Video Marketing Playbook

1. Welcome To Video Marketing Playbook: Why is it important for businesses in 2023 to make marketing videos? Is it to increase our social media following? Statistically, videos cause an 87% increase in web traffic. Or maybe it's to grow your brand. After all, video is shown to increase brand awareness by 93% or to improve customer satisfaction. Since videos increase a potential customers understanding of a product or service by 94%. Well, the answer is none of those. We make videos to make money. Videos are a tool to drive sales, convert leads, and earn repeat business. But here's the thing. Half of all businesses aren't using video marketing. Half. And it's because of these three reasons. One, they don't have the time. Two. They don't know where to start. And three, They don't have the budget. We make marketing videos for a living. So we've heard all of these reasons and more. So we completely understand. We've seen businesses spend $10,000 on a video that only got 300 views. And entrepreneurs who got inspired filmed a bunch of videos and then got self conscious and never released them. When you experience failure like that, it's painful, and it's discouraging. It makes video marketing feel out of reach. Like, it's only achievable for giant corporations that can hire top ad agencies. Here to tell you, that's just not the case. We've worked with dozens of businesses to grow their brands and make the money through video marketing. And in this course, we're going to show you the simple recipes to make your videos make money. Anyone can use videos to make money, whether you're a solo entrepreneur or an established brand with 30 employees. But not just any old video is going to make you money. Your video has to be good, which does not mean expensive, cinematic, or gimmicky. A good video has a clear target audience, tells a valuable story, visually engages the viewer, and has a clear call to action. The truth is, though we found there's only two ways to get good at making videos. You can either make hundreds of videos and learn slowly over time, like we did back in the day, or you can learn from experts like us who can give you the simple recipe you need to make videos that make money. So, if there's a clear recipe for creating successful videos is believing that you don't have the time, knowledge, or budget worth passing up on an 86% boost in lead generation. Within the first two sections of the course, you'll realize that you have the budget. Making a good video doesn't require a big team or pricy camera equipment. All you need is a strong understanding of your target audience and their wants and needs. By two thirds of the way through the course, you'll realize you have the time. Filming videos won't be time intensive with our simplified workflows. And once you understand the basics of story structure, coming up with ideas and writing scripts will be far simpler. And by the end of the course, you'll have to know how to distribute your videos online and know they're getting in front of the right people. We'll share with you the secrets of how to create videos that serve your audience's psychological wants and needs. How to tell compelling stories visually and grab people's attention. How to grow sales by incorporating videos into your sales funnel and developing strong call to actions. How to craft videos that will dominate on your platform of choice. And how to provide extreme value to your audience so they actually enjoy your content. By the end of the course, you'll feel confident making videos that make money. Ready to make your videos make money? Sign up for the course today. 2. What Makes A Story?: Did you know the human brain is specifically wired to be attracted to good storytelling? It's an actual survival mechanism. Your brain wants to hear stories so that if you ever encounter the same situation as the character in the story, you'll know what to do. This started back when cavemen would tell stories around the campfire at night. Caveman A would tell a story about how they survived a saber tooth tiger attack. And the other cavemen would learn from the story, amplifying their chances of surviving a sabertooth tiger attack in the future. That's why stories are so powerful. So let's go over exactly what makes a story. The two most crucial elements of any story are your character and your story arch. Your character is the person your story will focus on, and by the end of the story, they will have undergone a significant change. They can have learned something, changed their viewpoint on the world, or become a better person in general. Your character is who your target audience will connect with and see themselves as in your video. A story arch is the basic structure of any story, and you start at point A and end at point B. The arc is the collection of events that cause changes to your main character along the way. In the caveman example, the caveman who survived the Saber Tooth Tiger attack is the character. The attack is the plot, and the change is what the caveman learned from his survival experience. So let's make this really easy. And imagine how a story works in a product commercial. Your character exists in a world without your product. They have a problem in their life. They haven't been able to solve. That's where our story starts. Now, your commercial introduces the product into their life. We've started down the arc. Something has happened to the character. The product then solves your character's problem, and your character has now changed. They're in a whole new world because of the product, and they are a different person. Because of the fact our brains are wired to learn from stories for survival, people are able to see themselves as the character in your commercial, which means they see themselves as the person using your product. Here are a few really simple examples. A woman with a dog is annoyed their apartment is covered in dog hair. Enter the Swiffer sweeper. And now, the woman can clean up all the dog hair, and she's no longer annoyed. What's the problem? Dog here. How'd she fix it? By buying the product she didn't know existed before. Example two. A man tries to sleep in a terrible motel room, but the bed creaks. The neighbors are fighting, and there's a cockroach that crawls over him. Then he downloads the AirBNB app and books a house instead. He goes inside the new place. And it's clean. He goes right to bed and sleeps soundly. What's the problem? Traditional motels suck in a bad quality. What's the solution? Clean, convenient AirBNBs that are easy and fast to book. Example three. Sometimes, you don't need to actually show them before. Consider fashion commercials. A beautiful man in a designer suit, the product, walks into a bar. Grabs a drink and smiles at the girl across the bar, and she smiles back. This tells an entire story about the suit giving him confidence in sex appeal without having a show him in a T shirt earlier saying bad pickup lines. Although, honestly, I'd watch that commercial. What's the problem? It's a universal problem. We all want to be attractive. What's the solution? Buy our clothes and gain confidence and look your best. These all satisfy our caveman brains. They might not be life or death situations, but the real life problems everyone faces. And at some point in our lives, these scenarios might feel like life and death to us. But after watching these commercials, we know how to solve all of these problems. Think back to when we were sourcing stories from our target audiences. If you wrote any down that you found, pull them out now. Do they fit the structure of a story that will excite people's cave ban brains? If not, go back out and try to source more until you find some. If they do fit the structure of a story, you now already have options for a video. T three. 3. The Different Types of Stories: In this video, we're going to give you some easy to follow blueprints for videos you can start making right away to promote your company. These are more traditional formats for marketing videos because we cover social media posts in a different section of the course. Specifically, we're going to be focusing on explainer videos about us videos, product videos, and commercials. We'll give you basic best practices for each of these classic genres of marketing videos. Alright, so let's start with explainer videos. Boy, the Tech Startup world loves their explainer videos. Let's break down the basic element of what makes an explainer video good. Explainer videos are all about breaking down new or harder to explain aspects of your business. That's why they are so popular with tech companies. Tech start ups are always trying to explain to people why they need this new service in their life that's never existed before. About a company like imperfect Foods. They sell bad looking vegetables. A consumer who just sees that part of the brand wouldn't get why they need to pay for that, when they can go to the store and get good looking veggies. But with an explainer video, imperfect foods can explain the environmental catastrophe that's happening with how many imperfect vegetables are being thrown out and not sold at grocery stores. Suddenly, the opportunity to do some good makes the value proposition for imperfect foods much better. So what makes an explainer video different is how slow an information dense they are. They follow different rules. An explainer video assumes that someone is already interested in learning about the product or service. And with this assumption, the filmmakers take more time to break everything down and worry about conveying information effectively rather than holding your attention. A lot of explainer videos are literally someone just looking at the camera and explaining their product. Sometimes the person is hilarious. Other times they're just a good speaker. Either way, they're as engaging as possible. Now, it's important to use as many visuals as possible to tell your story. Visuals plus the verbal explanation will make complex subjects easier to digest for viewers. Beyond this, it's just knowing your target audience and figuring out their main pain points. The main pitfalls to avoid is that it can be tempting to make your explainer video overly broad. Even though you have more time with an explainer video, it's still important to know your audience and be specific. Explainer videos are not good at grabbing people's attention. So unless you're putting some ad dollars behind it, don't expect it to go viral on the Internet, unless it's about a really popular topic at the moment. Let's talk about About US videos. About Us videos are great for your website. And About US video won't go viral and capture a bunch of new leads for you, but they are effective at engaging potential customers who found you through your existing marketing. The main point of any About US video should be to differentiate your brand from the competition through the quality and uniqueness of your product or service. You want someone who watches your video to understand why your brand is of value to them and why your brand better. If you only cover the basics of what you do when you're about us video, you're still better off than people who have no video at all. But you're missing out on a massive opportunity. These videos are where you can show and tell prospective customers that your product is handmade or that your ethical business practices are making your industry more sustainable, or how your product is so durable that people pass it down as family heirlooms. Basic structure of an about us video is, first of all, make sure your video is focused on the people behind the brand, not just the brand itself. People connect to stories with characters. So make sure you focus on the us part of about us. These videos can be slightly longer, about 90 to 120 seconds. People are specifically clicking on the video to learn something about you. So very quickly, show and explain to your audience what your company does. Just a super brief explanation so that people will immediately know what the video is about from the start. Think of these videos as a peek behind the curtain. Introduce the main people behind your product or service. People want to know who they're going into business with, and putting your face and personality to your brand is huge. Now, explain your value proposition. Why is your product or service better? For this part of the video, it's great to frame what makes your business better as something that's a direct result of your action. It's your craftsmanship. It's your design skills. It's your work with environmentalists. This doesn't mean you need to take all the credit for what your company