Going viral is every marketer’s dream, but there is a slim chance that you will achieve it. In fact, only about 15% of marketers experience viral success with their campaigns.

In short, virality is hard to create, manage, and it is even more difficult to predict. Like with many peaks and valleys in engagement, initial excitement over viral content often fades out as quickly as it has sparked.

The most important question regarding viral content for a marketer is: how many viewers of your viral ad will become customers?

Another reason to be apprehensive about virality is that a video, or any kind of content for that matter, might go viral for a different reason than you anticipated.

Nobody likes being the butt of the joke.

Two years ago, Mountain Dew’s Puppy Monkey Baby ad got a viral backlash because most people hated it for being weird and nonsensical. This is a good way to look your new video marketing campaign look and feel like a dud.

But now, let’s get back to our easy-to-follow video marketing steps. These are built around the visitor-to-customer conversion process, as you’ll see below:

1. BEFORE: Hook up With Customers

This is the most critical stage in the purchase process. ‘Before’ videos are videos that give prospective customers an introduction to the business. It’s here that you first interact with prospects–miss it and your whole marketing systems could break.

Videos from this phase have one purpose: communicating with potential future customers to build brand recognition. The ultimate objective is to build long-term customer loyalty by having content for each phase of visitor-to-customer conversion.

Here, the focus should be on videos that promote your brand and invite potential customers to learn more about the products/services you offer.

Read More: 7 Tips on How to Create High-quality, Engaging, Prime Video Content

Video content at this stage, aside from being high quality, engaging, and meaningful, will also have to make use of well-researched keywords and be SEO-optimized in order to reach your target audience.

“BEFORE video content” should impress visitors by visually highlighting the values of the brand and what it brings to the table without too much detail. Make it interesting, but don’t give away the farm just yet.

2. DURING: Cast Your “Video” Converting Nest

Now that your video content is driving traffic, the focus should be on producing high-value video content that speaks to the most popular questions new customers have about your product or service.

Videos should provide potential customers with all the information that help them make up their mind in the purchase decision-making process.

Try to answer questions that you get from 80% of your existing customers. It’s highly likely that potential customers also have these questions.

Read More: How to Make Your Content Stand Out

This is where your videos should go into detail about the range of your products/services, showcasing their value, and what clients who’ve tried them may have to say about them (like testimonial videos).

In this phase, videos can, and should, give prospects the urge to sign up, to commit, and to act. You can do this by referring them to a landing page designed to be highly engaging.

3. AFTER: Think Sustainability

Nothing is better than a returning customer. Except, of course, for a returning customer that brings referrals with him or her.

This stage comes after customers have already committed to purchasing your product or service at least one. Nevertheless, cultivating these customers even after a sale is crucial to your business’s long-term stability.

Taking the concept of sustainability and integrating it into your marketing strategy means building upon enthusiasm. As a possibly unforeseen benefit, your staff will enjoy working with satisfied, highly-engaged customers. This is all to ensure ongoing growth of the business.

Read More: How to Use Instagram Videos for Your Business

To put it simply, video content at this stage is produced and optimized with the intent of developing long-term customer loyalty.

Let your videos go beyond the pure commercial aspect, and show how your brand can bring a community together around the same interests and values.

A good way to do this is to film a “Meet the Staff” video, where you introduce your staff members and briefly explain why you value their skills. Your staff might argue that their on-screen skills are no good, but with a little encouragement, they might surprise you and them.

Videos should be produced to help build a lasting relationship with customers and give them the desire to come back regularly.

How does your video content fare within your overall marketing strategy? Are your videos segmented in a similar way as discussed, or feature any of the tactics above?