June 1

Video Marketing For Small Businesses Podcast Episode 37

 

In this episode, we discuss Video Marketing For Small Businesses. Video marketing is super hot right now – learn from our panel what you should be doing.

[00:00:00.505] – Paul

My name is Paul Barthel, and today we’re talking about something that almost every small business owner struggles with and tries to avoid, I think, and that’s video marketing, maybe it’s because they just don’t understand it or think it’s too expensive, or they think they have to be on camera, there’s no way around it. So today we’re going to talk about that and what it is and how small businesses can take advantage of what it has to offer. So, Ken, I’ll start with you. We’ve talked in the past about this omni-channel marketing thing, and so is this one of those channels and why should small businesses be focused on it?

 

[00:00:38.635] – Ken

Well, video marketing isn’t really a channel – it provides content, I think, for a lot of the channels and absolutely should be used in an omni-channel way. So, for example, you know, if you’re going to be doing a video, that video is going to perform best on each individual platform. So creating a video, putting it on your YouTube channel, uploading it to your Facebook page… and this is really important:  don’t link to it as a link to your YouTube channel where that video lives. Upload it to Facebook because the performance of that video is going to be dramatically better when it’s native to Facebook. Otherwise, Facebook is going to treat it as a link and links don’t perform nearly as well as video. So but yeah, absolutely. I mean, video is the content that is getting the best reach. It’s typically getting the best engagement, and it’s, it’s really a powerhouse. You can use it across so many different things. You can take embedded video, put it on your website. You can obviously put video on pretty much any social media platform. You can take 30-second videos, put those on your Google My Business page. So there’s a, there are a variety of videos, which I’m sure we’re going to talk about, that you can use on pretty much any channel. LinkedIn gives you video capability, yeah. So it’s really a powerhouse and I think it’s going to operate best for businesses when they do use it in an omni-channel way.

 

[00:02:16.015] – Paul

OK, good, good information. Dan, you see a lot of companies out there, they’ll put videos out there that are kind of entertainment-focused and you also see a lot of how-to videos. So how should a small business use these, should they be entertainment-focused or should they be business-focused and put on landing pages and websites, what do you think about that?

 

[00:02:38.315] – Dan

Well, yeah, good question, Paul, I think one of the things that you have to sometimes look at is, well, what is the, the person on-camera personality like, you know… a lot of times that’s what I’m going off of when I’m, whenever I’ve been filming somebody or if they’re going to do something on camera themselves, you kind of have to work a little bit with, with who they are because you can’t always make somebody who’s very stiff and you know, it’s hard to loosen them up and suddenly make them into an entertaining, you know, like, oh, hilarious person, you know, you have to sort of work with the audience that you have. And so I think, you know, if, if it is somebody who can get a little bit loose, comfortable on camera, then I think sometimes that can lead to somebody who’s conversational, which in turn can lead to somebody who is open to doing some things a little bit entertaining, perhaps, and then you can kind of work with them and say, all right, well, let’s try some things that I wouldn’t say that are funny and goofy, but rather just a little bit looser than your typical business video.

 

[00:03:46.085] – Dan

On the other hand, I will say most of the time, you know, if you can keep it sort of the best of both worlds, you want to keep it nice and conversational for a business audience. And I often say it more, more and more every day is that you have to think like you’re talking across the table to somebody in a coffee shop setting. And the video setting is no different. So the one thing I try not to do with, with people when it’s, how business-y, how entertainment-ish, are we going to get is, try not to script some things out.

 

[00:04:24.365] – Dan

I just don’t think that’s going to lend itself to feeling very natural at all. I don’t think most people can pull that off. And I think the ones who do are really, really experienced at it. They can kind of glance at something and then they can glance right back like we didn’t even see them. So I do think that you’ve got to start, I would recommend starting in a business format, if you can, and have it as a business application, because I do think that’s going to lend itself more to where you’re comfortable.

