Customer loyalty is a fickle thing. Make a mistake, own up to it, apologize, and make it right, and you’ll have a customer for life.
But have a temporary outage on your site for no more than ten minutes, and you’ll have an angry mob with pitchforks outside your front door faster than you can say “overreaction.”
The truth is, you can’t please everyone all of the time. Some of your customers, at some point, will be irritated by something you do or say, and you’ll lose them for good. There’s no point getting stressed – it’s just the cost of doing business.
However, there are certain ways you can increase customer loyalty upfront before anyone’s annoyed (and we highly suggest you do that). One of our favorite methods just happens to be video.
After webinars, videos are the best method for developing customer relationships. There’s no marketing vehicle more effective for communicating who you are, what you stand for and what you have to offer your customers.
But that doesn’t mean you should throw any video on your website willy-nilly. Certain practices, if you follow them, will lead to more goodwill and fewer angry customers rapping at your door. Read on to discover just what they are.
1) Consider activating the “Mute on Start” option on sales page videos
It’s strange the things we choose to get worked up about.
Unemployment is on the rise? Hmm… that’s a shame, but my business is doing okay.
Some more cyclists got caught doping? Man, cycling is a boring sport.
A load of bankers got caught cheating the system for personal gain? Sucks, but what you gonna do?
This web page I just opened auto-play the video, filled the room with generic techno music and drowned out the Little Mix track I was listening to?
WE MUST RISE UP AND DESTROY!
Seriously, we’re going to find out which company this is and make a personal vow never to do business with them. Ever.
There are times when autoplay is helpful to conversions, but if you’re getting a high bounce rate it might be because you’re irritating people with the unexpected burst of audio. “Mute on Start” can fix the problem but you need to counter this by making the visual particularly arresting.
One method, often used to good effect on social media feeds where auto-play videos always begin muted, is to wave (or knock on the camera lens) and physically point at the bottom of the screen in the general direction of the volume control.
2) Embrace your mistakes and become more relatable
Once upon a time, a guy left the house to go to work. The driveway was icy, but it was only a few feet to his car and… oh, he’s going… all the way…
The epilogue to that video is that he became a celebrity for about 2 minutes and all of that collective laughter was channeled into, “Ah, isn’t this guy great, being able to laugh at himself.”
There’s something about self-deprecating humor that attracts us to people. Maybe it’s the implied humility. Or perhaps it’s just that, when we see someone acting like a human being, with noticeable flaws that they’re confident enough not to have to airbrush away, we find them more relatable.
So, the next time you’re editing a video, try leaving in some of the flubbed lines, pauses and word whiskers. Polished is good, but too polished looks fake. Leaving in the odd mistake makes you more human and will make you more likeable to your audience.
You could even go all the way and make an outtakes compilation. But if you’re thinking about pouring a bucket of water on your driveway on a cold night, just be aware that this kind of thing doesn’t always have a happy ending.
3) Embed an opt-in form in your video
Once you’ve impressed your viewers with your video, you can demonstrate your mad web skills by showing them an opt-in form, embedded directly into the video space.
No, it’s not magic, it’s just really great coding magic that Kartra offers.
*** In the interest of full disclosure, we’re not the only software firm to offer this feature. But it’s fairly unique so you might as well just use Kartra. Yes, we could just tell you the other firms we know of that offer this feature, but we’re helpful, not insane. And besides, Kartra offers this in tandem with all the other business tools you need. Embedding opt-in forms into your video links right into your Kartra video library, your Kartra email campaigns and your Kartra web pages! ***
There are lots of ways to use this feature but here are the two we recommend:
- After Video Ends: Towards the end of the video, offer the viewer a free gift and let them know that, to receive it, all they need to do is complete the form. The video ends, the form appears and your customer is awestruck. Perfect.
- To Unlock Remaining Video: Early in your video, promise to reveal an important strategy or tip, but advise the viewer that, to watch the remainder of the video, they need to opt-in. The video pauses, the form appears and your customer is awestruck. After completing the form, the rest of the video plays. You need to be a good video presenter to pull this one off, but if you can pitch this right, it’s highly effective. The key is to really tug at your viewers’ curiosity so they just HAVE to know what’s in the second part of the video.
In Conclusion:
If you haven’t created any videos yet and your knees are shaking just at the thought, head here for some great tips on creating a video sales letter. Once you’ve got a super awesome, interesting and worthy video, implement the strategies you just read above.
Your customers will thank you for being relatable and helpful…and they’ll love that you didn’t annoy them by auto-playing the same free song from Google they’ve heard 3000 other times. Win-Wins are always the best, aren’t they?
Great tips, thank you! You brought up some really good points that I had not thought about! Keep up the helpful articles! Cheers, Todd