Our Secrets to Successful Videos

Welcome fellow business owner,

we are about to embark on a bit of a journey together, you might ask, what’s in it for you? Well this blog post will reward you with the knowledge of how to make videos that people will want to watch, videos that will optimize your marketing and of course the most important one videos that will make you money. And guess what’s in it for me. I get to talk about my favorite subject. I’ve studied videography for many years now and have created videos that have generated millions of dollars for companies.

Allow me to give you a quick overview of what we are about to go through:

• Why Videos, what makes them special?
• How much are you utilizing videos in your marketing?
• Why do videos work?
• Which kind of videos work well in marketing?
• Where to start with video?
• Pre Production: Key principles of planning videos
• Scripts & Storyboards
• Video Equipment
• How to prepare for the video shoot
• Clothing recommendations
• Implementation of Videos

Alright, alright, I get it. It looks like a lot. But just like anything in life, there are no short cuts to things worth doing. Stick with me and I promise you, your Business will grow as you implement what you learn.

Grab your goggles, we are about to dive in! Ready? Let’s go.

Why Videos? What makes them special?

Video is the fastest spreading media in the world. I want you to take a second to think about the last time you spent 24 hours without watching a video in some way or another. They are everywhere and everyone is watching them. Video is spreading so quickly because it is the most shareable across platforms, when you think about it you videos are really the most versatile media out there, allow me to demonstrate a point that might be obvious to you, but not to everyone:

• You can’t upload a photo to youtube
• You can’t upload your podcast’s audio file to instagram

You need to turn them into a video file in order for them to become shareable. That’s why video is spreading so quickly and its also the reason more and more businesses are embracing video production as normal part of doing business and advertising.

Well let’s talk about a bit of a sad fact, the average persons attention span is that of a goldfish, I’m not joking… and to be really precise a goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds, but we humans have adjusted so much due to so many stimulants demanding our attention that we now only give 3 seconds to see if we are interested in something or not. Those 3 seconds are precious and we need to get the most out of them. That’s why video is so important. You can communicate way more with video in a shorter time than with reading. We will get back to this one in a little bit.

Are you ready to get your mind blown? 82% of internet traffic is video based. To put that into none ‘lab coat language’ it means that out of every 5 minutes the average person spends on the internet they are spending 4 out of those 5 minutes consuming video… Yeah, crazy, right? I mean if that doesn’t wanna make us adjust and rethink our relationship with videos inside our marketing, then I don’t know what will. Videos are a crucial part of every marketing strategy. And after seeing this statistic you wont be able to go through the city without seeing how true this is. You will see people glued to their phones left and right consuming videos. You might even start thinking of yourself, wondering if you do that too.

This will come to no surprise to you now that you know how crucial videos are and it’s only logical but it’s still a point I want to make: Videos improve EVERY stage of the sales funnel. Every Marketing Key Performance Indicator can be improved by implementing videos. Let that sink in! Think about your current marketing, think about your Key Perfomance Indicators and think about which area of your marketing could be improved simply by implementing videos. Whatever just came to your mind, write it down and act on it. Make that video and implement it, you will see improvements in that area of your marketing.

Why Do Videos Work?

Allow me to introduce you to the 4 E’s.

Educational, Engaging, Emotional and Empathy

Educational

65% of people are visual learners and let’s be real, videos would be very helpful to these people. But of course you can package your video in a way that it mixes entertainment and education, with of course would help your audience to learn what ever it is you are trying to teach or convey. Many Businesses sit in industries that require a little bit of education before someone becomes a customer. In Marketing that is called a knowledge gap. That knowledge gap can bridged with videos, in fact it is the most effective way of doing so, because more can be communicated in the same amount of time. The average human mind can collect 17 times the information in a 60sec video than by reading for 60 sec. And of course that’s because its not just words that are being absorbed into the mind, we also have complementary images shown during the video, we got the body language of the presenter, and so on. Videos allow us to communicate more in a shorter time.

Engaging

We mortals humans are fascinated by a good video, they keep our attention. Think of the superbowl ads. They are still ads, yet millions of people look forward to them and will watch them all the way through with such excitement. No other media is as engaging as a well produced video, maybe a really good novel, but last I checked there aren’t that many novels out there that make people buy whatever it is you are offering. (But if you ever come across a good novel about plumbing, let me know). Videos are engaging because they address as many senses as possible, we can see them AND hear them. Text we can only see, Audio we can only hear.

