In this webinar, our Director Sunjay explains the key principles of video marketing, along with strategies for creating your own video, a step-by-step lead generation guide, and practical tips to get you started today.
If you’d rather read the content than watch the video above, then here’s the transcript:
“My name is Sunjay and I’m from a company called Life Media UK. And today, thank you so much for joining us on this webinar of how to start using video successfully. We’re going to be running through the fundamentals of video marketing.
Some housekeeping stuff, all of the social stuff that you know, if you’re on Instagram, please give us a little follow. And if you like something on Facebook, do the same, but most importantly if you are on LinkedIn, that’s where all the good stuff is. That’s where we’ll be posting the blogs, we’ve got the guides and information on more webinars and that kind of stuff. So add me on LinkedIn because that’s how we grow the network.
We are going to be going through a really, really brief introduction of us as Life Media, who we are, our approach and that kind of thing. And then I’ve broken this webinar down into three core elements. We’re going to look at strategy and ideas, content and execution and production and presentation. This is a whistle stop tour because like I said, it’s the fundamentals of video marketing.
So it’s an overview, we will be doing more of these webinars in fact we’ll be looking to run at least three more, and we’ll do them on the same day each week. If you make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter, I would send one email out after this with details of the following webinar. And in the subsequent webinars we’ll be diving in a little bit deeper into each of those areas. Then at the end we’ll do a quick conclusion and a lightning round Q and. A.
So this is us Life Media UK. Film with Thought with is our mantra, and the reason Film with Thought is our mantra is because we understand that yes, your video has to look good, but it has to be a sales and marketing tool first and foremost. And that’s what’s really important to us, is how do we create videos that actually work for our clients.
When we say work, we mean work from a marketing perspective first and then we can make it look look good. We don’t do vanity projects, you know, and that’s a really key thing. So we work with businesses to figure out what they’re trying to achieve. Is it brand awareness, is it to increase conversion rates and then we help them with that through video strategies. We’ve won an RTS award we’ve won an MTM award and we are 2 time Bristol Life Awards finalists. I think the Bristol Life Awards were supposed to be at the end of this month, so fingers crossed for whenever they bring it back in maybe September or something.
Our clients include people like ITV, Ford, Brothers Cider. GKN aerospace, ISG, Wiltshire College, we’re trusted suppliers to the FCA, and many, many others.
So our goal today is to just give you a better understanding of the important facts you need to take into consideration when you’re creating your own video. Right now we have this incredible opportunity to communicate and engage with our clients because everybody is online. There are no other real avenues, you know, even direct mail; unless you’ve got people’s homes addresses, that sort of won’t work. Cold calling might not work because they might not have their office phones linked to their mobiles. So your online presence is more important than ever.
But producing content for content’s sake, that is a terrible, terrible plan, it’s no plan at all! So what we want to do is make sure we can plan, make sure we strategise. That is going to be really key, and hopefully some of the things you learn in this webinar will help you along with that.
So firstly, we’re going to start with the Life Media UK COVID-19 update. So I’m not here to give you an update on our update, but what I’m trying to say is what we realised is we were getting lots and lots of these COVID-19 updates from various businesses. And my God, were they boring! Were they uninspired. They were awful. People were just doing it because they saw everybody else doing it. So it was just like the same emails, same templates. And there was that phase where it was really negative. Like the news is really negative, the business world was really negative. A lot of people were, you know, cancelling direct debits, all that kind of stuff. I’m sure you can relate. So as a company we had to look and think like firstly, what are we going to do?
How are we going to communicate because we know it’s important, but more importantly what’s actually important to us? What are we passionate about and what are we passionate about communicating? And for us it was all about positivity. There was no other option.
We had to be positive in this time because that is one of our values as a company. It’s about being fun, it’s about relationships and it’s about maintaining that positivity. So we knew we had to communicate that.
We also have to understand… what do our actual customers want from this update? Like, you know, how are they going to benefit from that? So we have to think about, are we going to create new products and talk to them about that? Are we just going to, you know, try and be that person, that supplier for them that is that positive light, that is that high energy contact, is the one that gives them a bit of a laugh in such a dark time at that point.
And then also we looked at what we needed to achieve, you know, what’s the point in putting out an update for, like I said, just putting out an update’s sake. I didn’t see any point in that. So we have to figure out what we wanted to achieve. For us it was all about, increased brand loyalty and increased brand awareness with client. So that was the kind of, thought process that we went through.
And the reason I’m talking to you about this, is because when you’re thinking about your strategy and your ideas, these are the kinds of areas we want to talk about. And firstly I want to talk about passion. The reason passion is so important when you’re putting together your video ideas and your video strategy is because if you’re not passionate about what you’re talking about on video, my god is it going to show. Like, you might get away with it in a blog because you’re hiding behind the words and you can pretend, but it’s very hard for you to act on camera, if you’re not passionate about it.
And to give you a really, really quick example, if I told you, you can give me a five minutes talk on something that you’re really passionate about within your business, or you can give me a five minutes on GCSE Maths, which one do you think is gonna be more exciting and more engaging to watch? Unless you’re a maths teacher, I don’t think it’s going to be the GCSE Maths. Now, it’s not to say that you can’t do GCSE Maths, but you’re probably just not interested in it. So that’s going to come across in video. So passion is really, really important and a lot of people, they don’t have a lot of confidence when it comes to creating their own videos because they haven’t done a lot of them before. So if you are low on confidence, one of the ways that you can start with your best foot forward, is to start talking about the topics that you are passionate about because you’re going to have way more confidence in those topics.
