Animated Slideshow Videos
Ever wanted to get a video online but are stretched by budget constraints?
These animated videos are becoming very popular as an engaging way to share content online.
Check out this sample we created to sell a property with a mix of custom video, a photo slideshow and some background music for effect…
Is there anything video CAN’T DO for business owners looking for more profit???
Over the weekend a friend of mine was asking me what kind of things he could do with video to boost his business online.
This is one of those questions where the answer could take a couple of hours to explain and I thought it was a great question to cover in a blog post. So here goes…
I don’t think there is much video can’t do to help business owners today become more profitable.
When you consider what video could do for your business, please look beyond the simplistic view of adding a video to your website with a simple sales message. Although this is a great investment and something I’d highly recommend, there are so many other ways you can use video online that most people seem to ignore or just forget.
My top five areas for ways video can help business owners become more profitable will be shared over the next few blog posts, but for this one I want to start with how video can help you in building and expanding your team.
This is number three in the series – stay tuned for the other four over the next week or so…
Top Five Ways Video Helps Businesses Become More Profitable.
# 3 Boost employee morale and drive recruitment
Yes it does seem like a weird choice as one of the top ways video can help businesses but I’ll argue this point to the death because I feel it is one of the most important, yet most commonly overlooked benefits of online video. So how can online video boost employee morale and recruitment, and why is this so often overlooked?
If you’re in business you’d have to agree that your team and your people are your most valuable assets. Motivating them, inspiring them and making them feel a sense of belonging and creating team loyalty is very important for any business owner. Attracting new team members also demands your constant attention and video provides a leveraged opportunity to speak to the masses, build your profile and build more attraction around your company for prospective new employees.
A great example of this is a recent online tv show we’ve launched at Myvids for the team at RE/MAX WA. Geoff Baldwin has video interviews with key performers in the team to showcase their performance and shares these videos through Facebook. By giving his team the opportunity to shine on video, it sets a great example for other people in RE/MAX WA and also gives the people in the interview something to share online with their friends. See the images below as an example of this in action…
What better way to say well done to someone kicking goals in your business than to interview them in a tv show format and put them up in lights for everyone else in the team to see? Not to mention making it easy for them to share this video online with their friends!
Larger organisations with over 1000 contractors and team players working all over Australia (or the world) could be using a similar strategy to make everyone feel more connected and appreciated through regular video content shared by the CEO. Imagine the impact a series of regular, professional and personal video emails would have to a team of this size that acknowledged key performers and told everyone about the direction of the company?
As a new contractor to a team like this you’d have little chance of meeting the CEO in your first week, but imagine if you were acknowledged personally with a warm welcome from the CEO in the video newsletter the first week you started?
The best part of all this is how much time video saves you in this process – it is all about leverage and by speaking to one (or more) cameras you can inspire, motivate and truly connect with every person in your company on a personal level without having to manage this on a one to one basis.
Even if you run a small business with less than 10 people, video is worth considering to build a stronger team through internal marketing, and also create attraction for new team members through more public video content like the example of RE/MAX WA.
Look out for my next blog post which will share another often overlooked way that video helps boost businesses – coming soon…
Frank Kern and Andy Jenkins have a new product launch formula
As you probably know I get very excited about the power of video and social media marketing and the opportunity it provides for businesses of all sizes.
Recently, you may have been exposed to the launch of Frank Kern’s List Control and also Andy Jenkins’ Video Boss products.
When I first saw the way Andy Jenkins was using video to launch his product I have to say I was very impressed. As far as I am concerned, the technique of content delivery, relationship building and online sales was groundbreaking and literally blew me away.
A few weeks later, Frank Kern pops up and emulates almost the same model to launch List Control.
If you haven’t seen these launches or are familiar with what I’m talking about, fortunately this post will explain it all for you.
So in a nutshell, this is the way they approached the launch of their products – you can expect to see many more people taking on this model because for so many reasons it has to be the most powerful marketing I’ve seen online in a while.
