Video [Inbound] Marketing: How to Drive Real Business Results With Video

Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining our webinar today on inbound video marketing. Today we have George B Thomas joining us. George is an inbound marketeer, evangelist and a HubSpot certified trainer with more than 25 years of experience in inbound marketing, HubSpot and sales. So without further ado, I want to give it to George B to take us through what he's going to present today and also do a little bit of an intro to himself. Awesome. Thank you, Christopher. So I'm super excited to be with you today. I am, as Christopher said, George B Thomas. I work for an agency called Impulse Creative. But today I really want to talk to you or tell a story about a little thing called Sprocket Talk. And we do have a website for it, sprockettalk.com. And really the story is to help with this title that you're looking at right now on the screen. That is that video and then we've got in brackets inbound marketing, how to drive real business results with video. And I want to start with the word inbound. And when we think about inbound, we think about human, human to human marketing. It's not about B to B. It's not about B to C. It's P to P, people to people. And also with that human level, we think about a magnet, right? So pulling people in or inbound. And so as we go through our story today about Sprocket Talk and the things that we think about when we create video and what you and your team could be thinking about when you're creating video, it really wants to leverage into that your videos should be a magnet that are pulling people into your brand. And it should be. And it should be always thinking about the human on the other side of the screen. So with that said, my question for you, and I'd love for you to put this in the chat pane, is are you currently using video in your inbound strategy? You can put a yes or a no, maybe a thumbs up, thumbs down, because it's very curious or I'm curious to the fact of how many people are logging on to this because they're already using video versus logging on to this webinar because they want to learn how to. Do video or what they should be doing with video, which, by the way, is two entirely different things, how to do it and what you should be doing with it. Two totally different things. And really, you should have both of those mapped out. You should understand the gear. You should understand the people. You should understand the placement or settings or the process. But then also, like, what are we trying to achieve? What are our major goals when we're creating these videos? I'm going to take the next 15 to 20 minutes to talk to you about some high level goals that if you connect with these and you're thinking of these as you're creating your videos, it's going to end up being a win win situation for you, your prospects, your leads, your customers. In other words, the other human beings that you're trying to be a magnet to that you're trying to do inbound video marketing for. So let's go ahead and dive into this. Why video in 2019 and beyond? Because it's the best way to communicate other than face to face. Like when and hey, listen, I know you might be an introvert. You might be an extrovert. Maybe you don't like face to face communication, but face to face communication is the best way because we as humans are really good at paying attention to the micros of somebody's face or the way that they look up or down or turn their head or their body gestures. That is how we're built as for face to face communication. But video in 2019. And beyond has become so accessible that we as humans almost think of this as face to face. You're literally looking at my face. I wish I could see yours. You're looking good today, by the way. But the point is, you can see if I know what I'm talking about. You can see if I'm comfortable with the conversation you're having. And immediately I can I can help your BS meter. Hopefully everybody knows what that is. Just go away and go, hey, this is somebody I know, like and trust. That's why video. It's not because it's a stretch strategy. It's not because it's a tactic. It's because it's the best way to communicate as a human being in a digital space on your Web site, in social anywhere that you can think of. Video is going to be a blessing for you if you can embrace it and run with it. So what should you be doing once you say, yes, I should be doing video? What should we be accomplishing? And the first thing I want you to. Realize is this is kind of a sales area here, but we're all in sales, to be honest with you. And that is that we should be disarming our prospects. Again, I go back to what I was just sharing. A video is the easiest way for you to show yourself when you're just meeting somebody and you might be miles and miles away and you're talking about a process that maybe they need. You're talking about a product that they might need. You're talking about a service that potentially would help their business. You as a human being are helping solve a problem that they have. And with a video, you can quickly disarm your prospect by doing a great introduction. Hi, my name is George B. Thomas. I'm an inbound evangelist at Impulse Creative, and I help people like you be great at video right now. Immediately you hear my voice. You see my face. You know what it's in, what what is in it for you because you're trying to be good at video. And now you're like, oh, OK, let me. Listen to what George has to say. So you can definitely use video to disarm your prospects. I have a ton of videos over on our YouTube channel about one to one personalized videos that really go deeper into how you can leverage those to disarm your prospects. You can totally check those out. But