As consumers brace for economic hardship, marketers have a much higher threshold to persuade shoppers to fulfill their carts and the Conversion phase of the marketing funnel is more important than ever. Shoppers are actually spending more time in this stage, weighing different options and doing extra research before buying.
In the Consideration phase, marketers must earn trust and inform audiences who are evaluating competitive brands.
To really win in the Consideration phase, you need to be able to understand the difference between influencers who educate versus those who solely entertain. Those who are able to educate will be able to supply honest review videos about your products.
Throughout this four-part series, we’ll explore all levels of the marketing funnel:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Loyalty
Now, let’s explore two unique strategies for nurturing Consideration on social video.
Objective: Form partnerships with influencers who have earned trust and built rapport with their audiences.
How to:
- Use measurements that indicate quality over quantity
- Learn to spot trust and community engagement
Signs of a leaky funnel:
- Creators have too much audience overlap so reach is not maximized
- Creators have too little audience overlap so there is no noticeable ‘buzz’ created on social media
Authenticity is trending
Just because someone has a lot of viewers, doesn’t mean they are trusted by their audiences.
Consider just recently when mega-beauty creator @Mikayla Nogueria triggered a massive #deinfluencing trend when TikTok sleuths suspected she applied false lashes during a paid video for L’Oréal mascara.
#Deinfluencing refers to a recent social video trend where creators tell audiences what beauty products they shouldn’t buy. Influencer @rawbeautykrisiti responded to the trend by saying “an influencer’s job is to maintain their credibility.”
For marketers, an influencer with no credibility is far less valuable than one who maintains trust. When audiences start to spend their hard-earned money on a product and they don’t get the same results they saw in a review, that’s when the trust between audience and influencer starts to crumble.
You can also spot those who are trusted by their audience with social video analytics. For example, measurements like watch time can indicate quality viewership.
Check out beauty creator and medical aesthetician, Cassandra Bankson who often shares her past struggles with acne. Her YouTube bio reads “I work to help educate & empower you to look past the labels & marketing schemes to make more informed decisions when it comes to skincare choices”.
When looking at Tubular Audience Ratings, we see metrics that indicate her audience truly trusts her opinion. In the month of February, her viewers each spent an average watch time of 27.1 minutes with her content. In the same period, watch time also averaged 11 minutes per video. These numbers tell us that her community of 3.1M monthly unique viewers genuinely values her opinions and detailed product reviews.
Influencers like Cassandra are great options for relevant brands looking to position themselves as both high-quality and trustworthy. Creators who consistently earn high watch time are more likely to create product review videos that will usher your consumers through the Consideration phase.
Objective: Identify influencers who are already driving web traffic to your owned site and relevant searches.
How to:
- Use influencers to drive traffic so you can educate on your owned sites
- Find influencers who have trained their audiences to follow calls to action and clickable links
Signs of a leaky funnel:
- You don’t see a natural increase in owned site traffic associated with partnerships
- Viewers are stuck in the Awareness phase but aren’t engaged during Consideration
Who is actually driving web traffic?
Some influencers are great at capturing attention, while others excel at getting their audience to take specific actions online.
With Tubular’s social video analytics, you can identify which creators are actually moving the needle in terms of website and search traffic. In the following example, we looked at influencers who are driving traffic for the athletic apparel brand, Alo Yoga.
When it comes to forming partnerships for a brand like Alo Yoga, one would think that major yoga and fitness creators are the best choice. While some of these creators are great at promoting Awareness and reaching Alo Yoga’s target demographic, they aren’t necessarily driving direct website traffic.
Using Tubular’s social video analytics, we identified an alternative option…lifestyle and athleisure blogger, Emma MacDonald.
In the last 6 months, visitors of www.aloyoga.com were 297.4x more likely to watch Emma MacDonald’s channel than the average social viewer. On her channel, she features hauls of the popular clothing brand Princess Polly, day-in-the-life videos, and more.
We found that Emma MacDonald’s audience is 343.7x more likely to search “Alo yoga” in a search engine.
343.7x is a huge number for this smaller creator, but how do mega-creators stack up? Let’s compare Emma’s numbers to a mega-yoga creator, Yoga With Adriene. Tubular Audience Ratings tells us that Emma won 1.1M views in February 2023 while Adriene had 58M. Initially, the obvious answer might be to partner with Adriene, and if Awareness was our goal, it would be. But even though Emma has a smaller audience, her viewers are 11x more likely to visit Alo’s website than Adriene’s.
You could spend big bucks on a mega-influencer partnership to target an audience that views but doesn’t often click. Or…you could strategically partner with a portfolio of smaller influencers who have audiences that are more likely to follow CTAs.
Marketers should use website and keyword search affinity to identify influencers who can help them drive Consideration of their brand. While the massive audiences of mega-creators can be tempting, these viewers are often less likely to click links and follow CTA’s.
Let’s review some of the key takeaways from Part 2 of our Social Video and the Marketing Funnel: Consideration.
Consideration KPI: Educate & earn trust
Strategies:
- Partner with influencers who are highly trusted
- Use measurements that indicate quality over quantity
- Learn to spot trust and community engagement
- Partner to drive traffic to your owned sites
- Identify influencers who have a track record of driving site traffic
- Find influencers who have trained their audiences to follow calls to action and clickable links
Thanks for following along with our four-part Educational Guide to marketing funnel success accompanied by real-world marketing examples.
If you missed part one of Awareness, you can find it here. All in all, we’ll explore all phases of the marketing funnel:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Loyalty
Next up, Conversion!
To unlock insights from all four stages today, download the full report here: Social Video Funnel Optimization: Your Educational Guide to Success.
If you’re interested in staying on the pulse of culture through social video’s single source of truth, it’s time to request a free demo of Tubular. Click below to unlock social in a whole new way.