ScentTrail Marketing: Video Marketing Online - Why Video Vendors ...

After an amazing lunch with Brandon Hoe and a lunch with
Atlantic Creative, an almost partnership with David Rose and MagneTVideo and
seeing what friends at BigFatFilm can do with video (including shooting broll of me
riding a bicycle for the Duke Cancer Institute) I see a common problem ? each
of these talented teams are undervalued and selling the wrong thing in the wrong way.

The market can be a vicious place. The video marketing tsunami is coming, but ?almost here? counts for little for most Marketing Directors, CMOs and CEOs. NOW is what most management teams are trying to wrestle to the ground. Now has its hands around their throats like a Hitchcock movie. We see the hand, the throat and the silenced scream but little else.

How do I know the online video marketing tsunami is coming? As a Director of Ecommerce I tested video until it worked. The ?helping hands? video we created quadruple conversions. For hot products our "helping hands" video reached new mountaintops, a new level of sales. For older, stable and staple products the ?helping hands? videos provided new life to all but one product. The laggard was too far from the flame of ?cool now? to be saved by video?s benefits. Video?s benefits included:

?????? Product was hero so exciting

?????? Product worked so trust built

?????? Not Boring - narration was blocked against multiple angles and quick cuts

?????? Videos became substitute manuals (easier to understand than highly technical diagrams and complicated syntax for replacing batteries)

?????? Included our Buzz Team reviews so community involvement?

?????? Music matched the core values of the product, so exciting again

Product As Hero
We shot the product on a lazy Susan device that rotated slowly as the VO (voice over) read a short script. Hands were blocked against the script with only the wrist down visible. We didn?t want to brand the voice by showing a person. We didn?t want to move emphasis away from the product. The product was the "hero".?

Music reinforced the product?s ?character?. Some products had light, ethereal instrumentals others jazz and still others more of a rock tone. Music reinforced the product?s core values and consumer perceptions. Music and those faceless helping hands made the product the hero.

Saw Product Work

Seeing a product in action is more exciting than any other portrait. That is worth repeating, seeing the product actually work makes believers out of the audience. We believe what we see with our own eyes or what our friends have seen with theirs (whether this is foolish or not in a post-Photoshop age is another blog post for another time). I saw two videos for a survival product recently. The first had the product on a table with a talkinghead.

The second video showed the product helping someone actually survive. You already know the most effective approach (seeing the product actually help someone survive).?

Trust is the other benefit of seeing the product in action, seeing it work. We (potential buyers) will still read the reviews since presentation by the seller stresses the unvarnished GOOD, but our trust meter goes up when we see a company willing to share every aspect of their product (warts and all if there are any) via reviews or testimonials.

Common Video Vendor Mistake - Every video vendor I know wants to move potential buyers to their examples. Yes, examples are important and they help sell especially when great and created for known brands. Problem is every video vendor does exactly that - move me to the examples as fast as possible. Where is the perspective, the story? Where are the reviews, references, case studies or testimonials that help place the gallery in context? These B2B online selling basics are mostly missing since video creators think like artists not Internet marketers. As an Internet marketer, and being an "Internet marketer" is an important distinction since marketer is something different, I know managers move from fence to buying over time and via specific steps and processes (email newsletters for B2B, great offers and deadlines for B2C). Virtually every video vendor goes right to the video instead of including the copy needed to tell the story online. Video vendors are not alone in this mistake.

Not Boring

The survival guy at the table bored me to tears in ten seconds. If a guy talking about how to save your life is boring then any subject is boring shot in that way. The table had about a hundred different survival things on it and the guy, a highly trained survival guy, was pointing, picking up and demonstrating in a fake looking living room. BYE, so bored I couldn?t stand it.

The second version, and I wish I could share more but this video isn?t out yet, had a guy with a pack and camouflage running in the woods. I actually moved up to the edge of my chair. My mind started firing questions:

?????? Why is he running

?????? Is someone chasing him

?????? What is he running from

?????? What is he about to do

?????? What do I need to do

See the difference? In the second approach I am the guy running in the woods and MY (the viewer?s) survival is at risk. Did I watch that minute of video intently as they dramatically demonstrated ways my life could be saved? You bet, in fact I can still see the images in my mind. Video is great with FEAR, LOVE and GREED. Are there three stronger ?buying signals??

