A Good Video VS. A Bad Video. What makes all the difference?
As of late, I have been talking with leads and prospective clients about our NEW video marketing system. It’s funny that my main job as a business owner is still closing deals and getting more leads in the pipeline. The hustle never ends. This new video marketing system has been working like charm, but 87% of businesses still can’t seem to jump into Video Marketing.
Case in point.
Yesterday I was speaking with a guy that said he was not interested in running YouTube or Facebook video ads, because he had tried it, and it didn’t work for him. He spent some money promoting it, but didn’t get new clients. They even had 600,000 views.
That’s weird…
If your video has 600,000 views and you did not get one client…then you have a video problem.
If you never get any shares, likes, or comments, you have a video problem.
If you don’t get leads, sales, or more customers, you have a video problem.
When I speak at conferences, I always put this quote at the beginning.
“If you can’t link your video back to leads, sales, or customers…you’re doing it wrong.”
The exception to this is education videos and training videos. Those are in a totally different category.
So how do you do this? How do you create a video that will pull in viewers’ emotions to cause them to act? How do you create an insane video that will get you the results you desire?
We do this by creating a an actually story.
Video Storytelling 101
For the past 8 years we have focused on “Storytelling and Messaging.”
Our job is to convince people to take action.
We’ve found that great stories make all the difference.
I have been listening to an audio book called “The Hero’s Two Journeys.” Written by Michael Hauge and Christopher Volger. They laid out the simplest foundation for a good story.
This might surprise you, but all good movies are based off of a simple formula. I learned this when I read the story behind Pixar.
Once upon a time
Every Day
One Day
Because of that
Because of that
Until Finally
The next time you watch a pixar movie, you’ll be able to identify the formula.
It’s a bit more complicated than the one I like to use, but it works.
Michael and Christopher made a formula that is even simpler. I recommend following this formula. Every good story should have:
Character
Desire
Conflict
Michael says, “Good stories have a captivating character who is pursuing some compelling desire and who faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieving it.
You will obviously build on this structure, but it’s a great place to start.
Luke grew up in the outskirts of the galaxy. He wanted to learn the Force. Yet, he had no idea he was going to have to defeat Darth Vader who was part of the dark side.
Character: Luke Desire: Learn the Force Conflict: Darth Vader
Isn’t that easy? That’s a multi-billion dollar formula. ☺
Now, let’s apply this formula to the addiction recovery space.
A young doctor decided he was going to open up his own drug treatment facility. He wanted to help those who were struggling with addiction. The doctor soon realized that he was not able to get anyone to come to his new facility. He needed a way to deliver his message. He started to run ads on Google, but was paying over $115 per click. He could not afford to compete, so he closed the doors.
Character: Young doctor Desire: Help people who are addicted Conflict: Marketing and Google’s cost per click was too high
For a real estate business
The Jones family is looking to move because the father received a new job offer. There is just one problem. They have to sell their house ASAP. Are they going to list it with an agent and take a 6% hit or should they list it themselves and run the risk of not selling the house?
Character: Jones family Desire: Sell their house Conflict: List their home with an agent and pay 6% or list their home by themselves
I am leaving out one key component in the formula, which we discover a little later.
Why does this story telling formula work?
Sticking with the theme of addiction recovery, I want to show you a video that converts. I know this, because we use it for our clients.
How well does it work? Well, let’s just say that we get leads at 1/10th the cost of a click.
Take a look.
If we break it down, you will get the following:
Character: The drug addict Desire: Wants to be clean and get his life back Conflict: Battle with addiction and getting help
A couple of factors you will want to consider when telling your story.
1. The character has to be relatable in some way. If nobody can relate to your character the video will not get the desired result.
2. When watching your video, the viewer needs to feel something. If they can’t relate to the desire or the conflict, they will not act.
3. End with a resolution.
All great stories have a resolution. Have you ever left half way through a great movie?
It’s like torture.
You’ll do anything to see the end.
