Thursday, December 31, 2015
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
243 Reflecting on 2015 and Planning for 2016
There’s no fancy intro. No music. None of the fancy stuff.
Instead, it’s just me.
I’m taking a thorough look at 2015. What did I learn about my business? What did I learn about myself?
And based on those lessons, how do I plan on approaching 2016?
I believe that it’s important to take stock of where you are in your life from time to time.
The end of the year is a great time to do that as we plan for going into the new year.
I have a lot planned for 2016, but most of those plans don’t involve adding new things.
Instead, they involve getting rid of non essential things so that I can focus more fully on the things that are essential.
So go ahead and listen in, and then answer the following questions in the comments below:
- What did you learn from 2015?
- What do you plan on doing differently as you move into 2016?
The post 243 Reflecting on 2015 and Planning for 2016 appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.
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E-commerce and Mobile: 10 Easy Powerful Tricks to Sell More
According to research carried out by PayPal, which examined more than 17,000 consumers in 22 countries around the world, one-third of online shoppers uses mobile devices to make a purchase.
Mobile commerce, that is the management of commercial transactions via smartphones and tablets, has existed for at least fifteen years: in the late ’90s, Coca-Cola installed vending machines that accept payment via SMS text messages, and a few years later the possibility to pay train tickets directly from mobile phones was introduced in Austria.
However, it is only in recent years that purchases from mobile have seen an exponential growth: PayPal’s research reveals an annual growth rate of 42% in the period between 2013 and 2016.
Searching on mobile, conversion on desktop
Despite the growth of mobile, there is a fact that speaks volumes: the conversion rate on smartphones is 0.8% against 2.78% on desktops and users who clicked on “Add to cart” on mobile are less than half of those on PC.
It seems clear that, despite the fact that more consumers surf online to shop, this often does not lead to purchase. People use their smartphones to search for information about products, to compare prices, perhaps even get themselves intrigued by new products and promotions, but then they would rather complete the purchase on desktop.
When optimization is a stranger
There are different reasons why people are reluctant to purchase on mobile. According to Paypal’s research, 34% of people say the problem lies in the physicality of the device. The screen size is too small to allow an easy visualization and navigation of the purchase procedure. 18% of users blame it instead on the lack of site optimization, the content layout and difficulty in finding information.
Today, mobile commerce offers a great opportunity to all brands, because thanks to smartphones people can shop anytime, anywhere, multiplying purchasing opportunities. But this opportunity still too rarely results into business, because most of these e-commerce businesses are not yet ready to make the mobile purchase path easy, simple and fast.
M-commerce: undoubtedly fast, but without improvising
For anyone who has an e-commerce business, thinking mobile is a priority that should not be put off anymore: 204 million dollars were spent on these devices in 2014, while in 2018 transactions will be 626 million, three times as much. According to an article on Entrepreneur.com, if you aren’t building e-commerce businesses with mobile in mind, you may be irrelevant in three to five years. Before starting, however, it is important to analyze your objectives and targets, to observe the profiles and behaviors of consumers on mobile, which do not always coincide with those on other channels: the audience is generally young people. According to Paypal, 59% of shoppers on mobile between 18 and 34 years old use their phone to surf for about 3 hours a day (source: eMarketer) and they prefer in 63% of cases (source: Econsultancy) e-commerce businesses that have rich contents, which give detailed descriptions and product reviews. From this first general guideline, we can define the specific audience of the brand. You should always keep them in mind when designing and implementing all these improvements that make the shopping experience on your e-commerce business better and more evolved.
Here is a series of effective tricks to get you started:
#1 Enrich your content: although mobile experience is the emblem of immediacy, when it comes to choosing a product people love to have in-depth information. Therefore you should put detailed descriptions for each item, and you could even add videos illustrating the assembly instructions, functions or its use.
#2 Encourage reviews: Descriptions are important but opinions on your products spontaneously left by costumers are 12 times more (source: Econsultancy). To encourage them, put and highlight under each item a field where they can leave a review and make sure that the publishing procedure is as simple as possible, even on mobile.
#3 Choose explanatory photos: Given the small size of the screen, the pictures should tell what the product is about in a clear and attractive way and highlight its strengths. Make sure they are in good quality and easy to view.
#4 Use legible font sizes: To read the texts, whether they are titles, descriptions or buttons, users should not have to zoom in or move horizontally or vertically to see the whole page. Make sure all the important information are already shown on the opening page.
#5 Scrolling is better: Every link involves a waiting time to open a new page, which is not particularly appreciated on mobile. Structure your information as a single sequence that can be viewed through scrolling, so that users can smoothly pass from one content to another without interrupting their navigation.
