Social media is a fickle mistress. One day, you can post content and get tons of likes and comments. The next day, your engagement is in the toilet.

You might already be familiar with this phenomenon if you’ve dabbled in social media marketing, but have you considered what it takes to turn an Instagram follower into a long-term customer? With video content marketing on social media, you can generate leads organically, and nurture them all the way through the sales process—without leaving the platform.

And with over 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook alone, there’s no better time than now to start using video for social media lead generation. So let’s jump right into the top tips for turning your followers into customers.

This post is a follow-up to a podcast interview we had with Kevin DuBose, which you can watch here and listen to here.

Businesses don’t need make viral videos.

Even if you’re not a huge brand with the budget to create the biggest and the best in terms of production value, you can still use video to generate leads. It’s not about making viral videos—it’s about creating quality content that engages your target audience and ultimately gets them to take action.

There are many factors that influence whether or not a video will go viral on social media: length, style, originality, and type of video. But while more views are certainly nice (and they do contribute to higher rankings in search engines, somewhat), they aren’t nearly as important as engagement. Engagement is what generates leads—if people share your video with others or leave comments on it telling you what they think, then they are more likely to reach out to you or entice others to reach out to you for work/sales.

It doesn’t matter if you’re small-scale or at a large corporation; it only matters what kind of viewer experience you offer. If viewers feel like their needs were met by watching your videos and feel compelled enough by them to share them with others then that’s all that matters.

When you should use long-form video versus short-form video.

It’s important to realize that the length of a video isn’t the only factor that determines whether or not it will work for your brand.

There are several different kinds of online videos you can create, each with their own unique audience and purpose.

For example, a short-form explainer video is great for sharing on Tik Tok, Reels, and Shorts to generate leads through brand awareness and accumulate views. It’s perfect for a quick sales-y new product video ad. You can even tap into something trendy as long as it’s high-quality and relevant content.

In contrast, long-form educational videos tend to be more effective for building trust by educating potential customers about your product or service. And these are best for YouTube channels, Facebook video, or your own video platform if you’re considering webinars and other how-to tutorials.

So which one should you use? The answer depends on what kind of brand you want to be: if you want to build relationships with potential clients while teaching them something new (like how to dropship), then long-form is probably best. But if you want to be trendy or demonstrate how an item works so they know exactly what they’re getting before purchasing it (like a $1K drone), then short form may be better suited for those purposes.

It’s also important to note that if you already have a video marketing strategy and you aren’t seeing the numbers you want, then it might be best to switch tactics. If you’ve got a ton of long-form content but no engagement, then chop it up and start posting short-form.

Contrarily, if you’ve got a ton of short videos with lots of likes and no leads, then move over to long-form because you’re probably focusing on trendiness rather than quality video content.

Both video types of video content can act as part of your digital marketing campaign strategy and guide new customers into your marketing funnel; capturing them with visuals, sending them to your landing page, through the payment process, and bam—conversion rates are up.

Stories can be used for testimonials, behind-the-scenes footage, and before-and-after shots.

Stories are an interesting marketing tool. It’s definitely not for long-form content, but it doesn’t quite fit into short-form either. These videos are in-the-moment; quick glimpses into your product, style, brand, etc. With them, you’re inviting the viewer in to see what’s going on around your brand.

Behind-the-Scenes Content

Behind-the-scenes brand videos are a great way to show potential customers how your product was made and how it works, as well as what goes on at the company. It shows the viewer how real you are as a brand, as a person/people, and that simple gesture can draw them in and convert them to life-long brand followers.

Before-and-After Shots

Before and after shots are a good way to give people an idea of exactly what you do for them and why they need you. This could be something like “before” photos of fitness goals before working out with you as a trainer and “after” photos featuring the results from your diet and exercise plan.

Customer Reviews

Testimonial videos are one of the most effective ways to get people interested in trying out a product or service—or even hiring your business. If someone has used one of your products or services and loved it, share their story so others know why they should trust their experience too.

One long-form video can make many short-form videos.

The beauty of video content is you can use the same recording in a thousand different ways. It takes some video editing skills, but you can transform a single 30-minute video into at least 30 clips that offer distinct points of value.

Let’s say you just finished an hour-long Facebook Live video session. Typically, content creators either ignore it completely or upload the full live streaming session as a YouTube video and call it a day. That’s not a good tactic; you’re missing out on seriously valuable content.

Instead, send it over to an editor, chop it up, get as many pieces of valuable clips as you can out of it, and start posting. Pieces can differ in length, say 15 seconds or 30 seconds or even a full minute. They can overlap with information, like maybe you post a 5-second clip to your Instagram Stories and later post a longer 30-second video with the same clip to your Reels. There’s tons of opportunity here.

Once you get a template set, it’s easy to edit your in-house content and publish across social media channels.

Repurposing is an easy way to expand on your existing content by creating more of it and providing different versions of your original message. When people see your brand, they’re more likely to remember how you were helpful than they would be if they just saw one piece of content from you at one point in time. Be consistent.

You need to start using a content calendar to plan ahead.

If you’re looking for a way to keep your content organized, it’s time to start using a content calendar.

A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan, coordinate, and manage all of your blog posts and social media updates in advance, including video. Scheduling your posts is a great way to monitor what information you share, where you share it, and even measure engagement metrics (as well as click-through rates, bounce rates, and video views) each piece receives.

Once you have a good schedule planned out, you can easily learn what works and what doesn’t between your brand and your viewers. This will help you focus on lead-generating social media videos instead of the other fluff.

It’s okay to repurpose and repost old video content.

The content calendar comes into play when you want to repurpose old content. Just because a video has been published doesn’t mean it’s useless to you now.

Use your calendar to see which videos performed exceptionally well 3 months ago or more, and repost it. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s also okay to plan out which clip is posted on a specific platform first, and then post the same clip on another platform. You have different audiences on each social media platform, so there’s probably not going to be much overlap.

You always have new audience members to reach, new followers to connect with. So reposting the same video on the same platform, yeah you’ll likely get followers that skip right over it, but you’ll also get a ton of new engagement from people who weren’t following you before or didn’t see it the first time. Don’t be afraid of being redundant, your content will be fresh even if you’ve seen it 10,000 times.

Secure Your Lead-Generating Video Marketing Cash Flow

Use a video content marketing strategy for lead generation now. Video is the future of online advertising, and with good reason. You’re not only making your brand more visible, but you’re also giving people a chance to get to know your company better.

Your last step in securing new leads is here: as a direct response marketer, your payment processor matters. You need a high-risk processor and a functional gateway to turn all those new leads into paying customers. But that can’t happen if you stick to using PayPal and Stripe. You need to make a change—fast.

Get in touch with DirectPayNet to open a high-risk merchant account so we can hook you up with the right payment processor for your business—one that won’t shut you down if you scale to fast.