does, but it's important to add this human aspect to an about us video. It's not the monolithic brand doing all the work. It's the people behind the brand. So next up, we're gonna chat about product videos. If you're selling a product, having a video is really important. But don't just make that video a bunch of pretty shots of your product. That's not much more worthwhile than just having a bunch of photos. It's really important to focus in on the value the product brings to your specific target audience with these. Visually convey the value very quickly. Get it in there in the first few seconds. It's totally okay to use text to hit home the value proposition, but don't be lazy and just use text. Use text and Visuals. Product videos make great paid commercials on digital platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. They are also fantastic to have on your own online store, shown on in store TVs next to your product display, shown on TVs at trade shows and put on your Amazon product page. Now we're gonna dive into commercials. For the sake of simplicity, we're calling a commercial what you classically think of on television. These are higher production value. You put some real money into it, hired some actors and a big crew, et cetera. The biggest mistakes that people make with these commercials are that they don't follow the basics that we teach in this course. Knowing your target audience, knowing the best practices for your distribution platform, and communicating value. A lot of people think they'll make a funny commercial, throw their logo on it, send it out into the world, and then everyone will buy their product. And then it doesn't happen. Video gets a few hundred views, and the marketing executives wonder why they spent all that money on this one video. The majority of small companies benefit way more from an explainer video or an about us video. They communicate more about you and your brand and feel more personal to the viewer. Commercials tend to tell a story of a mega corporation more than a small business. Alright, guys, we'll see you in the next video. 4. Setting Goals For Your Videos: Welcome to one of the most important videos within this course. Goal setting. Every video needs to have a goal. To determine what the goal of your video is, you need to know what you want your audience to do after they've watched the video. One quick way to identify your goal is to think about what stage of the sales funnel this video will be inserted into. If you're raising awareness, your target audience is at the beginning of the sales funnel. Meaning that your goal may be as simple as making people know your company's name or that your product exists. If you're further down the sales funnel, maybe you're at the evaluation stage. Your goal probably has to do with giving your viewer a deeper understanding of the product so that they feel comfortable making the purchase. There are two important factors when deciding on the goal of your video. Number one, every video should only have one goal. Having two or three goals will lead to a scattered video that is immensely less effective. Number two, keep your target audience in mind when writing out the goal. That way, instead of having the goal to simply raise awareness, your goal is instead to raise awareness within college campuses. Instead of boosting conversions by 10%, is to boost sales within your survival horror audience that specifically loves puzzle games. By having a specific goal in mind when creating videos, your videos will be more engaging and informative. As a quick exercise, write out a goal you have for each of your target audiences. Then see how those goals would impact the videos you're currently working on. 5. Demographics and Psychographics: Two descriptions of a person. Tell me which description you think is better when creating your target audience? Description number one? This person is white, male, 28-years-old, single, has no children, has a bachelor's degree, and an annual income of $150,000. Description number two. This person cares about people feeling safe and cared for. They prefer beer to wine. They think it's important for individuals to recycle, even if corporations are more at fault for pollution and waste, and they love camping out in their Subaru cross track. So, which description do you think is more helpful? Second one. Well, what if I were to tell you that these two descriptions are not the same person? In fact, the second description is a 17-year-old female named Ellie. Well, if you're a brewery, you just marketed to someone under age. Not great. The same is true if you take the first description. This white male hates rock music. I mean, go figure. So that new video you created with him in mind that features guns and roses is gonna be a big miss. Welcome to demographics and psychographics. If you aren't sure what either of those terms mean, that's all right. We're about to break them down. And once you know what they mean, they will help us create a cheat sheet for identifying your target audience. Let's start with demographics. Demographics are statistical data relating to a population or individual. Demographics are things like race, gender, age, marital status, number of children, occupation, annual income, and education level. Psychographics are a qualitative methodology used to describe consumers on psychological attributes. If your eyes just glossed over, hearing those incredibly boring words, you are not alone. In more simple terms, psychographics refer to a person's values. These are a person's guiding principles, things like being community focused, wanting a good deal, preferences, L liking sweet instead of sour, preferring to get somewhere fast or take the scenic view. L large amounts of food versus a filling amount of food. Opinions, cats versus dogs, city versus suburbs, hopes and dreams, wanting a house to start a family, new career, attitudes, prone to anger, excitable, humorous, interests, genres of music, sports, movies, and lifestyle. Travel obsessed, homebody socialite. Y understanding the demographics and psychographics of your target audience, you can really start to hone in on the voice and style of your videos. Before we break down how to use demographics and psychographics to create really clear videos that lead to high quality results, we want to speak to the biggest pitfall that we see when people begin using demographics. This is stereotyping. Marketing and digital marketing included is notorious for stereotyping people based on race and gender. One perfect example is the video game industry. Nowadays, nearly 42% of gamers are female. You wouldn't guess that if you watched ads from the early 2000s. But that doesn't mean race won't ever play into the demographical breakdown of your target audience. For decades, makeup was exclusionary towards women of color, and specifically black women. In 2012, Melissa Butler founded the lip bar, a makeup brand focused on widening makeup palettes to serve more skin tones. It would be a mistake for her to not address one of the makeup brands differentiators by creating ads that focus on how the makeup serves under served skin tones. So while demographics can prey on our biases, they can also be helpful in clarifying who we're talking to. Here's an important standard that will help you to avoid the pitfall of stereotyping. Don't assume, listen. Listen to what the data and your audience are telling you. So how do you use demographics and psychographics to really understand your target audience? Well, it's time to create an audience persona. Head to our next video to figure out how. 6. How Specific Should Your Target Audience Be?: Michael and I have noticed that the biggest obstacle digital marketers tend to struggle to overcome is specificity. In this video, I'm going to walk you through an exercise that demonstrates what we mean when we say you need to know specifically who your videos are talking to. We're going to use what we call the specificity funnel. This is going to help us get really specific about your target audience. You can download the funnel below to follow along, or you can fill it out after. Additionally, in this example, I'm going to pretend that I'm a video game maker, and I've created a horror video game. I personally like the horror genre, so I feel right at home. Now, this game will be marketed for the Nintendo switch and is a survival horror game called Surviving Alone on Island. Idaho, Catchy. Now that we're all on the same page, let's start off at the most general level. Everyone on the planet. Do you think your product is great for everyone in the world? Your target audience is way too general. For my first stage of the filter, I'm going to cut out anyone who doesn't play video games. Could I potentially entice someone who doesn't play video games into playing my game? Maybe, but the amount of money I would need to spend to convince that person to play just isn't worth it. Great. We've entered the first stage of our funnel, but this is a funnel, so we've got to keep filtering people out. To get more specific, let's imagine that I'm at a gaming convention. If I start approaching random people and offering my game, what are the chances they want to buy it? Probably not great. It's horror, and I'm not a well known brand. It's not likely that I have a high conversion rate. So rather than continuing to ask anyone who plays video games to try mine out. Let's get more specific. We know that my game only works on the Nintendo switch. Let's skip out on Xbox, PlayStation and PC and just head over to the Nintendo Booth. We're now going to spend our time talking to people who own and play a Nintendo switch. Second level of the funnel achieved. But let's get more specific. Now we're at the Nintendo Booth. How likely is it that we find people who will be interested in our game? It's certainly better, but I ask around and keep running into people who only play this Mario Mario party, Mario Galaxy, Mario Mario Mario. As I said earlier, our game is part of the horror genre, and doesn't include this guy named Mario. So even though I'm talking to people who own a Nintendo Switch, my filter still isn't specific enough. So let's just get rid of Nintendo Switch players who don't like horror games, and to make it even more specific. Let's get that fourth player out of the way. Sub genre. Now, we're not only speaking directly to horror enthusiasts, the gamers who specifically like survival horror games, and that feels a whole lot more specific. Now, this stage, you might think that we've really locked in our audience. But the fifth stage of the funnel is where things get really excited. Here's why. At this point, we can begin identifying our separate target audiences. When talking with survival horror enthusiast, we may meet people who love resource management or puzzle solving, or the horror elements. Understanding that even at this level of specificity, we can dig deeper, empowers us to craft videos that speak individually to different target audiences, honing in on their unique values and experiences. At this level, about five layers I would argue you have really gotten specific. In my example, I know that my audience plays video games that they play on a Nintendo switch. They like horror video games, a specifically survival horror games, and not only that. I know the elements of survival horror that different segments of my audience are drawn to. So this is an example of how to fill out a specificity funnel to make sure your target audiences are specific enough. The actual stages of the funnel are definitely going to be unique to your industry, product, and service. But the important part is taking the time to dig deeper into who you are talking to, separating your audience from everyone else in the world. At this point, you might be wondering I missing out on people because I'm being this specific? The truth is is that you're missing out on people by not being this specific. You're missing out on your evangelists, your mega fans, the ones who will spread the word on your product or service. By targeting the people who are most likely to love your product, you'll see your marketing succeed. You'll get more referrals, better reviews, and more sales. 7. What is a Call To Action?: Every video needs a call to action. We would argue that if you don't have a call to action within a video, there is no way for it to be successful. So what the heck is a call to action, and why is it so important? Well, a call to action is a direction to your customer, telling them what they should do next. A classic example is 877. 877. 