TV sitcoms are exceptional at this. They will keep us watching for months and some for years because we need a resolution.
Remember when you were a kid watching your favorite sitcom? Every couple of weeks your show would end with this:
…To Be Continued.
There’s nothing worse.
We can’t just end our story with a character, desire, and conflict. There has to be some kind of resolution. Good or bad.
Introducing… The Resolution.
When designing your video, your product or service is going to be the resolution. You can introduce your product in many different ways, but you have to make sure that it clearly helps achieve the character’s desire.
So how do you create a story in under 5 minutes that includes a Character, Desire, Conflict and a Resolution?
It’s not easy to design a story in under 5 minutes, let alone 30 seconds for a TV commercial. You have to create a character, explain his/her desire, battle the conflict, and end with a resolution.
That is a lot to do.
The goal is to dig deep into the viewer’s life. Make them feel like we are talking about them. We are describing THEIR desires and conflict.
Step 1: Character Development
This is one of the reasons that big brands pay huge amounts of money to get a superstar.
We already relate and know the superstar. They can jump right into the desire, conflict, and resolutions.
There’s no need to spend precious seconds defining the character.
If you are starting from scratch, here are some ideas to get the right character for your audience.
1. Know your target audience. Age, Desires, Wants, Likes, Color, etc.
2. Find, build, or create a character that matches your target audience.
3. Make them likable, lovable, kind, powerful, cute, or pitiful.
Step 2: Desire
What does the character want to accomplish? What’s his or hers greatest desire? Does the desire relate to the viewer?
Step 3: Conflict
The conflict should take up the highest percentage of the time. This is where you get the viewer to hurt a bit. We all hate conflict when it’s our battle, but we all love watching someone else battle. It’s what makes great stories.
Step 4: Resolution
This is the simple part. The conflict gets solved with your product or service and the character is happy. Problem is solved.
I hope this helped.
Now that you understand what it takes to create the story, the tricky part is actually getting started. If you would like us to create your story, we can do that. Our writers are exceptional at creating stories. We can take you product or service and design a video your audience will love.
If not…
Use the formula above and create an Insane Video that will get you results.
Here’s a simple video on 10 ways you can market you business.
Some of these will work for you and some will not. The key is to learn them, test them, and then keep testing.
10 Ways to Market Your Business
The Video transcript (forgive errors)
Hey, guys, what’s up? This is Jace with Marketing Hy. Normally I don’t shoot live videos, but we’re going to do it today, so this ought to be interesting. I am going to go over 10 ways to market your business, okay? We’re going to try to get this done in about seven minutes. We’ve got 10 things to jump through.
1. Do you have a Website?
The very first thing you want to do if you’re going to market your business, especially online, is, website. Okay, get a website, get a good website. I always look at websites. I get a lot of people who request marketing proposals, and so first thing we do is go check out their website, what is their messaging? Is their website set up correctly? Do they have Google Analytics in place? Webmaster tools? All those little things that make all the difference. Have they got Pixels on their website? So the very first thing you want to do is make sure you have a website that is up and running and done properly. You can get them done for $1500, and some people like to spend $10,000. But normally you should spend between $1500 and $4,000 to get a good website.
2. YouTube Channel
Okay, number two is, YouTube. Make sure after your website gets done, get yourself a YouTube channel, brand it with your branding, brand it with your message. A lot of times people up at the top of YouTube will just put there an image, and then they don’t put their website where they should. I mean, you can add links to the cover photo. They don’t do any of those types of things. What I like to do on my YouTube channel is use it as an extension of your website, and make sure you put your value proposition up at the top. Okay?
3. Facebook Page and Facebook Ads
Number three, Facebook. Get yourself a Facebook page and go out there and make sure you are running Facebook Ads. Facebook is very, very good at finding your target audience. You can use Facebook and create … I mean, you can upload your email list. You can download your contacts from your LinkedIn, upload them into Facebook and then start running them ads. You can market your ads to mothers who have 13 year to 15 year old children and they live in these areas. I mean, you can get really targeted. Now, Facebook is the hot thing right now. It will probably change as more and more people drop off of Facebook it can hurt the advertising, okay?