And here’s the thing – right now you are a content producer. Right now you have no other choice. You are a content producer and that is going to be really key in the next 90 days. So by choosing things that you’re passionate about, actually that’s where the ideas are going to flow because you already have a really strong understanding. So be passionate about your topics that you’re talking about. That is really, really key, and be authentic. The reason authenticity is so important is because when you’re not authentic, you are cringy or you are boring. And I know right now you can go on LinkedIn, do a couple of swipes and you will see a boring video or a cringy video. The only way you can get around being boring or cringy is to be authentic.
And like I said, authenticity is really about finding out what you’re passionate about within your business and then speaking about that first. We’ve covered confidence, but that bit about your energy. What I really mean by that is when you’re talking about a topic that you’re already passionate about, you’re going to have the most amount of good energy in that topic and in that source. And if it’s not you doing the videos, if you’re a marketer and you have to try and encourage, you know, your, your development guys, your operation guys or your sales people or whoever else it might be in your team to do more video content, the way you’ll get that done is by getting them to talk about something they’re passionate about. There’s also this triangle of brands that we wanted to talk about.
And passion really plays into this because you’ve got what we call brand equity; your personal brand and product brand. So brand equity is really about how your brand as a company is perceived and that’s the more traditional definition of a brand in general. But right now we have this incredible opportunity to really leverage personal brands. Again, if you’re a marketer, it might not be your personal brand it might be, the lady that works in sales. It might be the founder, it might be the MD. There is this fantastic opportunity right now to leverage personal brand and it’s a must. It’s no longer a kind of ‘nice to have’.
The product brand. You know, if you’re passionate about your product, maybe you don’t deliver a service so you can have a product that’s going to be super important for you as well. Because product brands are about how your service or your product is perceived. So people will have misconceptions or preconceptions of that already. And how are you marketing that in a way that engages? So again, your passion will enable you to do that in a way that’s most engaging.
The next thing we want to talk about is purpose. So the reason purpose is so important is that, you know, when Will and I started the business, wherever it was, like nine years ago, trying to convince people that they needed video was really hard because back in 2011, if you had a video, it was a three minute video on your website. That was it. It was either that or it was the old boys doing the TV productions. You fast forward that to today and it’s not that, you know, trying to convince people that video is the key.
That’s what really the problem. The problem is that now people that come to us and say Sunjay, I need a video. Then you say, okay, great. And then say what for? It will be like, I don’t know, the blog said we should do it or you know, the marketing person said we should do that. Or you know, I’m seeing my competitors doing the video so I need to do, and that’s bad business. That’s really bad because we need to have purpose in our videos. And when you’re creating your strategy you need to really think about, what’s the point of the video? Like what do we want each particular video to achieve and what’s the point of the campaign and the strategy overall. It sounds obvious, but again, it’s going back to that point I mentioned earlier. Like don’t produce content for just production sake, just to be busy just because, well, what else am I going to do?
You have to have purpose. And when your videos and your ideas and strategies have purpose, they’re just going to be more engaging. You know, they’re going to resonate because there’s a point to it. Also when you have a purpose and you define it, that’s going to dictate things like the content, the length, the tone of voice and all that kind of stuff because the videos that we create for, like Brothers Cider for instance, they just want to stop the zombie scroll. So it’s just about entertainment. That’s a very, very different video compared to when we work with a very niche engineering company and they need to educate their buyers on a really long term buying journey. They’re two different videos, completely different. And the same strategy isn’t gonna work. So you have to be really clear. What do you want each video to achieve? What do you want your overall video strategy to achieve and how does that fit in with your sales and marketing processes right now?
We talk a lot about sales versus branding. And the reason I do that, it’s a really simple way of saying, okay, right now where does my video fit in? Is it sales? Is it branding? You have to be careful with that because you need a balance in both. What I mean is if you’re going to be producing a series of video blogs, that’s branding. You’re not really gonna sell on video blog number 3. Like you might sell a small thing, but not really. That’s about building brand awareness, building brand loyalty, about building authority within your field. But if all you’re doing is video blogs, you have to ask yourself, when does the sales video come in? Or on the other side of that, you know, case study videos are great sales videos or product explainers are great sales videos, but if all you’re doing is that, then where’s your branding?
So be really cognisant of ‘do I have a good balance of sales and branding videos’? And the final point is where does it fit? So we’re going to come onto the customers in a second, but where does it fit within your buyers journey? Where does it fit within your sales funnel? Because again, you gonna want to have balance within those areas, along that journey. So that brings us to being customer focused.
So, you know, we’re gonna think back to that COVID-19 update. It would have been easy just to produce an update that was for Life Media to tick a box to say we told everybody, but where’s the value in that? You know, and when you’re, when you’re producing video, I need you to stay super customer-centric like really, really, really customer-centric. You know, we talk all the time about, we don’t make films for our clients, we make films for our clients’ clients.
And that’s what you need to do. Don’t make them for yourself. Don’t do vanity projects. This is not the time. Or if you do keep it your Instagram personal page. Right now, you need to be producing content specifically for your customers. And I want to talk a little bit about personas and a little bit about your buyer’s journey and realigning that. So when we come to personas, I mean, I’m hoping most of you as business owners, as marketers, you’ve got some personas. If you don’t, we’ll quickly run through what that is. So when we talk about personas we’re talking about your ideal client. What does that ideal client look like? It’s absolutely okay to have more than one. Most people have around 3. And you can really, you know, define your persona, give them a name. Um, give them hobbies. You know, really get into the skin of understanding who they are, how they behave, you know, what their priorities are.