So they have a site setup with a video that gives away great content and advice. I’m talking really, really good value here – the type of thing you’d expect to pay for, and because it’s free, you feel compelled to share it around with your network.
The first video you watch from both of them is longer than most sales videos you see for sales pages, simply because it is jam packed with content. You can opt-in to get notified of when the next video comes out too which is pretty enticing because they have already demonstrated fantastic value upfront and you want more, so of course you sign up.
Another thing that you’ll notice is a dramatic demonstration of social proof. They allow people to comment on these videos. The power of this is immense because they manage to generate hundreds of live comments that are raw, genuine, and more powerful than a heap of video testimonials. These comments make you feel more comfortable with the content of the page and because most of the comments are people asking questions for more advice or simply fans sharing their gratitude for Andy or Frank sharing, it makes these guys look even more like heroes.
Shortly after that, they release the next video and this is when I noticed exactly what they were doing. The site design changes slightly and all of a sudden you can see four links in the menu. One goes to the first video, the next goes to the second video, and the third and fourth links say COMING SOON.
Do you see how clever this is?
They are building anticipation for you to come back and watch the third and fourth videos. So why is this so smart? Well, after a week or so you’ve potentially watched four videos that might add up to be an hour long. In this time you’ve not only become more familiar and comfortable with Andy and Frank, you’ve also learned a heap of great things for free and they’ve flaunted hundreds or thousands of comments to let you know (in case you had any doubts) that they really are the leaders in their fields.
The other good thing this does from an affiliate marketing point of view, is the way they allow their JV partners and themselves to email out to their list four or five times, rather than just once, to promote the product and the information to generate an audience and up to four or five times the traffic!
Throughout the length of the campaign where they release each video, they have built up a qualified audience, a very excited crowd of hot leads just waiting to get more and built the buzz around their content so everyone is starting to link to it and share it around.
At this point they flip the site into a sales page with a limited time offer and create a bucketload of sales.
Now just imagine for a second if they decided to release one page, with an hour of content and a sales pitch at the end, with an add to cart button, no comments and tried to get the same result. It just doesn’t compare.
I feel this is a very well oiled machine that combines the power of online video and social media very effectively, and I have no doubt that both of these guys generated hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe more than a million dollars in sales from this process.
So what can you expect next? I wouldn’t be surprised if they launched a new product on how they made it happen. A “Learn My Product Launch Boss Formula” type product. Wouldn’t surprise me at all.
What I thought was interesting is that in Frank Kern’s sales video currently live on the List Control site is that he actually uses almost exactly the same graphics as Andy Jenkins did in The Video Boss. Do you think these guys are working together?
I was very impressed when I could see the social engineering that went in to The Video Boss and was disappointed that I never got any screen shots of it, fortunately when Frank launched List Control, I made sure I had some screen shots of these pages before he flipped it into the standard sales page…
The above image is the first video page, when this launched originally, it had coming soon across the top for the next three videos.
How incredible is this for social proof? Frank got over 1700 comments!
I guess having a big list and a few JV partners helped with that…
Notice down in the side bar the video thumbnails for the other vids in the campaign. Before the last three were released these also said coming soon to help build anticipation.
I took this screengrab this morning – check out the header graphics in this video and how it matches with The Video Boss logo below…
I wonder how long it will be before List Control has a page like this up?
Shane Dawson the Youtube star – some good insights for video marketing
My good friend Mat Balek from VidiSEO shared this on his blog and I thought it was so good I’d share it with you on mine.
Some key points I think you should take away from this:
- Have a plan and a structure
- Be consistent
- Be patient
- It can and will pay off if you do this properly
I don’t expect you to start taking on this production yourself, that is unrealistic. The thing you should realise is that if some kid in the states can make an income through building an audience online, who says you can’t build an audience for your business online.