Emotional

Do you know that scene from titanic where Rose and Jack are in the water and Rose gets on the door while Jack stays in the water. Millions have cried during this scene. How about in Lion King, when simba passes away. They now have even found out that dogs have an emotional response to that scene… I don’t know what made them test that, but hey, what don’t we do in the name of research. Anyway, think of your favorite movie, why do you like it so much?

I still remember the first time a movie hit me like a ton of bricks, the movie ‘The Theory of Everything’ which is about Stephen Hawkins life, made me smiling, laughing, scouling, cheering, andry, crying and in the end left me motivated. Videos have the ability to make people feel. There is a lot that goes into this particular area and I think an entire book could be written about that. But your probably asking yourself ‘so what? I’m not going to make a movie about my business for marketing’ and your right, you shouldn’t. But we can still convey emotions within our short corporate videos. And in order for people to buy your offer, you need to make them feel something at the very least they need to desire what you are offering. That emotion can quickly be instilled in people through the use of a successful marketing videos.

Empathy

Videos help us relate and connect on a human level. You might notice this about yourself or about your kids. We all have people we look up to or that we admire, some of them we never met in real life. Think of your favorite youtuber, celebritiy, coach, mentor or speakers. The crazy think about this is that you know quite a bit about this person and if you ever meet them in the streets you would be excited to see them. Well, they know nothing about you, but you know so much about them. That’s where videos are powerful, they can automate a human relationship. They allow us to connect and bond, without ever being in the same room.

That’s the 4 E’s of Video Success. Make use of them and your videos will see significant improvements.

Which kind of videos work well in marketing?

Every stage of the sales funnel benefits from video so lets go through the different stages and tell you which videos would be beneficial in which portion of your marketing strategy:

First of course we have Awareness: This is where we are trying to get our message our to new people, new eyeball and most importantly new potential customers.

Let’s divide the heavy hitters in this stage of your marketing strategy up based on which location you would use them at:

Social Media Videos:

• Facebook Reels
• Instagram Reels
• Youtube Shorts
• Tik Tok

Ad Videos:

• Promo Videos
• Testimonials
• Animations

Other Methods:

• Blog Post Videos
• Podcasts
• Youtube Videos

The next stage of the sales funnel is Interest, this is where we are trying to get these new people intrigued enough to check us out and see if they are interested in what we have to offer. At this point they have are at least aware of us and they usually have taken an action to get to know us, like clicking on your landing page or visiting your website.

Videos that help in this stage are:

• Brand Message Video
• About us video
• Product Walk-through Video
• Service Walk-through Video

These videos will help your potential customers understand your offering, your business and will help them see if they could benefit from what you do.

We gotta remember that not everyone is out customer, in fact we dont really want to sell to literally EVERYONE. We want to sell to our customer avatar and here is a shameless plug, (and I say shameless because I truly believe we outdone ourselves on this one) we made a FREE hands on training available to you guys with handbook and guided walk through that helps you develop a customer avatar so good your potential customer will think you are reading their mind) But again at the end of the day not everyone is in the market for what you are offering. In fact usually only 4% of possible buyers are at any given time ready to buy.

The above mentioned videos help you move potential customers into the next stage of your customer journey, which of course is consideration.

Once we have reached the stage of Consideration we are looking at the following videos to help us aid our potential customers to see how what we are offering is the right solution for them and help inspire a desire for what we have. The following videos can help in this stage of your video marketing strategy:

• Webinar
• Email Videos
• Deep Dive Videos
• Price Breakdown Videos

The biggest points we need to bring home in these videos are clarity and trust. They need to clearly understand what we are offering, how we are different, and how our service or product will improve their life. The other point is trust, humans have this odd tendency to only give their hard earned money to people/businesses they trust. If our videos can communicate those 2 points (clarity and trust) AND the person actually would benefit form our offering, then we should be able to inspire in them a desire for how their life would change if they bought our product or service.

Which would bring us to the Desire stage of our sales funnel. In your Video Marketing Strategy, this is where we want to turn the focus of the videos away from us and on to them. We want to show them how their lives will be better if they get our service or product. We want to show how other peoples (previous clients of yours) life have changed due to working with you.