 

[00:04:57.545] – Dan

But don’t get too, like, script-y, keep it natural. And I think that’s what will make it a lot more comfortable for people. So just a quick tip on that is just simply whether it’s someone like me or these folks here on the call or even a colleague trying to interview script or I’m sorry, not a script, but an interview off camera. And then you take out the person who is questioning and you actually just leave the person who is answering those questions. And then it feels pretty darn natural, I think, at that point. So a good way to loosen it up for a business setting.

 

[00:05:38.705] – Paul

That kind of feeds into a question I have for Jen, a lot of people, a lot of business owners, they’re uncomfortable being filmed or being on camera and they think these videos have to be professionally made, which means a lot of money. And so what are your thoughts on that? Is it necessary for the business owner to be in these videos? Are there certain videos that should be professionally made and others that, that aren’t? What do you think about that?

 

[00:06:04.965] – Jen

Oh, I think a lot of things about that. A lot of questions there. First of all, about the getting comfortable on video. It’s so important to do that because like, like Dan said, I mean, if if you can get animated and you can get expressive, that’s great. But if you can’t and you’re a very serious person and whatnot, that can come across on video just fine as well. Right. We don’t all have to be the hands on video.

 

[00:06:27.875] – Jen

So what you have to offer, your point of view, your style, your personality, I mean, it’s it’s all valuable that can come through really well on video. I think the key is getting comfortable on video. So to answer your first question about getting comfortable on video, there are sort of low cost ways to do that. And I say low cost in the way of, oh my goodness, if I mess up, how am I going to feel?

 

[00:06:53.015] – Jen

So with your handy cell phone, you can go live on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on your own personal channels, and just try a few, ten, twenty second live videos. It could be your opinion on something that happened in the business media today. Your two cents on that. Just get comfortable being on video and the rest will come. As for the business owner always being in video, that doesn’t have to happen. If you have people on your team that are naturally more inclined to hammin’ it up on video, why not use that? You can showcase your team. And, and that could be a great way to have your team get in front of video and show different aspects of your business. As for expensive, it doesn’t have to be expensive. We’re doing this right now in StreamYard and I think it’s, we were talking just before the show, under 50 dollars a month. So it does not have to be expensive at all. But I think the most important thing is, the more comfortable the business owner gets with being on video or having their team on video, that can just snowball into other opportunities about how to use video to market your business.

 

[00:08:04.095] – Ken

Jen, I wanted to kind of jump in there, too, in terms of having team members. You know, I think that that’s a really great thing to do. When we look at a social media strategy for a business, that’s usually one of the more advanced things that we talk to a business about is, you know, behind the scenes, showing the team members, things like that. Those videos are so powerful on social media channels because people want to know the people that they’re doing business with and they want to see them in action and they want to get to know them.

 

[00:08:34.845] – Ken

And those kinds of videos, I think, are just fantastic. So the business owner doesn’t always have to be the person or the, or the professional spokesperson of the company, doesn’t always have to be the person in these videos.

 

[00:08:46.125] – Jen

We do have a question from the audience here. One came in. I want to throw it out to everybody here. The question is, do you have tips to get someone to loosen up before a video shoot? So anybody have any any tips they can share?

 

[00:09:00.945] – Dan

Yeah, quick one, actually, sometimes if you’re the person filming it, let’s say like a whether again, whether it’s one of us or a colleague or somebody like that, and you’re filming that person on camera, a little trick… Sometimes I actually hit record and I just start talking to them and I say, well, we’re going to we’re just going to loosen up here a little bit. Let’s just talk a little about some of the things we’re going to say. And that’s some of the loosest stuff that I’ll probably get in the entire session right there. And then they don’t realize they’re on camera and it’s live. So but they’re like, OK, well, I’m going to talk about this, this and this.

