A new way to use video to market your small business with Video Hero’s Jules Watkins | #411

Tim

Now there will be some people listening who go “Yeah, but I don’t want to be in front of the camera”. What do you say to them?

Jules

Well, I’ll say a couple of things. One is you don’t have to be- you could research the talent in your company. If you’ve got other people who you work with or if you’ve got a partner then maybe they might be better on camera. So it’s a bit like a reality TV set to try and find your reality TV characters, the ones that got the personality, the humorist that can perform. So you could use somebody else. The other thing you could do is you could create videos that are more like text-based videos so maybe you don’t mind using your voice, it’s just actually being on camera. So they can work pretty well as well.

Tim

I like that one because you’ve got a wonderful training course called Screenflow Hero. Now Screenflow, for those who don’t know is simply a software that allows you to record what’s happening on your screen and what you’re saying and turns it into a video. So I see a lot, even from some of the bigger businesses out there, I’m seeing text based video working really well where you just create a PowerPoint, flick through it and talk to it at the same time.

Jules

Absolutely. You know it’s what converts really, what’s working. You don’t have to be confined just to one style. You got a test styles and what works well. So a lot of marketers have found that in fact very simple slide show type videos, they’re called the dirty sales videos. Basically, like a white screen and just text that comes up at the same time as voice can be incredibly effective. It really focuses people’s minds down to concentrate on the words. So those can work great or you can do what’s called hybrid. I’d hear quite a lot of these where all you have to do is get on camera for a few sections of the video. It could be just four sections. One at the start, one at the end, and a couple in the middle. Maybe only you’re on camera for 25 seconds each time. And the rest of it then goes to the screen capture, the text base. So you can literally just go over it. You can make any mistakes as you want as long as you can get it right four times for a brief sentence or two then you can then edit send the rest of it and then just use your voice over. So there are ways and means of getting around it.

Tim

Love it. Other business owners think Video Marketing is expensive. What do you say to them?

Jules

It can be expensive if you go for the big glossy video with the drones and multiple camera crews and you could spend ten thousand dollars up to 100,000 dollars if you wanted to. But that’s probably not the great thing to do stray off the bat. The best thing is to actually test your audience with video, simple video, see what they react to. Do they react to you on camera better, do they react to seeing machinery or how-to videos, what works best. Then you’ve got some research done then you can actually go in commission perhaps a production company to make a glossy video. And there is a room for those type of videos you know, on your home page, when people come to your home page. Fine but if you want to start, just start with a short to simple videos, get them out on social media and test the market.

Tim

It takes too long to set up is another, what I would say, limiting belief.

Jules

Well I could say one thing. Once you set it up once, you can redo it. If you want a little studio sets up in your office, a couple of lights background, then you could just keep it set up. And what you could do is bring in your phone, or your camera, or whatever you’re using. Put it on the tripods. You could even mark your tripod legs on the ground with some tape and where the lights so you know where it all should be and then you could just rinse and repeat. So if you find a style that’s working, like maybe it’s a how-to of your products, then you could just rinse and repeat. Week by week or produce like a weekly show from the same environment. It doesn’t have to be starting from scratch each time.

Tim

I love that. There’s all about flow, the ability to just kind of set it up once and then all you need to worry about when you want to create next video is going and hitting record and you’re away because the set up can be a little bit kind of “oh jeez, here we go again do it.” Some think it’s too technical, Jules?

Jules

I mean not so. When you see some of the horrors on Facebook, people grabbing a phone and literally just with all the right things wrong, and everything’s wrong, and they still getting views, they’re still getting success. So basics, just the basics. Just thinking about lights, a bit of daylight will be fine or investing in a hundred-dollar light if that’s what you need. And a decent microphone that clips into your phone or your DSLR if you happen to have one of those. Just think about audio, sound, and then the most important thing is content. But you don’t need to have lots of gear. I think a tripod is handy as well. Otherwise it gets hard to hold it in your hand.

Tim

I learned a lot from you many years ago with your iPhone video training- video hero training which I know you’ve updated. But as you say, little simple things like don’t have, you know don’t shoot into the light, you’ll be a silhouette. And being a little bit sensitive to some of the sounds around you and getting a little mic attached to your iPhone which can cost you know, 50-60 bucks. And it’s amazing how quickly you can step the quality of your videos up without spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And to your point Jules, there is power in the idea and the way you present on the video vs. worrying about it, trying to make a Hollywood production which again, if people think every time they’ve just got to have this incredibly, incredible looking video, they’re not going to do it.

