Using Video Marketing to Communicate Your Brand Story with Ben Amos

In part 14 of our Masterclass Series on Building a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Business, host Eric Dickmann speaks with Ben Amos, Founder of Engage Video Marketing. Ben has over 15 years of experience in the film and media industry and is also Founder and Creative Director of Innovate Media, a video production and online video strategy agency operating from Queensland, Australia. Ben has also founded Australia’s only purpose-built video blogging studio space, and facility – Vlog Pod®.

Ben is passionate about working with clients to develop effective online video strategy within their niche and is driven to help other business owners and marketers understand the full potential for online video platforms within a wider business marketing strategy.

For additional resources on this episode and from our other episodes in this Masterclass Series, visit https://fiveechelon.com/masterclass

To learn more about Eric Dickmann and The Five Echelon Group, visit https://fiveechelon.com

To learn more about Ben Amos and Engage Video Marketing, visit http://engagevideomarketing.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/beninnovate/

Episode #64

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Marketing Automation with HubSpot
Try HubSpot’s all-in-one marketing software to simplify campaign management and drive new leads.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

For additional information and insights, visit https://podcast.ericdickmann.com/

Be sure to check out Eric's other show, Beyond Expertise!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Carla 0:01

The Virtual CMO podcast is sponsored by the strategic marketing consulting services of The Five Echelon Group. If you’d like to work directly with The Five Echelon Group and receive personal coaching and support to optimize your business, enhance your marketing effectiveness and grow your revenue, visit Five Echelon.com to learn more and schedule a free consultation.

Eric Dickmann 0:23

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Hey, Ben. Welcome to The Virtual CMO Podcast in our Masterclass series around building out a strategic marketing plan for your business. I'm really glad you could join us today.

Ben Amos 0:51

Hey, thanks for having me, Eric. I'm excited to jump in.

Eric Dickmann 0:54

Me too, because we're nearing the end of our series. It's been a 15 episode series. And just for the sake of the audience, I want to recap quickly where we've been, we've sort of talked about the benefit of building out a strategic marketing plan, identifying your target market and your ideal customer profile. Then talking a little bit about your product market fit and competitive differentiation. Using that to build a brand story and market messaging using content creators, to be able to then take that messaging and build out some really compelling and value, add content using marketing automation, CRM, and analytics, and then social media, to be able to amplify your reach, to get your message out there to the marketplace. Advertising SEO, other content development, and then PR and communications, as well as free tools to be able to sort of get your message out to people of influence within the marketplace. And then finally, we sort of moved into building a list and email marketing, because that's still super important to this. How to maximize your marketing budget because marketing is an expense, it does cost money for the most part. And so you want to be able to maximize that and then now we get to video. And I think one of the reasons that I wanted to include it, because if you look at all those other things, you may say, well, why does specifically call out video? But we are in a visual age, right? Video is so important to people and we've got content creators all over the world, whether they're individuals on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube or whatnot, video is sort of king right now, wouldn't you agree?

Ben Amos 2:38

100% and still just because that's what I do everyday for our clients and help people do. But. It's no surprise to anyone who is active on any digital platforms that video is everywhere, these days. Every social media platform is a video platform, and video as a form of communication I think is one of the most powerful forms of communicating a message to someone. So very powerful tool for marketing, which I'm excited to dive into deeper with you here today.

Eric Dickmann 3:05

Yeah, so that's great. And I really am excited about it as well. So talk to me a little bit about your company, just as means of background for the audience and how you got into video marketing yourself.

Ben Amos 3:19

Yeah, sure. Thank you for that. So, I'm kind of represent two companies in a way. One of them is Engage Video Marketing, which is my coaching consulting, course creation brand. I'd have my own podcast under that brand of Engage Video Marketing and that's my way of basically helping people understand this world of strategic video marketing to do better videos for either their clients or themselves. So that's kind of one way that I kind of help people understand video marketing. I also run a video production and strategy agency here in Queensland, Australia, which is called Innovate Media. And that's basically how we work with business clients right here in our area to help them do this. So we produce content, you know, we have full production crews and things like that, but we also help them implement and manage and distribute that content online as well. So it's kinda two ways. If you have anyone watching or listening is in Australia, then we can work directly with you in that way. But otherwise Engage Video Marketing is the place to find out more.

