Dodgeball Marketing Podcast #35: Using Video for Better Marketing

Michael Utley: Hey, everybody! Welcome to Episode 35 of the Dodgeball Marketing Podcast. I'm Michael. This is Chris.

Chris Raines: How you doing, man?

Michael Utley: Good, happy Friday.

Chris Raines: Happy Friday.

Michael Utley: We're going to talk about using videos for better marketing. Video content is one of the biggest things that's come along with the internet, really since broadband. And, one of the ways, Chris, that we talk about it, point number one here, is make your ad landing pages convert better. Can you talk about that for us?

Chris Raines: Yeah. So, we're going to talk about five ways to use video in your marketing. First, like Michael said, is to make your landing pages convert better. This is an interesting stat that we found, this is from EyeWideDigital, having a video on your landing page can increase your conversion rate by 80%. That's pretty astonishing.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: It makes sense. Video is a unique format, in that you can really engage people, pull them in, and build a relationship and an emotional connection in a short amount of time. And so, usually when you're building a landing page you might be driving cold traffic, so these are people—

Michael Utley: . . .Maybe a landing page, they're paid search or maybe a social media ad campaign.

Chris Raines: Yeah. So, you're trying to engage people that have never heard from you before, so you really got to build that relationship. And, you can just do it so much quicker with video. And, for things where you need to show a process or how something works, maybe it's something complicated and you really have to see it unfold, see a transformation happen, there's nothing quite like video to really show that in a short amount of time in a really compelling way. So, I'm not really surprised about that 80% statistic. It's just such a powerful medium to engage people, convince them, and build a relationship with them.

Chris Raines: So, first thing you should look at, anywhere where you have a landing page, where you're driving traffic to, especially cold traffic, think about using video on that page to really accelerate that and get a higher conversion rate.

Michael Utley: Yeah. So, an example of that could be someone coming in on a keyword search. They're not doing a branded search, they don't already know who you are. They're not doing a branded search, coming to your website, and finding the phone number they're looking for, or submitting a lead. They might be coming in based on a keyword built around the need or the area of product or service that you offer. So, that's what you mean by cold. They're really coming in not necessarily committed to your brand.

Chris Raines: Yeah, exactly. Would you take the second one, Michael, make your homepage convert better with video.

Michael Utley: So, this is a little bit different because, like Chris was talking about, with ad content, anybody who is coming in, and you might on an ad expose them to the brand or, "How we do it differently". On a homepage, maybe they're there because they know who you are. Or, maybe they're there because they're evaluating you as an option for what they're doing. All products and services would benefit from this. It's a little bit of a challenge on a homepage because you've essentially got to say, "Hey, here's what you can count on when you use us", in a way that's pretty broad. It's really got to cover all your products and services. And, sometimes you can have multiple lines of business, and you really have to boil that up to a simple, clear value proposition that conveys something about your brand.

Michael Utley: So, something that I think about when I'm thinking about homepage content, is that this is where the production values are maybe going to be dialed up a little bit higher.

Chris Raines: It's the first impression.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: Or can be.

Michael Utley: If you're going to do the thing where you have lights and professional photography, and shoot and you're getting mic'd up to do really good audio, that's going to be material that would be good enough to go in with a real clear statement of what makes you different, in the form of a homepage video.

Chris Raines: And, the flip side of that, Michael, is that because of that extra production that you probably want to put towards it, it's going to be more expensive and time-consuming. But, on the flip side, it's going to have a longer shelf life usually, because it's about your brand. Your brand doesn't morph and change like a campaign would.

Michael Utley: Right.

Chris Raines: If you launch a six-month campaign, your brand is your brand, hopefully, that's a long-term asset you're building. So, you might use a homepage video for two years.

Michael Utley: Yeah, I think at least one to two years. These things, maybe in the last few years have been running, maybe 5K in Nashville market, it would be more expensive in LA, New York, Chicago. When we're producing a video, if we're going out doing three or four camera setups and getting some talking heads, mixing that up with some B-roll, doing maybe a voice-over track, you're going to want that to have a shelf life of 12, 24 months as a minimum.

Michael Utley: Something else that's a painful reality of doing video for the homepage, there are two real hard things to get your head around. Number one, is that it still has to be really short. Even though this is the video that has to be the catch-all, to cover any and all types of inquiries to your homepage, it doesn't need to be more than two or three minutes, and that's really tough.