Jules

Absolutely the thing these days is just being authentic, being transparent, being real, being somebody that other, that your prospects or your customers can identify where. Then you’ll attract the right tribe. If you’ve got the right motivation, you’re attract the right people. And they will forgive the fact that it’s not ultra-glossy. The fact that it is sometimes they’ll put their guard up and think “Wow, this is like shopping TV.” or “This is kind of one of these boring commercials and it’s overproduced and it’s just sell, sell, sell” whereas if you’re just be you really and you’ll see how, particularly now with live video as well on Facebook, people are just literally getting on their cameras, on their phones now, broadcasting alive and being authentic. You know, they can’t hide themselves behind editing. And if you’re a good talker and if you’re relatively confident, you can just do that. And that’s a really simple way of making a video without having to get into the whole process of post-production. It is what it is.

Tim

It is what it is. You know a classic example speaking of Hollywood productions, I was watching the Australian Open tennis over summer and one of the celebrity guests was actor Will Smith and they showed him going down into sort of the bowels of the Rod Laver Arena which is where it all happens. And he was doing some selfie videos with ball boys and some of the players and they were very raw you know. He was literally holding the camera out as if he was taking a selfie, doing some videos, posting them to his Instagram. And again, it’s the content not necessarily the production values. “My customers aren’t watching videos.” Jules, I hear this a lot. What do you say to them?

Jules

Well they might not be watching marketing videos but they are watching videos. I mean the amount the video being consumed right now is incredible.  All the stats show people way preferred to watch a video than to read a long bit of text. So I say they’re watching videos, they may not be watching your video if you’re not making interesting videos. You know if you’re just pitching too much or if they’re dry and dull and you know using the wrong kind of music or whatever, then yes, they might not be watching yours. But I think people absolutely love videos just trying to find the style, trying to fit into the persona of the Instagram star. You know the short, snappy, visual video where people are looking at it on their feed, mute, no audio and it’s just going to catch the eye a little bit then people will watch it. And then the same goes with Facebook as well. People are just consuming so much of it so I think it’s more to do with the style of video you’re making but people are definitely looking for video and for companies that are innovative or very personal in their approach.

Tim

Saw some crazy stats out of YouTube recently where I think it said something like 27 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. I want to say every second but that sounds ridiculous. I’m going to say every minute. That’s a lot of video. I guess you could hear that and go “Well why would I add to that? Why would I create more.?” Well that’s happening because people are watching video. But again, it then it comes down to the creative challenge of actually creating something that works for your business and that people want to watch. So Jules, What have you seen change with smartphone video and its users since we last talked probably about five years ago.

Jules

Yes, it’s been fascinating to me to see that development because when I started teaching iPhone video and this can apply to Android of course as well, it was limited in the kind of accessories you could get, the quality. But now things have changed big time and you’re talking about being creative. I’ll give you an example now, the fact that you know you can buy a gimbal for your video, for your phone. Again, but it’s something that you put your phone into it and it just keeps it super steady. So as you’re walking or shaking around, it corrects the motion. So it just gives you these really smooth steady cam shots like you see-

Tim

So that’s one of those, that’s a device. Like at sporting events you see the cameramen go out on the field with his massive set up on trying to maintain stability of the camera. Is that the type, is a gimbal doing the same thing?

Jules

Exactly. Like the guys you see they’re wearing a massive bit of kit around their shoulders and they’re carrying a really heavy camera using this device. They look like a kind of robot or something.

Tim

Isn’t that unbelievable. Like five years ago, that technology, I don’t know what it cost I’m going to guess it was tens of thousands of dollars for the TV station to produce. Now you can go and buy a gimbal. Sounds like something out of pulp fiction, bring out the gimbal. You can buy that. I’m guessing again tens of you know, 50-60 hundred bucks and you’ve got some unbelievable technology.

Jules

Yeah, I mean gimbals the low rent possibly about 60 or more around the sort of 200 which is still not a lot of money. You can literally get rid of this dreadful camera shake but also you can do great things like tours. So say you were in the property business or interior design or anywhere where you want to move, gardening, you want to move around and just give this cinematic feel to your videos. And if you look on YouTube, we talked about YouTube just now. A lot of the best YouTubers are really upping the quality. They’re using gimbals, they’re using drones, and other things as well and the quality is incredible. You can now achieve that sort of quality just with your iPhone and some inexpensive gears. So that’s how to stand out, right. Because if your competitor is just doing rubbishy, shaky videos on the selfie stick and you come in with this more of a cinematic approach, then that’s going to stand out a mile.

Tim

You mentioned drones I mean, I always say Jules the marketing world has changed so much in the last few months and years and there’s never been a better time to market a small business. I mean, talk about wow that applies to video more than anything because of the technology and the smartphone.  I would say you know like the iPhone, I don’t need a new iPhone it’s just got a better camera and a better mic other than that, it’s the same phone. But if you’re talking about video marketing, then that better camera and better mic can make you look and sound pretty good.