And what I want you to do is if you’ve already got those personas, you’re going to need to perhaps just double-check them right now because here’s the thing. Their priorities have probably changed, their challenges are certainly different. Their goals are certainly different. So, you know, we need to re-adjust that side of it. And if you don’t have personas this is a brilliant time to create some. So think about who your ideal client is. A great source of that information is by looking at your top 10% of clients, but looking at all like the invisible top 10% above them, you know, clients that you haven’t even got yet. What does that look like? Who do they look like? What are the decision makers? We talk about personas, you know, we’ve just talked about decision makers, but there’s also the gatekeepers.
There’s also the influencers. You know, there’s also you could call these flag wavers who help in that buying process. They’re all going to be online as well. So if you need to speak to an MD, but you know, a great route would be through the financial director. Then are you creating content for them as well? And again, you look at some of these questions like what are their goals, what are their challenges, where do they consume information? All of that is going to be really important. I think personas are going to be your friend for the next 90 days. But again, just like I said about realigning it, you just have to be really, really clear as to, you know, what that looks like today because it’s different from 90 days ago. So the second bit is your buyer’s journey. You know, this kind of process here. Lightbulb, awareness, consideration, decision, delight. HubSpot use that and call it a flywheel which as it spins, feeds into itself.
So here’s the thing, it’s a terrible shame, but nobody wakes up and says, ‘Oh, I want to give Sunjay some money today’. It’s terrible. I don’t know why. But it doesn’t happen. They don’t even usually wake up and say, ‘Oh, I need a video’. What normally happens is they wake up and say, okay, um, if they’re a marketer, ‘I need a promotion’ and if they’re a business owner, ‘I need to increase the bottom line because I want to go on holiday to Bora Bora’. And then they start looking at the solutions. So that was their lightbulb moment. And then they go through the awareness, well you know what my problems are? What kind of solutions are out there? Then they can look at like the various types of solutions that solve that problem. Which one are they going to go for?
And then they can look at well, who’s providing those solutions? Who should I go for? And that is the Decision phase. Then they might choose you. The reason it’s important to think about this when you create your video strategies, is because so many people will focus, on the decision phase as if their prospects and their ideal clients already know what the situation is. There are so many people out there that need your service and neither of you know it yet. You don’t know it and they don’t know it yet. That’s the point. Like, think about the people that need your service and they don’t know it yet and help them diagnose themselves. Like that’s really key because you know what happens at that point? That’s what we would call tactical empathy. When you get into that point where you can create content that sits in the awareness phase, sits in the consideration phase that nudges people along that sales funnel, that’s tactical empathy, that’s going to resonate with them.
And then by the time they come to you, by the time they get into their sales meeting, they are 89% sold. So that’s the kind of clients you want. You don’t want to be convincing people about why your solution is better. Like in that initial sales needs. You need to be producing content. Right? And that’s where, you know, the soft sells kind of thing comes into it. It’s never really soft sales, its over a longer period of time. So you know, on this buyer journey, what questions are they asking along the way, who’s involved in where, what content is relevant at each step. And this bit, I wanna talk to you about is time during the later stages. Here’s the thing everyone’s going to tell you, people will say to me, all the time, people only have five seconds attention span. Videos are getting, shorter, right?
Like 10 seconds, one second, three seconds. Wait, relax, here’s the thing. Go to YouTube and look at makeup tutorials. It can be 15 minutes long. So, people are watching right till the end of the 15 minutes. The thing is, where are you on that buyer’s journey? Yes. It might be 10, 15 seconds at the beginning of the journey, when they didn’t know you. But as they get through that buyer’s journey, they’re spending more than a thousand, 5000, 10,000 pounds with you. They’re going to take some consideration on that, on that purchase. So when you’re thinking about, you know, where you’re your videos on that buyer’s journey, it’s going to help you construct the content and the pace and the tone and the information and the length video and your, your ideal client, your prospect, they’re going to give more time as they go through to the later stages of that buyer’s journey. And that is the key. So you can create content that spreads along the entire journey and that’s where you’re gonna be most effective. Don’t just focus on one point. Don’t just focus on one part of that buyer’s journey. You might not need video for the whole thing, but just make sure it’s planned out. That’s what you’d be asking. So like I said, it’s going to share massive amounts of tactical empathy, it’s going to show you’re grounded. Its going to show you are more on their wavelength. All of those things.
Next, content and execution. So before we get into this, but I need to tell you a story. August, 2007, I was 16 years old and three days. So 16 years and three days old. So this is actually the night before I got my GCSE results and man, I was nervous and I was panicking, and up until that point I was fine. But it was, I remember that night so specifically. I was just sweating buckets and I felt the pressure of everything that I’d been going on all through revision. I was fine. But yeah, just that night it was like, it was just became very, very real. And it felt like at the time, you know, the whole plan, my whole life depended on it. You know, it’s funny when you look back because you can realise was it that significant? Maybe, Maybe not. The fact that I graduated in Genetics and now we do film. Maybe it wasn’t that significant. But the point is, is like during that, that night, I was super nervous. I was feeling the pressure because I was always a good student. So we were expecting As and A stars and I just kept thinking, what if that doesn’t happen? What if it doesn’t happen? And go into my mum and dad’s room and chat to my dad. I’m like, ‘dad, you know, I’m really nervous and I’m getting really, really worried and just feel like there is this huge weight on my shoulders pressure to do well and like to achieve and to not let anybody down. And I’m just really worried if I didn’t get the results with the grades, you know what is everyone going to think. And I’m kind of panicking and I’m thinking kind of faster than we can now.’
