouTube.^[1] Now, a quick survey of the market will show that a good number of financial advisors have videos front and center on their home pages. Companies with national presence and local-focused groups alike have short videos embedded into their landing pages.^[2]
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Videos for products are now nearly ubiquitous, and for good reason. The statistics on sales of products favor videos in marketing. 8 out of 10 buyers have purchased a piece of software or app after having watched the brand’s video. 64% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos.  50.9% of B2B decision-makers use YouTube to research purchases.^[3]
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You may be doing a lot of your prospecting right. That includes asking your current clients for referrals and introductions. Asking for referrals should be both polite and personable. You can eliminate the possibility of being misconstrued in text by sending a video message asking for the referral. This could be as simple as recording a message about how your expertise helped a new client resolve a problem. You can position yourself as a problem solver, and request help finding others with problems to solve.
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You may already have a cache of videos to use for prospecting. You may already be producing monthly webinars as part of your prospecting plan. Or you might try videotaping your education sessions. Both of those sessions can be segmented into smaller clips. Those small, 3 to 5 minute clips can be used in emails to prospects. Short clips on relevant topics can be tagged or coded in a library, so that follow up emails can feel personal and relevant.
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You can also email clips to clients as an item of value so that they can refer to specific topics, especially case studies. You can go one step further and note to clients that those clips can be forwarded to colleagues at other companies. But make sure that the forwards follow an embedded link, so that you can track them. This allows you to identify where a new prospect might be, as well as who among your clients is forwarding information.
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On that same point, video clips can also be used to target specific prospects on pain points. You can mix the useful trick of finding prospective clients who are hiring for specific areas (like benefits management or record keeping) and targeting them. If one of your clips handles that specific issue you may want to use that clip as something to forward to them. By doing so, you can show yourself as an expert in the area, one who can problem solve a pain point.
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Videos can also provide a missing link in your marketing. While other businesses have amplified their testimonials as part of their word of mouth-like marketing, they can be particularly challenging in the financial advisory field. Instead, having videos of real-life clients could fill in that gap. This might include video that shows advisors listening to clients, with a voice over about some other aspect of your practice so that the clients words are not heard. This could also include video of a meeting at a specific, recognizable company without any other information being heard.
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Videos can also be used on other marketing areas, like social media. Content marketing helps identify you as an expert in your field. Generally, the idea is to focus more in delivering information to your potential clients on a pain point, rather than pitching a product or service. But there is a second point too in social media content – how you deliver it. In a video, you can also get across your approachableness. This could create a sense of trust with your potential clients.
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The next step in using video for your prospecting is to speak to your ideal customer. Stumped on how to determine that? You might look to who your top five clients are by profitability or by referrals. By finding the similarities between those clients, you can then create an ideal customer profile, and make each of your videos speak to that profile. Some experts also suggest thinking of the venue in which you interact with your top clients the most and using those as backdrops or locations for your videos. You might even think of what activities your top prospects engage in, like social events or groups, and making references to those activities in your videos. To be overly simple, if your top clients all golf, make sure to use a golf analogy in your video.
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You might also consider what your top clients look at on a regular basis and whether video is an appropriate format. For example, you might have clients who are highly active on LinkedIn. That platform works well with embedding brief, five minute videos into posts. It also works well with live events, which can be recorded and shared later. So too do Instagram and other social media platforms. But if your clients interact mostly through professional groups via social threads or Slack, you might consider how to best get the links to videos to your existing clients to share there. Finally make sure that all of these links and videos open and view properly on mobile devices.

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^[1] https://www.bcgbenefits.com/blog/should-you-youtube

^[2] https://www.captrust.com/locations/draper-ut

^[3] https://www.superoffice.com/blog/prospecting

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‍These articles are prepared for general purposes and are not intended to provide advice or encourage specific behavior. Before taking any action, Advisors and Plan Sponsors should consult with their compliance, finance and legal teams.