Eric Dickmann 4:16

And we'll give a chance to talk a little bit more about that at the end. And I'll certainly have all this linked up in the show notes, but what I was hoping we could sort of talk about in terms of framing this conversation today is obviously video is a digital medium. So you're going to have to be on a computer, on a phone, on a tablet somewhere to be able to receive it. So obviously the channels that this plays in become self-evident. So I want to start out by talking about your website. And we've seen a lot of video that started to be used and hero images on the front page of your website to almost be either an explainer video that tells a little bit about her product or service or your company, maybe a testimonial. Can you talk to me a little bit about your experience working with clients and what you're finding as most effective in terms of the use of video. Let's just start out talking about that front page. What grabs people's attention on a front page?

Ben Amos 5:19

Okay. Yeah. I mean, this is often the place where most of our clients start. So they often redesigning a website or rebranding, or they're speaking with their web designer. And they're saying, you know, we should have a video on the hero video on the front page of the websites. Pretty, common thing because you know, the goal of web design is to get people's attention, get people to stay on your website, to you know, have longer page view times and things like that, but importantly, to actually get people to realize very quickly that they're in the right place, right? That's the goal of a website. To communicate why people need to dive deeper into learning about your business. Video is very powerful at doing that because it's kind of like the in a way, if you think about the video's role in this place is it's kind of like the front of your shop, you know, in bricks and mortar kind of metaphor is the idea of you want your shop front to be welcoming, to bring people in, and to help them understand very quickly, why they want to come in and do business with you. Video does that both from a branding perspective. So both from a visual impact perspective, so the opening scenes or shots of your video on that hero section of the website need to hook people emotionally so that they're like, Wow, this is something that resonates with me. But then it also has the power of communicating. You know, rational information to people very quickly as well. So. I guess much like a impactful headline at the top of a website as well, which often the hero video works well with the tagline or the headline of the website as well. So if these things are kind of working together, then basically it should do the job of getting people to buy in before you ask them to buy, right? So buying is an emotional thing. So this video, this hero video, on your website, often we referred to it being a brand story is a term that's often referred to that video's goal is to get people to make that right emotional connection with your brand or business so that they are then interested to go further on that journey with you. Does that make sense?

Eric Dickmann 7:24

It does make sense. And one of the things that I love about what you're saying is that, you know, several times in explaining that you talked about the emotional connection and I think in my experience in dealing with a lot of clients, they're very focused on features, they're very focused on why they're better what their product does, but it sort of misses the point. So a lot of other things do that same thing, right? That's not the differentiator. The differentiator is how you can establish that connection with your potential buyer and establish trust. But it's the emotion of it, right? It's really setting the tone for maybe future interactions.

Ben Amos 8:04

Yeah, 100% and it's coming down to why people make decisions to buy. You've probably touched on it in your podcast before around the idea that people make decisions based on emotion, and then they justify that with logic and reasoning. Its how the human brain works. Our subconscious mind or our pre-conscious mind makes decisions based on gut feel or emotional connections. Well, before we make a rational decision to do something particularly to part with cash to buy something. So when you're thinking about selling, which is ultimately what we're doing in business, that's our ultimate goal, but it doesn't start with the sale. It needs to start with getting the right emotional connection, showing up for your ideal target audience with the understanding that you know how they feel, that you understand the pain that they're feeling, the emotions that they're feeling, that's triggered them to make a decision to buy this thing or to explore buying this thing, right? So that's where video can be really powerful is when you consider how you craft video differently, based on the stage that your ideal audience is at and engaging with your brand along their customers, the customer journey which I know you've talked about in previous episodes as well, the customer journey idea. So that's critical. Not eat every video doesn't look the same, you know? And to understand how you can strategically plan for video content that's used in different ways along that journey is very important. We can dive deeper into that if you like.