877 It's your money. Use it when you need it. Call to actions are there to tell your audience exactly how they can move through your sales funnel. With the cash now ad, they are raising interests that you will call for more information. Also, it's a scam. Don't do it. Here are ten examples of call to actions, so you can get familiar with the most common. Give me a call today. Click the link below. Fill out this form for a free estimate. Come into your local dealership today. Put your e mail for exclusive deals. Head over to our Patrion for exclusive content. Bye now. Download now. Reserve your place in line. Like subscribe or comment below. Now you know what call to actions are. But why are they important? Call to actions are important because they tell your customers what to do next. Without you telling them to e mail and give you a call, fill out a form, L can subscribe, They won't do it. Because they won't know they should do it. One way to quickly identify what call to action you should use for your video is by looking at your overall goal for the video. If your goal is to raise awareness, tell your audience to click a link to learn more. If your goal is to convert more users who know you exist, but haven't pulled the trigger, tell them to download now. By now or click the link for a discount. As we discussed previously, every video needs to have a concise goal. So make sure your call to action is driving customers towards completing your videos goal. So take action today. Commit to always having a call to action within your videos. Your ROI will thank you. 333. 8. Backgrounds and Wardrobes: We all know that what you wear says something about yourself. But the background or setting of your videos tells the audience just as much about you as what you're wearing. So right now, I'm missing a huge opportunity by standing on a black background. Ooh. That's better. This scene is all about how to tell your story with wardrobe and backgrounds. Wire background is important. Every part of your frame tells a story and builds the character of who you are to your audience. My outfit and my background are telling a story about who I am to you, my viewer. Let's start off with a quick example. My dad has played guitar his whole life. And recently, he started trying to up his skills. So we looked up guitar lessons on YouTube. While on the platform, he found a few different YouTubers making guitar tutorials. He started off watching all of them, but pretty soon he had abandoned all of them but one. He'd found the tuber, who, in his opinion, was the most professional guitar player. When I asked my dad why he thought this tuber was so much more professional, he immediately talked about the man's background for his videos. It was filled with beautiful, classic guitars and amplifiers. Background communicated something very important that my dad was looking for. I am a professional guitar player with lots of experience. So what does your background communicate? It's important to always consider your target audience when deciding what to wear or what to have a is your background or setting. Different visuals mean different things to different audiences. So you need to look at your wardrobe and background through the eyes of your target audience. Let's start with backgrounds. Complete. Choose to be somewhere that tells the story. If you own a coffee company and you were talking about the process of roasting coffee beans. Don't make that video in your office. Make that video with the coffee roaster right next to you. That way, when coffee lovers are scrolling through Instagram and they see you standing next to your big, fancy roaster, they immediately stop and know what's going on without having to hear a single word. Think about ways that you can communicate who you are through your background. This is especially useful if you're putting together a background for a podcast or talking head video. We can look at our background as an example. So we have camera equipment back there. You can see the lenses right there. We've got our drone up here. These are all there to show that we are professional filmmakers. So that way, when we talk about the filmmaking process, you can trust that we know what we're talking about. And then we also have a lot of books. Now, our books are specifically on business and storytelling. You can see growth hacking right here for marketing, the lean start up. We've got Story and Joseph Campbell's, the hero's journey, all quintessential texts. It comes to the storytelling and marketing process. That way you know that we've done our research and that we know what we're talking about. We're using our background to tell you who we are. So now we're going to talk about wardrobe. Just like your background, your wardrobe communicates something about you. It's really easy to get stuck in the trap of just wearing business casual clothes and filming a video. But that's such a missed opportunity. You have a chance with your wardrobe to connect with your audience without having to say a word. So let's look at this in action. I'm going to list off some adjectives. What I want you to do is write down what wardrobe items would communicate this adjective to your target audience. As a quick example, if I say scientific, maybe you think of a lab coat or tweed jacket or some science goggles. The important part is thinking about how your target audience will interpret the outfit. Alright, let's start. The first adjective is success. Maybe you think about suits and fine dresses, jewelry, designer accessories like sunglasses and handbags. Maybe you don't think of any of those. Maybe it's something completely different for your target audience. Just take a moment and write those down. Alright, we're gonna go on to the next one. Now let's think about professionalism. Maybe that's a button up shirt or bus. So dress shoes. Maybe you're really fancy, you go with tie or cus. Just go ahead and write those down. Now, let's think about Tech. Ooh. Maybe that's some chinos, business casual shirt, hoodie. Or, you know, if you're really, really into tech, it's that Steve Jobs black turtleneck. Okay, I'll give you a second.Go ahead and write it down. I'm gonna fix my hair. I'm sure what your audience would think of for those adjectives is a lot different than what we said. If you struggle to come up with clothing for those adjectives, it just means that you got to do a little bit more research. Go check out what kind of clothing your target audience is responding to. I promise it'll pay off in the end. Remember this exercise, because in the workshop for this video, we're going to be having you think of adjectives that describe your target audience and wardrobes that match those adjectives. Now, though, let's move on to a fun little experiment. To my right, you'll see a short script. We're going to use this script to create three different looking videos. All we're going to change is the background in wardrobe. But pay attention to just how much the overall vibe changes. Let's take a look. Are losing out on millions of dollars if you're using a normal IRA instead of a Roth IRA. Roth IRAs allow your money to grow tax free. That's right, tax free. Which means if you're investing when you are 30, that is 35 years of tax free growth. Get on it. This setup in wardrobe comes across as casual, but also professional. Most people don't have whiteboards in their home. So it comes across as though you were sharing information with a colleague who stopped by your office. You didn't come prepared with the PowerPoint, but you just know this stuff so well that you can't help but bust out a presentation. You are losing out on millions of dollars. That's if you're using an IRA instead of a Roth IRA. Roth IRAs allow your money to grow tax free. Which means if you're investing when you're 30, your money gets to grow tax free for the next 35 years. With this setup in wardrobe, you come across as such a widely renowned expert that people flock to see you present in person. This makes you look incredibly well established. You are losing out on millions of dollars if you use an IRA instead of a Roth IRA. Roth IRAs allow you to grow your money tax free. That means that if you start investing when you were 30, you will have 35 years of growing your money tax free. With this background in wardrobe, you are here to sell me something. It feels personal, but also kind of like a tech start up. Hopefully, you can now see just how important wardrobe and location is. Now, let's move on to some common questions. Should I always film in the fanciest background possible. Whether your background is casual or fancy affects the tone of your video. So if you want to convey a sense of professionalism and expertise, and you feel your target audience will respond better to a suit and a tie with a high end background, then that's definitely the way to go. But maybe your target audience will react better to a more casual portrayal of your character. So doing that top button, personalizing your background, and moving away from standard visual examples of success and professionalism can help you connect with totally different audiences. I want my video to appeal to as many people as possible. Should I use a nondescript background? No. Don't use nondescript backgrounds. Nondiscript backgrounds, like a single color wall, don't necessarily detract from your video, but you miss out on the ability to convey who your company is to your audience when you use them. Alright, so we covered a lot in this video. But as always, it comes down to knowing your audience. Make sure you take the time to consider how you can best connect with your target audience. Now for the promised workshop, take a moment to write down three adjectives that best describe your target audience. Then write down three articles of clothing and three backgrounds or objects within a background that match those adjectives. If you need examples, simply rewind 2 minutes or however long ago, we did the examples, and we'll see in the next video. Right? Correct. 9. Framing Your Video: The way you frame yourself or your subject tells a powerful story. Right now, this angle is just plain, weird. I don't look very comfortable. You're looking down on me, which has a whole host of connotations, and this whole thing has just kind of a quirky vibe. That's not at all what I'm going for in this video. Now, I'm a hero in an action movie. This doesn't really fit what I'm going for either, but at least it's closer. And now we finally found the vibe that I want. Now, those were some extreme examples we started off with, but they prove that framing is a really important part of telling your story. And it's literally impossible to ignore. We're gonna go over three different aspects of framing, camera angle, L lens with, and first or third person. First, let's talk about camera angles and what story they tell. Camera looking straight on. This is very personal and standard. Camera looking up. This is the hero shot. You're tall, powerful, and you own the frame. People are literally looking up to you. Camera looking down. This is weird, wacky, or zany. Makes you look small and like you're not in command. Camera looking at you from the side. This feels like you're being filmed doing an activity, and the activity is the main focus. Think about the story you're trying to tell, and how the camera angle you choose is going to enhance the experience for your audience. Now we're going to talk about lens widths. All of these lens widths are extremely useful. One type of lens width or angle isn't better than another. They're just useful tools to communicate visually with your audience in different ways. There are three main lens widths we're going to talk about today. Wide shots, medium shots, and close ups. Let's go somewhere a bit more fun, though to get this started. Wide shots are great for setting a scene or showing your audience the bigger picture. But it's also way harder to notice you when you're in a wide shot. So right now I'm in a wide shot, and you can obviously see this beautiful structure behind me. But I'm the one teaching this segment. It makes no sense to be in this wide shot. So I'm actually gonna come closer. What we do to teach and make good videos. Ooh. Okay. This is much better. Whatever's gonna be filling your frame needs to be what's going to stop the scroll and tell your story. You want to be focused and filling the frame with whatever's most important that you're trying to communicate to your audience. Of course, one of the main reasons to get really close to something is to highlight a specific detail, whether that's superior stitching on a handbag or the pistons in a car engine pumping up and down. When you want your audience to notice one detail in particular, sometimes the best way to do that is to just make that detail as big as possible on the screen. Close ups are much more personal and intense when a character is what is filling the screen. In real life, we are rarely this close to a person's face. So it's a strange experience when you're this close in a video, too. This can be really powerful when used correctly. Your emotion is what's going to stop the scroll in a close up, the impassioned look in your eyes or the quiver of your lip. People are always panicked when it comes time to decide whether to look directly into the camera or whether to look off camera. But there are some very simple rules of thumb to keep in mind about where you should look. This first person shot where I'm talking directly into the camera is very personal. You're talking directly to your audience. This tells the story that you made this video for your audience to communicate with them. You can have your camera on a tripod, you can log, which feels even more personal and intimate, or you can use your phone for a TikTok video. So for this third person shot, I'm looking off camera. And it's more like I'm being interviewed. I'm not speaking into the camera, and I'm being interviewed by somebody, and it makes me look like an expert. This tells the story that someone else thought the information you are sharing is so important that they had to make this video about you. Whether you're filming a commercial, a quick interview with your CEO or a video on your phone for TikTok, I hope you think about framing and how can help you tell your next story? Tony afraid to experiment with framing, too. Making videos is an art form, and there's nothing wrong with trying new things and seeing how it works. Get creative. 