Michael Utley: Another thing that's kind of a related topic, is nobody cares about the history of the company. You're not making a documentary. Don't start with, "Well, you got to know all of this stuff because we feel like this is who we are, and really what matters". Flip that value proposition upside down, start with the pain point that the customer has that would get them coming to you. If you are in a really sophisticated industry like healthcare or technology services, I would recommend that you look at the marketing done by oil change shops. You might learn something. What you'll learn is that they're very good at starting with the pain point the customer has. "Is your engine light on?". That's a better starting point for this type of content development. And, it's really hard for people to get out of, "Well, this is who we are. We want to tell them about the founding". I'd skip all that. You really want to start...

Chris Raines: Jiffy Lube doesn't say, "We've been in business for 15 years, who cares?" My engine light is on, that's what I care about.

Michael Utley: If they do, it's a really tight tag. It's more like, "Is your engine light on? Do you need cybersecurity evaluation?". It would be better to take a Jiffy Lube approach and flip that upside down and start with something that's very centered on the audience's pain point, and then back it out a little bit to say, "Hey, here's how we handle that differently, and here's how we solve people's problems, like yours".

Chris Raines: Yeah, perfect. Thing number three you can do to use video for better marketing is, using YouTube as a search engine. So, this one's really cool because YouTube, we've said it before, is a number two search engine in the world. People go to YouTube to get entertained, and to learn things.

Chris Raines: So, what you do in YouTube is you think about, "What problems do people have inside of my industry or people I serve? And, what do they want to learn? And, how to entertain them around the subject matter?". And then, produce video to that end, the same way that you would for written blog content, you just turn into video.

Chris Raines: And, I brought up two examples here, you can check this out, people that are doing YouTube in a really cool way. REI, the outdoor store, if you look at their YouTube page... I'm just going to go through... Here's episode four, "Setting Up the Ultimate Camp". So, this is like a vlog series, they're following people around to do the ultimate camp setup. And the, they've also got content here. They've got, "Trying Every Type of Backpacking Stove", so they're reviewing a bunch of backpacking stoves, probably ones that they sell. What else do we have here? "How to Pick Snow Shoes", "My Winter Backpacking Essentials". So, this is educational content for people that are interested in outdoors.

Michael Utley: I spend a lot of time with kids on the Appalachian trail, I've been taking them section hiking. We absorb a ton of material from video, including this REI content.

Chris Raines: Home Depot also does a really good job here, "Best Solar Panels for Your Home", "Types of Woodworking Jigs", "Types of Conduit Fittings". So, anybody that's a DIY'er that has a project in their home, they're going to be going to YouTube to figure out what type of conduit fittings there are, how to change this, how to alter that, all this DIY stuff. And so, Home Depot is steadily cranking out content to help solve these problems. And, not all of these sell a product. They're meeting the home DIY'er where they are with the problems that they have, and educating them.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So, that's two really good examples. And, think of it like you would Google. People have problems, how do you use video in a unique way to help them solve that problem? And, teaching them how to do something. Especially something really visual like a home project, can be really cool.

Michael Utley: And, Home Depot, for anybody who wants to look it up, they're doing a really good job with their branding, their look and feel of those videos, that looks really good.

Chris Raines: Yeah. That's it for that one. Michael, you want to take the next one?

Michael Utley: Yeah. So, next up, make your services pages convert better. When you have something that you're doing, and you can apply all this to products as well... When we think about the homepage, maybe we think about blog topics, maybe we think lower down on the content structure hierarchy about social media posts, and emails, and off-site uses of video. But, there's a middle layer there of services pages. This is a really good area for video, because a lot of times, these are pages people are coming to first on a website. They're coming directly in from a search engine query, to a services page.

Michael Utley: We do a lot of work in healthcare, we do a lot of work in technology services, we do a lot of work in the construction industry. An example for us would be if a company does both commercial painting and industrial flooring. Industrial flooring is very specific, it's a lot of information about surface prep, repair, coatings, thinking about the joints between segments of concrete, thinking about the paint, and other materials that are going to be used to coat floors. Having an industrial flooring page gives you the real estate to get people in around that topic, and to land them and say, "Here's how we do this category of services in a unique way that's valuable". And, this gives you a little bit more real estate, because that homepage is so limiting. It's got to be so general that it can tend to be a little bit too general. But, the services pages, that's where you really get to connect with the ball and have something that says, "Hey, for this type of activity, here's how we do this differently".

Michael Utley: And, this is where it's really good to show and to demonstrate. If you can even get people out in the field, or even customers to be on camera and be in a little bit of B-roll. Just walking a project after it's been completed, or hard hat and clipboard and saying, "We're going to do this. We're going to do this". It's demonstrating, "You're going to be heard. We're going to focus on the details. We're going to be professional in the way that we do things. There's going to be a process to how we do things". And, this can be reinforced graphically and tied into your page content with, "Here are steps one, two, three. This is how we approach these projects".

Michael Utley: A lot of times, when people are on a website with a services page or services pages, they're digging in and they're saying, "How do these guys work? What do they do?", "What is it going to be like if I let them come in here and walk them around and ask them for a quote?". People are kind of exposing themselves when they do that. And so, what they want to know is what to expect. They're really asking, "What should I expect?". And so, on a website, we'll typically do this with a bar on a homepage, and then we'll often repeat this on services pages and say, "One, two, three. These are the steps. This is our process". That's really a way of predicting the future a little bit in the minds of people who want to hire one of our clients for these services.

Michael Utley: Anything you can do to dispel mystery and remove anxiety from, "This is what the experience of working with us is going to be like", you can do better with video. Show, don't tell, is really, really helpful in video on services pages.

Chris Raines: Yeah, that's perfect. Last one, is to make your social media more engaging. We've gone through an absolute metamorphosis in the past ten years. I remember when Facebook didn't offer video.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: Video was a feature that they added.

Michael Utley: It was probably a big deal when it was added.

Chris Raines: I think it was around 10 years ago they added video.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So, we've gone from that, to video being a big deal. Facebook had to roll it out as a feature because it's such a heavy thing to manage, from a server standpoint. All the way to TikTok, which is video. You can't even do images on TikTok, it's all video. So, the cool thing about this is, like I said before, with everything else we're saying, it's such a good way to endear the audience to yourself and to engage them in a more immersive experience, like we're doing right now. If you're watching on YouTube, this is a more immersive experience than perhaps just listening to us or just reading a blog article about what we're talking about.

Chris Raines: Secondly, the platforms are still promoting video as an asset. So, if you produce, especially on LinkedIn. Michael, I've seen the content that you do on LinkedIn.

Michael Utley: It's silly little stuff. It's getting us deals, because it's really kind of a personal expression in video, but I think it shows a little bit of humanity and a little bit of other personality.

Chris Raines: And, here's the cool thing about that. When I watch your videos, you're not bringing out a camera with lights, it's literally just opening up your laptop. So, the mind shift that needs to happen with people... This is the opposite of the homepage video.

Michael Utley: Mm-hmm.

Chris Raines: This is about volume, and about getting content out. So, do not be afraid to just pull open your laptop and then just project your expertise into the camera. Don't be afraid to get the iPhone out and tour the construction site with shaky video, if you're a construction company. Just get it out there, don't worry. People don't care. They know it's social media, they know it's just in the moment kind of content.

Michael Utley: Yeah.

Chris Raines: So, you don't need to put the bar necessarily high and try to jump over it to plan it out and devote a huge budget to it, hiring professionals. You don't need to do that for social. You can certainly use some of the content you shoot professionally, roll it into social. But, if that's your only thing you're doing, you are going to sell yourself short. There's all kinds of opportunity there for short, raw, in the moment content that you could be making, but you think that you can't because of that impression it might give. I promise you, it's not giving that impression.

Michael Utley: Yeah. It certainly gives you another tool in the toolbox, in terms of using video more spontaneously, more robustly. I think of it as a pyramid with two big layers. There's the homepage and the services pages, and these are those evergreen, more highly produced. Even though, you do want as much from the field material as you can get. And, you can get really good images on an iPhone. That's a layer.

Michael Utley: And then, blog post content, things that are supporting. . . social media content, are really that next layer. A little more authentic, real, a little more ephemeral, less editing.

Chris Raines: For proof of what I just said, download TikTok and see what the top videos are, and you'll see. People editing videos straight off their iPhone, not high production value. Some of it is, but the vast majority, the stuff that gets traction is very raw, very doable for the average person.

Michael Utley: Yeah. Millions, and millions, and millions of views for some of the influencers and people who are engaging on that platform, even people we know.

Chris Raines: That's right.

Michael Utley: All right, thanks for joining us for this episode, and we'll see you on the next one. Hit subscribe below.