 

[00:09:42.075] – Dan

And then suddenly all of the good stuff comes out and they’re very natural and it flows well. And then if you were to ever say, OK, now I’m actually going to start recording it, even though you’ve been recording the entire time, it’s amazing how then suddenly it’ll be like, OK, now I’m ready to go. That’s not where you want to be. And so many times what I’ll do is, is just keep it rolling the entire time.

 

[00:10:08.325] – Dan

And just the stuff I will get will be the stuff where they don’t think they’re on camera. So give that a give that a try. I think that that sometimes helps to just loosen them up, talk as early as you can.

 

[00:10:23.805] – Ken

I know I’ve seen some articles from Wistia, video hosting platform, that talks about just making sure you’re moving around, you know, before the shoot, even to get some energy up, to get some enthusiasm up. You know, movement frees the body and it frees the mind. So doing that a little bit before you do the shoot is always a good thing as well. And then I will just add, your strategy is great unless you’re doing a live stream.

 

[00:10:51.135] – Dan

That’s true. If you’re doing a live stream, that’s a little bit harder. Yeah, you’re right. You’re right.

 

[00:10:56.025] – Ian

I would just jump in there and add that depending the type of video you’re doing, this is a little bit different, but it’s about preparation. If you, if you actually do a dry run, especially if it’s a presentation of some kind, prepare yourself, because the more prepared you are, the looser you will be and the more natural like, don’t, don’t, you don’t have to follow your script. But once you know this stuff and you feel comfortable presenting it, you’ll present it way better. But if it’s a, if it’s a more authentic video, obviously just, just be loose, think happy thoughts, maybe tell yourself a joke before you jump on.

 

[00:11:33.345] – Dan

You know what? There is one another thing I thought of which happens a lot, is we all screw up. We all mess up when we’re talking. You know, we all forget what maybe for a split second what we’re going to say and we’ll have an ‘umm’ in there or something. Many times I think people are just way too harsh on themselves and they’ll be like, oh, I should start that over again. Again, I know it’s not possible on a, on a live stream, but let’s say if you mess up, just keep going.

 

[00:12:04.695] – Dan

Like, don’t, don’t worry about it. All of us, all four of us saw a guy speak a couple of years ago about Facebook Live. And the great thing about Facebook Live or any live thing is you can, you just got to keep going. And so even if it’s recorded, keep going. Like, don’t worry about it. Everybody actually appreciates the humanity of messing up a little bit, within reason. So don’t be so hard on yourself.

 

[00:12:32.235] – Ken

Blooper reels can be a really good addition to put at the end of, of a video, too, you know, I mean, it’s you know, you don’t have to use it, but you’ve got it if you, if you need to. And like you said, Dan, people like to see humans.

 

[00:12:47.985] – Ian

And don’t forget to breathe. Take big breaths before you start. It helps.

 

[00:12:55.655] – Paul

So Ian, obviously, there’s, there’s all kinds of different types of videos out there, so what types of videos should a business have or start with? If you’re, if you have a business, they have no videos, they say alright, I gotta budget for three, four videos. What would you suggest they start with?

 

[00:13:13.175] – Ian

Yeah, I think businesses struggle with this because the sky truly is the limit. You, I’ll list off a whole bunch of videos. You know, there’s video ads, there’s welcome videos, there’s sizzle reels about, you know, an overview of your business, there’s topical videos, onboarding videos, explainer videos. It goes on and on and on.

 

[00:13:33.335] – Ian

But truthfully, when you look at it from a strategic stance, you really want to make sure that you’re creating videos that fit with the buyer’s journey. So I would usually start with a business where it’s most natural and and highest, giving you the highest return on investment. So for some businesses, that might be like a reactivation video that you’re actually sending out through an email. So these are to people that are already your fans. They’re already your customers and maybe you haven’t heard, heard from them in a while.

 

[00:14:03.545] – Ian

So that’s a great video. It’s not as much pressure because they’re people you already know. Another great type of video is thinking top of the funnel, so top of the buyer’s journey. So if you think of the buyer’s journey as no, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer, which we also call in the duct tape marketing world, the marketing hourglass, it’s, it’s really about, you know, if you look at the ‘no’ side, advertising is a fantastic place to start there.