10. Sourcing Information About Your Audience: In the next section, we're going to break down story structure and how to create engaging stories for your target audience. But first, we have to understand who our target audience is. After all, if you haven't done this research, there's no way you'll have any idea what kinds of stories or content are going to move your customers to action. So how do we begin understanding who our target audience is and what kinds of stories they'll find interesting? Well, since we're making digital content, it's a good idea to seek out our customers online. We have four main platforms we use when conducting customer discovery research. The first one is sub reedits. The second is Facebook groups. Third is the Facebook ad library. And the fourth are YouTube comments. By utilizing these four platforms, you can find out a lot about your target audience and what they find interesting. You know what? Let's go ahead and start off with edit. If you haven't used a sub credit before, that ends today. You can find a sub credit for just about any industry. If your company is an investing firm, go to our Slash Investing. Pet toy company? Had on over to R Slash Pets, or R Slash, whatever animal your toys primarily service. By spending time reading through the posts and comments on these sub redits, you will learn all about your target audience. Specifically, you'll learn what questions your audience has that you can answer. For investing, that might be, what is the difference between long term and short term investing? For pets, it might be, what if my dog is allergic to specific types of materials? As you learn what questions your audience has, you can create content that answers those questions, giving you the ability to provide extreme value through your videos. Additionally, as you read through these sub redets, you'll hear stories from your audience that connect with other members of the sub dit community. Maybe that's someone who was really scared about their financial future, but found a good plan for monthly saving, and now they're buying their first home. These stories can serve as inspiration, sparking the brainstorming process and giving you more specific ideas for videos that your audience will identify with. Facebook groups work in mostly the same way as subreds for our purposes. We think Reddit is an easier platform for researching as a digital marketer due to their platforms design and search functions, but we also highly recommend using all of these platforms for inspiration so that you can get a wide out look at who your audience is and what types of stories they connect with. Now, Facebook ad library is one of the coolest free services out there. I'm frequently surprised by how many people don't know this service exists. I highly recommend getting familiar with Facebook ad library and utilizing it whenever you're researching for a video. Facebook ad library is Facebook's free online database of every active ad running on their platforms. You can access it at facebook.com slash Ads Slash library. Once you're on the site, you can enter in key search terms to find out what digital ads are out there for your industry. Additionally, you can search for competitors to see what advertisements they have running. For example, if you're a pet toy company, you can check out all the ads that Petco currently has running. That's a huge advantage of your smaller company going against a massive advertising firm. Finally, we have YouTube comments. Now, I know people say all the time to stay out of the YouTube comments. But as a marketing director or digital commercial creator, that's not an option. YouTube comments are a fantastic place to see how people are reacting to the information that is out there within your industry. If you're an investment firm, there are tons of investing focus creators on YouTube making content all the time. They've done the hard work identifying the type of content that works for your target audience. And while you don't want to steal what that creator has done, you can use their approach as inspiration. A jumping off for your own creativity. And the comments lets you actually see how people react to it. Each of these platforms provides insights into the stories your audience wants to hear and the types of stories that they'll find engaging. For nearly every industry out there, someone else has done the hard work of identifying the audience and sourcing stories they find inspiring. Now it's your turn to save time and create more impactful videos by engaging with your audience. Details for the homework are below. 11. Identifying Your Audience's Problems: All of marketing and in reality, business can essentially be boiled down to one fundamental strategy, knowing your audience's pain point and providing solutions. Think of the classic Fairytale setup, a princess locked in a tower guarded by a dragon. In real life, we're all trying to overcome dragons constantly. The dragon may be fitting in, and that dope pink sweater might be your sword. It's important as a marketer to be able to identify your target audience's dragon and be able to speak to how your product offers a solution. One way to easily begin identifying your audience's pain point is by looking at the six main pain points humans have. Number one, financial security. Two, hunger, three, boredom, four, wanting to fit in or stand out, five, lack of sex, and six, shelter or not feeling safe. So if you're a real estate agent, your audience's problems probably fall within financial security or shelter. Or if you're a board game maker, you might be focused on boredom, while a fashion designer is solving a client's desire to fit in or stand out. Once you identify the macro pain point, you can then zoom in. For example, audiences overall pain point might be financial security. But if you're providing life planning for wealthy individuals, their true concern may revolve around generational wealth. In contrast, a 26-year-old who is trying to open their first retirement account is also focused on financial security, but is a very different type of target audience. As with understanding who your target audience is, identifying their pain points is all about getting specific. 12. What Makes Your Story Different: You and your brand are unique. And this uniqueness should be highlighted, celebrated and showcased in every video you make. You want your videos to set you apart. You want them to make it clear that you and your brand are different. But sometimes, it's not easy to find that unique angle or that story that differentiates you from the competition. So that's what this video is all about. In this module, we are going to teach you how to find which differentiators about you and your brand to highlight in your videos. And by finding these differentiators and highlighting them, you'll be able to create content that hits home with your target audience and absolutely crushes your goals. For a lot of clients, the big things that differentiate your brand from the rest are hidden in plain sight. But they can be hard to see because to you, they're just a part of what you do every single day. But when you take a step back and look at your business through your target audiences eyes, you can suddenly see what stands out as unique and valuable about your brand. One of my favorite examples of this is a furniture manufacturing company that we worked with They were having trouble figuring out what their story that would hook audiences was. To them, their story was how great their furniture is. It was beautiful, incredibly sturdy, and also comfortable, the best of all worlds. While touring their factory, the first furniture manufacturing factory we had ever been in before. We asked a lot of questions about the furniture making process, and the answers they gave revealed their story. They explained to us how they craft furniture completely differently than most mainstream brands. That the way they hands state their upholstery and handstuff their pillows makes their furniture far sturdier than the other brands that are all stamped out in a factory. It still wasn't obvious to the client, but we knew we had just found their story. The client, the way they made their furniture was just the right way. And to them, doing things the right way was a given. Why would you do it wrong? But in today's world, doing things wrong is sadly commonplace. And if you don't make it clear you're doing things right, then customers don't know that when they're looking at your website, or even when they are sitting on your couch on a show room floor. You have to show them. Here's an interesting example. Think about cell phone commercials. I keep seeing commercials for the Google Pixel phone, where they brag that their phone camera produces accurate skin tones. It's not that iPhones have inaccurate skin tones, but now consumers know for sure their Google phone does. People are not experts when it comes to your industry. They don't know the ins and outs of how your business works, but many of them would love to learn. They want to feel guided and taken care of. One of my favorite examples of a company who does a great job making educational content for their customers is a company who makes video lights. A few years ago, I was looking to buy my first light. I saw a video they produced on YouTube about the five main things to look for in a light. At the time, I didn't know what the differences between a cheap and expensive video light we. But the video they produced explained them to me, and how they would affect me on a regular basis when using the light. There were things I had never even considered, but were really important then explained how their lights met all of those specifications. That's when I was sure their light was the best choice for me. Even though they were the more expensive light, sharing that information with me made me understand why paying more was going to be worth it. All right. So for this section's workshop, let's answer some questions about your business to see if we can identify some interesting stories that will resonate with your customers and highlight the main aspects that differentiate your business within your industry. I personally prefer to look at the positives of your business rather than the negatives of other businesses when finding these differentiators. I don't think attack ads reflect well upon brands, except in extreme circumstances. So consider these questions. What excites you the most about your product? Extra steps or care are taken with your product or service that aren't standard in the industry. What are hidden benefits about your product or service customers don't know about? I hope that after doing that workshop, you were able to find some exciting differentiators about your brand. These are what you should focus on when telling your stories. And if you really can't think of things that are truly different about your brand, which, I bet you can, if you think hard enough, then think about all the things that you do right in the day to day operation of your business, and highlight those. 