realize this is one thing, one goal that you should be doing with your videos is disarming those prospects so that you can continue on with the conversation, because if you don't get past prospecting. You can never make it to a customer. You never help them solve that problem. And of course, I know you. You want to help people solve their problems. The next thing that we should be focusing on once we get past that prospecting is educating our leads. Why do we create all the content that we create at Sprocket Talk? Why do we create free tutorials? Why do we create videos on videos? Why do we do a ton of interviews with thought leaders? Because we want to educate our leads. We understand that. And consumers today are very savvy. They are one Google search away from finding what they need or at least a walkway or a journey to getting what they need. And if you're focused on educating your leads, your prospects, they're going to find you. The map is going to come to you. They're going to find your content and then find you. And so you want to use video to educate. Now, one of the things that I always love to put in here. Is. Is that it can't really be boring education. Christopher and I were actually talking before the webinar about webinars in general and how they have kind of this old stagnant kind of feel to them. But they shouldn't because we should always be focused on how can we entertain people, which hopefully you're being entertained today. I hope. How can we entertain people when we're educating them? And so one of the core things when we're thinking about educating our leads is how can we do edutainment, right? Educate and entertain. At the same time. So you definitely want to be educating your leads with video in 2019 and beyond. So it's disarming your prospect. It's educating your leads. And then with with this in mind, something that is a byproduct and you're also paying attention to and kind of mixing it into a big ball of goodness is that you should be humanizing your brand. Look, people don't buy from a logo. They don't buy from a brick building. They don't. Don't buy your product or service even necessarily. They buy it because the people who have talked them through the journey, they buy it because of the people who are actually building or passionate or love or enjoy building the solution that they need. People buy from people. Again, it comes back to that inbound, that human level. And the best way to humanize your brand is to have something like an email signature video where people, when they get an email from you, they can click. They can click on a little graphic or a link and you can introduce yourself. You can talk about all the things that you're passionate about, how you love solving problems. Maybe talk about how you like long walks on the beach and puppy dogs. I don't know what you want to put in your video, but the idea is your email signature videos should humanize you and therefore humanize the brand. When they come to your website and in that top hero section, it should be a video that positions you as somebody who is thoughtful. Caring, empathetic, and ready to help people solve problems. That's human emotion and people buy off of emotion. So prospecting leads, humanizing your brand. Another thing that we want to pay attention to, and this one's difficult, which is funny because when I actually show the slide, like it's difficult, but it's important. And that is actually using video to simplify the complex. Look, I can't tell you how many times. I've received an email and it's like five paragraphs long. I'm lost in about paragraph 2.5. I'm not sure what they want me to do or what I'm supposed to do. And it would have been much easier just to get a personalized one-to-one video with a couple lines of text and me be able to truly understand or diagnose what this human being is asking me to do or wants me to do. So being able to take if your product or service. Is complex. Distilling it down into a simple video. One of the examples that I like to use is if you ask somebody, what is an API? Man, that's a little nerdy. And some people might start to sweat under the collar a little bit if they had to answer that and win like a million dollars or a million pounds or whatever. Right. But the idea is if you search for what is an API, you can quickly find several videos that distill it down. And start to use storytelling to simplify a complex product or service or procedure and realize that an API is very much like a waiter. You say, this is what I want to order. The waiter goes to the kitchen, tells the kitchen staff this is what they want. The waiter brings back the information or your meal to your table. The waiter is an API. Super simple way to explain what's happening with an API when it's one system talking to another. Right. So make sure you're using video to simplify the complex. The other one that I want to bring up is very powerful. Marketing, sales, HR, culture, humans, everything. And that is that you should use your videos to evoke an emotion. When you go into creating your videos, you should have a goal. And again, it is about how can we humanize the brand? How can we talk to our prospects? How can we educate our leads? How can we simplify? But in all of that, how at the end of the day, at the end of the video, can we have them or leave them with feeling something? How can we touch the heart? Right. And so one of the things that I love in this is that we have to have some statistics, some logic in our videos, but we have to have a ton of emotion as well. We want them to feel things like trust or safety or love or fear or fear. Or whatever it is that your goal is. But your video should evoke some type of emotional response. Again, this is important because it moves the human