Why pay thousands of dollars on advertising, when a small investment once a week could build a stronger, more qualified and more relevant audience for you to promote your business in an engaging way that I guarantee very few (if any) of your competitors are using.
Online Marketing 2010: The year for online video
Yes. Everywhere you look people are making predictions for 2010 and reflecting on 2009.
Some people are reflecting on the 2000’s and predicting trends for the decade ahead. I thought rather than share my thoughts on how important video will be for online marketing this year, I’d share with you the thoughts of others…
More marketers will increasingly embrace online video advertising.
Geoff Ramsey, Emarketer.com
2010 will see a further increase of video used on websites forming part of their sales message. Anecdotal evidence shows that adding video to a website can significantly improve a website’s conversion rate, and in an environment where conversion rates effect the amount that advertisers can spend on online advertising, online videos will quickly take off.
Alex Cleanthous, WebProfits.com.au
Everyone wants to create a “viral” video. Sure, a viral video is a marketing weapon if you can do it, but the real benefit of video to marketers in 2010 is content
David Siteman Garland, blog.therisetothetop.com
Online video is a powerful tool in today’s marketing arsenal. With 2010 fast approaching, make sure your company has a clear video strategy in place that works alongside your online, social, paid media, PR, and other marketing strategies. Your customers want video, so give it to them!
Patrick Moran, Mashable.com (Dec 9, 2009)
30 second commercials just don’t work in the online video world, and 2010 is the year that brands realize that. Brands that don’t realize it will see lackluster video performance and either decide that online video doesn’t work for them, or go back to the drawing board.
Matt Balek, VidiSEO.com
Joe Pulizzi, blog.junta42.com
The following quotes were all found in Joe’s list of 100 Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions for 2010
With shoot-and-upload video getting easier and easier, everyone’s going to jump onto YouTube. The video rush of the last few years will look like a trickle. Ian Lurie
“More video, especially in B2B, as marketers realize that live video podcasts and other video formats are not difficult to do and can communicate a compelling message to help you get found by more prospects.” Mike Volpe from Hubspot.tv
“Online video will emerge as the most important tool for marketers in 2010.” David Meerman Scott
Here is a very handy slideshare presentation that also sheds some light on the importance of video in 2010…
Whether you realise it now and be someone who takes action on this early, or ignore this reality and decide to play catch up later on in the year, online video is now a critical and must have element for all businesses hoping to achieve greater results this year.
6 obvious benefits of online video most people ignore
I’ve been on the ‘start using online video’ bandwagon for over two years now and in the last 3 months have seen more momentum and buzz onthe topic than ever before.
Getting an effective sales video for your business is both affordable and very easy to do. Whether you try to do this yourself or employ the services of a professional video production company, this is something you should be investing your resources into sooner rather than later.
Why?
Well here are some of the obvious benefits I find most people seem to overlook, forget or just ignore. If you’ve had any hesitation about getting your business online with video, I hope this gives you the nudge you need to take some action and start reaping the benefits.
1. A picture says a thousand words…
So what could a video say about your business? More importantly, how many product features and benefits could you fit into a video on your website homepage?
Nothing can compete with the sheer power and efficiency of allowing your customers to press play and take in your sales message.
Most traditional websites have 5 to ten pages of text which could take five to ten minutes for someone to read. On video, all of this information can be conveyed within one minute.
And by the way, If you want to get scientific about it, video works with an average of 25 frames (pictures) per second, so one minute of video gives you around 15 billion words (60 seconds x 25 frames).
2. Video makes the most of the online marketing medium for increasing your sales
Everyone knows a salesperson that has ‘the gift of the gab’ and there are many wordsmiths out there that can work wonders with the sales copy on your website. How many do you know that never speak a word and give their prospects pages of text and expect to close sales this way?
Does your website use the online medium to it’s full potential?
How many television ads do you see that give you a screen of text to read?