 

[00:14:37.085] – Ian

And you can create some really quick videos, you know on some advertising platforms it’s a six-second video. So it’s really, you want to get your message super concise and out there. Other great videos for local small businesses are just authentic videos where you’re sharing your passion with people. People love authenticity and they love passion. And if you can express your passion through video, that’s fantastic. In fact, one of my favourite things when I’m doing onboarding with new clients is, and I haven’t done this, I should do this,  is actually set up a camera when I’m talking through the onboarding process, because one of my favourite questions with small businesses is, why did you get into this business?

 

[00:15:22.835] – Ian

And all of a sudden, it’s never not happened. Every time I do this, the person’s eyes light up and they start sharing what really drove them to get into the business. And that’s exciting. And when they say that, I get excited about their business. So those are great places to start.

 

[00:15:45.015] – Paul

All right, good. So, Ken, let’s say a business owner said, OK, I’ll do a couple videos for you so you can use them in my marketing plan. So what are some things they should keep in mind? Should they use a script or a teleprompter? And what about editing the video after it’s shot?

 

[00:16:05.645] – Ken

Yeah, so, I mean, again, it really depends on what the objective is. But as Ian said, you know, I think one of the very first videos that many businesses should do is they should have a home page video and it should be either the the main person in the business or the person that, you know, the customer is going to most likely have the experience with, again, because it’s previewing what it’s going to be like working with that business.

 

[00:16:33.395] – Ken

And so that, you know, I mean, we do a lot of different things where we literally could have somebody just stand in front of a white, clean white wall or put a white sheet behind them and just use their, their smartphone, make sure they turn it landscape, and just do a quick intro of who they are, what their business is and the area they serve, and the products that they have, very short, maybe 10, maybe 15 seconds. Almost everybody can do that kind of a video and then maybe at the end just make a personal appeal to say, you know, we would love to work with you guys. If you have any questions, contact us at such and such and just wrap that up, and then that kind of sandwiches, you know, a video that you could create with B roll of pictures. You don’t even have to use video. You can do the Ken Burns effect, if you will, where you’ve got the picture, zooming in or zooming out you know. And so you can, if you have a videographer, they’re going to know how to do that.

 

[00:17:34.325] – Ken

And then you tell the story of what your business does, and you can do that with voiceover, and so the business owner or the spokesperson of the business doesn’t even really have to get on screen a lot. Now, we’ve also had customers where we’ve written scripts for them and they stand in front of, you know, the the white background or green screen, whatever they have available. A videographer can swap that out even if you always hear the term green screen, but they can actually work with a really solid, clean white surface as well. And, you know, and then just deliver the script, you can do, we recommend shooting three or four versions of that. Surely one of those takes is going to be the base and then you can supplement it. Maybe you can tweak the audio a little bit because maybe you nailed it, except you didn’t get the pronunciation of one or two words properly. But if you have that second or third recording, you can maybe just again, the video person can grab that little audio snippet and replace just that single word or phrase that they that they kind of botched.

 

[00:18:45.245] – Ken

And so it can be really powerful. It’s really cost-effective. I think a lot of people think that it’s going to cost thousands of dollars to get a professional video shot. I absolutely disagree with that. I think there’s a time and a place for those videos. But I think a lot of, a lot of businesses can really work with video in a much more affordable way. And again, I think they can do a lot of this without a script, you don’t have to have a script. You should plan in advance what you want to say. You should know what you want to talk about. But that doesn’t mean you have to read from a script. I’m a horrible reader. If I have to read from a script, I will botch it up, a lot. I mean, I just know, if I have to read numbers, I guarantee you I’m going to mess those numbers up. I know that for a fact.

