What is buyer’s journey and how to leverage its different stages with videos?

Most of your customers do not buy your product the very first time they visit your website.

It is not how you would expect customers to behave, but it is true. The average gap between a Google search and a purchase can stretch to a few weeks. During that window, some prospects drop the idea of buying, some go for an alternative, and some never come back because they never intended to buy in the first place.

What about the people who stay in the journey because they genuinely want to buy? What do they go through, and what makes them convert?

In short, a prospect who ends up buying goes through a series of steps called the buyer's journey. Let's get into it in detail.

The buyer's journey is the process most prospective buyers follow to consider, evaluate, and purchase the product or service that best fits their needs. Some buyers make the final decision quickly; others take considerable time. Either way, a buyer goes through three stages:

Awareness: The buyer realises they have a problem and that solving it requires a product or service.

Consideration: In the quest to solve the problem, buyers consider and evaluate different options based on strengths and weaknesses.

Decision: The final stage, where the buyer clearly understands the problem, sees how a specific brand's product solves it, and is ready to spend money on it.

Video marketing is one of the most effective channels available right now, so leaving it out of your buyer's journey is a big miss. More than half of marketers agree that marketing videos help create brand awareness.

To talk about this in detail, we invited Karthik Subramanian, head of marketing at Picmaker. Karthik has close to two decades of experience and has worked with IT giants like Cognizant and Accenture. His interview series, "High on Stories", has been getting a lot of attention on LinkedIn.

There is an interesting story about how he transitioned into marketing. For that, we recommend watching the recorded webinar:

The rest of this blog covers the key points we discussed in the webinar, so you get a quick walkthrough of what to expect from the video.

A lot of marketers mix up the buyer's journey with the marketing funnel. They have similarities, but using them interchangeably causes problems.

The buyer's journey looks at the buying process from the buyer's point of view. You list all the activities your buyers perform and map the steps they follow before deciding to purchase.

The marketing funnel is the blueprint laid down by the marketer. With it, you look at the customer's journey from the brand's point of view, which helps you understand the process and frame your marketing strategy around it.

"Talk to your customers." Karthik Subramanian

That is genuinely it. There are no magic formulas or secret ingredients that deliver success overnight. Talking to your customers lets you reverse-engineer from customer behaviour to understand the journey.

A marketer can start the interaction with a prospect right from the start, the moment they reach out on chat or email to enquire about the product. You can also ramp up your understanding of customer behaviour by running surveys, and offering a small reward encourages customers to complete them. Simplicity is the key. Practical methods surface a lot of insight about the customer journey.

At every stage of the buyer's journey, the customer has different requirements. Aligning videos with these requirements makes them relevant. Getting your videos right is like holding the customer's hand and leading them to the destination. Examples of videos for each stage:

Awareness stage: The customer is only trying to learn about your brand. Pitching product features here is premature. A video showing your brand value, mission, vision, and the problem you solve works better at this stage.

Consideration stage: Here you can give customers a complete picture of your product. A customer at this stage is evaluating and learning, so a video that serves them everything they need makes their job easier.

Decision stage: If they have watched your first two videos, they are likely comparing your product with competitors. Prospects look for signals to score each option. A customer testimonial video is very effective here. Case study and success story videos also help establish trust and credibility over the competition.

Videos have evolved alongside marketing. There are many ways to create them, and each format has a different impact on customers. Once you understand which videos work at which stage, decide which format fits your business. This matters because video production costs money and resources, and a wrong call here puts pressure on the rest of your marketing. Here are the four most common types of marketing videos.

Real-time videos

These are not the most budget-friendly because production costs are high. Being real-time, there is no editing, so customers see raw footage. To get it right on the first attempt, every piece of equipment needs to be in the right place and factors like lighting need to be handled. Despite the expense, real-time videos can be very effective. The customer knows there is no filter involved and that what they are seeing is real.

Interview videos

In interview videos, you invite people to answer questions and share their thoughts on different subjects. These videos help establish brand credibility. You can invite prominent personalities (which requires budget) or lean on your own brand presence.

Animation videos

Animated videos have gained popularity over the years. With tools like Animaker, you can create them without spending a heavy budget on an agency. These DIY tools let you create animated videos to tell a story or explain a process. The light-hearted format makes them engaging to watch.

Screen recording videos

As companies leaned more on video for marketing reach, new production methods emerged. One that has spread fast is screen recording. Screen recording videos are used not only for marketing but also for sales follow-up, internal communication, and customer support. Screen and webcam recordings are finding their way into multiple business functions thanks to their easy, low-cost production.

Further read: How to Increase Feature Adoption with Explainer Videos

"Videos are just forms of content, so the weight should be on the content idea first and the format second." Karthik Subramanian

One of the best ways to blend videos into current marketing is creating more videos in a shorter format. Given short customer attention spans, simple 90-second videos often get the job done.

Once you have a video, think about repurposing the content. Repurposing lets you create more videos from the same source material without extra resources or much additional time. The long-to-short AI automatically turns one long-form video into multiple short clips formatted for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok, which is the fastest way to repurpose at scale.

Video consumption keeps climbing as people spend more time watching on mobile devices, and attention spans keep shortening. That combination rewards brands that produce a steady stream of relevant, well-targeted short videos.

Karthik shared a great message when we asked him about the future of video. We will use his quote to answer the question and summarise the blog:

"Keep producing as many videos as possible, and try to be more creative with your approach. Keep it short, keep it simple, and most importantly, keep your audience in mind. Personalise your videos for the different stages of your buyer's journey and ensure they answer the questions the buyer has at each stage. You will succeed."

If you are ready to put video at the centre of your buyer's journey, Vmaker covers the full pipeline. Record with the screen recorder, polish with the AI video editor, and turn long recordings into short clips for every stage of the funnel. Free plan, unlimited recordings, no watermark.

Recommended Reads

• How to Get Video Testimonials from Your Customers
• How to Deliver Customer Support over Videos
• How to Increase Feature Adoption with Explainer Videos
• The Role of Video in a B2B Marketing Strategy