If you’re like most business owners, the thought of doing video makes you nervous.
That’s ok, it means you’re human!
I’m going to talk about it anyway for one reason: EVERY business owner I’ve worked with over the past year who has achieved big results fast, has done it using online video.
One site we built went from zero to £180,000 in sales in the first 4 months. The key? Online video.
I talk a lot to business owners about using online video and many are reluctant to do it because they think it’s difficult to do, time consuming and you need expensive equipment to do it. None of this is true so keep reading!
You might still think that online video is quite new and while it might be nice to use it, it’s not essential. I hear that a lot too, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Every single minute, 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube so video is not new!
Truth Bomb time: If you want to succeed online, video is essential.
Click play on the video to hear more about the 5 reasons why video is essential to generating leads and sales online:
REASONS WHY VIDEO IS ESSENTIAL TO GENERATING LEADS AND SALES ONLINE
1. Attention
Video grabs attention like nothing else. While people generally won’t read everything you’ve written on a web page, they are very likely to click play on a video if there’s one on the page.
2. Communication
Video is the next best thing to talking to your prospect one to one. It allows you to convey emotion and personality. You can connect with the viewer through video and it lets them feel a more personal connection with you. They’ll almost feel like they’ve met you… and you can have this running automatically for every single person who visits your site.
3. Multiple Modalities
We all have different learning styles and absorb information in different ways. Some people learn best through particular modalities, e.g. some people learn best by reading text, others absorb the message best if they hear it or if they see a visual representation. Using video allows you to hit multiple modalities so that 100% of your audience really ‘hears’ what you’re saying, regardless of their learning style.
4. Instant Expert Factor
Using video immediately sets you apart from the competition and elevates you to expert status. By talking about your field in online videos, you are positioning yourself as an authority. We are so conditioned to look up to people who are on screen, make a few videos and you’ll soon be a celebrity in your industry!
5. SEO
According to a study by Forrester Research, it is 50 times easier to get a video to rank on the first page of Google than it is to get a standard web page to rank on page one. I always teach and recommend ‘Leverged SEO‘ rather than SEO for SEO’s sake, and optimising your online videos is a perfect opportunity to leverage your marketing activites for an organic search boost. The easiest way to get started is to upload your video to YouTube and be sure to use relevant keywords in the video filename (before you upload it), the video title, description and tags.
4 WAYS TO USE VIDEO ON YOUR SITE
There are lots of ways you can use video on your site to improve your marketing, connect better with your customers and get more leads and sales. The main ways you can use video on your website to improve your marketing results are:
1. Video as Regular Content
This is where a video is available to watch on your web page without any registration or sign up required. You can use video like this to connect better with your audience and make sure they really ‘get’ your message.
2. Video as a Lead Capture Offer
This is where you make a video that a website visitor can only view after they give you their details (usually their email address). A lead capture offer is something that you offer to give your website visitors in exchange for their details.
E.g. You’ve probably seen restaurants or other businesses offering you a free discount voucher if you give them your name and email address. Once you have a visitor’s email address or other contact details you then have a lead you can follow up with.
Lead capture offers don’t have to be discounts, in fact, I usually recommend that you avoid giving discounts like the plague! A video packed with useful information is a great lead capture offer.
E.g. If you design and sell kitchens, then your website visitors are likely to happily give you their email address if you offer them a video that tells them ‘the 3 common mistakes that people make when buying a new kitchen and how to avoid them’.
3. Video Squeeze Page
This is where you use a short video to tell prospects to sign up to receive something – e.g. “Hi, I’m Jim from A1 Kitchen Designs, I’ve put together a free report that tells you the 3 common mistakes that people make when buying a new kitchen and how to avoid them. Put your name and email address in the box next to this video and I’ll send you the free report straight away.”
It’s called a video ‘squeeze page’ because it’s designed to ‘squeeze’ out some contact details before you provide something of value to your visitor.
4. Reverse Squeeze Page
This is where you give away some free content immediately in a video and then tell people to sign up for part two of the video. E.g. Let’s stick with our “3 common mistakes people make when buying a new kitchen and how to avoid them”. In this case video 1 would include:
- an introduction that articulates the visitor’s problem (they need a new kitchen),
- why a solution is so important (it’s pretty devastating to fork out thousands of pounds on a kitchen that you end up hating after 2 weeks of using it), and
- the first common mistake people make when buying a new kitchen.
You would then ask them to enter their email address to get access to the second part of the video, which would cover the remaining mistake 2 and 3 and how to avoid them. The second part of the video would end with a conclusion where you ask the viewer to take some action (contact you, book a consultation etc).
MO’ VIDEO, MO’ MONEY
The more you use video the more you get access to all the benefits we talked about at the beginning of this article…and the more leads, sales and money you get.
It’s also important to note that even a video that contains no useful content as such, and just gives instructions for what the viewer should do next (leave their email address to receive something), still has many of the benefits of creating a personal interaction with your potential customers.
Using (and testing) a combination of the ways you can use video allows you to get the benefits and capture leads at the same time.
As a general rule we also stick to a limit of one video per page, otherwise it can get overwhelming for the visitor and makes them less likely to play any of the videos. With only one video on the page there is no question about what is the most important one to watch.
YOUR VIDEO CHALLENGE
Abraham Maslow said “You will either step forward into growth, or you will step back into safety” so let’s take the bull by the horns and get yourself some business growth this week!
Your challenge is to make a short video and get it in front of your leads and customers within the next 7 days.
Here is your action list:
1. Make a 2 minute video using a webcam, smartphone, iPad, or video camera (basically ANYTHING you can get your hands on that records video).
Don’t worry about making it super high quality, just get going! In your video talk about an offer you’re doing, a product or service that your customers may not know you do, or just answer a common question or problem you hear from your customers.
2. Make sure that there is a clear and strong call to action at the end of your video.
Tell your viewers exactly what to do next – e.g. “send me an email with the word “video” in the subject line to get more info on the offer”, or “call my office before Friday and ask to speak to Jane to get a free trial of this new service” etc. If you don’t tell people EXACTLY what to do next, chances are they’ll do nothing.
3. Upload your video to YouTube.
It couldn’t be easier to use YouTube these days – log in or create an account, click the ‘upload’ button and away you go.
4. Embed your YouTube video on your website if you can.
If you are able to edit your website and create new pages then click the ‘share’ link below your video on YouTube and then click ‘embed’ to get the code to paste into your website. If you can’t do this,don’t worry, you can just send your customers a link to the YouTube page (and then come talk to me because being able to edit and update your website easily is a MUST for online success).
5. Send an email to your customers and leads to let them know you’ve made a video for them.
Have a bit of fun with the email, write it like you’re writing to a friend, no one needs another boring corporate style email in their lives! And don’t overcomplicate it, the purpose of your email is to get them to click the link to watch the video, nothing else.
6. Tell me about it!
Email me at megan [at] twiggal.com with “Challenge Complete!” in the subject line or come back here and leave a comment to let me know what you did, what your video was about and what feedback or results you got.
Over To You (and that pesky brain of yours)
Commit right now to growing your business and your sales this week. We all have lots of things we intend to do but actually following through and making them happen can be a different story. Here’s a little psychological trick I like to use on myself:
If we tell another person that we’re going to do something, our brain kicks into ‘oh shit, I better actually make this happen!‘ mode and we’re much more likely to make the magic happen in our business.
So give your brain the motivation and accountability it needs by leaving a comment below telling me what you’re going to make your video about – an offer, a product or service, a common question you hear from customers… what’s it gonna be?
