This is the age of online video. Last month I shared with you 6 video marketing stats that should have made you go out and start publishing video content to attract new clients. If you haven’t taken that step, what are you waiting for?
This month we are going to enhance your videos. We are going to make them better. More attractive. More likely to get you new clients. That should be the sole reason you produce videos. Not for fame and social approval (although they are nice), we are trying to grow our business and take advantage of the media that currently has the mindshare of our market.
The first thing I want you to know is that getting started is better than waiting for things to be perfect. If you look back on my first videos, they were far from perfect. Thanks to the Internet and YouTube archives, you can even see one of my early videos from my old music marketing business below.
That image isn’t grainy because it’s a low-quality photo. That is actually how grainy my videos were back in 2009, but that video was still seen by 809 people.
Today, with your iPhone or some great DSLR cameras, you can look much, much better than I did in my early days. But, just because you have an iPhone in your pocket doesn’t mean you can just point, click and shoot. This month I want to give you 3 ways to enhance your online videos and use these videos to get more clients.
- Enhance Your Environment
Your environment is everything. It’s perception. It’s positioning. It’s branding.
It sounds obvious, but so many small business owners are filming Facebook Live videos, Instagram Stories or Snapchats with no regard to what’s in the background.
Your goal is to create a stage. On that stage you want to be seen as the headline act. You want to use your environment to create images in people’s minds. Do you want people to see you as an author? Have your books or Quilly® Award in the background. Do you want people to see your conference table or office? Should you pick up your office before hitting record?
Every time we film a video for ourselves or for one of our clients that we create online TV Shows for, we set the stage. We make sure everything is positioned in the background. We make sure the cameras are at the best angles and that the lights don’t cast shadows across one side of our face.
All of this comes across in video and makes an impression on the person watching the video. Your viewers only give you seconds before they have made a decision if they are going to work with you or not.
I want you to look back at your past few videos and answer this question: what does the background or environment say about you, your services and how a prospect would perceive you?
- Enhance Your Music
Music has an incredible power. When you are in the gym and need to get the blood flowing, what do you do? You turn on a Power Workout playlist and turn it all the way up. When you are sad or in a funk, you use music to either try and break out of that funk, or sit in your sorrows with tunes that fit your mood.
As marketers, we can also use music to control the emotions of those watching our videos. Music helps to pace your videos and keep your viewer’s attention.
Think about movie trailers, or movies for that matter. Just by changing the music, your emotions change. Your online videos need to use music to create (or take away) energy. To set the mood. Good music can bring people on a journey with you. Bad music can make your video inaudible and bring down the energy, ultimately driving the viewer to watch something else.
Choose your music wisely and you will have more people not only watching, but competing and engaging with your online TV show.
- Enhance Your Outcomes
The majority of the world creates content without thinking about the outcome they want from that content. This is not specific to videos either. How many blog articles or social media posts have you created without any thought as to why you are posting it and what you want to happen because of posting it?
The answer is probably not much, if any at all.
But you wouldn’t go into a big meeting or sales presentation without an outcome in mind, would you? So why create a piece of content that doesn’t have any purpose or intention? That outcome or intention doesn’t always have to be a sale. It can be an emotion you want to your viewer to feel. You can ask for comments or feedback. You can also direct them to learn more or watch a webinar or sales video. And yes, you can even try and get a sale.
No matter what the outcome you desire, always have one. None of us have a lot of free time, so why are we spending time (usually lots of it), creating a great video or episode of our TV show without knowing why we want to create it.
Here’s a great example. We recently filmed a TV show for David Bradley, a mortgage broker from Texas. One of his episodes was about Conditional Qualification Letters, or getting pre-qualified for a mortgage before you go and look for a house. The intention for the video is to educate people on what a Conditional Qualification Letter is, how to get one and the biggest mistakes people make when trying to obtain one.
( David Bradley on the set of his TV Show, Just Mortgages)
The outcome we want the viewer to take is to call David so he can help them obtain a pre-qualification letter. Yes, we want to educate the consumer and share valuable information, but it’s not for the sake of simply sharing great content. We have created this episode to get business, to generate interest and leads.
Knowing the outcomes of your videos allows you to create content that is better equipped to get you those outcomes. It will allow you to film an environment that is more conducive to getting that outcome. It will allow your editing team to select the right music to pace the video accordingly. And it will make your results measurable, so you are always moving your business forward.