13. What Works Best On Social Media: Social media is a beast. The way I commonly describe it to clients I'm working with is that social media is an insatiable monster that just wants more and more content. But that doesn't mean we can't be strategic about what we're feeding it. Every social media platform has its own unique needs, but there are some overarching best practices that everyone should be aware of. Here are the five best practices for social media that you need to know about right now. Number one, 90% of social media users watch with their audio turned off. So make sure the visuals speak for themselves. Additionally, include texts to help grab people's attention. Number two, stop the scroll. People love this buzzword, and it's not without reason. Facebook put out research that showed users on average look at a video for only 2 seconds. Yep, that's how long we have to get their attention. So right off the bat, we're fighting a losing battle. So you need to be fixated on hooking your audience right off the bat. No introduction, no saying hello. Just get right into what you're there to show or talk about. Another way to stop the scroll is through your videos visuals. Remember the visual storytelling techniques we discussed earlier. Number three, when thinking about social media content, especially on TikTok and Instagram Reels, think about setup and payoff. Things like wait for it, and you won't believe what happens next. These are really easy ways to engage a viewer right at the start and have them feeling fulfilled by the end. Number four, don't save the best for last. If you're selling a product, show the dopest aspect of it, right at the start. Remember this algorithm. Problem plus solution equals good video. Number five, finally, This is a pet peep of mine. Upload your videos natively to all platforms. While Instagram and Facebook give you the option to upload your post onto Facebook and Instagram simultaneously, this is just a bad idea. You lose out on a lot of the functions you would otherwise be able to use if you just posted on the different platforms one at a time. Now that we've covered the basics, head onto the next video where we'll break down each social media platform in greater detail. 14. Offer Value To Your Audience: Want you to remember this one thing. I mean, tattoo it onto your forehead if you need, so you see it in the mirror every morning. Alright, you ready? Your video should never waste your audience's time. There, I sat it. There are two types of videos in the world. They're taking Thomas's and giving Gertrude's. A taking Thomas takes time away from their viewer. You've experienced this type of video. This is the video that starts off with some kind of insane claim, promising helpful information. Then three or 10 minutes later, they're still pitching you without having delivered any information. Hey, guys, Super excited to be talking to you about the one thing that's going to change your life. I'm telling you if you're sitting there and you hate yourself and you hate what you do, and you look out the window every day and you see the leaves change and you go, why am I doing this? I need to be changing my life? You don't need to change your life. You need to do this one thing. It's one thing that you need to be doing that's going to bring you in, not $100, $1,000, not $100,000, not $1 million, but $1 billion. This is the type of thing that doesn't change your life, it transforms your life. I was just on a yacht with Jeff Bezos. I was just on a yacht with Elan Musk. I was just on a yacht with a lot of different people, and there were a lot of interesting conversations, and everybody stopped what they were doing. The stop everybody dropped their martinis. I swore to God, it was 45 Martinis dropping to the ground, all in one symphonic second because they heard what I said. And honestly, every single one of them, the party ended. Everybody went home and got a lot richer, a lot richer guys because of this one thing that I'm going to talk to you about. These videos are frustrating, and they leave a bad taste in the viewer's mouth. A taking Thomas may be able to fool a viewer into watching one video, but that viewer won't keep watching. Now, what we're after as digital marketers is growing trust with our audiences. Nothing destroys trust like a taking Thomas. On the other side, are giving Gertruds. These videos are information dense. They speak to the pain point of your target audience and provide solutions. Y giving this information, you're able to build trust with your audience. So decide for yourself, do you want to be a taking Thomas or a giving Gertrude? 15. The Art of the Montage: Alright. This is a fast one, but a good one. We're going to talk about a classic editing technique that helps tell your story visually and convey messages to your audience. This editing technique is the Montage. Montages are a series of video clips back to back. We all know about superhero Sed up Montages. In fact, montages were invented by Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s. Thank, Soviets. So there's this thing called Montage theory, which asserts that a series of connected images allows for complex ideas to be extracted from a sequence. In case that wasn't clear, that means that each subsequent clip in your montage should build upon the last and move your story forward. Let's apply Montage theory to something really simple, like an event video. Lots of event videos open up with a montage of B roll from the event. But if you want your montage to be good, each clip of your montage needs to build on the last and tell a story. So let's have our first clip of the Montage B, the location. Next, let's show the guests arriving. We've already started building on the first clip. Because this clip of people arriving comes after we've seen the location, we've given our audience context to have a greater understanding of what's happening here. The audience knows they're arriving at the location we showed them. Next, let's show a clip of the DJ, then the food. And finally, people dancing. We've now communicated a lot right away at the beginning of this video, and the order of these clips really matters. This is a really simple example of a montage, but you get the idea. You can also use this technique with just two clips to tell a story visually. Let's say that you're cheese company, and you want people to know that your cheese comes from pasture raised cows. We'll put this clip of cows in a pasture first and then cut to cheese being made. Not a single word was spoken, but we've just said a lot visually to our audience. And that is the montage. This is a really powerful tool that you now have in your arsenal. But don't fall into the trap that tons of YouTubers and beginner filmmakers find themselves in. Don't just put a series of pretty images back to back. Tell a story with your montages. Communicate with your audience and make your videos better. 16. What Video Quality Communities To Your Audience: Guys, I have a really important message for you. Not every video needs to be cinematic. Sometimes, it's better to just bust out your phone and tell a story. Let me explain. Cinematic video quality is always better, right? Well, not always. Really, just like every other element of this course, you always need to be thinking about what story you are telling. Think about how the video quality is going to communicate to your audience and then make the choice of whether you're going to go with a cinema quality camera or an iPhone. First off, let's go over some adjectives for how iPhone footage makes us feel. It's raw. It's cheap, voyeuristic, authentic. So how can we use this for our benefit? If you are creating a video for a platform like TikTok, the vast majority of the content on that platform is shot on phone cameras. So when people see cinematic footage, it sticks out. If you're posting regularly on TikTok and want to stick out, maybe the cinematic footage is the move. But if you're trying to come across as authentic, and you want to build relationships with your customers, then you're probably better off filming on an iPhone. Same is exponentially more true when creating an ad on TikTok. The trick with advertisements is trying to blend into the platform the ad is running on. Otherwise, people will normally click off as quickly as possible. So with ads on TikTok, you'll pretty much always be better served by filming on your phone to create personal feeling videos. This can also be true for Instagram reels. Though on Instagram, you have more flexibility between high quality and phone footage. An example of a great phone ad is one of your customers talking about their experience using your product for the first time. Because this ad is filmed on a phone, it feels way more authentic and spontaneous. Now, when can phone quality work against you? Well, if you're a doctor's office, making a video about your brand new surgical technique, having a high quality video matters. You don't want people thinking you're filming on an iPhone because you're cheap. I mean, if you're cheap about your video quality, then you're probably cheap about your surgical supplies. Still unsure when to use phone footage. Here's our basic rule of thumb. We recommend only using a phone when it's specifically beneficial to your story. Now, let's talk about high quality video. Let's go over some adjectives that high quality or cinematic quality video makes us feel. Polished, staged, professional, commercial, artistic. There are massive benefits to shooting high quality videos, but you need to think about the story and what serves at best before you make the decision of what camera to shoot on. We break high quality into two categories. There is high quality videography, which is beautifully shot, but has a digital feel to it and clearly belongs on the Internet, and then there's cinema quality, which is most commonly used for commercials or branded content. Primary difference between these two is that videography is more go with the flow than cinema quality. Videography uses a lot of available light and what's on hand, and usually features smaller production crews. While with cinema quality videos, the crew is larger and success depends on there being a greater degree of control over the entire process, including building sets and purchasing props. That way, the director of the chute can curate exactly what is seen on screen. These style differences are important to keep in mind when telling your story. For some stories, cinema quality footage might feel pompous enforced. And for others, good videography quality might feel cheap. This is again, one of those moments where you have to put yourself in your target audiences shoes and consider what the footage quality you choose will communicate to them. As you get ready for your next shoot, put yourself in your audience's shoes. Think about what type of video quality they are going to respond to best. Will it be phone footage, videography, or cinema? 17. What does "Going Viral" really mean?: I want to tell you a story that will change the way you measure success forever. It's the story of videos going viral. Vity. What the hell does that mean? Is measuring vity useful? What if I were to tell you 600 views was more powerful than 10,000? To understand why we have to go back to the golden age of digital videos. The 2000. On a time, videos like End of Z World and the ultimate showdown of ultimate Destiny owned our eyeballs. I for one rocked the hell out of a shag haircut. At this time, virality was all about views. The Internet was young at that point. YouTube had only recently been invented, and we had no idea what the platform should be used for. So, when businesses decided that they should embark on creating online advertisements, They focused on total views. This obsession with getting a large amount of views persisted four years. The news cycle obsessed over the first YouTube video to hit 1 million views. 100 million views. 