 

[00:19:32.885] – Ken

So, but I do voiceovers from time to time, for my business and occasionally rarely, but occasionally, for a customer. And so if I have a script, if I go through it two or three times, I’m much less likely to botch up those things that I know I’m going to mess up. So part of it is just practice, because then you know where you’re going to be most likely to make a mistake. Don’t worry about it if you make a mistake, it’s not that big a deal. You know, if it, if it’s not a live video, if it’s just a recording that you’re going to turn into a professional video to put on your website or put on social media or to use for a video ad. And video ads are fantastic, by the way. You can, you can edit that and clean it up a lot. And, and there are some great tools, some very simple tools to make that happen.

 

[00:20:21.635] – Jen

Ken, I think that’s a good point. I just want to jump in and say, like for business owners, for anybody on video, there tends to be two different types. One is the type that goes, I need to go off the cuff. I know what I’m going to say. I’ll just get it together as soon as the light comes on. And other people, they want the full list of questions. They might want to memorize the script. They might want to have the talking point, they need a few days to get prepared for it, both ways are fine. So whatever way it takes for you or it’s important for us to know our client, what works for them, and then either allow them to go off the cuff and ham it up, or allow them a couple of days to rehearse and get comfortable and figure out what kind of stuff they want to say. And then that, that comes through on the video, too. They seem more natural, more confident, more in their, their element.

 

[00:21:09.235] – Ken

I think authenticity is key. Don’t try to be something you’re not. Don’t force it. Don’t be artificial because that’s going to come through.

 

[00:21:18.835] – Dan

You know, definitely I think the biggest thing, too, if it’s recorded, do not at all try to run for the entire thing. If you, don’t feel like you have to go through the entire two, three minutes and, oh, I made some mistakes, we should do it over again. That will take forever if you’re not really, frankly, good enough to do that. And most of us are not. I mean, I don’t think I even can many times go through an entire thing myself. And I’ve been doing this a while. So I try to do bite-sized stuff with people and say, can you just do the next 30 seconds. To your point Ken, you were saying about scripts, I think a lot of times I don’t do scripts anymore. I do outlines and say, here are the three kind of points we want to make in the next 30 seconds. And again, this is recorded rather than live. So I just say, give me something on these three points. And many times it works out just fine, because if you can just get them to focus on that, that little piece, focus on that, get that down even if it takes two or three takes, and then move on to the next 30 seconds. Now, if somebody is just rocking and rolling and they’re doing a great job and they’re just, it’s coming off like, like they’ve been doing this for decades – great. Then we’ll keep the camera rolling and I just have them go. But most of the time my expectation is, let’s just do like 20 to 30 seconds, get that down and then just do another 20 to 30. And before you know it, we can splice some things together and make it look good.

 

[00:23:00.085] – Ian

You know, and one of the things that’s often overlooked is, especially for people, because there’s a lot of people that hate being on camera for whatever reason, right? We all, we all have our own inhibitions. But one of the easiest things that businesses, especially small businesses, can do is leverage the powerful tool called PowerPoint. It’s often overlooked for actually creating videos, but it is a super platform for creating a video. Like most or, a lot of small business owners know how to do a PowerPoint presentation. It doesn’t mean they’re always great PowerPoint presentations, but you can basically create an explainer video or present an idea to people using PowerPoint while recording your voice.

 

[00:23:41.305] – Ian

And that takes away the, if you don’t want to be on screen, you can create a great video that way yourself, no, very low cost right. And it’s a fantastic tool that I forget sometimes as well.

 

[00:23:58.045] – Paul

All right, those are some really good points, so Dan, from a content perspective, can a blog post be turned into a video or can a video be turned into a blog post? Are there advantages to doing this?