My dad, he just straightens up and he just hits me with that late night DJ voice, which instantly calms me. And he just really simply said, ‘Sunjay the only person you ever have to live up to is yourself’. Boom. I’m easy. I’m good. Yep. Do you know what, wow. Yeah, dad, you’re right. I’m pumped. I’m back in my room, I fall asleep. It was all good.
Now why am I telling you that story? The reason I’m telling you that story is because that stuck with me. So whatever happened during that time period, like during that moment, can we replicate that? What, what was it about that moment that made it so special? Made it so memorable. And when we look at it, like for me, I think there’s three areas and this is what I want to talk to you about. It’s about being memorable and it’s about delivery and it’s about structure.
And we’ll start with making it memorable. Here’s the thing, it was novel to me. It wasn’t trance language. Do you know what that means is like, have you ever had a cold call and they say, ‘Oh hi there. I was just wondering if you can help me’. Like somebody has been giving out sales workshops where they just told every call centre to say ‘Hi, I wonder if you can help me?’. And whenever you hear that, like from a number, you don’t recognise or a voice you don’t recognise its trance language, you’re already on the defence. Like, I don’t know about this. Or, you know, if you see somebody like a neighbour and like, ‘alright’, ‘right’, like it’s trance language. Or when you walk into a shop and they say, ‘um, hi, can I help you with anything’, ‘just looking thanks’. It’s trance language.
It just comes instantly. And that’s the thing. You cannot use trance language within your videos. Get rid of it. Anything that’s cliched, and that’s too obvious, people are just going to switch off. So no trance language, make it novel. What I mean by that is it has to be new. Here’s the kicker, there are no new stories, sorry to tell you, but there are no new stories. All the stories have been told. There’s only new ways to tell them and that’s where you can differentiate you and your customer, you and your competition. The reality is you’re gonna probably have similar ideas. The difference is how you then communicate that to clients. That’s why it’s so important to constantly be thinking about how I’m making it memorable. I need it to be novel, you know, leveraging your knowledge is key because your knowledge is what makes you valuable.
But more than that, the way you deliver that knowledge is what makes you exceptional and stand out. And that’s what I need you to get. Your knowledge is going to make you valuable, but your delivery and how you communicate that makes you exceptional. But be really hard on yourself in regards to that trance language with regards to telling the same old stories, the boring stuff, you know, think about that COVID-19 update, I think everyone was just copying everyone stuff. It was so boring. How many of those COVID-19 updates… click, click, delete, delete. You did that right? Of course you did, because we’ve seen them. Talk about delivery and this is like some practical points. You know, these are my five P’s: Pace, Pitch, Pause, Practise and Produce. Pace is really important and this is what my dad knew or didn’t know during that time when like he brought me back down, pitch brings me back down, you know, pace talk slowly. He read the room. Tactical empathy. When we talked about that. So he read the room, brought it all back down because that’s what I needed at that time.
Remember we talked about what your customers need, customer focus. That’s what pace and pitch is about – match your customers. Your FD persona is going to be way different to your marketing persona. Be more fun, energetic with the marketing content. Well, the content for the marketing people, go slow, steady for the FD. That’s a massive generic, general sweeping statements, I’m sorry, if you are in finance or are a finance director, but overall that’s probably going to be the room. So pace and pitch are super-important. Pause. Again, learning from my dad. That is so important when you’re delivering your videos. Understand that pause to let an idea sink in is super important. I say super a lot. But pause is really really important. That’s going to emphasise and punch certain points home so pause is really important.
Practise can’t get that through enough for me. Like to give you an example, if you’ve never really paid played the piano, now your job requires you to play the piano. You wouldn’t just start in public playing the piano, you would practise a few times, you would watch some videos, you would practise practise. That’s what we need to do in video. You need to practise your pitch, practise your topics, practise what you’re going through. Practise different types of content to see which one, which one lands best. Practise is so important. Practise when you are in the shower. Practise with, um, whoever you are in lockdown with. Practise online like practise in front of the mirror. All that kind of stuff, practise, practise, practise. And the last one, notice it says produce. It does not say perfect. That’s on purpose. It says produced. It does not say perfect. Don’t try to aim for perfect. You can go watch videos of me, there are ‘ums’ and and ‘ahs’. I’m comfortable with that. It humanises me. It’s real. It’s okay. That’s absolutely fine. Do not try and perfect this. Just produce it. You know the production is going to always trump the perfection because its better to have strong content. You know where you’ve thought about making it novel, you’ve not included trance language, you’ve thought about your customer. You’ve got five, six good videos and there a little bit rough around the edges. Better that than a video that you’ve been planning for ages and never got around to making. Right, simple.