It seems obvious but this is the way most people use their website. The Internet gives your website the potential to become your strongest and most consistent sales person in your team. An online video will be word perfect every time, will works 24 hours per day, is guaranteed to always deliver a slick and highly engaging presentation and to top it off – it doesn’t require a salary or a commission from the sales it generates!
3. Control over your message
As explained above, there are some wonderful wordsmiths out there that can create amazing sales copy for your website. The problem with sales copy that video overcomes is that you can’t control how people read your copy.
They might skip a paragraph, not completely understand the link between your words and the images on the page, or simply go to another page on your website before getting that golden bit of sales copy in the last paragraph.
With a short and punchy sales video, you can pack all the best bits of your sales pitch into one presentation. They press play and take it all in at once. Your sales script can address the most important parts of your sales message and communicate them in the order you want, along with moving images to enforce the message.
Video gives you full control over what sales message people take away from your website – and more importantly, tell people about your business and your offer so they are positioned to either contact you immediately, or do their research and read more info (or watch more videos) before they take that step.
4. Forever reaching new eyeballs
This is something more relevant to how you distribute your video content online, but in the context of using video with social media marketing, it is amazing how many people a video will reach.
Earlier this year I posted a video testimonial on my Facebook page. Within minutes I saw that several of my friends had reposted the video to their Facebook friends. That day my one video had reached thousands of people – most of which were people I have never met. There is no way this would have happened if I posted the testimonial as text.
This is just one example of how when you integrate your video within social media websites it can spread to reach a large network of people.
5. Increased conversion rates
It has been proven time and time again how powerful video is for increasing your conversion rates. It is common sense – people are more likely to contact you after watching a sales video in comparison to reading a page of sales copy with the same message. Why do you think that you hardly ever see sales pages these days without video?
Check out these stats here to get the facts on how powerful video is for increasing conversion rates.
6. Targeted exposure
Compare for a second the difference in putting a 30 second, screaming for attention, television commercial out to an audience of potentially hundreds of thousands of people to putting a 60 second, soft and yet persuasive sales video online to reach people on Google searching for your product. One could cost you tens of thousands , the other could arguably be setup for less than $100.
The other difference is you pay every time you want to promote a video on TV – on the Internet it can cost you nothing to get a video online and it can be there 24/7 for months or even years on end reaching a targeted audience.
Some other benefits to consider…
I want to cut this article short and leave my explanations at that, but here are a few other benefits to consider quickly:
- Personal video builds rapport and relationships with people you don’t know
- Customers love to press play, but very few enjoy reading sales copy
- Video makes your business more relevant to online customers (they almost expect it)
- Costs virtually nothing if you have your own equipment
- Video content is easier to generate in comparison to writing articles
- Video is more effective than any other medium to touch people’s emotions
- There will only be more and more video content online in the years ahead – you can still be ahead of your industry by investing time and resources into this now
- Video opens new destinations for your business online with video sharing sites
There are dozens of other benefits to list here. Maybe I should put them all in a short video rather than listing them here in text?
The conclusion I hope you can draw from this article is that there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be seriously considering, and taking real action now towards getting your business online with video.
Measuring ROI in Social Media Marketing
Do you have a strategy for adding some accountability to the way you market your business online using social media?
I find this topic very interesting because everyone has a different view on it. Some people say you can’t truly measure it, others measure everything down to how many people click on the links they share through social media.
Many people aren’t even aware of the tools available for increasing your accountability for social media marketing.
I thought it would be useful to share some useful tools you can use to measure the effectiveness of your social marketing and also ask the question – who cares?
It might be nice if you are tracking your social marketing to get a report that says you are getting on average, 73 people click on the links you share through Twitter that go back to your blog. It might also be reassuring to see that your video on Youtube has had 228 views in the last day, but do these stats really matter?
I just finished reading Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk a couple of weeks ago, and in one chapter he was talking about how many social networks should you join. There are dozens of them – hundreds of them, that you can setup an account in for free and build an audience with very quickly. His thoughts were you should join as many networks as you can – in the smaller ponds he said it is easier to be a bigger fish. Following on from this, Gary had a great line that touched on this issue of ROI and accountability.