 

[00:24:09.505] – Dan

Yes and yes. I think if you can do, let’s take a blog post to video. I think the nice thing about blogs is, getting those down is that, you know, first of all, in both cases, both formats that you really have to remember, sometimes your audience has different preferences. Sometimes they just want to click a button and watch you. They don’t want to necessarily read everything. And then other times they actually enjoy reading, let’s say, on a phone or tablet or something like that, so their reading preferences might be different. So I definitely think you should explore both for that reason. There’s no such thing I think as too much SEO, too much search engine optimization. So I think when you can let’s say you have a video down, have a blog on it as well, and you can probably expand on some thoughts too, you know it doesn’t have to be a carbon copy necessarily. If you talked about something for two minutes, you might say, well, if you want to see some extra thoughts, go on to the blog, on my website, and you’ll see how some additional thoughts that I have there. So these things do not have to copy each other word for word. And I, one other thing I think that is, pretty important here is that, let’s say that you do a blog and you get that down first and then you want to do a video. Well, one thing I want to mention about that is, you can do sort of the straightforward thing that feels a little bit more like an announcer kind of thing straight on. But many times one thing I want to mention that could be good from blog to video is, you can kind of turn to the side a little bit like you’re looking at the camera off, looking at someone off-camera, like they’re an interviewer, and that feels very kind of lifestyle-ish, like, oh, I just happen to be talking to someone off-screen in the moment. I’ve been trying to play around with that a little bit lately, rather than being, well, it’s me and it’s Dan. I’m here to announce something to you. You can have some, some mixing up like that. And I think that brings a fresh perspective from blog to video.

 

[00:26:27.625] – Ken

We’ve got some tools that will actually take a blog feed, use artificial intelligence, pull out the headlines and the key points and turn that into a short two minute video or 90 second video. And it’s even smart enough to where it’ll try to pull context, relative pictures or videos, and put them in there for you. And then you just go in and you edit it, you clean it up. If you don’t like an image, you know, if the text over the top of the image or video doesn’t work, it’s a matter of a couple of minutes, maybe 15 minutes, worst-case scenario. And now you’ve got a little video promo of your blog post hitting the key points. And then that’s a great way to drive people to, to get onto your website to learn more and dig into that content a little bit more effectively.

 

[00:27:17.175] – Ken

There’s tools off the top of my head, but I know Ian, you and I probably have seen a bunch of those, I know I’ve got a handful of them already that we use periodically for ourselves and for our clients.

 

[00:27:29.705] – Dan

There’s definitely like just another thought. And this, I don’t want to step on Ian’s question because I know that this is something he’s going to probably address, but you can definitely have different clips too, as you go from blog to video. So there’s probably some social media that will be better for, when you’re doing a video of, you know, do that long video version of the video. But there’s going to be some social media that probably doesn’t allow you to do really long stuff. So, you know, definitely do blog to video, but then think when, once you have the master, how can I chop this thing up?

 

[00:28:07.985] – Ken

Well, also, don’t forget about, if you’re going to do a video, have that transcribed and then put that transcription on your website. That’s ridiculously great for SEO.

 

[00:28:20.135] – Paul

OK, so Jen, back to you. Once the video is ready, it’s got to be hosted somewhere. Obviously, there’s YouTube, which is a free, we won’t go into that too much, but a free hosting service. But there’s also paid hosting services. Which one should they use? And are there advantages and disadvantages to each approach? What are some of those?

 

[00:28:39.935] – Jen

Absolutely. Well, small business owners and anyone in control of a budget likes, might like the word free. So YouTube is free to upload your video there, but don’t shy away from having your videos hosted. A couple of points here. First of all, surprisingly affordable, can be as low as five dollars a month depending on your plan. So do check it out before you just think this video thing is going to be too, too expensive. Also, if it’s hosted, your performance is going to be better. There’s nothing crazier than trying to wait for a video to load, right. People are just not going to wait for it. And all your hard work into that video is just going to be kybosh because the hosting is too slow.

 

[00:29:19.535] – Jen

Cons on that is, depending on what, what hosting program you go with, you, there might not be enough room to grow. After you get more and more comfortable with this and you find video working for you, you may find that you’ve outgrown your package. You also have to be careful of security as well. So make sure whatever hosting company you are going with, make sure their security is up to snuff. And one thing for anybody thinking, you know what, I’ll just host this on my own website, you don’t want to be doing that at all. You’re in business to do a certain type of business. You don’t want to get into the business of video hosting. It’s just a whole other technical can of worms to go down.