Jules

Absolutely. Drone is one thing that gets amazing aerial shots and of course often controlled by your phone. You hook up your phone to it and you can see the image on your phone so that’s related to phones. But also, yeah, the camera quality. For me big change is the 4K camera. The super high quality 4K on the rear facing camera on your phone, on your iPhone. And what’s in iPhone is in Android as well. And that 4K is incredible. You don’t have to export your videos at 4K but if you shoot 4K, this is my tip for you folks, shoot for 4K and then just downscale it so you can scale it when you’re editing it and exports at 10 8 0p which is a slightly low resolution but it’s still HD. By doing that, if you downscale it, it means that you can zoom into the shot when you’re editing. So you can blow up bits of the shot and therefore you don’t lose any quality. So that means that you could shoot video of yourself and just shoot it static. But then during the video you can zoom in and just get more of a head and shoulders and then you can zoom out again on a fuller shot and zoom in. So without having any zoom lens, you can get that kind of effect.

Tim

That’s clever. Now I know some people are thinking me but I’m not going to edit. And I don’t really want my listeners to be editing. I think editing can be such a time suck. I mean for my point of view, I want them to be creating fantastically helpful content that’s going to help grow their business and handle the mechanical stuff over to someone else. Just out of interest and I’m sure you mentioned this in your training, but where do you go for editors?

Jules

If you don’t want to edit, and by the way, I just described you can actually do it on the iMovie app which is like peanuts. But in terms of editors, you go to somewhere upwork.com and for about ten dollars, through a sort of 25 an hour, you could hire an editor. You can even get a full-time editor for about three-four hundred dollars a month if you were doing a lot of videos.

Tim

Yes, it’s amazing isn’t it?

Jules

They could just be cranking out videos for you because it is, it’s about a stream of videos you know and having videos and multiple touch points, not just the one video. So absolutely if you feel frightened of editing, outsource it. It’s just the quick trim at the ends of it and adding your logo then that can be done pretty simply with things like Screenflow, Camtasia, iMovie on the desktop, or whatever you might use.

Tim

I’m talking to ex-MTV director Jules Watkins who has now created some incredibly good training products for anyone who wants to make videos for their business and I’ll tell you how to get them later. But Jules there’s a lot of videos that small business owners can create. Previously you and I have spoken about and I’ve touched on things like a welcome video, sales video, product review videos, testimonial videos, all the kind of basic stuff. You’re very big right now on vlog style video marketing. What is that?

Jules

Well that’s something I kind of caught up with in the past few months really because right now, there is a huge explosion of vlogging and love for vloggers so I don’t know if you watch any yourself. But I guess your audience too might know of people like Casey Neistat would be one. His he’s just take in the world by storm. You know he’s got like nearly 10 million subscribers, become very, very famous in his vlog. He’s inspired the whole generation of new vloggers and they’re getting very creative with their blogs, they’re looking at like reality TV shows which I used to make and taking the best knowledge from that and also looking at film and applying it to the i r vlog. Vlogging is huge, it’s popular. But also, it’s extremely daunting if you are starting out with video to think about pumping out a regular vlog. You know these guys are insane, they like film all day, they edit four or five hours-

Tim

Well that’s what they do. I mean these guys have made, in fact only tomorrow I’m interviewing a couple of girls who have got one point two million followers on Instagram and they do all this video stuff and you know that’s their business so they can be filming all day. But is vlog style video marketing still a relevant idea to say you know, a sewer, or a real estate agent, or a plumber?

Jules

Absolutely because what I’ve thought of here is you don’t, you’re not doing it daily vlog. You’re not pumping out vlog. You’re just taking the style and then applying it to your content video, your marketing video. So you may only be, let’s say you’ve got a new offer coming up or a new launch. You just apply that style just to one video and that video becomes your sales video. So I’ve done this myself with a product that I launched. I tried to film it a lot more casually than they normally would. So it’s not a studio based video.  I was in my car, I was showing a little snapshot of behind the scenes, and I was talking in a slightly unusual location, and I was kind of fairly casual about it. So you’re just playing that casual, personal, behind the scenes look and feel but clearly, your message is “Here’s my product. Here are the benefits. Here’s the problem I’m solving for you and go and buy it.” But you’re just doing it in a different context than you would normally expect.

Tim

Can I just- Okay so let’s drill down. Vlog style video marketing, so what you’re saying is that you just wherever you are, you don’t need to be in your set up like we talked about earlier with you know your tripod marked on the floor and ready to go and all that. You could be anywhere. Is this the fundamental nature of a vlog style video, is it?