His thoughts are that it doesn’t matter if you have only 6 people following you on Orkut, because one of these people might be the producer of a TV show looking for talent to interview on your topic.
I agree. There is the old line that numbers never lie, but I can tell you now they can be very deceiving.
Don’t be fooled by the numbers when you start trying to measure your ROI.
You never know who or what opportunity is hiding behind them. Measuring ROI is about more than tracking click throughs and website visitors – how can you actually track the business that is generated from your social media activity? Creating great value content and engaging with your audience on a deeper level is more important than knowing how many people watch your videos or follow your links.
If you are interested in tracking, measuring and analysing how effective your social marketing efforts are, here are a few tools that will be useful for you.
Marketing for 2010 – It’s time to rescue your frog!!
Business owners, marketers and advertisers around Australia are starting to realise that Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites are a double edged sword for marketing and promoting a business.
Whether you have decided to be proactive with social media marketing or not, the fact is your business is already involved. Why? Because your customers are involved, your employees are involved, your Mum might even be on Facebook!
There are REAL TIME conversations taking place online now that might mention your company, they might mention your products or better yet they might involve people talking about their desperate need for your product.
The reason I love the analogy of the frog as shown in the video is there are thousands of businesses, like frogs, sitting completely oblivious to what is happening around them in context of the latest online marketing trends.
Consider your online marketing strategy as your frog. He desperately needs a rescue operation to survive in 2010 – are you going to help him?
Don’t let the days, weeks and months pass without you taking any serious action towards helping your business survive this massive shift in marketing that is happening right now. It is time to rescue your frog!
Your online marketing strategy has never been more important and if you are only looking at your website and how you sit on Google you are missing a phenomenal opportunity in social media and online video marketing.
I guarantee most of your competitors have never considered using Facebook for marketing, and if they have they don’t have much of a chance to make it work unless they have a clear strategy and gameplan.
Yesterday I told a client to have a great Christmas because I won’t speak to them again until January. It is now November 6 and 2010 is just around the corner.
After working so many years in Perth helping business owners with marketing I see a huge danger for many business owners that suffer from do-it-later-itis.
Does this pattern sound familiar to you?
Christmas is coming up, we’ll look at this in January… We’ve just got back so we need a few weeks to look at it, lets do it February… Easter is around the corner and we don’t have time for this now… We’ve got the end of the financial year approaching, better look at it in July some time after school holidays…
Then you’ve got the Royal Show and before you know it you’re approaching Christmas again! I’ve heard people over and over again make the same excuses and miss opportunities to dramatically change their marketing situation.
If you are aware now that your online marketing needs attention, please don’t suffer like the frog. Rescue your marketing asap before it’s too late!
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cactusbones/537105931/
What is RSS? A must watch video from CommonCraft…
I just posted a video on my Facebook fan page about listening to your market and using RSS.
This video explains how RSS works and makes it very easy to understand.
If you can’t see the video above, click here to watch it now.
For more great and helpful videos in this style from Common Craft, check out their website here.
Youtube rolls out promoted videos in Australia [VIDEO]
Online video marketing will continue to become more and more important in the months and years ahead.
When I started helping business owners with video it was exciting to see videos from Youtube and other video sharing sites were appearing in the search results of Google. This started over 12 months ago and is still getting results for clients today. Achieving video exposure in search engine results is a great way to get premium exposure for your business to a targeted audience.
Something that you should also strive for when it comes to positioning your business in the search engines is to consider Youtube as a place to do this. Youtube is now the second largest search engine in the world!
Using the power of Youtube and the genius of Google Adwords, you can now promote your Youtube videos in ways that were not available before. This video explains the concept in around a minute and is more proof of how important online video is for advertisers today.
If you can’t see the video shown above, check it out here.