Eric Dickmann 9:33

Yeah, I do want to dive deeper into that. I would just share an example that I had. So one of the people that I used to do my accounting work, I was giving them some advice the other day on their website. And I think on their website, on the homepage, just what you could see on the first screen, there were probably five or six places where they were asking you to contact them, phone numbers, email addresses, forms, whatnot. And then there was a short sentence that said, you know, what they do in a very matter of fact way. But I happened to know this business owner pretty well, and she's a great person. She really loves her clients, she really takes a personal interest in everybody that she does business with, yet that was not reflected in any way, really at the most important place, which is the first thing that people see, which is that homepage of the website. And I think that it's interesting when you talk to businesses is oftentimes they immediately want to start to sell, they want to start to collect information, they want to start to push those conversions, right? Where, when somebody is landing on your page, maybe they found you through a Google search. There's some organic content, whatever it may be, you want to start to build that connection with them, not start to immediately sell the very first sentence. And I think video can play a really big part in that.

Ben Amos 10:59

Yeah, definitely. I often kind of liken it to the idea of dating. You are effectively building a relationship with your ideal customers, just like going on a date. And you know, if you think about that dating analogy, when, on that first date, that first time that you've met this person, what you want to do is you know, you dress nicely, you make eye contact, you take them out to a nice restaurant, you tell great stories. The goal of that first date is to get that emotional connection to see both if they feel like you're a good fit for them, but also conversely, that they're a good fit for you, right? So that's the goal in dating. We understand in the dating analogy that if on that first date, we went for the conversion, what would happen, right? Be slapped in the face and instead run away. But too often businesses considering their marketing in the same way that they're just slapping their customers in the face and customers don't like that. So, yeah, that's exactly the way to think about it, it's kind of liking it to dating your ideal customer, there is a process they go on. Sometimes that process can be very fast. If it's a you know, as simple cell or a low, low barrier to entry, kind of a product or sale, but particularly for larger decisions then it is often quite a long journey with multiple touch points along that you know, dating life cycle, I guess. So. Yeah, that's a great way to think about it.

Eric Dickmann 12:22

I like the way you frame that. And if we sort of stick to this you know, first area of being your website, so we've talked about what may be a good use in your hero to showcase your brand story, talk a little bit about those factors that start to build an emotional connection with your customer. The other place then as we drill into the website a little bit more that I've seen video used pretty effectively are sort of in two areas and I'd love to hear if you've got some others that you'd throw into this mix is testimonials and explainers. So explainers sort of maybe going into depth and bringing to light the features of your product, why your product is different, why your product solves a specific pain point and testimonials, people saying this product solved a problem for me, and that's why I think you should buy it. What else would you add to that list? Or how would you expand upon on those concepts?