1 billion views. We all remember Gung Dum style, and it's not because the song was good. O But around 2010, marketers started to notice something. The world was changing. Platforms, like Instagram and Snapchat were starting to fracture the world. This was the start of the death of monoculture. Now, if that sounds dramatic or a little too abstract, I hear you. In real terms, what marketers were noticing is what we're all used to by now. All media was beginning to decentralize. At the same time, this decentralization was happening. Marketers started to notice that a lot of views didn't necessarily mean a great conversion rate. Which meant all those expensive advertisements that were super shiny, weren't leading to tangible results. This was a problem. So what did they do? They invented a calculation known as the K factor. Now, please, don't fall asleep. I swear this is important. The K factor calculation tempted to define what virality meant in a shifting digital landscape. Right over here, this is the K factor. This small formula changed marketing. Let's break it down so you can understand how marketers use this formula and why it's so important to creating successful videos. First, K factor is literally a stand in for vialty. So let's just plug that in. Get rid of K factor altogether. Now, I equals the average number of people one user sends the video to. Let's say for the sake of example, a viewer sends the video to ten of their favorite friends on average. Right. Then C is the number of video recipients who actually click on the link and watch the video. Let's say on average, five out of ten or half of the people who are sent the video actually watch it. This person has some very devoted friends. Kowing those two bits of information, how many people one user sends the video to, and how many of the recipients watch the video gives us our vialty. You have to do is times the two numbers, which gives us 50% virality. This formula caught on like wildfire. No longer, was it just how many views a video got, but how many people sent that video to someone else, and how many people who received the video actually watched it. This was a big shift. What this formula did is give us a more holistic view of the health of a video because it no longer came down to total views. It instead came down to interaction or engagement with a video. As you fast forward to today, K factor has largely been replaced by analytics such as watch times, likes, comments, and subscriptions. But the rationale behind the invention of K factor still persists. That's because only looking at one number like views in a vacuum isn't very helpful. You need to take into consideration what your end goal is for the video and the size of your target audience, which brings us back to the statement at the beginning of this video. How is 600 views more powerful than 10,000? Well, take, for example, a local real estate company who get 600 views on average per video. That may not sound impressive, but if all those views are centralized to their local area, that is way more important than 10,000 views from people across the United States. The same can be said for likes, comments, subscribers, and all the rest, because when you have a concrete goal, specific target audience, tell a compelling story and distribute the video correctly, you also need to measure success correctly. Otherwise, you're doomed to waste a lot of money and make a lot of easy to avoid mistakes. 18. Pillars of Content: As we begin discussing distribution, we wanted to take a moment to explain one of our favorite strategies for video marketing distribution. That is the pillar of content. This was popularized by Gary V, and we're going to break down the core ideas behind building a pillar of content and how to utilize it when distributing video content. So let's jump into it. To start out, let's discuss what a pillar of content is. Visually, it's a reverse pyramid. Pillars and pyramids aren't the same thing, but don't think too hard on that. The central idea behind this marketing strategy is taking one long form piece of content and breaking it down into smaller forms of content for other platforms. Or example, think of an hour long video podcast that's released on YouTube. That piece of content goes at the top of the pyramid. It's the initial piece of content that everything else will be taken from. The second stage of the pyramid is dissecting that initial video into as much short form content as possible. That means reels, short posts, TikToks, blogs, stories, quotes, memes. Everything you can think of, take the initial video podcast and filter it. The final stage of the pyramid is distributing all that shortened content. All across social media, taking those means and putting it everywhere. Those blogs. You don't just put on your website. You put snippets of it as quotes on your Instagram feed. Using this strategy helps you maximize the value of all the video content you create. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to start recording hour long podcasts. You can take this concept and incorporate it into every video you make. That includes videos that are straight up ads. Think about a three minute video. On average, a three minute video includes 90 different shots of footage. One shot per 2 seconds. That means you can have 90 different clips that you can potentially be mixing and reusing as images, means, gifts, and more. You can take one line from the ad and turn it into an inspirational quote. You can take the core ID of the ad and turn it into at least one blog post. One thing we incorporate into nearly every video we make are cut downs. We don't just make the three minute video. We make a 92nd, a 32nd, and 215 second versions, one for real slash story and one for standard posts. This way, the ad is customized for every single social media platform. Let's do a little experiment right now, and turn this video you're watching into a few cutdowns for social media. The whole video you just watched is the primary pillar of content. And you're about to see how we turned it into usable content for other platforms. The pillar of content, distributing all that shortened content all across social media, taking those means and putting it everywhere. Those blogs. You don't just put on your website. You put snippets of it as quotes on your Instagram feed. Using this strategy helps you maximize the value of all the video content you create. The central idea behind this marketing strategy is taking one long form piece of content. That's the value of all the video content you create. Videos take a lot of effort, and oftentimes a sizable investment. So it's important that the videos are utilized in as many ways as possible. Take a look at the videos your team has created in the past, or the videos you're thinking about making right now. Are you using them as much as you could? If not, start looking at all the ways. You can push those videos out into the world. Bakke. 19. 5 Ways To Enhance Your Marketing With Video: Digital is the most common way people interact with video nowadays. But that doesn't mean that it's the only way. When you're building or expanding your video marketing, you need to be creative in getting those videos out there. Here are five sneaky ways. Videos could be used to enhance more traditional marketing. One, add video to your e mail newsletters. The same way that video increases the amount of time someone spends on a website, people are also more likely to stick with your newsletter. So slap video in there, breaking down new tech updates, industry shifts, or team hires. Whatever will provide value to your community and get them engaging more with your business. Two QR codes. We recently worked with a real estate brokerage that put a QR code on every flyer they sent out. The existence of these QR codes tripled the amount of engagement their videos were getting and led to a lot more home buying and selling activity. Fliers still work, if you can believe that. And one way to make them work even better is to include a QR code that potential clients can use to see an informative or helpful video you've created. With that brokerage, their QR code linked to a monthly market update that the team updated consistently. This was great because no matter when a client used the QR code, they were seeing new information that was valuable. Especially if your marketing team already uses flyers, slap a QR code on there to continue the conversation. You can also put QR codes on lawn signs, billboards, merchandise, literally everywhere. Within reason. Think about that tote bag that your company gives away. Could be a lot more powerful. If there was a QR code on it that took someone to an about us video or a product video. Number three is a little Marnie, but that's what I love about it. Now, this technique works best for companies that have a one on one sales strategy. That means an individual salesperson who will lead a customer through the process, handling initial introductions, creating quotes, et cetera. If your company has a sales approach like that, your sales team will appreciate the hell out of these videos. Way they work is this. Film a series of short one to two minute videos to break down core attributes of your service or the industry. One client we worked with was in financial planning. So they broke down topics like how to take legacy planning into consideration at the start of your career and ways you can use compound interest to save for retirement. Having these videos, he would then send one of them over anytime he spoke with or was referred to a potential client. They served as a great ice breaker and introduction to a conversation since they immediately provided helpful information. Ing Gertrude. Additionally, they worked as a great way to follow up with a lead he hadn't talked to in a few months. He would just send them a text or e mail that said, I recently made this video, breaking down how important it is to make compound interest work for you as soon as possible. Thought you'd find it interesting. Number four is slapping a high quality video on every screen you have access to. Whether that's in an office or a waiting room, a booth at a trade show or above the butcher's counter at a grocery store. By having great videos that show your company in a positive light, You'll become aware of just how often you can use them. That way, instead of designing a new graphic for the televisions at every event, you can have your company video playing instead. Number five is a hype video that can play before presentations. Now. This one might be super specific. But we say it because there is someone watching this course who this is applicable to, and we care about you. When our company who was younger, one of the first companies we ever worked with was a tech company that held an annual conference. People from all across the world were to attend this conference, and the culmination of the event was an industry update from the CEO of the company. But every year before he took the stage, a video introduction would play. One year, he was stuck in traffic until the batmobile swooped by, picked him up and took him to the conference. The next year, he was caught in a high speed boat chase. Every year, it was something else strange, weird, and fun, because that was his personality. He wanted the conversation to be lighthearted and welcome. That way, when he went into specifics on the industry, it was a little less boring. For your company, something this funny might not be the right call. But having a video before a presentation or playing between panels can be a great way to have events feel cohesive and set a great tone while also disseminating useful information to your attendees. And if your company doesn't host events, think about how you can use video in unexpected ways to communicate your brand and engage your audience. That concludes one of the most specific examples we have within this course. So make sure you don't separate your video marketing from traditional marketing. The two don't have to exist rolls apart. Instead, the two can be used in tandem to boost the overall success of your marketing strategy. 20. What Works Best On Social Media Part 2: Welcome to part two of the best practices on social media. In the first video, we covered social media as a whole. In this video, we're going to cover each social media platform separately. That way, when you're creating videos, you can take the distribution platform into account before you ever click record. When Michael and I are planning a shoot, we always think about where the video will be distributed. Because if the video is going to live as an Instagram reel, that's a whole lot different than YouTube. So let's get started breaking down each social media platform. And a quick disclaimer, we are covering the best practices for specifically creating video for social media. We won't be going into hashtag comments or anything like that. We do highly recommend studying social media management further, but that's really outside of the focus of this course. Alright, let's start with Facebook. Facebook videos should be no more than 3 minutes. If it's an ad, focus more on 15 to 90 seconds. If it's content for your main feed, you can go up to 3 minutes. Can go longer, but only if it's a video focused on the evaluation section of the sales funnel. If you need a refresher on evaluation videos, head back to the call to action section of the course. When distributing on Facebook, it's important to write out descriptions that add on to the content of the video and spur conversation. One quick piece of advice, always turn on captions for every video. Even if you're not going to take the time to make sure captions are 100% correct, it's better to have mostly correct captions than have no captions. This will help catch the attention of viewers who are watching with their sound turnoff. All right. Instagram. Now with Instagram, it needs to be short. 