Structure is really important because again, going back to, you know, no new stories, just new ways to tell them like you’re going to need to keep your audience engaged. You’re going to need to captivate them and like, here’s the secret. Human psychology is super primitive. So, actually there’s plenty to it. There’s plenty of formulas that work really well and have worked for a really long time. So you know, for me stories are so crucial. Stories are really key because they are great vectors for emotion and we’re going to get to the logic sandwich and emotion in a second, but that great factors for emotion. You remember stories better, they put things into context and here’s the thing. Stories are going to be pretty unique to you. Every story that I’ve told you so far has a real life experience. No one can tell that story for you because it’s happened to me, right? So if you’re thinking about stories like you don’t have to be Pixar, you don’t have to sit there and take creative writing. It’s three stories you can leverage. Number one is your own stories. Things that have happened to you in real life.
Number two, your customer stories. And number three, the story of your brand or your companies. Those three stories are readily available to you, and there’s lots of versions and variations of them. That’s where you go to first because that takes out the pressure of having to write this cool thing. When it comes to stories it’s always good to include a little bit of comedy if you can, if it’s natural. And it’s always good to have an emotional state switch. So you know, going from sad to happy, from failure to success, those classic stories.
So going back to the emotion we talk about a logic sandwich. And what I mean by that is you have within the structure of your video: emotion, logic, emotion. So having an emotional hook to bring people in, hit them with the logic. This might be statistics, data, all that kind of stuff. And then finish off with their emotional image so that they understand it. Because as human beings, we love to think that our decisions are logical and rational. But countless studies and all the data shows that we are emotional creatures and we make decisions on emotion, but we justify it with logic. So work with your prospect and provide them with what we would call a logic anchor. So give them the thing that they can say, the reason that they say, yeah, I made my decision based on this statistic, give them the logical anchor to grow onto, but really package it very nicely with emotional points in your site.
An example of that is this formula for change, which I really love. So the formula for change is dissatisfaction times vision plus first steps has to be greater than the resistance to change. The reason I love this is because the dissatisfaction, you know, loss, aversion, pain points, challenges, that’s all emotional and that’s why it’s fantastic. So if you can create, you know, you can use a customer stories, great customer stories, you know, what was their situation when they started having some negative circumstances that you obviously provide a solution. So that’s that dissatisfaction side of it. They weren’t getting enough leads, they weren’t getting enough website traffic. They were tired. So they were looking for a new supplement whatever that might be, what’s that dissatisfaction? That’s the emotional side. The vision is, you know, your solution and the benefits and the value of your solution bites.
Theodore Levitt had that wonderful saying that no one buys a quarter inch drill. Because they want a four inch drill bit, they buy it because they want a quarter inch hole. So sell the hole, not the drill bit. Does that make sense? So, you know, sell the value of it, what the actual real purpose of your product is as opposed to the actual product itself. That’s the vision and that solution and the first steps, you know, what’s the process? What’s the logical steps to moving forward? I’m giving them a clear path of what to do next. So you can see, you can put emotion that dissatisfaction side of that. You can put emotion in the vision side of it. You can put some logic in the dissatisfaction, a little bit logic in the vision. 50% of people in the UK will die without a will. Yeah, that’s it. That’s a logical view. That’s a statistic. What does that lead to? It leads to intestacy’s and all that nonsence. So that’s a way of mixing that emotion and logic for people. And that’s really, really going to be key.
So when you’re, when you’re creating the content, you’re delivering it and you’re writing it and making it memorable, focusing on your delivery, focusing on that structure. Say that logic sandwich is formula for change. Using stories and leveraging stories is going to be keen. Here’s the thing with structure as well that when you, when you create like a real structure that we can use again and again, it’s like a recipe. You create recipe for banana bread. There’ll be things that you think actually could have used a little bit more flour, a little bit more bananas, sugar or whatever it might be. You only understand that when you have written it down when you can look at the recipe and then you can tweak and fine tune it. Same is going to go for your videos and you write down that structure you have a real plan for the structure of your videos you will be able to fine tune the points and really kind of make the whole thing go a lot further. So it’s super important to get these to get these points. You know, planned out when you’re doing your videos.
The next piece we’re gonna talk about is, production and presentation. Actually let me just go back as I want to talk to you about the structure as well. I’ve just seen a note that I wanted to talk to you about. So you know that formula for change? Another way of looking at it is pain, promise and process and that might be a little bit more tangible for some people. You know, what’s your customer pain, what’s your promise and what’s the process of getting there? That’s going to be really crucial. Um, and actually the reason I’ve gone back is because I want to draw home this point of tactical empathy that is always going to win. Empathy and positivity is always going to win. And when you tell the stories of the success of the winning, it’s positive. And I’m not trying to give you like gimmicks within this presentation within this webinar. I’m not trying to give you life hacks and ‘Oh, if you comment on this and tag this person you’re going to get six more views’. I’m not trying to give you any of that. I’m trying to give you stuff that is pretty timeless because as I mentioned before, human psychology is super primitive. It’s the same, like we’re still scared of the dark, but that’s the quickest way I can explain it to you. We’re still scared of the dark. Like it doesn’t matter. The technology has advanced so much so the mediums and how we communicate have advanced so much.
But human psychology stays the same for a really really long time. And that’s why stories still work. That’s why emotion still works. Empathy, positivity is always going to win, always going to win. And that’s kind of, I just want to make sure that this really, this isn’t about gimmicks it is about giving you tools that work. If you utilise them in your videos, they’re always going to work. So yeah, production and presentation. I gotta tell you another story because you know, I’ve got to walk the walk if I talk the talk.
