When people talk about lead generation with premium content, you probably think about ebooks and whitepapers.
Well, we are going to blow your mind by showing you how video can dramatically increase conversion and be a way better medium to use.
Video lets you craft a message create a personal connection and most importantly build trust So that the more that you engage, and teach your audience, the more trust you build. Lead capture is all about trust. You need to trust that when you give your email address to someone that you are going to get something valuable in return. And that’s why if you can increase trust you are to increase your conversion rate.
But getting an email address is just the beginning.
To have a real conversation you need people to actually open your email and read your blog posts.
And then you can have a shot at turning them into real customers. Video can help this way easier Let’s say you got an email from me Chris at Wistia.com tomorrow. 
Do you think you would be more or less likely to open the email? After watching this video
Well my guess would be that if you feel some kind of connection, you would probably be more likely to open that email
But if I had just been the photo on an ebook you might not.
Once you start thinking about video as a way to build trust it becomes much easier to focus on increasing trust.
So now let’s walk through some of the logistics on how to use video to increase lead conversion.
Build a landing page with your videos behind an email wall. People will have to submit their email to watch the video. This works if you have a substantial resource to give.
At Wistia we did this with our video marketing 101 series. It worked really well. The downside is that if people have not built up trust yet, then they might actually leave before they convert.
For our 101 series, We actually got a higher conversion rate than we ever had. On a landing page before. Just from advertising traffic alone, 11% of people signed up, which was great. But the best part was that they watched a lot of the videos.
To get conversion rates higher put a short ungated video
What this will do is build up the trust that the quality of the content is worth paying for with the email address. It is all about building trust so that people want to get more content from you
Here is where things get even more interesting. Instead of a landing page with a gate, you can add an email capture form directly to a video. At Wistia we call this turnstile. With turnstile, you can put a lead capture directly into the beginning of a video and treat it like a regular gate. You can also put it somewhere in the middle of your video.
Maybe you can give a quick intro and then ask for an email hooking the viewer and collecting their email before they watch on. Or put a turnstile at the end of your content treating it more like a call to action instead of a gateway.
This approach is a bit softer and gets the most amount of views of your video. Even if you don’t collect quite as many leads.
This flexibility is a huge advantage of using video for lead capture.
You can choose when and how you want to ask for an email address in a way that is impossible with e-books and whitepapers.
Decide if you want a hard gate or a soft call to action at the end of your video and of course experiment.
Take a long-term approach to building your leads. Making lots of videos will help you stay relevant, but it will also help you build a rapport over time. And it is that rapport that you build up that helps you build trust. Content production with video can easier than producing other forms of content.
See how Moz does this with their whiteboard Friday using only a whiteboard and a camera.