The videos that will help with that are:

• Customer Journey Videos
  • Show the customers story, show how their life has changed since working with you
    • Allows the potential customer to put themselves in the story of the happy customer and start desiring the same improvements to life.
• Re-targeted Ad Videos that promote Lifestyle / Life change

These videos should be able to answer the question ‘what’s in it for me if I give this company my money’ When you can clearly communicate that in the language of your customer avatar you will help them see your service or product as the solution to their problems. The only question left is value, meaning is the price you are asking for justified in relationship to the severity of the problem you are promising to solve. This is where your potential customers will start to evaluate your offering.

Once someone has reached the Evaluation Stage of your Marketing Strategy, you have to help them make an educated decision, this is where honesty is hugely important. We want to show them that this purchase is the right fit for their problem and that afterwards they wont be experience that problem again.

Videos that help here are

• Process Videos, show then what your process looks like if they would choose to work with you (mainly important for service companies)
• Sales Team Videos (ask your sales team what common objections they keep having to help people overcome) those will make things easier on the sales team and increase the likelihood of closing the deal.
• What to expect / how to use your product
• Frequently Asked Questions

These videos are here to help people make the right decision and to ensure them that their problem will be gone once they have your offering.

That leaves us with the purchase stage, and as long as you don’t overcomplicate your payment process or agreement you should be just fine asking for payment from here. If you do however have a bit of a complicated way of doing business then it would be absolutely helpful to make a video walking someone through the process.

Alright, so far we have covered why videos are important and what kind of videos are helpful inside of our marketing strategy. Our next step is to understand how we are going to get started with videos.

Where do we start with video?

As with everything in life. Planning makes or breaks a video. You have probably heard of the pareto principle, also wildly known as the 20/80 Rule. 20% of efforts bring forth 80% of the results. For Video the 20% that bring forth 80% of the results is planning the actual video out.

And in order to be as helpful as we can be we came up with a Workbook that guides you through this planning process and gives you an outline to follow that we at XYZ Marketing use, we also recorded a walk through of this in order to give businesses an example so they can understand how to get the most out of the workbook and potentially even hand it of to their team.

You can access those free resources here:

DOWNLOAD: Video Planning Workbook

Access: Mission Protocol: Video Planning

We will briefly touch base on the planning side of things, if you want to dive in further make sure to get the Workbook and the Mission Protocol mentioned above.

First and fore most we need to understand which Platform this video will go on and how it will be used.

Platform examples:

• Youtube
• Facebook
• TikTok
• Vimeo
• etc.

Use-case examples:

• Email Campaigns
• Ads
• Include with Proposal
• Website
• etc.

Once we know the platform and the use-case we need to ask ourselves, who is going to watch this video and what are they wanting to see?

If you struggle with answering this question with precision I would recommend you check out our guide to building a bulletproof Customer Avatar that eliminates 90% of marketing questions. You can access that based on your preferred way of learning:

• Customer Avatar: Blog
• Customer Avatar: Mission Protocol
• Customer Avatar: Workbook

Our Next step will be to define a clear message. This is not where we want to start scripting. We want to outline and brainstorm, starting with a quick summary of the concept of the video, something like this:

💡 This video is suppose to help potential customers understand what makes us different compared to our competitors.

Allow me to cut this area a little short, simply due to the fact that I think a blog post is not the best media to walk someone through a project that has multiple steps, If you want to dive into this, we have our workbook and mission protocol that dive deeper into this area.

Here is a quick summary of the steps we go through in the early planning phases of a video:

• Outline what you want to say
• Fill in the outline using your brands personality, not quite a script yet.
• Think of something engaging every 15 seconds
• What’s the end goal of this video?
  • What emotion are people suppose to feel?
  • What was someone suppose to learn from this video?
  • What objection is someone suppose to overcome?
  • What call to action are you hoping someone will take after this video?
• What visuals will be included?
  • What will help someone understand better what you are saying
  • What visual element could you show in order to cause an emotion?
• What will be promoted durring this video?
  • Is there an offer?
    • How can we make this offer as clear as possible?
• What’s the key takeaway from the video?
  • Don’t try to cramp 7 different messages into one video.
    • Each message needs it’s own video
  • Someone needs to be able to say ‘this video helped me with BLABLABLA
    • You need to define what that blablabla is

This wraps up the early planning phases of your video. You now have something you can hand of to your team or a writer to develop a script and a story board. A script is what will verbally be communicate during the video. A story board is what you will visually be shown during the video. If you are the one thats managing this part as well allow me to share what framework we use for most of our videos.