4. Adwords Campaign
Number four, Adwords or Google Ads. I always want a company to run search ads. Okay, now you might not be able to spend a lot there, the return on investment might not be there, but it will be for certain key words. You just have to be careful, make sure you get the right keywords.
8. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
We’re going from four to eight here, SEO. Search engine optimization is big in my book. I like search engine optimization because once you create a really good article and push it up through the search engine it is there and it’ll stay there for a long time. So you just have to get used to creating good content and then get back links to that content, and that’s how you win at the SEO game.
5. Conferences (speaking and booths)
Number five, conferences. Okay, if you’re a small business and you are looking to get some good exposure, I like to go speak at conferences, okay? I will try to speak anywhere from about 10 conferences, like Pubcon, SMX, I like to do business things, DECA, all those types of things I like to speak at, just because when I speak at a conference I’m able to give them value and then in return a lot of times people are there to do business. So they’ll call you up, “Hey, I want you to run my ads.” And stuff like that. Booths, I put on there two booths. I am iffy on booths. I haven’t been able to get a really good return. I’d rather go speak and then attend the speeches.
6. Direct Mail Campaign (still testing this one)
Number six, direct mail. Okay, not a lot of people are doing it, but everyone likes to look at their mail. If you are a person that goes home and looks at his mail, then you probably should be running a direct mail campaign, okay? I am testing that right now. I have not been the greatest at direct mail but I am going to get good.
7. Radio for local area
Number seven is, radio. I’ve got a chiropractor that we do business with and we market for him, and he likes radio. He does a local radio show, gets a lot of leads. It’s harder if you’re going to go national, that is a little bit harder to get a ROI, but if you’re a local business, local chiropractors, financials, it’s good to do a radio show. Gets you some good exposure, and on top of that, whenever you’re doing a radio show, people immediately think that you’re an expert in that industry.
9. Cold Email
Okay, number nine, cold email. Okay, so I like cold email, but it’s being overdone. If you look at my email you would see tons of cold email and they try all these little tactics to say, “Hey, did you look at this?” They’ll put forward and all that, and they’ll be like … I need to think of an example. I’m on the spot, can’t think of it. Blah. I’m not going to go look. Okay, but just no, cold email, I think it’s getting overdone. What I like to do is I go to Upwork.com, I hire somebody to find the websites that fit my target audience, they will then get the contact information and they’ll just email them and they’ll be straight up and basically say, “Hey, here’s our value proposition.” We don’t try to trick them. If they’re interested, they’re interested. If they’re not, they’re not, okay?
10. Hustle
Number 10, hustle. Okay, part of owning a business or starting a business is you have to learn to hustle, you have to get up early, you have to go to bed late, especially if you’re broke, okay? My very first business I started I graduated college, went out there, and me and my friend didn’t know what to do, and he said basically, “Hey, I know how to do mortgages.” And I was like, “Okay, I like money and I like finances, let’s do it.” So we started our first business and we knew nothing, and like I said, we were just graduated. Now, I did own a window washing company, which put me through college.
Basically, my goal was to run a million dollar business, okay? And I wanted to do it quickly. When I was young I wanted to retire when I was 25. Obviously, I’m never going to retire now, I like work too much, okay? But what I did every morning, I got up, I learned my craft, I studied from like five o’clock til around eight o’clock, then from eight o’clock I opened up the phone-book and I started to just dial numbers, trying to see if people were interested in what I had to offer, which was refinance purchasing, real estate, stuff like that.
Then I would go knock doors, I would just go in neighborhood and knock doors. Now, I did not close anything for the first four months, but once that fourth month hit it was like a waterfall business, just boom, everyone started to close. Never looked back, and just kept doing those habits of hustling, networking, talking to people, and that’s how we grew that first business, and we’ve done many since then. So if you’re a business, you’re just getting started, be prepared to hustle, and apply those things, those 10 things. If you have questions you can always go over to MarketingHy.com, and that’s Marketing H-Y, not H-I, .com, and there are some tutorials, lots of tutorials. There’s a university that will show you how to do YouTube ads, Facebook ads, whatever you need.