#6 Customize your message: The e-commerce app is particularly useful to communicate to users instantly and in a personalized way: thanks to push notifications you can inform customers who have purchased one of your products when a similar or complementary product is on sale.
#7 Enable booking: Considering that many users search for products on mobile but then buy them on desktop, you should provide the opportunity to book an item, so that they can buy it at a later time.
#8 Add Social Medias: 28% of online activity is spent on social networks (source: Social Times) and there are 1.65 million active users on mobile (source: Wersocial). Make sure that they talk about your e-commerce business by adding social sharing buttons on each product and by promoting your best articles on your social medias.
#9 Make payments easy: Purchasing through apps offers consumers the convenience of not having to enter their data each time they make a payment. 26% of consumers consider it a significant advantage (source: Skrill). Ensure the possibility for costumers to use all major credit and debit cards and allow them to complete the purchase path in just a few clicks.
#10 Optimize your efforts: If you can’t apply most of these tips on your e-commerce business or the app currently in use, it may be appropriate to rethink it from scratch and to rely on skilled programmers or web designers. Alternatively, if you have limited time and budget, you can choose an online system to create apps and mobile sites on your own, like mob.is.it, without having graphics or programming skills, and they will be ready in a few minutes with its full features, also for e-commerce.
Experience is the key to commerce, even on mobile
It’s a fact: mobile commerce will continue to evolve and it is possible that these and other winning tricks today will be completely outdated in a few years. How to keep up with the times? By choosing a flexible e-commerce system and remaining faithful to your role: even in the mobile era a marketer’s task is to keep their eyes open and think about the consumers, what can truly satisfy their desires for comfort, immediacy, and simplicity in the purchase path. As stated by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, “If you do build a really great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” Do your costumers talk to each other about your e-commerce business? Make sure that the answer is yes.
Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
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The Ultimate Countdown: 10 Best B2B Video Marketing Examples of 2015
Every year around this time, we highlight some of the best video marketing examples over the past year in an attempt to provide inspiration to B2B marketers as the new year rolls in.
The truth is, we all need a little bit of inspiration. Especially in the video world. Mainly because the use of video is proving to be more and more crucial to marketing success. In fact, marketers using video are growing revenue 49% faster than those who aren’t and 74% of B2B marketers say video content converts better than any other medium.
So crack open a fresh page in your 2016 planner and take notes from the best.
10. Best Use of a Customer Story
Squarespace’s ‘Building a Website with Jeff Bridges’
Straight-up interviews with your customers captured on camera is one way to go about telling your customers’ stories. Or you could follow the route of Squarespace, who told the story of Jeff Bridges’ sleeping tapes in a raw and oh-so-captivating way.
9. Best Sales and Marketing Alignment Video
Zuora’s ‘Talk to Your Doctor’
When you watch this video, you’ll most likely recognize the format. But Zuora’s application of a popular commercial turned customer story not only helped their marketing team share important stories with their sales team but also broke down the barriers to sales’ adoption of video for their own tactics. Win-win, I’d say!
This video won a 2015 Video Marketing Award! Learn more and see other winners here.
8. Best Use of Humor in B2B
FedEx’s ‘Growing Business’
There’s in-your-face humor and then there’s FedEx’s subtle humor. We love that this video communicates the value the company can provide to a growing business with a touch of straight-faced humor at the end. And by playing with their own special effects, no less!
7. Best Big Bang Video on a Small Budget
Salesforce’s ‘Professional Edition’
This product demo helped buyers self-serve, freeing up Account Executive’s time as a result. Plus, it was a serious budgeted production by only one person at Salesforce using Keynote, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro C and a USB mic with a 15” Macbook Pro Retina display.
The results say it all, though: in the first two quarters of 2015, the video influenced almost $1 million in sales.
This video won a 2015 Video Marketing Award! Learn more and see other winners here.
6. Best Feature Demo
Volvo’s ‘Look Who’s Driving’
This is the second year in a row that Volvo has taken this category (last year with ‘Epic Split’). What can I say, when the value of your product can be shown on camera, show it on camera! Demonstration beats description every time!
5. Best Educational Video
TD Ameritrade’s ‘RIA Journey to Independence’
TD Ameritrade’s Journey to Independence campaign set up an online, self-serve mentorship program. New RIAs (registered investment advisors) can learn from successful RIAs who have gone before them. It’s a great example of how video is the next best thing to being there in person.
This was the campaign’s intro video, you can see the rest of the campaign here.
4. Best Video Series
Intel’s ‘Jim Parsons and the Intel Innovation Adventure’
Oh Jim Parsons … aka Sheldon! How we love you.