being. And also we purchase. We make decisions off of emotion tied to the logic. So using your video strategy to tie the heart and the mind together is super, super important. Now, kind of as I wrap this up, I've got a couple more slides. I want to talk about one other thing that is near and dear to. My heart right now. And the reason it's near and dear to my heart right now is because for the last couple of years, we've had this content creation mindset. We should create content. We should we should just over and over and over. And there's a ton of content being created right now. And right now, what I think marketers and businesses in general need to start thinking about is creating an experience. How do we use our videos to create? Create an experience. There can be an experience in the actual video, more of the storytelling. Maybe it's kind of the blogging side of this. Maybe it's paying attention to adding B roll to the videos that you're creating. But beyond that, how do you create an experience where maybe it's a video gallery? And what should that video gallery do? Is there interactive parts? Can you put forms inside your videos? Can you have CTAs inside your videos? Or at the end or beginning? Can you do pre-roll and add things to the video? Should the description of your videos, whether it be on a platform like 23 or on your YouTube channel, should your descriptions be an experience? Should you use emojis? Should you pay attention to the words you're using? Yes. Yes. All of that. Right. So thinking how can you get creative? How can you make your video or sets of videos an experience? How can you make your video or sets of videos an experience for the viewer, for the human who is coming to your brand, who is trying to educate themselves on fixing a problem or moving forward? Maybe it's an aspirational thing. They just want to grow and be a better human being. How can your videos create an experience that they want to be there? And more importantly, that they want to share with the world that this is a great experience. Again, it's kind of a publisher mindset with an experience mindset. And merge that together. And then people will start to talk about you. And when people talk about you, that is your best, best marketing. So one of the things that I want to leave you with, as you think about educating your leads, as you think about disarming your prospects, as you think about simplifying the complex, humanizing your brand, creating an experience, all of the things that we've talked about today. I want you to think in your mind. This is awesome. These are the things that I need to do. But when you go to do them, I want you to imagine or think or diagnose whatever words you want to throw in there. How can I make more videos in less time with less money? And the reason I'm bringing this at the end of my section for this webinar is because those are the two major hurdles that I've heard companies talk about over and over and over again as well. We George. George, we just don't have enough time. You know, we're busy and we're trying to do all these things, but we just don't have enough time. Listen, I go back to the very beginning of what I said. Video is the best way to communicate in a digital space. It's like telling me you don't have time to talk to your customers. It's like telling me you don't have time to talk to your leads. It's like telling me you get it. You don't have time to talk to your prospects as well. Video is important. Figure out how to do it. In less time so you can get over the hurdle in your own mind that it takes too much time. Because trust me, as somebody who puts out two, three, sometimes four videos a day for sprocket talk, you can do it quicker. You just have to reimagine how you're doing it. Also, the other big hurdle that I hear is who videos expensive. Really? How much is it costing us to do this webinar right now? Not a whole lot. Probably if you really break it down, it's my hourly pay. Christopher's hourly pay. Maybe a little electricity to keep the lights on and the internet bill. It's not that expensive. We're using little webcams, not a bunch of equipment, and we're creating a video that hopefully is educational and entertaining and helping you rethink the way that you should use video and think about creating video. Listen, don't get bogged down in gear. Don't get bogged down in budget. Again, reimagine how can I create the video for less money? And I'm not saying less money equals a crappy video. It still needs to be a good video, but how can I do it with less money in less time and create more videos? Because that's more little pieces of content, little pieces of experience that all lead back to your company that help those people find you. And then you make more money. You grow your business. You change your community. Your community changes the world. Okay. That's why. In 2019 and beyond. Thanks, Christopher. Thank you so much, George. A lot of good insights here on how to educate your leads and really use that education in combination with entertainment. I got a lot out of this already. Use your videos in your emails, use emotion, utilize emotions, and disarm your prospects. Now, before we get on to this. So the real interesting part, which is obviously the, in most cases, the questions and answers to those. I'm just going to go through very quickly seven tips on how to actually improve your video marketing efforts. And then hopefully you can take one of two of these away and go home and actually get started. So quickly on the topic here. So seven tips to improve your video marketing efforts. So first and foremost. Explain our videos. A great way to basically get started and leverage videos. We have a great example of Dynaudio who are leveraging videos in a whole different