Jules

It could be anywhere. It could be at home, it could be anywhere. But when I think about vlogging, I think more of lots of movement. So what works really well is just you can use a gimbal or a selfie stick which cost peanuts. And so it’s a walk in the talk. You know you’re walking down the street, taking people on a journey somewhere right. Or it could be your property, you’re actually going to say, or your business I should say. You’re going to say “Well I just want to take you a quick tour behind the scenes, I just you want to take you behind the scenes to the kitchen and see what they’re up to.” And you going to just walk through and you’re going to bump into the people and say “So Luigi-” I don’t want to be stereotyped about Italian restaurants but, “Hey Luigi, show us this pasta dish from your mama.” He’s going to tell you what’s that about and then you could move on. And you’re not going to edit it too much, you’re going to just literally stop and talk to people and show stuff, and it’s going to feel quite loose, and you’re going to be pointing the camera around, and it’s going to come back to you and you’re going to say “So folks if you want to test out Luigi’s pasta then we got a special deal on for next weekend.” And off you go. So as opposed to a corporate produce that would come in and they would set up a big interview with you. You’ll be sat there, be glossy, there’ll be lots of shots of the exterior and then it would be cut “right now let’s go interview Luigi” and it would all be very traditionally made and highly edited.

Tim

Yeah. Okay. This is ringing very true I interviewed about three months ago a fellow by the name of Peter Hitchener. Now he’s our leading news reader in Victoria which is where I’m from Jules. And now Peter’s obviously very used to the camera, very used to big sets and high-quality production, he has become a social, in his words, a social media addict. He does four to five hours of social media a day but he’s doing a lot of video on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and he literally is just getting his phone out for opportunities to share what he’s doing with his audience and it has worked its absolute pants off. He hasn’t you know, when you drop criteria like you know, must have perfect lighting, must have perfect backdrop, creating video becomes a whole lot easier. So I’ll put a link in that interview in the show notes. So with blog style video Jules, we’ve got a familiar format because it’s sort of like, it’s a bit like reality TV where you sort of, you’re dropping in unannounced so that drops the guard of those watching. You also talk about an upside of vlogging as being a pattern interrupt. What do you mean by that?

Jules

Well it’s because it’s very important to grab people right at the top of video. You know that’s where you’re going to catch them. They’re going to keep watching. As you mentioned before there’s a ton of videos being produced. So what’s going to be catchy and what’s going to be different. So if people are expecting to see the same old video of an accountant or a solicitor or whatever it might be, sitting there in the seat and then suddenly bang, you’re seeing them on a surfboard, right. You know the first 15 second or think about what your hobbies are. You might not be a surfer. It’s not so great in London surfing but you might be do yachting or gardening or golf or whatever. And suddenly, “why am I seeing this? What’s this got to do with this business?” And suddenly the guy you know you see the golf club, it’s putting the board into the hole and then he turns to the camera and then the guy says, that the person who’s in the video, “You know I’ve been thinking when I’ve been playing this round of golf” Dot dot dot and then it kind of segues into the video. So that first little montage is something that just grabs you.

Tim

One of the great bits of advice I’ve had on video previously. It was by another Jules, his name is Jules Lund, a past guest to the show. He’s done a lot of- there’s a travel show here called Get Away. He’s done hundreds and hundreds of little travel segments and his best advice was, have a good in and a good out. So for example the “Hi, it’s Timbo here from the Small Business Big Marketing Show. I just want to talk to you about video marketing and then you share maybe three points around video marketing.” And then you’re out is, “if you like that there’s plenty more over at Small Business Big Marketing dot com. See you next time.” Question, unannounced, do you have any other tips like that? Because that one for me has worked so well because it takes the pressure off you know, talking to camera.

Jules

Yeah, I see what you mean. I mean definitely strong in. I totally agree with the visuals and just the call to action. I mean a lot of people kind of have such a weak call to action.

Tim

They do! They stuff around because that’s where the sale. That’s where the ask is.

Jules

Exactly are they trying to imply it or not draw a wink. Or they sometimes just put a bit of text up that kind of flashes up for two seconds. The best thing is to say what you want people to do so if you see YouTubers, they would say smashed the like button. And if you can show something on screen like smashing it, you could even grab a hammer and just smash something you want to. “Smash the like button, click the link and I’ll show you what to do.” So, I have motion graphics that I use and I offer those as well. They have gone down a storm with entrepreneurs who wants motion graphics that actually show people what do.  They point at the button or you see the button clicked. So if you’ve got a yellow button or you’ve got an optin form on your Web site for example, showing the button showing click, visually showing what people need to do, their name being filled out or a phone the pairing with the number and a ringing sounded the phone like to wake them up a bit. So I would say don’t just mumble it and visually show what you want people to do at the end.