BTW, I've named this moment or recognition where "viewer" moves to online participant the "like me" moment. Every Internet marketer I know, and I know a passel of them, looks to create "like me" moments as fast and strong as possible. Like Me moments move visitors to buyers more consistently than any other Internet marketing tactic.

Video As Manual
One unintended consequence was emails we received thanking us for our ten videos. Seems a number of older customers who couldn't hold much less read or understand complex manuals used our video to understand how to do stuff.? Simple things on video such as replacing batteries, locating the power switch and understanding the sometimes non-intuitive inner workings of electronics became complex written in a manual.

Almost every startup entrepreneur has tripped to the power of video, startups are sure to use animated video to explain their new widget. Animation has additional benefits for a generation raised on the Flintstones and a later generation raised on Pixar. Animation is fun and light. See examples at DailyDigital.com and Loyalese.com.

Buzz Team Reviews
We ended each product video with a star rating from our ?buzz team?, a group trained to write great product reviews earning free product as compensation. Our Buzz Team was a ?trusted source? so ending with their thoughts meant the video was a conversation not a lecture. WE are sharing reactions to product X or Y not US (the company).

Why Can?t Video Companies Make Money?yet

If video is the next best thing to sliced bread for Internet marketers why aren't video creation companies slammed with more work than they can keep up with? There are several reasons why it is tough to make money right now if you are the video vendor including:

?????? Too much supply chasing too little demand

?????? No ?Golden Key? online video marketing formula yet

?????? Costs perceived as HIGH (so wrong conversation, wrong way)

?????? Video vendors are not in business they think they are in

Demand Curve
A thousand things are simultaneously hitting your average Chief Information Officer or Chief Marketing Officer. Video is on their radar, but they are in the ?wait until it proves out? stage. Internet marketers know better than to ever be in such a state. We Internet marketers live in a perpetual NOW and must figure out tomorrow?s money this minute. Internet marketers aren?t waiting and seeing they want video but video marketing online keeps coming back cost prohibitive.

Here is how I operate as a Marketing Director for a great web development and Internet marketing company. I start doing stuff, as much stuff as time and money can afford, and then I watch it like a hawk on a wire looking for field mice. When I see the tiniest crease, the smallest positive anomaly I rush to double down to see if the outlier is reproducible. If the test is positive I double down again. I rinse and repeat until I break the back of the variation, until the point of diminishing returns is reached.There is never a "wait and see" stance.

The low demand for online video is related to three things:

?????? Timing

?????? ROI

?????? Costs

Timing

The demand for online marketing videos is going to be huge when the online video marketing tsunami hits, and the video marketing wave is coming. The wave is still out there, still a chance, a possibility. As long as the money is on the sidelines, to quote CNBC, videographers who approach the market as videographers are going to have a tough time (more on this later). Vendor vendors have to use online like an Internet marketer NOT a video vendor who happens to have a web site.

ROI

CFO?s will kill you with ?where is the ROI? statements. Saying ?trust me? doesn?t work with spreadsheet oriented financial types (and they usually end up running the company). Problem is video marketing is part of a scrum of brand, product, web, social and about ten other things. Picking video marketing's ROI out and knowing in a 2 + 2 = 4 way is tough to impossible. When I proved 4x return it required some new formulas and attribution voodoo (something my team called ?Martin?s Magic Math?).

Here is the thing. You can?t ROI this stuff? (Internet marketing) in the old ways. More than it just doesn?t lend itself to such static views. The ecosystem you are modeling is too dynamic, too alive. Spreadsheets afford a window into the past, but their ability to predict an Internet marketing future when there are a million billion variables is absurd and goofystupid. There is a space between ?trust me? and ?Martin?s Magic Math? where truth resides and smart Internet marketers live there, build there and exploit what they find there. One day soon a smart internet marketer in your business vertical will be clobbering you with video (trust me :).

Costs
If I could do a Spock mind meld with Brandon after today?s lunch he would see there is no way to get there from here. Brandon wants his great company ClearSketch to create high end video and video animations for Fortune 1,000 companies. Brandon used to be a Marketing Director so he has a ?curse of knowledge? to quote the Heath Brothers (Made To Stick).

The Spock mind meld would help Brandon see that marketing his video company online is different than he thinks, nothing like anything he even remotely understands yet. Imagine the most busy bazaar you?ve ever seen with frenetic activity happening all over, faster and faster, more and more. Now multiply that vision by the largest number you can imagine. Now square that and welcome to Internet marketing.