1 minute max if it's going to be on your feed. 15 to 30 seconds on reels or under 15 seconds for stories. If you're buying ad space on Instagram, it is mandatory that you tailor that content to what part of Instagram these ads will be appearing. If it's on reels, it needs to fit within a reels worth of time. It should ideally be more casual and authentic. And then for the feed, it can be more sales focused, and it should be one by one or near those dimensions. Also, use text and other visuals. They will pay off. Next up is YouTube. YouTube is great for Long form. But only as long as you need to be able to tell your story. On YouTube, the game is all about watch time. This is the amount of time on average someone watches your video. Remember, that's not how long your video is, but how long the viewer watches for. It's actually watch time that's responsible for gaming and other longer form videos becoming so popular. If your video has a long watch time, YouTube is more likely to recommend your video. The second most important tool for hacking or putting the UTube algorithm to your advantage is click through rate. Click through Rate is essentially how many people see your thumbnail and click on it. This is similar to click through rates for social media ads. The best way to improve your click through rate is by creating a strong thumbnail title for the video. Think of your thumbnail as your greatest ambassador. It's heading the charge on telling people why they should watch your video. The thumbnail needs to be eye catching. Engaging and it needs to raise intrigue. You want people to need to know what secrets are lurking within the video. Now, this doesn't mean that you should create clickbait titles or give people false impressions of what your video is about. That will lead to distrust and anger from people who are potential customers. So don't do that. It will end badly. TikTok. Similar to Instagram, TikTok needs to be short. They've started allowing users to create videos that are up to 3 minutes but as with all content, keep your videos to the length they need to be. A video isn't better simply because it longer. Also, TikTok is not just dancing. So don't make that mistake. It maybe was three years ago, but that's just a thing of the past. Instead, TikTok is a fantastic place to quickly and concisely provide insights and information. If you have an expertise, tell people about it. If your product does something amazing, show the world. TikTok is the best place to get a large amount of awareness quickly, or more quickly than any other social media platform out there currently. The important thing with TikTok is that your videos need to feel organic and authentic. Feels too clean. People will know that it's an ad and immediately just swipe you away. When distributing on TikTok, focus on quantity over quality. Now, I know that seems counterproductive and against everything else that we've said in this entire course, but TikTok doesn't need to feel as polished as other platforms. Remember, you're having an honest and authentic conversation with people. So allow yourself to go a little bit more off the cuff. Additionally, you want to post more because you want it to be as likely as possible that something you post goes viral. Now, what does virality mean? We'll break this down in an upcoming video. But here's one warning with TikTok. Just because we say to post frequently, doesn't mean you post badly. Still stay focused on your message. Don't post about random stuff that people won't find interesting or valuable. Finally, utilize trends. TikTok has 1 million ecosystems within it, and by using the app more, you'll find out the different trends, conversations, and weird things that are happening on the platform every day. By being additive to these conversations, you'll raise your brand awareness and customer loyalty. Warning. That doesn't mean getting caught up in all of the drama of the app. It means showing up when you should show up. Next up is Linkedin. Linkn is unlike any other social media platform. It's hyper specific. And yet most people are on it. But Lincon isn't where you're going to want to sell merchandise. It's better for recruitment and B to B businesses. So if you're looking to hire or sell to other companies, Linkn can be a great asset. Create videos that sell your work culture and the benefits of being an employee at your business and start marketing those strategically. Or use Lincoln sales navigator to locate profiles of individuals within businesses who you could sell your product or service to. Then send them an introductory or explainer video. Within Lincoln, videos can be a little longer, anywhere from 90 seconds to 8 minutes. But they do need to be information rich. Aspirational also does work well on Linked in. Showcasing how you're making a difference in the community or started your business three years ago, and now it's thriving. Think about the good your business does and show it off. All these platforms can be exceptionally useful when used correctly. So make sure you sculpt your videos to work within the different platforms. Don't one size fits all it. It won't work. But just because one size doesn't fit all, doesn't mean you can't change the size of the video. More on that next time. 21. Using Video To Enhance Your Website: B sites with video content retain visitors for over 70% longer. In addition, websites that feature video have higher conversion rates, SEO rankings, and brand trustworthiness. There are so many positives to featuring video on your website. So how should you go about implementing video into your website? There are essentially three steps to implementing video on your website. The first and perhaps most obvious is that you need to decide what videos you're going to put on your website. As with the sales funnel, your video should guide potential customers smoothly through their web experience. To do this, you need to really understand the point of each web page that comprises your website. If your first page is all about introducing customers to your product, hype video or explainer video could work great. These will work to get your visitors excited about what you have to offer and will entice them to learn more. On an about page or recruitment page, you may want to put a meet the team or history of the company video. These explainer videos are great opportunities to differentiate yourself from your competition and tell customers why you are so passionate about the industry you're a part of. On a sales page or FAQ page, feature longer form evaluation videos that go into the different aspects of your service. You can also include testimonials from previous clients that you've filmed or that have been sent in or posted on social media. There are a ton of unique ways you can use video within your website. The important part is that it all works towards closing the deal and growing your brand. So once you've identified what videos you're going to feature on the different pages of your website, it's time to start thinking about how you'll lay those videos out. Now We are neither web designers nor graphic designers. So we highly recommend bringing in experts when crafting your website. But we have seen a lot of ways not to use video on a website. Here are the top three. Number one, putting the video at the bottom of the page behind a link or somewhere obscure. This is a complete waste of the video. I mean, you might as well not even have filmed the video to begin with. Number two, making the video too small. The same way that you need to be mindful of dimensions when posting on social media, you need to think about how the video will show up on your website. We've seen a lot of examples of websites where the video is way too small, making the visuals impossible to see, the impossible to read and the entire viewing experience underwhelming. Number three, placing too many videos on one web page. Believe it or not, you can have too many videos. Unless the page is your blog or FAQ, you'll nearly always want to limit the number of videos to three at the most. Now, on a particularly in depth sales page, you could possibly get away with up to five videos, but normally you want to be selective. This is because your end goal is to clearly and concisely lead your customer to the purchase. Too many videos can lead to distracting or confusing your potential customer. So just use your judgment and be a little selective when choosing what videos to put where? Third step of implementing video into your website is actually hosting the videos. With most sites like square space and Wicks, you can put a limited amount of video content on your website for free. If you're looking at more than a gigabyte of video, which truthfully isn't that much, you may need to pay for it. But remember, it's a small fee for over 70% higher retention. Another way to host a video on your website is by putting the video on YouTube and then embedding the link on your website, so it shows the YouTube video. This is super easy, and people are very used to seeing YouTube videos on other websites. So it's a great and expensive option. But if your product or service is more high end, definitely recommend to pay for hosting your videos locally on your website. This just gives you more control over how your website visitors interact with the videos and how you can implement your videos onto your website as a whole. Before we wrap up this video, we do want to delve into the power of having a video blog flog on your website. One of the most important ways to have your website succeed is by crushing SEO or search engine optimization. This is essentially how Google decides whether you should show up on the first or 50th page of their search results. In the past, text used to be the King of SEO. Google Crawlers, creepy Dame for the software that would scrub through websites, trying to figure out what the website did were more technologically basic and weren't nearly as good at interpreting visual inputs, things like photos and videos. But in recent years that has shifted, Google Crawlers can now watch videos, interpret what they're about, and include them within their SEO analysis, which is amazing for all of us. Why? Because that means we don't have to insert bricks and bricks of useless text into a website just to appease the SEO gods. Instead, we can utilize a clean mix of text and video to accomplish the same goal. In addition, you can put videos on the blog portion of your website, and they will boost your SEO. Now, I kind of just add it on a second video to this already long video, but to recap. Three stages to implementing video into your website. Identify whether each video works with the page to move your potential customers through the sales funnel. Then look at the layout and make sure you avoid common pitfalls, and finally, look at how you want to host your videos on your website. The two most common ways are locally on the website or through an embedded YouTube video. Also, start a video blog for all of those Site Suite SEO gains. 