kind of way where they've built their own video studio. Where they really go deep in explaining their video, their product in videos and go deep on towards their ambassadors and really give them, you know, the fine. Fine. So we're setting up two sub names at very high. interactive part. Universal Robots is a great example of how to leverage webinars and actually create a ton of videos for both training purposes, employer branding, and so forth. And what they are doing is basically they have one guy running the show in front of the camera, behind the camera. And in that way, they can create a ton of videos, as George was just mentioning, is key. Another aspect really to go on to the inbound aspect of things are customer cases. A great way to tell your story, but in a much more trustworthy way. Because if you are just blurbing about your product, it's not going to be as trustworthy as if you get your customers to actually tell the story for you. So leverage the voice of your customers is a great way to use. Video Binder is a great example of this. I would definitely recommend you guys to go in and check out their case stories. Another example of how to leverage videos is on your blog in terms of product updates, etc. It's a really good way to start owning the SERP and utilizing SEO. Follion is a great way to start. It's a great example of this, where they actually leverage videos together with their product updates on their blog. Make sure that they have multiple videos for every piece of blog content that they have. And in that way, they're actually creating a lot of SEO value. They're dominating the SERP as well. Not just the classic blog ranking, but also ranking with the video. And now that we speak about the SERP, a good way to go about this. Is start thinking about your competitors. Start thinking about your category. An example here from from 23 is basically how we rank on the SERP with certain videos. Now, this is an example where this could easily also be in some cases YouTube. But the difference is that you really want to make sure that you send the traffic towards the domains that you own, rather than the domains that is. Is owned by YouTube where you don't control the journey. So leveraging videos to really control and own the SERP is a great way to really leverage videos for inbound purposes and drive that traffic along. Now, once you've basically gotten got your traffic and you got the flow going, video actions is a great way to actually control the journey even more so. So within the video, make sure that that the audience takes the desired actions along the way. One example is again back to Folion who here in this case are, you know, have buttons on that video. So when they want the audience to take a desired action, sign up for more sign up for a demo, etc, etc. They can do that within the video and make sure that they actually, you know, lead the audience in the path that that they want. So that's the path that that is is mostly desired. Finally, we've talked, I've talked a little bit a lot actually about video SEO, and it is very key to drive that traffic to your website and really get your your inbound engine going. And what is key there is that is that you go a little bit beyond just creating videos and implementing actions and so forth to control the journey. But that you also remember the nitty gritty aspects of the journey. So as a side note, with your video SEO efforts. But enough about that. If we just go quickly on to the Q&A section, we already had a lot of questions on social. So I'm just going to get started with those and then we'll take questions along the way as well. We've gotten a few questions already, which is great. Please feel free to ask more questions along the way in either the chat function or the question function on your right side. Now, the first question we got on social were basically a question around in-house versus outsourcing. What are the pros and cons in terms of my video strategy? And I think I want to let George B. take this one. George, what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts on this? Yeah, definitely, Christopher. It's funny because usually when you have this conversation with people, it's insourcing versus outsourcing. And to be honest, in my humble opinion, it's not a versus. It's an or. Meaning, if you have the ability to do it in-house, that's great because it's going to save you time and it's going to save you money. There's less of a process that you have to go through. You can churn out more videos per day. You have a dedicated videographer or somebody who likes to do video. We don't have to necessarily have somebody that their full title is a videographer, but maybe it's a marketer who likes to edit video or likes to create video. Myself, that is who I am. I love inbound marketing, being strategic, but I also love getting into a simple editor and making simple videos that are highly effective. But you might be sitting here and go, I don't have any ideas. I can record it, but after that, I am aloof or I'm not sure what to do. Then you can ship that out to somebody and have them edit it. So you can do all the shooting. They can do all the editing. Or there's the third variation of like, look, we just know that we need to do video. We've got budget. We don't want to have to worry about it. Let's have somebody come in, shoot and edit. And now we just have content that we can drip out over the next quarter or two quarters. So I don't think it's... I think it's an in-house versus outsourcing. I think it's an in-house and or outsourcing together. Because again, the most important part of this is that you're leveraging video to communicate with your prospects, leads and customers, no matter how you do it. Makes perfect sense, George. And