Ben Amos 13:24

Yeah let me expand upon that idea. And it's kind of share some other ideas for videos that can be used. And I think it's a great way to kind of consider the website, the landing page or the front page of your website, as a kind of microbe. Cause him a microcosm of your bigger marketing strategy. Because what I'm going to kind of walk you through here if we consider the role that it plays on a website, you can think of it in your wider marketing strategy as well, which is incorporating, you know, touch points with clients on all sorts of platforms, even before they get to your website because it's, it follows the same idea of connecting emotionally and moving people along a journey through to a rational decision to buy or make that purchase. But let's just frame it in, let's imagine that it's a single page website, right? Single page, landing page, you've got the top of the page down to the bottom of the page. And let's imagine that your ideal customer that you're dating at this stage is scrolling down the page, right? So the top of the page above the fold on a website using website terminology is where you're going to put that brand story video, that hero video that we've discussed here, which the goal of that is to get people to emotionally buy in before you ask them to buy later, right? And that video you're going to tell the story of the brand in a way that positions not you or your brand as the hero, but the customer as the hero of that story. I know you've looked at brand storytelling prior in prior episodes as well, where you dove deeper into that. So when you've kind of got someone's interest, you've hooked them emotionally, and they're like this is the place for me. I'm going to scroll down further and dive deeper into this business. So as you move down, think of it like the second and third date, right? So they're going to scroll now down further into the website. This is where on those second and third dates where you want to actually add value to this relationship, right? So on your second and third day, it's not so much about making that emotional connection. I mean, yes, that is still part of it, but it's more about, you know, do I like this person? Do we have things in common? Are they going to add value to my life? You know, when we think about dating. So this is the same way as a business, you need to think about videos used in what we'd call the middle of the funnel, right? So middle of the funnel is often referred to as the consideration stage when people are now weighing up their options, they can either keep going on dates with you or they can go and find someone else, right? So this is where from a video sense, you need to create content that is helpful, that is valuable, that gives people information that they have been looking for, right? So from a video sense, this is where you'd be using videos that it might be you know, short education clips that talk to people about specific frequently asked questions they might have around your expertise or your product or your service, right? This is where video might be used. You talked about explainer videos, right? This is where an explainer video gives further valuable information so that people understand the product or the service better, right? So here, the goal is to provide helpful, valuable content that makes people want more, right.? They're more interested to buy now from you. And then as we scroll further down, the page provided those middle of the funnel videos have done their job, that then people are now considering whether or not they'll convert the purchase, right. And this is using the dating analogy. Now they're bought in emotionally and they know you're a good fit for them, but now they're thinking about the rational stuff right there thinking, ah, but he leaves in, you know, the other side of the country, can I move to the other side of the country or, you know, or they're thinking things like yeah, but he hasn't got the job the, level of income that I'm wanting. Their thinking rational stuff, now they're thinking like, can I actually live with this person? And it's the same with your customers on your website? They're thinking, am I actually going to make the right decision if I buy from these people? So this is where videos at that conversion end of the funnel or the bottom of this single scrolling website that we're talking about needs to be very rational. It needs to address any objections that people have to buying from you. So your video's here might be, you could call them frequently asked questions, videos, but they're answering the questions that are holding people back from buying. So it might be talking about, What's your refund policy? How long until delivery is made? You know, what does the process of working with you actually look like? So what's, what is your five-step process of leading me towards success? This is where you might also include testimonials, which are social proof, right? So often what's holding people back is just this feeling like what if I'm the only mug who got duped into buying this thing. Instead if you've got multiple videos there of people just like me that are saying this was the best decision I ever made, you know? Fantastic product or service or whatever, that's a testimonial. It's very rational, it's not really emotional, but the goal at the bottom of the funnel here is just to address that rational stuff, right? So does that make sense? When we kind of look at that webpage is a microcosm for a bigger marketing strategy. That's the way to funnel people through it. And the way that videos can change, the way you approach the videos change as you go.

Eric Dickmann 18:31

No, I think that's great. And obviously a one-page website is a simplistic way of looking at it, but. It gets to the core concept of when you want to use these different kinds of videos within the buyer's journey to build that trust. To, you know, explain what your product does to sort of answer any questions that they may have to give them that social proof that you are talking about. And there are other ways that you can use video to on the web. But as we know, it's not always about people coming to your website, people see your presence, or are introduced to your brand through the other places on the web, through social media channels and whatnot. Talk to me a little bit about how you think video is effective through social media. I get the distinct impression through my own experimentation and working with clients where you may be able to get away with a two and a half minute explainer video on your website as probably isn't going to fly if you're doing a Facebook post or something on Instagram. Everything is a bit abbreviated once you start to talk about video on social media.