Not only is this video a great example of utilizing a TV personality that so many know and love, but also a great example of building a consistent series off of one main character. (Keep watching after the first video, below, to see others in the series.)
3. Best Use of Video in Integrated Marketing Campaign
Gainsight’s ‘Blank Space’
Gainsight created this video for their PULSE conference, where they hired, not only an acapella group, but a T-Swift impersonator to sing this song at the event, too. That’s a strong (and unusual!) integration.
This video won a 2015 Video Marketing Award! Learn more and see other winners here.
2. Best Play on Pop Culture
SIRIS’ ‘Pancakes’
We all know Gordon Ramsay. This video is an amazing example of utilizing a strong pop culture figure and mixing in a little humor and ‘resourcefulness’! While we can all tell that their may have been a few different scenes blended together to create this final video, this particular recipe will certainly pique your interest!
1. Best B2B Storytelling
Schneider Electric’s ‘Llama Superstar’
“Tell the story so your audience can relate” is a best practice we’ve heard over and over. But Schneider Electric took it one step further to beef up the story to an inspirational (and slightly absurd) level!
And that’s a wrap on the past year in exemplary video marketing. Want more?! Check out 2014’s top video marketing examples, too.
The post The Ultimate Countdown: 10 Best B2B Video Marketing Examples of 2015 appeared first on Vidyard.
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Tuesday, December 29, 2015
The Guide to More Pipeline with Personalized Video
To succeed in marketing, you need to be able to reel your audience in. Bring them close and capture their attention. If you can’t do that, how will you ever get to the point of convincing them to buy your offering? You can’t teach your dog, Ralph, to shake a paw if you can’t even get him to come in from the backyard (not that we’re comparing dogs and prospects here).
Then comes the opportunity to build strong relationships, connect, and ultimately convince buyers on the value of your product or service. Without these steps, there are no quality leads to pass to sales, and there’s certainly no significant marketing-driven pipeline.
But capturing attention is hard. I mean, like going-for-a-run-in-a-snowstorm-after-the-biggest-turkey-dinner-ever, hard. With over 85 business emails hitting your prospects’ inboxes every day, how can you possibly reach into the overflowing pot and come out with a solid business relationship … or hey, even an email click-through?
1:1 communication that brings your prospect directly into your story, that’s how. With video personalized for every single one of your prospects.
How do you do that? Good question! And one that stemmed the development of “Kickin’ Butt and Taking Names: How B2B Marketers Can Drive More Pipeline with Personalized Video”; so you can learn how to connect on an individual level to grab attention, engage, and ultimately drive more pipeline from the marketing activities you work so hard on.
Give this guide on driving more pipeline with personalized video a read to:
- Uncover the root causes of attention scarcity
- Explore individualization, 2016’s content revolution
- See a live personalized video campaign and its results
- Discover 5 ideas for your own personalized video campaign
The post The Guide to More Pipeline with Personalized Video appeared first on Vidyard.
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Monday, December 28, 2015
Don’t be Pigeon-holed by Google’s Local Algorithm Changes
On July 24, 2014, Google updated its local search algorithm, setting out to make local search more relevant, more accurate and more useful for users. Pigeon aimed to do that by incorporating ranking signals into local optimization that are similar to traditional web search ranking factors.
Along with bringing traditional search ranking back into the local fold, Pigeon improved Google’s location and distance parameters. This was coupled with a somewhat sweeping redesign for local optimization thanks to Google Pigeon, where cities are no longer geographical entities. Pigeon effectively sliced and diced cities into “neighborhoods” resulting in a smaller search radius for local search queries.
This shook up the SERPs. Some businesses lost the rank they had achieved by optimizing for cities, while some local businesses ended up in different places, at first causing a panic and leaving local SEOs begging the question “what now?”
If you feel you have been Pigeon-holed into a less desirable position due to changes in the local search algorithm, you are in luck because we have some suggestions to help you get back on your feet.
1. Neighborhoods don’t go by just one name
Neil Patel pointed out on Search Engine Land that there is a colloquial name that a neighborhood has as well as a formal one. Making a comparison similar to his, a local New Yorker might say “Alphabet City” whereas a tourist might call it the “East Village.” Not only that, Patel went on to posit that the Pigeon algorithm updates would return better results for queries that incorporate usage for both colloquial and formal terms. By optimizing for both types of keywords you leverage this fact, and for competitive niches, it may be easier to rank higher and capitalize on the less competitive neighborhood synonym.
2. Optimize Your Local Directories, and Use them as a Source of Information
Pigeon places importance on local directories such as Yelp, TripAdvisor and Urban Spoon. Make sure you have a presence on all local directories that are important to your niche and make sure they are well optimized. