Are you still watching?

Have you ever been victim to that shaming message that pops up after you’ve binged watched nearly an entire season of House of Cards?

Many of us have, and luckily we’re not alone. Humans love binge watching because our brains process video 60,000 times faster then text.

Video is entertaining, visual, and drastically underused to convert leads. Yet, having a video on your landing page can increase your conversion rate by 80%, according to EyeWideDigital.

Unsure of how to best use video to up conversion rates? Below are 6 full-proof ways to use video to convert leads.

#1: Insert a Lead Capture Form in the First 10-20% of Your Video

You might be shaking your head in doubt, thinking capturing leads directly in a video is impossible. Well, it isn’t!

Wistia offers a feature called Turnstile that allows you to insert a lead capture form anywhere in your video to either completely gate your video content or just make it optional for viewers to submit their emails to receive future content from your company.

Wistia did an analysis of over 15,000 videos with turnstiles, and found that turnstiles placed in the first 10-20% of the video have the highest conversion rates, ranging roughly from 38 – 43%!

So give your viewers a powerfully compelling introduction to leave them wanting more before asking for their emails, and you’ll see your lists growing faster and faster!

#2: Use a Custom Thumbnail with a Smiling Human Face

If you had the choice to view an image of clunky text or a human face, which would you chose? Naturally we all gravitate towards that goofy looking human smiling back at us. Well, most of us do anyhow…

“Smiles are almost internationally a symbol of friendliness and openness,” according to Wishpond. “They are also universally understood to improve the attractiveness of the subject – which we all know has a huge influence on sales.”

According to a 5-week A/B split test Wishpond ran of two individuals – one smiling and one not – the smiling image increased a software company’s profits by 10.7%.

Moral of the story, use a thumbnail image of a smiling human to increase the play and conversion rates of your videos!

#3: Make Your Video Short and Immediately Entertaining

Ever since I emerged myself into the online video industry, I’ve notice a recurring theme when analyzing my clients’ media files. Viewers lose interest over time. This wasn’t a mind-blowing finding to me, but it was also clear that many businesses are making their marketing videos WAY too long.

Just take a look at the 1-minute video below. People start off pretty engaged, even re-watching sections of the video (in red), but as time goes-on viewers begin to drop-off midway, ending with far fewer viewers than in the first half of the video.

Even more interesting, take a look at the graph below, which summarized millions of data points from 2009-2012:

This proves that yes, video length matters. The shorter, the better!

“You should strive to make your content as concise as possible to achieve the highest engagement,” says Wistia’s Ben Ruedlinger. “Consider front-loading your video with the most important information at the beginning.”

#4: Quickly Instill a Sense of Trust

Imagine you’ve been hit by a drunk driver who doesn’t want to take any fault for the incident. Yet you’ve suffered a laundry list of injuries, not to mention your car is totaled. You want justice, but you don’t have a lawyer or any affordable referrals to fall back on so you’ve found yourself on Google.

Browsing text on website after website isn’t giving you any idea of which direction to take until you find that video of the friendly lawyer with 20 years of experience, and a trusting and welcoming air about him. This sense of trust couldn’t be achieved just by persuasive copy on a landing page.

This technique isn’t just useful for the law industry. Remember, videos have been proven to increase conversion rates by 80%. Use video on your landing page to put a face to your business, help your leads trust you, and convert faster.

#5: Send Personalized Videos to Prospects

Another way to speed up the sales process and raise conversion rates is to send personalized videos to prospects over email. More often than not, salespeople spend half their day struggling to get leads on the phone. They answer one email, perhaps agree to a call, but then: radio silence.

How do you re-engage these leads that are mimicking the behavior of your flakiest friends?

Video, duh. There are tons of companies out there that have successfully adapted video email messages, like this one from a Bamboo HR sales representative below (click here to watch the video):

Not only does this create a more personalized and human sales experience, but it makes the lead feel like you actually care, in turn making it much more likely for them to be open to discussing your products or offerings with them.

And Bamboo HR is not the only company that’s had success with this strategy. Check out this post below from the Wistia community:

Using video voicemails led to 16% open rates and 17% CTR. Video is good for more then just binge-watching on the weekends. With these strategies, you can use video to actually grow your business.

#6: Leverage Video Viewership Knowledge with Marketing Automation

With the right tools it’s possible to build lists and score leads based off of video viewership data. Pretty cool, huh? A lot of marketers out there are spending their days emerged in Marketo, HubSpot, and other marketing automation platforms, and as they’re segmenting their audiences to send out targeted content and push leads down the marketing funnel, they’re also often ignoring a HUGE impact of the buying cycle: video.

Wouldn’t it be helpful to segment viewers based on those who have watched 75% - 100% of your video? Or to nudge viewers who have only watched 25% of your video to watch more? Or to up the score of a lead based on their viewership data? This is all possible if you’re hosting your videos with a platform that integrates with your marketing automation system.

Knowledge is power, especially in these situations. Don’t let your leads slip away by not knowing enough about them.