Ben Amos 19:38

I think when you consider the way that you use videos on other platforms, it's important to consider the user intent on that platform. So why are people going to Facebook or Instagram or whatever platform they're watching LinkedIn? For example. Why are they on that platform in the first place? They're not there to research your brand or your business. When they're on the, on your website, they're there with intent to find out more about your branding, your business. Whoever on social media, they're there to engage with friends, family, community, with other brands and pages that they follow in light. They're there for the for the social aspect. It's social.

Eric Dickmann 20:17

Yes. Right.

Ben Amos 20:18

When you recognize that you need to put your content in front of them in a way that adds value to their experience on the platform. Right. So what you wouldn't use on social media is those videos which are designed to sell those conversion bottom of the funnel type videos. They need to live on your website right next to the buy now button or whatever the equivalent of that is. Right. Cause if they do their job, those types of videos. There should be limited barriers to people actually taking the action that you want them to take. However. The other end of the journey, we talked about the brand story type videos. They can work on social media, however, They need to be often, you know, re edited or redesigned in a way that can work for attracting cold audiences or people who haven't heard about you before. And this is where kind of paid social media strategy can work. So. Putting those kinds of storytelling or brand videos. Cut down in a version that's specific for the platform you're on, but using paid ads spent to get them in front of the right people at the right stage of their decision-making process. But then where I think social media video really. Has has legs and it's really valuable. Is that consideration phase, right? Because if people like your page on social media or they follow your page, Or brand then they're in that consideration phase. Right? So they're there in that maybe they have bought from you before and they could potentially buy from you again, or maybe they can, you. They're interested in your brand or your business, but I haven't yet bought from you. This is where you should be using video content that adds value, educate, inform, inspire, entertain, all of that sort of stuff adds value to your target audience. And that's. From an organic perspective on social media. So not using paid spent, that's the kind of video that you should be considering is. Kind of running it through the filter of. What value is this video providing to my target audience? If the answer is well, there's no value. It's only trying to sell something for us, then don't use it right. So, yeah, that's I think social media. Really is all about that consideration phase content.

Eric Dickmann 22:29

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO onsulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. Are you an advocate of companies building a library of video content on something like YouTube, or are you more in favor of building a library of content on your website, in a resource center, a how is there, and then directing people that way. You lose a little bit of the potential YouTube search capability, but obviously you've got a little bit more tracking and whatnot. If you how's it on your website, what's your thought about either method?

Ben Amos 23:47

The answer is kind of a, it depends, you know, it depends on what your overall strategy is. And if I was advising a company on which way to go, there would be a. A bunch more questions that would need to be asked before I'd come to the clear decision. However that said, in many cases, I recommend a combination of both. So I recommend using YouTube and YouTube search functionality and SEO value fact that it's the second largest search engine and owned by Google. Can't be ignored. So I'd use that as my library of valuable content, education, content, helpful content, but then I would also then embed those videos into a section of my website. Or into an article page on my website. So you have your video from YouTube and then, you know, an article in text form below it about the same content. Because that has value as well from a search perspective, but also from a user perspective. When they go to your website and they can see all this valuable, helpful content there then it's going to add value to their relationship, building exercise with you and your brand. So you kind of getting both there and then the decision becomes with any kind of active promotion of that content. Will you send people to the YouTube? Watch page version of that video. Or will you send them to your. The page on your website, where that video is embedded and often the answer there, unless your goal is growing a YouTube channel, that's your primary goal, which for many businesses, it's not. Then I would be sending people to your website page because that's kind of more controlled by you. You can have calls to action around the video. You can, there are other ways people can contact you from your web page. So. Does that make sense? I'd combine both.

Eric Dickmann 25:27

It does. Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of noise on YouTube, right? So if you're sending people to a channel or something on YouTube, there's going to be a lot of other noise, a lot of other distractions that are pulling them away. You have a little bit more control when you're even embedding those same videos on your website. So I really agree with that. If we sort of moved to sort of this third area, which I wanted to cover today, what are some of your thoughts around video as part of the sales process? And so what I mean by this is obviously using something like a Loom where you're embedding a personalized message as part of a sales outreach, or even a marketing outreach, but you're embedding that video content within an email or your direct interactions with your customer. I know for myself and many other businesses that I've worked with, they believe that is a game changer, and yet. I am surprised. I literally, if I get one of those a quarter, that's about it. It just seems like it's something that hasn't caught on with a lot of mainstream players. How do you look at that?