This is about friend in need, so this was a chat with another video production. So he’s a camera guy. He’s a one man band on, he just wanted, he just, we just kinda wanted to meet for coffee and talk about how he could improve business and you know, all that kind of stuff. So we met for coffee one week, it was quite striking the things that he was saying. So he had paid a big membership fee for a networking group. So he has been like a decent amount for that, but he wasn’t really showing up. And I didn’t just mean like physically showing up to the meetings, but not only was he like get a bit inconsistent showing up in meetings he was also not showing up in the sense of doing his part for that group. So the one to ones, and finding referrals for other people and you know, like actively trying to grow his network or educate people and so the only was he not showing up, wasn’t doing things he was supposed to be doing.
And that’s why we’ve been showing up. You know, you can be present and still not show up. Do you know what I mean? You can go to the gym and walk five minutes on the treadmill and go home and you got to ask yourself then ‘did I really show up to the gym?’. So that was his thing. Like he paid all this money and he wasn’t showing up. But on a digital sense, he also wasn’t showing up. And what I mean by that is wasn’t really utilising LinkedIn, wasn’t really utilising Facebook, wasn’t really utilising Instagram wasn’t, you know, keeping in touch with his clients. He just wasn’t really there on a digital perspective either. So that was like number one, like, okay, you are not showing up. But then when he did show up, like, I mean more now in like a digital sense or sometimes like in a real life sense, he was super scrappy and he was inconsistent. He was inappropriate in a sense, like it wasn’t appropriate to that platform. So what I mean is, you know, he wasn’t, presenting himself in the best way possible. He wasn’t stepping with his best foot forward and he was inconsistent with his personal LinkedIn, he was inconsistent with his attendance at networking groups. I mean he wasn’t listening to, you know, what specific platforms needed or you know, what different personas on those platforms needed.
So it was just like Facebook posts on LinkedIn and Twitter posts on Instagram and just ridiculous stuff like that. So he wasn’t showing up right much. When he did show up, you know, it wasn’t executed very well. And then not to forget, like he’s wasting all this time and money on paying for these memberships and you know, paying for like, um, buffer. So he’s got like, you know, the platforms. So, wasting all this time and money. And it was a tough conversation with him because I had to show it to him like, okay, firstly, we’re going to need you to show up more. We need a level of being seen from you. Secondly, when you do show up, we need you to add value. And were going to need you to, um, to listen to those specific points. So, if you’re in a networking meeting, you’re going to need to listen to the people in the room and help them first. If you’re on LinkedIn, you’re gonna need to listen to your LinkedIn. And then finally, we’re going to need you because this is a sure fire way to go bankrupt. We’re going to need you to maximise your value for money on everything you’re spending money on. So why are you paying all this money to a network if you aren’t, then utilising it.
Now, why is this relevant? The reason this is relevant is because we actually see this in a video sense overall anyway, right? And what I mean by that is people aren’t showing up, and that means that they’re not doing video. And when they do video it doesn’t look very good. And then on top of that, they’re not utilising the video in the best possible way. So I want to talk to you about firstly the big three. So this is about when you do show up, how do you make sure that your video looks as best as it can possibly look. I’m not talking about getting in an expensive production team. We’re talking about three very crucial things when it comes to recording. And it baffles me that people don’t do this and you have to understand like your, your market is, is a reflection of your brand.
So everyone will understand that you’re not going to be producing, you know, Nike or Apple style adverts right now, but they would expect an element of professionalism from you, right? So the big three for me are audio lighting, and frame. Audio. If you are doing your videos, invest in a decent mic. You can buy a little lapel mic from Amazon plugged into your phone. You can buy great mics that are specific for podcasting or specific for video calling. That is important because you need your audio to be as clear as possible. Otherwise it’s really distracting for your viewer.
Lighting, use natural lighting where possible, but you don’t have access to natural light try to invest in like a ring light or some front lighting. You know, you can get them for really cheap. You can get little ring light that attaches to your phone. The lighting has to be important because like our boy who was, you know, turning up to a network event looking all scruffy – people didn’t want to talk to him, you know, he’s not going to get the level of engagement that he needs or when he’s on LinkedIn, he’s not posting the right stuff. Again, people aren’t going to be engaged with that content. It’s the same for you when you’re producing these videos. You have to be, you have to be putting your best foot forward. So lighting is going to be really important if you’re using natural lighting, do your best to either, you know, draw the blind so you can see the blinds are drawn here. So I’m still getting the natural light in, but it’s saving me from, you know, big clouds, light changing. All that stuff and being super harsh. So that’s important.
Framing, you know, how many times have you seen – I risk messing myself up. Uh, framing like this. Like there’s so much gap above people’s heads, you know what I mean? Like the head gap is the worst thing in, in like video conferencing right now. So framing. The rule of thirds, what’s in each third of the frame? What’s behind you, what does it say about you now are there plastic bags, are there very well placed awards. You can see, you can see my screen. So, you know, my point is think about your framing and what’s in shot and think about what’s looking, what’s gonna look the best. Best way to think about this is is does this look like a great photo, that’s key like. Does this look like a great photo? Um, the other thing is re purposing. So this falls into the, the point of getting the most money, get the most value out of your money and your time.