Pre Production: Key principles of planning videos

Most Videos can follow the age old proven method of:

• Hook
• Story
• Offer

Picture the “hook” of your video as this amazing opener, like the beginning to an adventure. It’s that spark that catches your audience’s attention and has them thinking, “Wow, I’ve got to see the rest of this!” You’re not just making a video; you’re making a first impression that counts, and as you know, we don’t get second first impressions, meaning we need to make sure its a good one.

Dig into what excites your audience, what are they asking themselves, what problems do they experience?

Maybe it’s a quirky question that gets their gears turning, a surprising fact that makes them rethink their perspective, a bold statement that shakes things up or a visual that they didn’t expect on their feed. When brainstorming your hook, keep in mind your audience’s tastes, the heart of your video, and the vibe you want to set.

Remember, the hook is important. It’s your golden ticket to get your audience attention.

When it comes to story a lot of people start thinking of something that starts with ‘once upon a time…’ but thats not at all whats needed. A story can be as simple as chronological flow of a process you use on a regular base or a simple customer experience, what problem did they have, how they decided to work with you, what you did for them and how their life is now different. I know it can feel a bit overwhelming to come up with a story, especially if you are not the kinda guy that sits around the fire and tells stories for 3 hours straight.

Allow me to give you an example of a simple story and the video that goes along with it. Here is the video we did for Redline Roofing:

Let’s walk through the visuals together:

1. a family having a bbq
2. a rainstorm started,
3. family had to go in
4. discovered a leak in their kitchen.
5. Called Redline Roofing,
6. Guy in Roofing Equipment climbs on roof
7. visuals of roofs being fixed
8. showing multiple projects
9. Talking to customer
10. thumbs up from worker to manager who then tells the family its all done.
11. happy family as kids walk into a leak free house
12. epic shot of roofer on the roof as the offer is stated

That’s all there is to it. It’s just a chronological sequence of events. Nothing magical, no witchcraft and not even complicated.

Lastly you got your offer which should always be strong enough to make it feel irresistible. The offer is what sets you apart if you are in saturated market. Crafting a strong offer that makes people feel stupid saying no to is what at the end will make people take action. Marketing becomes a lot easier if you are trying to get people to buy something they want, compared to trying to convince people to buy.

Now it’s up to you to put all of that in words and into a story board. I would recoomend you follow this process:

1. Start with an outline
2. Fill in the outline and think of visuals that would support what you are saying.
3. Write transitions from one point to the next
4. Read through it, make edits
5. Remove as much as possible while maintaining the necessary structure and flow

Once you did that you should have a decent draft that you can then share with people in order to get some feedback. As you are asking people about their opinion remember to stay open to recommendations, resist the urge to defend what you did and don’t say things like ‘I did that because…’. Whenever you receive feedback, take it with appreciation, remember, you are not the customer avatar.

After collecting the feedback, go ahead and make changes, tweak things based on the feedback until you have locked in your script and story board.

Congratulations, you now have a script and story board. Look at you go.

Now we enter the phase of planning, we gotta consider a few things in this phase:

• Location
• Materials
• Camera Equipment
• Lighting
• Audio
• Rehearsing your lines
• Clothing

Location & Materials

Locations and Materials should be easy enough when looking at your story board. Where will this be filmed? What do we need to show?

Look at your story board and see how many locations you need. Define where each of those locations will be at, think of the sun if it’s outside, at what time could you film at each of those locations and how will that influence the shooting day?

What do we need to bring? Do we need a company vehicle? Do we need a Uniform?

Make a list of what to bring plan ahead to make sure to allow for delivery schedules in case you need to order something.

Camera Equipment

Camera Equipment, this is were I get a bit geeky, but at the same time I understand that I will loose 99.9% of people if go too deep into this topic (thanks mom for being the 0.1% that would continue reading, I love you). So I will try to make this as short as possible while keeping it actionable.