22. Should You Start A YouTube Channel?: Don't waste your time with YouTube. If Tube isn't right for you, is YouTube right for you? Let's find out. Knowing where to distribute your content is really important to having that content be successful. Like all other social media platforms, users go on to YouTube for two things. Enertainment and information. Unlike all other social media, YouTube is a search engine. That little search bar at the top of the YouTube page is a huge differentiator from every other social media platform. Why? Because it transforms YouTube into a search engine rather than traditional social media site. The fact that YouTube is at its core, a search engine means that the content on the site is more searchable, but here's why that information is important. Let's say, for example, that someone has a question on fixing their sink. If you're a repairman, it's massively beneficial to be the top video on YouTube for results on how to fix a broken sink. This gives you industry authority and trust with potential clients. That way, when they have other questions or issues they need an expert for, you'll be the person they come back to. So if you're looking to grow your brand awareness or customer loyalty, YouTube search and keyword functions can make it a great. Option. But before you start the channel, you need to do some research. Particularly, you need to look into whether or not your niche is already being served on YouTube, and how so. If there are tons of YouTube videos about your specific topic, don't be discouraged. That's not actually a bad thing. It means there is a hungry audience looking for content about your topic. There aren't a lot of videos. Ask yourself, why not? Look around to see if any other YouTubers tried to create content about the topic. You may find things that they did wrong, that you would do better, or you may find that there just isn't a strong enough audience. Either way, it's good information to help you make the decision on whether or not YouTube is right for you. Now, after you've identified that there is an audience on YouTube, really make sure that you're willing to put in the time and effort required to be successful on YouTube. Tube is a massive undertaking that shouldn't be started on a whim. A YouTube channel takes time to grow and requires constant adaptation. It requires that you are comfortable investing a lot of time without instant gratification. On average, it takes 100 videos to really identify what your style is in around a year to start seeing subscribers grow. That is a lot of time. Now, look, we say this not because starting a channel can't be worth it, but because we have seen a lot of channels burn out when they don't see immediate success. But if you're willing to put in the time energy and resources and you've nailed down the audience you'll be serving, starting a YouTube channel can be fantastic branding Building a dedicated community can help you spread your message, introduce you to your most loyal customers and give you a direct line of communication with them. So, I Tube right for you? If you're still not positive, take a look at the flow chart we created below. It'll help you run through the pros and cons of starting a channel so you can better identify whether or not a YouTube channel is worth your time. 23. Bonus: Looking Good on Zoom: Hey, guys, good to see you. I'm really excited to go over this presentation with you. I think I've learned a lot about your business, and me? You feeling okay? 'cause you look kind of sick? Are you feeling up to this right now? 'cause it doesn't really look like it? Every time you appear on camera, you are visually telling a story to whoever is on the other side of the call. And presenting yourself well on Zoom can really help you come across better to clients and get more yeses. Today's video is all about showing you how to look your best on Zoom and absolutely crush your next presentation. You can up your game without spending any money. We'll give you options for spending $0, and so cool gear you can buy if you want to invest a bit. The five steps to looking great on Zoom are lighting, framing, backgrounds, your outfit, and audio quality. Let's dive into them one by one. Number one, lighting yourself. You want your face to be lit. Don't put bright lights behind you, and don't be in a super bright room where your face doesn't have direct light. You can use a ring light to light yourself better, or you can just use a lamp or a window. The nice thing about a lamp is that it doesn't matter what time of day it is or if it's cloudy. It'll still light you just fine. Number two, framing yourself. No extreme angles. Don't look up or down into the camera, get it as close to eyeline as possible. Leaning back makes you look like you don't care. Looking up makes you look confused, and looking down makes you look like you feel superior. Number three, think about your background. Zobler and fake backgrounds are fine. I personally don't like them, but if you want to use them or need to for your job, then I totally understand. But I personally like to use a curative background that actually helps tell the story of who I am to whoever I am talking to. Also, it doesn't create weird outlines on my hair, so that's a plus two. Number four, dress well. This one is super obvious, but dress for success. Say something with what you are wearing. Use it to express your professional quality, style, and personality. You are the character in your story, and you need to communicate who you are to your client. Your outfit is a really effective way of doing this. Number five, audio. There's nothing wrong with using your computer audio. Most people use it. But there are some ways to improve it if you want to. But stop for just a moment. Here's a big no no. If you are trying to impress a client, I do not recommend wearing a headset. I mean, it either looks or you look like you're a drive through worker. If you want better audio quality, use a professional mic. Lots of people like the Blue Yette. These microphones are meant to be placed directly in front of your mouth and talked into directly. Now you know how to look better on Zoom. Remember that with each Zoom call, you're communicating a story to the person on the other end of the call. Take full advantage of the opportunity in front of you. 24. Bonus: iPhone Filmmaking Basics: That was shot on an iPhone. Is this a positive phrase or a negative phrase? Here's the truth. It's both. Let's read it both ways. That was shot on an iPhone. That was shot on an iPhone? In this video, we want to get your iPhone filmmaking to the point where people always say that was shot on an iPhone, the positive way. Some of this video will focus in on the particulars of how to use the standout features of the iPhone for Stellar filmmaking. Other parts will teach you the basics of filmmaking so that you don't miss out on techniques that can help you up your game. This video is for anybody looking to create compelling video content on your iPhone. Let's get started. Alright, so we're going to talk about some of the standout features of the iPhone camera app that are really great for video. And this is just the basic camera app that comes with your iPhone, there are other apps that you can download that are even better than this and give you more control that literally kind of turn your phone into a cinema camera. One of the apps that I love is Phil McPro. So I highly recommend you go check that out if you want to get even more advanced control. Alright, so let's just jump into the app real quick. One of the things that a lot of people don't know about is tap to focus. So you tap wherever you want your camera to focus. But if you want to hold focus on something and not have your camera, rack focus to a new element. You can tap and hold, and it'll lock onto that, and then when you move your camera around, it will no longer change focus to other subjects. Also, if you want to expose for one specific subject and not have your camera keep changing exposure as the lighting changes, like if the clouds keep moving overhead or something, you also can tap to hold, and then you can go ahead and slide right next to that, and it'll go ahead and give you exposure control and let you adjust it up and down, and then it will no longer automatically change it on its own. Another important aspect to think about when you are doing iPhone filmmaking is to make sure that you have your resolution and your frame rate set correctly. Up here in the top right hand corner of the screen, you can go ahead and tap these numbers, and it's going to go ahead and change 2430-60 FPS. Then you can also change your resolution by tapping on the resolution between HD and four K. One of the cool new features that the iPhone has now is cinematic mode. Where it adds an interesting depth of field that mimics a cinema camera and allows you to rack focus more naturally between subjects. It's something really fun to play around with. It is a little bit limited as far as the resolution you can film in because it's doing a lot of extra processing. But there's some cool stuff you can do with it, and it's definitely something that would recommend that you check out for certain circumstances. And of course, you always want to make sure that you check out the Slomo feature. Slomo is awesome for shooting B roll for events, or if you want to highlight a really funny moment, or you just want to have fun with something and grab people's attention with, like, a funny antic on TikTok. And then the iPhone also has built in time lapse features. And time laps can be a really effective way of telling a story that takes place over a long period of time. If something takes place over 6 hours, it's a lot easier to have a time lapse that shows the progression of, like, a fairground being built, going from absolutely nothing in a plot of land to all of a sudden, having an entire amazing experience pop up for people. Time laps can also be really effective for bakers, if you want to show the entire process of baking a loaf of bread that takes hours. You can show the bread quickly rising in the oven. You can show yourself quickly putting together all of the ingredients and show the love and care that goes into it. Framing. Way too often, you can tell something was shot on an iPhone just because it was framed so poorly. Here are the basic rules of framing. Hight, you want your camera to be more or less around eye level for your subject. Don't make your subject look very far up or down to look into the camera. Angle. If your subject is talking off camera, make sure you have a flattering shot at their face. Don't make them profile. Make whatever the main visual element of your story is, fill the frame. If your story is a building, fill the frame with it. Car, you guessed it. Fill the frame with it, and don't give your subject too much head room. You want their eyes about two thirds of the way up the frame, more or less. Side note, don't get too literal with making your character fill the frame. Close up shots aren't super flattering you. Using the iPhones form factor to your benefit. This iPhone is teeny, tiny, and it also has stellar stabilization. So it's a real shame to not utilize both of these features. Fit your phone through spaces a normal camera can't. Do cool pass off shots to grab people's interest and make them wonder, how did they get that shot? Move the phone quickly and nimbly in ways that larger cameras can't achieve. Do slider shots that larger cameras would need lots of equipment to manage. Let's film a little car commercial with this iPhone and get some interesting angles that a normal camera wouldn't be able to achieve. If you're going to use your iPhone to film, take advantage of it. It's a really powerful tool. Filming on your iPhone also communicates something specific to your audience as part of your story. So it's important to keep that in mind while you film. 25. The Final Assignment: Congratulations on finishing the course. For your final assignment, you'll be making your first marketing video. Now, there's no need to invest too much money or resources into this first video. This is just about using the fundamentals of the course for the first time. You're going to create a social media marketing video for your business. You can use your phone to film and edit it. There's no need to release the video unless you're happy with it. Again, this is just about practice. Keep the following criteria in mind when making your marketing video for this project. Find a clear target audience for your video. Specify a clear goal of what you want the video to accomplish. Communicate your brand and story visually and keep your background, wardrobe in all the visuals you show in the video on Brand. Provide value to your audience, teach them something, entertain them. Surprise them with a fact. End your video with a strong call to action. Have a plan for distributing your video. Which social media platforms will you posted on? Will this video be sent out in your next newsletter? Will it be posted on your website? Make sure you follow best practices for your distribution platform of choice? For example, if you're posting on TikTok, make sure that you film your video vertically, so it's most engaging and start your video with an engaging hook. On the storytelling and effective marketing techniques for this video rather than focusing on camera work or lighting. It's good to think about how you can do better each time with your camera and lighting work, but those aren't the true elements of a video that will determine its success. Michael and I cannot wait to see the videos you all come up with.