Ben Amos 26:33

Yeah. I'm so glad you asked this, Eric, because it is, I believe it's also completely under utilized by so many sectors of business and it's so powerful, you know, like, The idea that in a digital world that we live in now, though, the way we do sales in business, it's well after 2020 in Coronavirus and all of that as well, like we're doing a lot more remotely than we ever were. And sales as part of that as well, so the ability to go out and shake hands with a prospect and, you know, meet with them to kind of go over the contract and that kind of thing doesn't really exist as much anymore in many cases. So the power of using tools in this way to help humanize that sales relationship you know, really can't be overlooked. And I kind of often talk about the idea of as we become more digital where you, we kind of, well, if you look at prior to digital blood, pre-internet all the way back to the way we did business, then it was very much a high touch, low-tech kind of a world, you know? So, high touch, meaning it was human interaction. That's how business happened. It was low tech. We had a calculator and a pencil, you know, so, and you know, the stack of papers, that's how we kind of your business, right? So, High-tech. Sorry, that was high touch, low tech. But now as we've kind of moved more digital. We're in the danger zone of being. You know, high touch, low touch and high tech. You with me. So it's, we're kind of taking away the human touch from things, but video and video tools like we're talking about here, that personalize that. That relationship and that communication can bring the high touch back to a high-tech world, right? So, I think it's very powerful. I'm a big fan of tools like Loom, personally we use Vidyard.

Eric Dickmann 28:18

Yes. Vidyard. Yep.

Ben Amos 28:19

screen recording plugin, which is free as well, which is great. Has some basic tracking when you can see when people have opened and watched your videos, and you can embed it into email and into text message. I'm also a big fan of Soapbox by Wistia.

Eric Dickmann 28:32

Yeah, Wistia. Yup.

Ben Amos 28:33

if you've come across that, so Soapbox actually allows you to easily record your screen at the same time as your video, and then do very simple edits to decide on kind of, when will I show just my screen and when will it show just me and it's all, when will it be split screen kind of stuff. So all of these two, I mean, there are countless tools, right?

Eric Dickmann 28:50

Oh, yeah. So many tools.

Ben Amos 28:52

The way of kind of standing out in that decision-making process for a buyer. Is by showing up in a human way. Right. It removes one of the biggest barriers to sale, which is like, which is trust. You know, Or it minimizes it, it doesn't remove it. Maybe. The other powerful thing about using video is the ability for your internal champion at the company that you're trying to sell into. So the person that you've been dealing with in many cases, they're not the final decision maker, right? So often the decision needs to go up the chain sometimes, or it's a collected decision. If you've been spending so much time converting your contact, the person that you've been selling to. But they're not the single decision maker, then often you can lose the deal simply by the fact that person fails to communicate the value of your proposition properly. That video, when you use video. You providing them with a tool to sell to their internal stakeholders, right? So, that really can't be overlooked and something that has made a huge difference to the way we put forward proposals and quotes for my video strategy agency as well.