Tim

Yeah, I love that. I think the call to action. Oh boy oh boy. As I say to people you know like, if you don’t have a call to action in any of your content marketing then you are simply creating art. You know, we are here to sell.

Jules

That’s it. Absolutely. Always I always think what’s the next step. What is it you want, be clear with that. Because the other thing people do is put to many call to actions like you know where are you, what you want. It like your page? Is it add comments to your video? Is it subscribe? Is it fill out a form? Is it make a call? So be clear what you want before you even make your video.

Tim

I think that’s a really important point, Jules because again what we- and I grew up in an advertising agency and I had clients who wanted to do everything within a 30 second TV or radio spot or a half page ad. It’s like you know the way we, as consumers work is that a single-minded thought is a good idea. So if you’ve got four things you want to say and you want to do it in one video would you argue that it’s probably better to do four videos?

Jules

Exactly if it’s different topics or it’s going to turn out to be too long. Absolutely, you’re better off having multiple touch points particularly with something on YouTube, each video will have its own key words, its own title so it can be found by different people who are searching it. If you try and combine it then you can’t pick out the title with so much information. It won’t be found so many times. So I think yeah, breaking up, having shorter videos within reason on a certain topic going a bit deeper is probably better than trying to do too much inside in one video.

Tim

I just want to touch on the training that you’ve got for those listening, you can look at all Jules’s training options if you go to get video hero dot com now your iPhone video Hero Training Jules I love but what are the other training modules that you’ve got?

Jules

I have yeah, the iPhone training has been a massive hit for me and I’ve been updating it and I’ve got, I’m adding continuous content into that particular membership. The other ones I’ve got a DSLR course because I realise that some of my folks who love their phones but then they maybe want to either progressed to their DSLR or use it in parallel with their iPhone. So yes, DSLR Video Hero of course and then it talks about editing, Screenflow which is one of my preferred tools.

Tim

Can I just touch on that and reinforce?  I’ve spoken about it before but screen flow is an amazing tool. I have used it and converted so many inquiries into business using screen flow because it takes the pressure off you necessarily having to speak directly to camera and it’s incredibly easy to use so that Screenflow hero training that you’ve got is fantastic.

Jules

Thanks. Yes, that’s the one that’s one. And then also I will be bringing out since I’ve spoken to you last. I realise that entrepreneurs don’t know where to find music and there’s lots of issues around using music that copyrighted to be taking care. Otherwise you can really get in trouble with YouTube or Facebook or whatever. So I brought out some music packs which includes training so is that how you use music in your videos, how do you choose the right music. So that’s been very, very popular as well. And also, I mentioned there’s motion graphics. I just go by what people are telling me what they need and what I see out there. So I realize that motion graphics can be really expensive to go out and buy two or three motion graphics and be sure that it, is copyright free that you can use. So I just created this mega pack of over 300 and it’s literally all the subscribe button you need for YouTube, and the like buttons, and the comment, the things we’ve just been talking about in able to- So you can visually emphasize what you’re saying and that works great because a lot of people are watching videos like mute or volume’s low and they were losing their attention, they’re looking all over the place. When they see it, they are on screen that makes them take action. And finally, we’d be local video ads hero which was a course that I’ve just done recently with Chuck Gallagher who is a local video advertising expert and we did a partnership on this training. It’s been a massive success and the concept here is that nowadays, you just can’t sit back and wait to people to watch your videos particularly with Facebook changing the algorithms. It’s all about getting your videos out there which means paid video advertising, getting your video ads or content pushed out to exactly the right market, in the right demographic, in the right locality. And this is what is really hot right now is actually putting a little bit of funds into getting your videos seen more rather than just having them sit there.

Tim

Love it, Jules. Mate, thank you for putting all the training together. I mean someone had to and it is fantastic for any small business owner thinking of embarking on a video marketing campaign. I don’t think you can really do it effectively without this so get video hero dot com is where you will find all that training. I think actually I might hit, did you say it was Chuck Gallagher? I might hit him up for an interview on local video ad hero because I’m seeing so many people converting highly on Facebook using video and again, they’re not high production but they are clever videos and I’m going to guess that the training will show us how to do it. Jules, love your work. Thank you, buddy, and maybe I’ll get you back in another five years to see how we’ll use holograms on our smartphone or something.

Jules

See our hair is getting on. Yeah. Great.

Tim

Thank you, buddy.

Jules

Thanks very much.