And that is it; enjoy.
Are you a small business owner looking to grow your business? Here are 8 websites I like to sue to grow my businesses.
Hey everyone
Thanks for visiting our site. Below we are going to go over the different website that I use on a daily basis to grow my businesses. Some of them you will be able to use, others you will not. Whenever I give my opinion or advice I would recommend you take what is useful and discard the rest.
Hope this helps.
Hey, good morning. This is Jace over at Marketing High, and today we are going to be discussing eight websites I use to help grow my businesses. A little history, I’ve grown multiple businesses past in the millions, so I thought I would share with you guys eight websites I use, or things I use to help grow my businesses, and this is mainly for … Well, it can be for big corporations, or it could be for small businesses, but mainly it’s for people who are bootstrapping, trying to get their message out there, trying to sell their product. This is the easy way to do it. I’m going to go through the list, and then we can turn around, I’ll show you what I like about each feature, and hopefully you can take some of this and apply it to your business. Let’s get started.
1. Adwords
2. Facebook
3. Upwork
4. YouTube
5. Infusionsoft
6. WPEngine
7. Google Domains and Apps
8. Elegant Themes
First, AdWords. For many of you know, I’m a big fan of AdWords. I’ll show you some examples here in a second. Number two, Facebook. You need to learn Facebook. Now, that could change in the future, but for right now, Facebook is a good way to produce leads. Use Upwork. Upwork is a place you can go get cheap work. It’s really nice, because you can hire people that know what they’re doing, and you can fire them with a click of the button. You don’t have to worry if you’re in the US about all the crazy worker’s comp, all the rules and regulations, so it’s really good for small businesses.
YouTube, get your message out there. Infusionsoft, that’s our email service that does all of our email campaigns. They do a lot more, but I mainly use it for emails, and followup sequences, which I’ll show you. WPEngine, I love that for hosting. They are more expensive, way more than GoDaddy or those types of companies, but they’re very good, very customer-friendly. Plan on spending over $1,000 a year if you want to go that route. Then you have Google Domains and Apps for emails and for domains, I’ll show you, and then the last one is Elegant Themes.
First off, let’s jump over here to an AdWords campaign. I do a lot of marketing for other companies, so here is an example of one. It’s an urgent med health center, urgent care center, and they’re located in a certain city. What we did, we turned around and said, “Okay, we’re going to set up an easy AdWords campaign. Nothing exciting, nothing crazy.” You can learn how to do this on your own. You just have to make sure you don’t make dumb mistakes, like be really strict on the words. Don’t allow Google to just go out there and put the words they want to put in there. You need to be very strict.
In the last 14 days, this little campaign has drove them nine conversions. That’s nine phone calls. That doesn’t include your 61 website clicks of people going to the website. Conversion rate, about 14%. Now, that’s really, really good. Whenever anyone’s in that city, if you own an urgent care, you want to show up. You need to be there on search engines. If you’re a small business owner, you have to get used to using AdWords. Now, it might not be the most cost-effective thing for you, but you can always get a good return. You just need to limit your keywords down to exactly what you want, and then let it run. Let it run for the rest of your company’s history. I have one company, Ydraw. We’ve been running an AdWords campaign for well … Going on five years now. It still produces. We have like a 15% conversion rate on it, and there are certain keywords that we get leads day in and day out, and it works. Get used to AdWords. You’ll want to use it if you are a small business owner.
Next, you need to get good with Facebook. Facebook is an easy way to get your message out there. You can see I’m running campaigns right now, and I have 45 conversions for $122. That is really cheap. I mean, that’s less than $3 per conversion, so I am getting people who are interested. I am collecting emails with just Facebook ads. Once again, there are so many videos. We’ve even shot our own videos on how to run Facebook ads. That’s a simple way to get your message out there.