So again, matey boy who was paying all that money to the networking event, and not utilising it like what’s the point of paying? If you’re going to pour time, energy, money, effort into producing your video, you need to repurpose it. What I mean by that is, and this is also the number one reason why you have to be doing video right now, because it is one of the best forms of marketing for you guys. Having a source of content that can just be spread out to music. So what I mean is you can produce a five to 10 minute long form video. You can collect the transcript from that video and you can produce blogs. You can use that 10 minute video and split it into short social media clips and put it onto Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. You can create a blog content from smaller sections.
You can create graphics and quote cards, you can create infographics. You could put together a series of these videos from all the audio and start producing your own mini audio book, audio guide, podcast. So repurpose the video as much as possible. We talk about macro to micro, think about how you can produce a long form piece of content, a long form video, and break it down because that’s going to be the best way to gain leverage of the video content and maximise the value behind it. Because, excuse me, so because if you’re thinking about a 90 day plan, you’ve got 13 weeks in there. Um, do you want to shoot 13 videos, 13 individual videos? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t have the time. So maybe you could actually shoot, um, you know, three or four videos and split those videos into three or four more videos.
So now you fill up that 13 week content map really, really easy. And it’s about creating an ecosystem of content. So really what I mean by that is, um, you could have your, your main video, but that leads on to one of your blogs, your infographic can lead into your LinkedIn article, which can be launching more graphics to lead you to your ebook that you created, which is an amalgamation of all of your videos and the content from it. So you provide an ecosystem of content. Go back to my original point, 40 minutes ago. Let people self-diagnose when they do that, they sell themselves. Do you know what I mean by that? Like they sell themselves, let them discover that they need your service, your product or solution, all that stuff, right? And you’re going to do that really well from your ecosystem of content. Like I said, you’re getting the most amount of value back of time, money and energy.And distribution is important.
So you know, again, the reason I use my mate as the example is because he wasn’t showing up like he wasn’t showing up in the first place. So this is the same view. If you’re just going to do, you’re going to leave here today and feeling really pumped up and do one video and sit back and wait for the cash to roll in, that is going to be a long day for you, my friend. So distribution, you should have a distribution plan and there’s three things I want to you about it. That number one, collaborate, collaborate with customers, collaborate with suppliers, collaborate with complimentary businesses that have complimentary services. Collaborate because you can leverage other people’s audiences. You can do guest slots, you can do guest blogs, you can do speaking events, which you can then record. Collaborate. That is going to be such a brilliant avenue for you to go down. Collaborate within your own company. Get departments talking that never used to talk and see what happens with that kind of video content. Cause that’s going to be playful. It’s fun. So collaboration is going to be massive.
There’s loads of opportunities for you to collaborate. When you do that, you’re only widening your audience more. Collaborating with your customers is such a great strategy. Think of the brand loyalty that you are taking time to help them produce content that you can both share – there’s a win win situation. Optimise your videos, which is going to help for distribution. So when we talk about optimization, what we’re really talking about is, on social feeds we find to our experience the square format is the most successful because it just takes up so much space on the feed.
Captions are just a must. So actually when we send you the email, we will put a link on that to the guidance. You can also find on lifemediauk.com/go. That link is for the guides and information. But on that page there’s some guides and there’s an equipment list and four steps to getting started. There’s a more information with regards to subtitles and captioning. I think we’ve got a whole blog and on our website about how to do it. But captions and subtitles are really, really important. You can use something like rev.com you can use something like Kapwing, and that’s going to be phenomenal for you. Optimise the length, as we said before, optimising for your buyer’s journey. That’s gonna be really key, and optimising for the different platforms. That’s what you doing. And one thing I want to talk to you about when it comes to distribution, you know, I love this format of awareness equals frequency times impact. Awareness = frequency x impact. And that’s crucial because it goes, it links in with our macro to micro, point earlier. That if we can produce that ecosystem of content, you know, you get that high frequency, you’ve done all the free work.
So you know, you’ve got this novel, its customer focused – all that kind of stuff. So we know it’s high impact. Your brand awareness is going to go through the roof and that’s what’s so, so crucial right now. So yeah, awareness equals frequency times impact. The reason I put that in the distribution section is please don’t think that just shooting one video and doing one video, putting one video out is going to work because man you’re gonna have a tough time, and you’re gonna have a tough time today. It’s going to be tougher today than it was 90 days ago. The reason for that is because the digital landscape is so noisy right now because we’re being forced to push onto these digital platforms.
So everyone is trying to produce content and do webinars and do all sorts of these things. So the landscape is noisier than ever, but it’s also so dynamic and changes so quick. So that’s why you know, these things about repurposing and having a distribution plan. Creating that ecosystem of content, understanding, awareness, increased frequency times. I mean they are really, really key. That’s why I included that in the fundamentals of video because you have to get these things right in order to be successful when it comes to video marketing. Do you see what I mean? You have to get these things right and you have to be cognisant of the steps. And the last point I want to talk about here is consistency. I can’t get across to you how important consistency is. Um, my quickest kind of example of saying that is when I used to manage my own LinkedIn, like I was super inconsistent because like everybody else, I was busy, social media posting, all that kind of stuff is bottom of the to do list.
Right? So I posted a few things. The moment we start working with an agency and you know, Charlotte put some stuff in there, start liaising with them and managing that and it was out of my hands. There’s a level of consistency there. And now that I just can’t do, and the results are phenomenal. Know why are they phenomenal? Because that awareness equals frequency times impact, that level of consistency builds trust and that builds visibility. When you’re creating your plan, your 90 day plan, it’s better for you to do three videos over that 90 days, if you can commit and just going to do three videos, that’s it. Because I know that’s what I can do in the next 90 days than it is to do and then spread it out than it is to do two or three or four videos on day one and nothing for the rest of the days.