I couldn't agree more. The next question that we have is around a topic that you already touched base upon, which is education versus entertainment. What tactics should I choose? And again, the answer might be it's not either or, but let's hear from George on this one. Yeah, definitely. So here's the thing. Nobody wants to sit around and watch a boring video. Like, we don't want to do that. We want to watch something that is at least moving along. It looks nice. And at the end of the day, even though I say entertaining, I don't mean it has to be over the top. You know, it's funny. Karen Fletcher actually asked a question very similar to this as well in the chat pane. She says, how can I evoke emotion in a video if the tone of the content is normally more professional? I want everybody to realize that emotion and entertaining and education is like a trifecta where if you can pay attention to all three of those and hit in the center, it doesn't matter if it's a professional video or not. Or you have to feel like you need to. You need to be professional. You can put little doses of entertainment. Ting. That was simple, right? Like just just the way you smile, the way you move. Maybe you make a small little joke. Maybe it's the way that the setting behind you. That's entertaining. People geek out with my Marvel superhero background that I usually have in my videos. That's entertaining to them. It makes the educational content that much more fun. Because the environment is fun around me. Plus, I'm just a big goofball. I'm a big nerd. And so I play that part in my videos. But they're getting educated. And what emotion do they get left with? Because I'm educating them. It's an entertaining environment. They feel better about themselves because now they know how to do what they needed to do. And so they have the feeling of like belief in themselves. So see, we don't have to. What I don't want people to do is overthink it. I don't want them to think it's like 50 50 entertaining and education. No, it's like education is the meal and the entertaining in the emotion is just the salt or pepper or the condiments that you would put on top of that meal. Good stuff, George. This actually, I think, ties a little bit in with with the next question that we have, which is basically around, you know, if I if I'm just getting started, where should I focus? Is it top of funnel? Is it bottom of funnel? Now? These terms are obviously inbound, very classical inbound terminology alongside both and tofu, etc. Right. When we're talking about the funnel, when we're talking about the flywheel, it's kind of a little bit different. But I think it still stands the question like, where should I focus? Should I focus like start journey? Should I focus more, you know, in end of the journey beyond where should my focus be when I'm when I'm just getting started? Yeah, I love this question. And usually I ask a question to answer this question. And I ask people, well, where's your pain point? And they have to stop and think. And what I mean by that is, do you need more traffic to your site? Or are you already getting a crap ton of traffic to your site? But you need to close more deals, right? And so depending on where your pain point is, where I would actually tell somebody to start first, however, above and beyond that answer to the question, I think that every company should start with one to one personalized videos right now, finding a software that you can do personalized one to one videos in because it's that one to one human connection that's going to give you the maximum amount of ROI. Now, I'm by no means saying that you shouldn't do the one to many videos. Of course we should. We want to communicate one to many. But if you're looking for quick returns, a way to prove to somebody in your organization that video works when you can tie one, two or three videos that you created for Jimmy and Jimmy ended up buying and Jimmy bought $50,000 worth of your product. Now you've got a bank of $50,000 that you can say, look at that ROI, Bob, let's go ahead and create more videos. Right. So start with the one to one personalized. Start with where your pain point is. Like, look, if you're if you need more traffic, then it's videos on social, right? It's getting more and more videos. So you're getting creative and telling your story out there on social and making sure that they come back to the website to get the rest of the information that they need. Again, this question ties a little bit into into the next question that we have, which is which is the best channel to promote your videos? And here we're probably talking a little bit more in the realm of of one to one to many, so to speak. Do you want to give it a go here and then I can maybe follow up, George? If we're talking social. If we're talking social and somebody says, what's the best channel to promote my videos on? I look at you and I go, what community do you have the most followers on? Like, where are people having the most conversations with you already? Because that's where you should do video first. And what's fun is I love working with companies, letting them know, like there's it's not like one channel, but it's a priority in the multiple channels. So, for instance, for me, I know that the big power pack channels are LinkedIn and Facebook right now. Now, I do use Twitter for those like kind of quick in the moment videos, like, for instance, our inbound 2019 speaks video series that we're knee deep into right now. We're using Twitter because we can hashtag inbound 19 as we're sharing those videos and it's interviews with speakers who are going to be at the event. And so it's timely. So we know right now that channel is very important. But historically, over the rest of the year, when that