Eric Dickmann 30:01

You know, that's interesting that you frame it that way. Because at my previous company, before I started my consulting service we had implemented a tool called Get Accept. And it was a tool, very similar to DocuSign or one of these contract management systems that allowed for digital signatures. But one of their unique selling features was that as you were sending out that proposal, you would embed a video within it. So you would, you could type up something, but then you would embed a video in it. And if the sales force was very reluctant to do that, but just as you're saying, you know, this is the time when somebody basically has to make a commitment and for some of these companies, you know, it could be tens of thousands of dollars that they're committing to. And yet you've got the opportunity to personalize that interaction, to thank them for their business ahead of time, to maybe walk through any last minute objections that they were having, just to personalize that. And you know, as we've gone through COVID, people have been working from home, there's been more acceptance of, you know, and these calls. I think people have finally realized that it's okay if there's the dog barking in the background or the cat walking across with the kids, you know, screaming, you know, people are more open to real life in a way that they haven't been in the past, even though video technology, video conference, and it's been around for years, right? This is a new, this just didn't come online this year. But I think now more than ever, if people aren't using video in their email communications, not for every one of them, but for the appropriate ones, they're missing out on an opportunity. And I've honestly been dumbfounded by how I haven't seen an uptick in it, even when I'm being bombarded by Zoom meetings and webinars and all these other forms of video communication. But that one hasn't taken off.

Ben Amos 31:51

Yeah, I think, you know, the remote way of doing business. The increasing rise of Zoom and video calls means that people are more comfortable just being on camera. And I think that has fast tracked these, the use of these sorts of tools. However, I agree with you that people are still not utilizing it as much as they could and often what that comes down to I believe is fear. You know, fear of putting yourself out there. When you're on a Zoom call, the other person is also on a Zoom call. So

Eric Dickmann 32:23

That's a great

Ben Amos 32:23

removes some of that fear. But putting it, like recording a video and sending it through email. There's still that level of fear there. However, you know, I think that's something that can be very quickly overcome just by getting started and just by sending one or two. Maybe the first way to do this for anyone listening or watching is just to think about maybe doing this kind of personalized video message internally first. So send it to your team or send it to a single person within your team and just see how that feels and see what the result is as you send it. I really like it because you know, when I'm crafting an email, I'm thinking too much about the way I'm putting words down, particularly if there's stakes in that email. So like it's a sales email. But when I'm speaking, my passion can come through. And even though the words might not be exact, the message is communicated through the nuance of interpersonal communication that just isn't possible in text alone. So I think just get started and you will find that it's easier to do, and also remove the barriers to do it like, you know, you don't need to go as far as like what I've got basically a DSLR camera set up as my webcam permanently above my monitor here, a good microphone. I'm a podcaster. So I've got a good microphone. But you can just do a couple of things in your office environment or at your desk to make it easy and quick to just turn on your webcam. Like think about what's behind you. Just have something where the barriers to just pressing record on something aren't there. And And then just do it.

Eric Dickmann 34:03

I completely agree. I've got my whole little set up here. The only thing that I failed to anticipate today as we're recording this at 5:00 PM local time here because I'm in Orlando, you're done in Australia and it just happens to be sunset here. So I'm getting blasted by the sun and I haven't had that happen to me yet before, so, Oh, well you can try to anticipate everything, but that's okay. You know, there's no problem. But yeah it's a setup that are literally just need to power up a few buttons, lights are on camera's on I've got the same mic as you I've just got a wind cover on it, and you know, it makes it so much easier and you can pump that content out and you can feel comfortable doing it because you're not afraid of what's in the background or you don't have the right equipment or you're going to sound funny. I would strongly encourage anybody who's going to be doing video or audio to invest in some decent equipment and by decent equipment, we're not saying that you have to get a $5,000 DSLR camera in order to do that, you can get a nice high quality a webcam, if you're going to do that. A nice high quality mic, you know, that maybe costs you 60, 70, 80 US to be able to do, that's not a big investment. If you're going to be using it to project your brand out there, it's not an expensive proposition to take your capability up considerably.

Ben Amos 35:23

Yeah, or just use your phone.

Eric Dickmann 35:25

Yeah,

Ben Amos 35:26

You know in many cases as well, just use your phone and in a quiet office environment, even just using your phone's microphone is often enough. I mean, that. Yes, absolutely invest in gear and it might only be a couple hundred dollars. in total, but, you know, just get started with your phone as well. You've already got a high definition video camera or higher in many cases in your smartphone.