 

[00:29:58.805] – Paul

Yeah, yeah that’s, that’s a good point about hosting on their website. Most website hosting platforms are not designed to host video. They just don’t have the bandwidth to do it. So that’s, that’s an excellent point.

 

[00:30:11.585] – Ken

Yeah. I think, you know, you, if you want your video to be publicly available, always put it on YouTube. But if you’re going to put that video on your website, I don’t recommend YouTube because YouTube will steal your traffic. Because it’s too easy for people to click through and go watch that next cat video or whatever the suggested video is at the end of that. So that’s where using a real video hosting platform that’s designed for that, that gives you actually really great bells and whistles, even with a lot of the simple plans where you can have calls to action embedded over the top of the videos or what they call turnstiles or gates, where people halfway through before they can watch the rest of the video, you can ask them for their contact information before they can watch the rest of the video. You know, if that’s appropriate, you know, those tools give you those capabilities. So definitely check those out. Those are absolutely worthwhile.

 

[00:31:12.935] – Ian

Yeah. Just in addition to that, everybody’s probably seen this, but YouTube, when you embed it on your website, it, at the end of the video, it puts up, and this is I think what Ken was talking about, is it puts up related videos or totally unrelated videos. It says it’s related. But, you know, I’ve had instances where, and it’s based on your own viewership as a person. So if you’re big into just what Ken was saying, cat videos, then when you visit this local plumbers website and you watch the video about why you should purchase from that plumber, at the end of that video, it will probably show cat videos as the next option, which is not a good, you’re, you’re sending the wrong message because you’re, you’re sending mixed messages there.

 

[00:32:01.415] – Ian

So I think that’s a really good point about, or really good reason of why you might want to consider hosting it on Wistia or Vimeo or one of these other platforms.

 

[00:32:10.505] – Ken

Yeah, the other thing, too, is you can click to watch the video on YouTube, which takes them off of your website. And you may never get them back. So that’s, that’s why I am not a fan of embedding YouTube videos on a website, I mean, sometimes that’s your only option. But if it’s your video, it’s worth investing in a video hosting platform.

 

[00:32:35.045] – Dan

Now, not to get super technical about it, but if you’re doing it on your own platform, you can do something where you change a little bit of the code in there, and don’t worry, you don’t have to be the crazy coder kind of programmer person. But in the share, if you guys look for, like, just YouTube, something that says, how do I not see related videos at the end, you’ll see you can just change a little little piece there and you won’t get the next videos.

 

[00:33:05.345] – Dan

Now, you can’t fix that when you’re sharing it out there in the world, like on LinkedIn or stuff like that. But you can definitely do it when it’s, when it’s on your own website. You just change that. You won’t see any of those related ones. It’ll just end right there. So just be aware of the differences when you’re sharing it out there and you’ll, you’ll be OK. But I agree with you guys. If the part that you still can’t get around is, it’s not going to give you any call to action. And that’s where Wistia and I think Vimeo, definitely Wistia will, will be a better play.

 

[00:33:40.145] – Ian

And I have some bad news about that Dan, YouTube keeps changing that code. So, yeah, so, so what worked two years ago doesn’t work anymore. There’s still some little tweaks you can do, but it’s way harder for you to do that from a web development side.

 

[00:33:56.255] – Dan

You’re kidding…

 

[00:33:56.915] – Ian

No, because it’s to YouTube’s benefit to do those related videos, right. They’re trying to take you off the website. But yeah, it’s, it’s getting harder and harder to do that, unfortunately.

 

[00:34:08.495] – Paul

Well, yeah, it figures out they’re going to change it.

 

[00:34:12.815] – Ken

Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s the nature of free, you know, you get right. Yeah.