The Internet does a few things well including:

?????? Do-It-Yourself ? creating a market of one

?????? Cheap - Drive prices down and squeeze margins

?????? Create community around ever smaller niches

?????? Publish content in increasing types of ?media?

?????? Create deadlines (campaigns)

?????? Shrink time (another way of saying drive prices down and squeeze margins)

Regular ScentTrail readers recognize the 4 Cs of Internet marketing: CONTENT, COMMUNITY, CAMPAIGNS and CONVERSION inside of the things the web does well.

Great Internet marketing is always built around one of these six ideas and exceptionally great Internet marketing is usually built around two or three of these ideas (freemium models such as Facebook and LinkedIn, for one example, are about cheap and community or publish and community).

Brandon?s best question was, ?How do I get started with the people I want?? Problem is this is the wrong question at the wrong time. You don?t get started with them they call you. This reversal is not trivial, but it is liberating. Once you realize you have to do something to get their attention, and you have to get attention over time since the days when you could hold up a URL on Sand Hill Road in silicone valley as one local startup entrepreneur did to get the funding call to come to him, those days are gone, baby, gone.

The irony of every videographer I know having the RPG I need to explode five ideas asking me how and what they need to do to explode online hasn?t been lost on me. The true irony is a I?ve been unsuccessful (so far) convincing any of them both our needs can be met simultaneously. I need video marketing they need the 4 Cs.

I?ve been faced with just such a vexing ?Crossing the Chasm? problem before. Trying to sell words on magnets (Magnetic Poetry Kit) to Barnes and Noble I kept pitching success in mom and pop gift stores. Barnes and Noble could have cared less. The right button was something like, ?Amazon was just here and they are selling a million a day (pause for effect), interested??

Solution Focused
If video vendors are having the wrong conversations in the wrong ways what should Brandon do at ClearSketh? Here are some ideas for Internet marketing thinking on the problem:

• Give it away
• Create a competition (have them compete to use you)
• Testimonials, Testimonials, Testimonials
• Trusted Authorities, Trusted Authorities, Trusted Authorities

FREE is never FREE
Brandon has SICK video and marketing skills. They are so good I want to cry. Give a great Internet marketer $40 or $50 thousand of that time and he will make millions and then Brandon and ClearSketch get to make millions. I don't know what I don't know yet, so I have to waste some time and money as we wander around in the jungle that is Internet marketing. We aren't wandering without a compass. I create days of keyword research before creating a plan to go to lunch, but we are going to lose a substantial piece of our money in the first round. Being an Internet marketer is another way of saying "poker playing gambler" since we read the psychology of the room.

We Internet marketers learn to echo-locate exploitable niches and ideas. We double down until we reach diminishing returns. Next we rinse and repeat on to infinity and hopefully more and more, faster and faster, better and better. We do more than one thing simultaneously since playing multiple hands helps hedge odds. We make decisions very, very fast and can only explain about half of them (the other decisions we make are all experience and gut instinct). We will give away the chair you are sitting in if we think it will create the feedback loops necessary to buy millions of chairs. Free isn't free when it provides the intelligence needed to become dominant (Amazon's Free Shipping, Facebook's "free" platform, Google's "free" search).?

Competition and Games

I'm tempted to create a "gamification 500" stock index listing the top 500 companies using gamification to win in the marketplace. Bet you Martin's Gamification Index outperforms the S&B by a considerable margin. Games, competition and gamification are the key to every Internet marketer's problem (and I'm working on proving that). When in doubt game it out.?

Testimonials, Testimonials, Testimonials
The most important words on any B2B site aren't yours. The most important words come from satisfied customers. There is a bunch of strategy around how to segment and present testimonials that I will share in a later post, but, for today, know the secret to selling anything online is having words on our site that aren't yours. If a few are "back handed compliments" that too isn't all bad.

Trusted Authorities
Apparently I suck as a trusted authority since I can't make this mutually beneficial sale yet to a talented video vendor. I want to trade Internet marketing magic beans for video help and haven't found the way to do that....yet.

I have to find a way to tune my pitch so we both win. Wish me luck and please share any ideas since I want to SURF the video marketing tsunami not drown in it and I have 90 days to save my job, me and the world (more on that later). To say I am highly motivated would be a VAST understatement (lol).

Share your ideas, ideas and suggestions for how to find a great videographer to partner with over the next 90 days in comments or email mobriff(at)gmail(dot)com.

And, as always, thanks.

Marty

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