event isn't going on, we know that people in our Facebook community and in our LinkedIn community are going to be sharing. And so we know that people in our LinkedIn community are most likely to watch our videos or click on links to go watch our videos on our website. And we know out of those two that LinkedIn is actually number one. So when we post, we always post to LinkedIn. Most of the time we post to Facebook and sometimes to Twitter. Right. So you kind of get a matrix that you start to follow. Now, one place that you should always be posting your videos is on your website, on individual sites. Hopefully you have a video gallery area for your videos. They should always be going there. And then one place that I would love to see more people adding videos on a regular basis is teaser videos for their blog articles. There's a couple of reasons why, Christopher, that this is important to me. One is because it gives you a way to humanize that article that you've created and tease people into the rest of the content. And you can give kind of the short synopsis of what's going to happen in that article. The second one is for a very hashtag nerdy reason. And that's because if they go to that page and they hit play and they watch that video, now it's a longer session for search engine optimization reasons. And now Google goes, oh, they're on this page longer, which is always a win-win. So that's what I think about when people start to ask what channels or where video should go. That's what's in my mind. And then the third one is just to follow up on that one. I think it's also a matter of saying video is a good tool to break through the noise, right? But you also need to sometimes go where the noise actually is because that's where people are. So it's also a matter of saying and looking at where are people and your audience spending their time. One thing is like, where is your core audience that your current customers, where are they relating to you? Where are they connecting to you? But it's also a matter of looking at your prospects and saying, okay, where are they spending the most time? Well, we know for a fact that most people are spending the most time on Facebook. It's also the place where you have the most options in terms of creatives, in terms of campaigning, in terms of targeting. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a big thing and it's getting bigger and it's getting better. But besides the targeting options, you don't have... You don't have a lot of creative freedom for your videos right now when we're talking PPC. On the flip side there, especially on the B2B, LinkedIn is big and it's just going one way and it's going to be bigger in the future, mainly because you can target titles, can target job areas, et cetera, et cetera, skills and so forth. So you can do some really good stuff. You can't necessarily do on other areas. Now, if we go on to the next question, I guess you kind of answered that, but let's just go over it anyway, George. Now what about video for Outbound? George McEnany So when I think about this, I don't necessarily... I mean, there is, I guess, in a way, Outbound. George McEnany For instance, when I think of Outbound, I think, So instead of a cold call, it's just sending somebody a video because you basically met once or God forbid, and hopefully this is not you, you got a list, right? So there is that. But I also think that just in general, posting videos to post videos is a little bit of an outbound strategy anyway. Like, for instance, and I'll kind of go with this, I'm having a mental battle in my head battle in my own brain right now. Like I put videos out because I know that they're going to be magnets and they're going to bring people into me and into the brand. And they might be on Facebook. They might be on Twitter. They might be on LinkedIn. But to a lot of people, even though I'm looking at it as an inbound strategy, because I know how the videos are going to work to some, that's an interruption in their feed. It's an outbound in their mind tactic, but that's their perception versus our perception. So I don't necessarily know when you're creating the content, the video, if there's actually a way that you would use video for per se an outbound mentality, because video in itself really doesn't work that way. Like you have to click on it to play it. You have to... You have to, as a human being, choose to interrupt your own day, right? It's much different. It's a different type of piece of content. So I don't know, honestly, if I would ever call a piece of video content like an outbound element or not. I'm curious, Christopher, what your thoughts are on video and outbound. I think that video is definitely coming more and more into the realm of outbound. You just talked about videos and emails, email signatures, et cetera. And it's about thinking about every part of the user journey that you have, both inbound versus outbound. I think that those two worlds shouldn't be as separated as such, but put that aside. I think you need to think video into every step of the journey. And you can use video, so to speak, in your emailing. You can use GIFs, et cetera. And you can also follow up with a personal email afterwards on a video page, or one to many... way of doing it, as in a personalized way of doing it, at least, right? So there are many ways that you can use videos also in the more traditional outbound methodology or way of doing things. It's just about being creative in the way that you do it. I like that. I like that. Thank you so much, George, for tuning in and helping us out today. This is the end of... of our webinar. I hope you enjoyed it and that you will tune in next time for our next Wednesday webinar. But for now, farewell, and hopefully see you later. Bye.