 

[00:34:17.525] – Dan

Oh man. That’s, I’m glad you said something, because I yeah, I’ve always had it that way for the longest time and thought, well, I just can do it and that’s that. I can’t believe they changed it. Well, that’s, that kind of sucks. OK, then, folks, you should probably go to Wistia.

 

[00:34:38.785] – Paul

Well Ian, final question for you. OK, so we have the video. We maybe have our hosting, given that last conversation. So how do we use this in our marketing campaigns and are they just for social media, video ads? It’s been mentioned a little bit earlier, but, and like I think it was Dan mentioned, you have a long video. Can you clip that up into shorter snippets? So how do we use it?

 

[00:35:09.125] – Ian

Yeah, great question. And I mean, this, this really does take you back to, you need a strategy for your videos, any content you’re creating, but especially video content because it’s an investment, whether it’s just your time and your energy, it’s still an investment that takes you away from other things. So it’s really important to have a plan. Things that you can do, obviously, part of that plan is to get yourself in front of as many eyeballs of ideal customers as possible. That’s the point, right? You, you’re trying to build a relationship with people, you’re trying to move them through their buyer’s journey, or you’re just trying to have fun. You know, it depends on what your purpose is. But you need to have a purpose. You need to have a plan. But then for sure, like, it just makes sense, get it on YouTube. It’s free. It’s the second largest search engine in the world. And of course, Google pulls YouTube videos into its search engine because it owns YouTube. So you gotta get it on YouTube. Social media, it’s a no brainer. If you have a social media channel and people are following you and those are your ideal customers or your connections that could share that content with other people, get it on there. Super easy and it’s free. Advertising. There are so many platforms. And again, it’s all about the strategy of who do you want to get in front of, which dictates which platform to advertise on.

 

[00:36:31.945] – Ian

But you can advertise now with video ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Snapchat and of course, YouTube. You can get your video in front of the right eyeballs and there’s lots of forms of targeting as well. So just think strategically about where you want, you know where is your ideal customer? How can I get it in front of them? And then, of course, think about budget. I’m sure you guys have some additional thoughts on that, though.

 

[00:37:03.595] – Ken

Yeah, don’t forget about video, I’m sorry, display ads, display ad networks, not just Google’s, but others give you the ability to, to do video ads as well. So, yeah, video’s really great.

 

[00:37:17.515] – Ian

Oh, I totally…

 

[00:37:19.765] – Ken

I’m sorry. Go ahead Ian.

 

[00:37:20.635] – Ian

I totally forgot, I meant to say this, but your website – get it on your website. Yeah. It’s your real estate on the Internet. So get it on your website.

 

[00:37:31.135] – Dan

Well, and don’t forget also about Google My Business. It’s, it’s funny because it used to be a thing, I don’t know, it’s changing by the day. It used to be a thing where you could pretty much, 30 seconds was all you could put on Google My Business for uploading. Don’t tell anyone in the world, it’ll be our little secret, but I think you can do a minute, a minute and a half. They haven’t slapped my hand yet. So I think you can probably upload some videos to Google My Business, which is pretty awesome for some potential visibility.

 

[00:38:09.265] – Ken

Yeah. I think, you know, if you haven’t dipped your toes in the video marketing channel, 2021 is the time to do it. I mean, it’s just the content that performs the best. It’s so multipurpose. It lends itself to this omni-channel strategy that we’ve talked about in past episodes. And, you know, we live in a world right now where there still are a lot of people who can’t experience the world the way we used to a year ago.

 

[00:38:38.935] – Ken

And video is the next best thing to being able to meet and see somebody face to face. So this is a real important year for video. Make sure you get it in your marketing strategy. That’s just my opinion. It’s something we’re really focused on this year.

 

[00:38:57.385] – Paul

All right. That’s some good information, this is probably a good place to wrap it up. So I’d like to thank everyone for offering their insights on this and we’ll be back next week.

 


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