Or like week one four videos week two to 13, nothing. You’d be better off releasing one video a month and telling everybody, Hey, this is my January video, this is my February video, this is my eighth, whatever. Do you know what I mean? Consistency is super key. It’s going to build familiarity is that which is an influencing factor for those of you read that book. Um, is going to be increasing your brand confidence because you’re consistent. And it’s that awareness thing. So I cant get across how much consistency is key, and the last thing I want to say at this stage about consistency, I meet so many businesses that are like ‘Sunjay, we’re an industry where we need to be right the right time. It needs to be in the right place at the right time’ And here’s the thing, here’s the secret. There is no right place right time.
It doesn’t exist. Luck, that’s right place and right time. Outside of that it doesn’t exist. As marketers, as business owners, we make our own luck, right? So if you are consistent, you will always be in the right place at the right time because you’re always going to be there. Now, don’t get me wrong, don’t just throw away everything I’ve said. Remember I’ve said don’t produce content and content sake, not talking about just spamming. I’m talking about giving your prospects an understanding of your content plan, what’s happening next and when you will be producing the next thing. What it leads to and being clear about structure.
So, be passionate. You’re going to make better videos and stuff that you’re passionate about it. You are going to produce, the ideas are going to come. The energy is going to be there. Have a purpose. I don’t mean that in a Tony Robins way. I mean that in a very straight business way. Have an objective, have a goal understand what each piece of content, the purpose that each piece of content has and what, what need it serves. Stay customer focused. Don’t do vanity projects. If you want to do vanity projects keep that to your evenings on Snapchat and Instagram and Tik Tok.
Have great delivery. Focus on the 5 P’s, there’s, you know, practice all the time, but produce the content. Don’t try to perfect. Have a strong structure. You know, like I said, we were formative psychology. These, these kind of structure of, of your sales and stuff. They work. Stories, work. Does it make it memorable? You know, like we said, there’s no new stories. There’s new ways to tell them. So be novel. Leverage your knowledge, your knowledge makes you valuable with delivering the communications section. I really, really believe that. And here’s the thing, you’ve got knowledge. This is why I’m so confident that everyone can do video, because I know you’ve got knowledge.
If you didn’t have the knowledge you wouldn’t be in the talk right now. Simple as that, so I believe in you. Even if I haven’t met you right now, I believe in you. I promise you you’ve got this, you can do it. Create a distribution plan, repurpose your content. Nail those big three, the audio, the framing, the lighting and you’re going to be well on your way to create some incredible video marketing content for yourself.
We’re going to be doing three more webinars because I understand I’ve given you a whistle tour or this stuff. So we’re going to do some more deep dive, these more specific things in these three webinars. All of that is completely free.
At the end of the month, we are opening the video school. I am so excited. The video school, we’ve got so much content we want to share with you through experience to what’s worked for our customers. You know, things that we’ve seen, trends we are going to be giving away information like never before. Like I, I can’t express how much value I crammed in to this. It’s like everything I’ve ever read and ever known and learn my experiences and experiences of my team in one place. It is nothing we’ve ever done before and I’m super, super pumped by it because I know the results from that we’ve already had with our clients. I know that they can be replicated when we start doing them yourself. The format of it is going to be you can buy the whole series and you can just buy the modules that suit you.
So, now we have got some, a few minutes for a lightning Q&A round.
“I’ve never had a social media presence and feel like it needs to get right before I do anything constantly, never done anything, where do you start?”.
That is brilliant question. So, okay, here’s the thing. You’ll be more confident with a plan but don’t suffer from like paralysis from analysis. So, plan out your 90 days plan at that buyer’s journey that we were talking about, thinking about the, the most specific questions that you need to be answering from your customers and start that. And why we say is start with three. Just that’s it. Like how you eat an elephant, one bite at a time, so three videos, all you’re gonna do, you’re gonna do three videos from the three most frequently asked questions, that you have and you start that and not your practise. So that’s why we do, here’s the thing, like if you’re really scared about it too, again, write those three questions and reverse engineer these three questions from, like I said, your frequently asked questions that your clients are asking you, what your prospects asking you or topics that, you know, you have a virtual coffee now, but back in the day you have a normal coffee.
It’s like when you’re talking to a client. You’d say something, something that was so obvious. It’s so run of the mill to you that you don’t think about it, but the person opposite, you’re saying, ‘Oh wow, Oh, okay, okay, I get that’. That’s not even content. So start with three, start with the ministry and ask questions. And if you’ve never done any video before, my advice would be to do it in a conversation with Tim. So get someone off screen to ask you the question and then you didn’t even have to look at the camera. You can do it 45 degrees and you can answer the question and you know what you’re talking about because you’re in business. You answered that question a million times. So if we can try to forget about the camera and go for it, do that three or four times and then you can graduate to looking directly in the camera and then you can graduate, you know, doing more different types of content. But start with three and use someone else’s as a prop to help you and get them to ask you.
If you’ve got any questions that you want to message me directly about, the email is [email protected].
Head to lifemediauk.com/go for all the other bits and bobs and resources. Thank you so much. Like I said, feel free to get me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all that kind of stuff.
Hopefully it’s been helpful and I will see you guys next week for a bit more of a deep dive. We’ll take it from there. Thank you so much.”