First, let me tell you that your iphone is an amazing tool and in the right hands can be used to create some stunning videos. You will never hear me say things like ‘you need a bigger camera for that’ or ‘phones are not cameras’. Phones are becoming more and more powerful and the beauty is that they fit in our pockets. If you don’t have the budget to get video equipment, just know that you already are in possession of a device with more computing power than Apollo 11 had, and guess what, if they can land on the moon, you can make a video with your phone.

For anyone interested in our Video Gear Recommendations please visit our Equipment breakdown here:

VIDEO GEAR RECOMMENDATIONS

Lighting:

Lighting set’s the tone, it affects how people feel when they watch. A poorly done lighting set up will make the video feel unprofessional, a well done lighting setup will give it the professional feeling. Your video’s performance will heavily be influenced by the lighting. Good lighting will give your viewers a level of trust that this is a real company, poor lighting will make viewers wonder if this is a real company or not.

Audio:

It’s often said that 50% of the viewing experience of videos is determined by the audio, and I agree with that. If I hear a horrible sounding video, I am out. Make sure your videos have good sounding audio. There is some really powerful tools out nowadays that use Artificial Intelligence to fix bad audio, thats where the magic and which-craft comes in.

Seeing the Key Principles of Pre Production in action

But just to show you that a you don’t have to have a huge budget of tens of thousands of dollars, here is one of my favorite low budget commercials:

Dollar Shave Club pulled this commercial of without having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on videos but they did hit all of the key components. And to be honest you could film this on your phone (I recommend cinematic mode for iphones), some budget lighting, and a budget microphone.

As you can see if the visuals and the audio is good enough, we focus on what’s happening in the video.

If you want to dive a little deeper into this topic check out this project by Wistia, they created 3 video ads for a company called soapbox with each of the videos having a different budget. The first video was filmed with a $1000 budget on an iPhone, the next ad was filmed with a $10,000 budget and professional equipment the last video had a $100,000 budget and was filmed by a full Hollywood crew. Personally I think the $10,000 ad is better than the $100,000 ad, but I will let you be the judge of that. Check it out here:

One, Ten, One Hundred – A Wistia Original Series

Rehearsing your Lines:

There is nothing worse than watching a video where you can tell someone is reading a teleprompter, emotionless, with eyes moving from left to right. Yeah nobody is going to watch that.

Just practice your lines. Yes you will look dorky in-front of a mirror talking to yourself, practicing your lines and body language. So What…. I rather look and feel dorky and have a video that makes me money than spend tons of resources on making a video that won’t work because I felt to cool to practice.

Don’t just get familiar with the words, find the part you need to emphasize, where you need to put more energy into or where you might need to get a little more quiet. Spend time with the script, go through it, mark the spots you need to place a slight pause, or where you need to lean forward.

The amount of time you spend preparing will tremendously impact the production time and the effectiveness of the video.

Clothing:

Let’s talk clothes for your business video. What you wear can really affect how people see your message. Picking the right outfit can make you look more trustworthy, professional and relatable. Choosing the wrong outfit will make you look unprofessional making people think you are operating your business out of the back of a van.

When it comes to what dresscode you should be wearing we always recommend to dress one step above what you average costumer wears:

• If your average customer wears tshirts, wear a polo
• If your average customer wears a polo, wear a button up shirt
• If your average customer wears a button up shirt, put on a sports coat
• If your average customer wears a sports coat, put on a suit.
• If your average customer wears a suit, also wear a suit.

Your clothes should show off your brand’s personality. They should match the vibe of your video and connect with your audience. So, pick smart and look awesome in your videos

My only warning is to stay away from really fine print patterns, cameras don’t like fine patterns.

Well, now you know EVERYTHING there is to making a good video. You could basically start working here. (You can apply by filling out our contact form) You are ready to get going, but if you would like to learn more or get some examples go to our recourse center and find the mini course on video or the mission protocol for a walk through of our video planning workbook. Enjoy!

P.S.

Making a Good video is only half the battle. Unless of course impressing your mom and your aunt is your only objective, then yes, just create the video and upload it to facebook.

But if we are actually wanting to use it inside of our business and have it become the asset we wanted it to be from the beginning, then we need to think a little more about how we are going to get viewers to the video.

Keep an eye out for our Blog Post, Mini Course and Mission Protocols on Video Implementation Strategies where we will dive deeper into the Implementation Strategy, how to get viewers to your video, analyzing if your video is actually doing good and how to trouble shoot a video thats not doing to well.

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Thanks,

Jonathan