Eric Dickmann 35:50

Yeah, and I just I can't remember the name of it right off the top of my head. It was not a easily rememberable name, but There's some software that you can actually use on your computer that lets you use your phone as your webcam. So you get all the benefits of the great cameras that are in like an iPhone. And you can plug that in and use that as your webcam if you want. So there are a lot of tools that are out there, you know, we've talked about your website, we've talked about using video on various social media platforms, YouTube, things like that. And we've talked about using it in email communications, you know, as we're getting to the end of our interview here, what else would you like to add in terms of the power of video and where you would advise, you know your clients to take advantage of what video can really do for their business?

Ben Amos 36:35

Yeah. I'd like to add really just before we talked about the idea of the different types of videos that are used within that customer journey, through that, through that funnel right down to the purchase. But I think the critical thing to recognize here is the purchase is not the end of that relationship with that customer. Once you've got them across the line, you think of them as you your loyal fan. So are your advocates right? And how can you increase customer lifetime value or the referral value of your existing customers or your new customers? Video can be a very powerful way in impacting on that advocacy level of your customers. And the way to do this as much, like what we talked about in personalizing the sales process using video. How can you provide a better client or customer experience using video? In the early stages of them being a customer or throughout the lifetime of them being a customer. So it might be using video, personalized video, to celebrate milestones or to reach out and engage with people of maybe disengaged from your brand or business. If you're in a kind of retention or monthly recurring revenue type business model, how can you use video at those recognized drop-off points that churn rate? At that point where churn rate can be affected. How can you use video to try and engage people longer? And personalize that because people buy from people.

Eric Dickmann 38:00

Yeah, they do.

Ben Amos 38:01

If you can humanize that relationship with your customers, they can often be the easiest people to sell to again, or to refer new people, to buy from you. So think about video in that advocacy stage as well. And then you've got that what I call a full funnel video strategy, working for your business.

Eric Dickmann 38:19

I love that because I think one of the greatest things that you can do for people after the sale is make them feel good in their purchase decision. You want to make them feel like they made the right choice so that they could be an advocate for your brand, a referral source for potential other business. But you know, you don't just want to discard them and said, well, what have you done for me lately? You want to say, Hey, we really appreciate the fact that you buy it. Now, are you really seeing the value is just what we told you. It was. So I think that's great advice. You know Ben, this is fascinating because I think we're at such a point right now where there is a lot going on in video, but there is still so much untapped potential for so many businesses to use it more within their organizations, within their marketing plans, within their social outreach. So I'd love for you to tell just a little bit about what your company does and helping your clients leverage video more and get the benefits of video in their particular businesses.

Ben Amos 39:16

Sure. So, as I said, if you're based in Australia, then you know, we can do business with you directly. So my company is Innovate Media down here in Australia. And basically that's what we do is we consult with and help clients produce and then distribute and use content across that full funnel that we talked about here today to actually get in drive results for their business. You can check out innovatemedia.com.au for more on that. However, if you're anywhere other than Australia and you want to learn more and dive deeper into this world of video marketing, then engagevideomarketing.com is kind of the central home to everything that I share around education and consulting and further information, and ways to learn more about video marketing to do it better for yourself or for your clients. So that's kind of the way that I add value to that side of the world as well.

Eric Dickmann 40:03

I think that's great. And I will make sure that we have all of that linked up in the show notes so that people can find you. You know, I said to you at the beginning of the show that we've been very intentional about the guests that we bring on during this Masterclass series, because we really want to get people with deep expertise in this area. And it didn't take me long to find you out there as somebody who really has deep knowledge in video and knows how to use it in marketing to be able to help customers really build that brand awareness and grow their brands. So I would strongly encourage people to to check out your company and I'll make sure that we get all that linked up in the show notes. Thanks so much for being here today. I think this was a great conversation. We covered a lot of ground.

Ben Amos 40:43

Thanks for having me on the show, Eric.

Eric Dickmann 40:45

Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.