Next is Upwork. I love Upwork. Upwork is a place you can go hire, you can go fire. You can see I’m running cold emails, data mining, take forms. You can see what we do, and hire, and all you do is post a job, and you can pay people $10. You can actually find some really good people that do huge amounts, so that’s another thing you can do. Upwork, easy, cheap labor. YouTube, obviously I like YouTube to deliver my message. Some people might not want to use YouTube. It’s fine, but you can jump over to my channel right here on YouTube and see that we love YouTube. We record videos often. It’s just a good way to get our message out there. We run YouTube ads, so it’s a good thing for small businesses.
Next, Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft might be a little complicated. They are for small businesses, but then again, they’re not in some ways. I think they are being passed up. I just do. I’ve thought many times, “I’m going to jump over to like an AWeber or a MailChimp,” but I’ve just kept it here for now. They’re good. They’ve been around a long time. They have this campaign builder, which used to be kind of the big thing. Let me show it to you. Whenever you’re out there marketing as a small business, you have to make sure that you collect email addresses, that you get information. You have to make an offer. Whenever you’re running AdWords campaigns, whenever you’re doing Facebook campaigns, you have to have some type of offer for them to opt-in. Then you collect their email address, and then you can go here and look at our sequence.
Here’s all these forms that are collecting, and this is what’s nice about Infusionsoft. They have forms, and then you can just build out these campaigns so you know what’s happening. They get tagged, and then they go through this email sequence where I educate them, where I help them out, answer any of their questions, and you can see they get a day one, day two, day four, and that’s how you move them through the funnel from top of funnel to bottom. Email marketing is big. A lot of times you can take all of those emails and then run remarketing ads to them, upload them back into Facebook, those types of things.
Now, number six is WPEngine. Like I said, great if you’re a WordPress, if you’re hosting for WordPress. I like WPEngine. They work well. GoDaddy and those places were just too slow. For cheap, if you don’t have enough money, if you’re looking only to spend $5, GoDaddy works great. That’s kind of who I started out with when I first started building websites. Seven, Google Domains and Apps. Pretty self-explanatory. I like Google Domains. They are in beta right now, but the user experience is really good. It’s easy to buy domain. It’s easy to set up email. It’s easy to do forwarding emails. It’s just a simple, simple platform. Like them.
Lastly, Elegant Themes. That, I use what’s called the Divi theme to build out our websites. If you look at our website, this is the Divi theme. It’s really easy to use. They put a lot of work into it. You can check out like our blog, but this is all built in the Divi theme, which I like.
There you have it. Eight websites I use to grow my businesses. Feel free to use some of them, forget some of them. I would say like number five, AWeber’s a great choice. MailChimp is a great choice when you’re first getting started. They run about $19 a month. I have a lot of accounts with them too, where some of our businesses we market for are on Aweber. GoDaddy is a good substitution here. There are some other freelance websites out there, but Upwork is the one I use, and then obviously AdWords, Facebook. You can go get all the tutorials you want on how to create AdWords campaigns.
I hope that helps. Go out there, get to work, start testing it. Don’t give up too soon on all of this. It takes work. It takes learning it. Practice. A lot of people quit too soon, especially like on AdWords. They just don’t put in enough effort, and then next thing you know, they lose money, and then they quit, and they’re down. Get out there, get to work, learn, provide value, and you’ll be able to grow your business. Hope that helps. See ya.
Like in all great stories (explainer videos) there is a character with a clear ambition.
Great videos, especially explainer videos, have to focus on one thing. Not a bunch of things. That’s why the very first step to creating your story has to be focused on the one thing that your viewer/customers wants.
When your story is focused on what the customer wants, they will listen.
And by the way, the character in your story is the customer, not your product or service. The majority of businesses get this all wrong. They assume the character is them when in reality the Character is your customer. You’re the Yoda!
When you’re ready to get an amazing video, let us know. We would love to help create your story.
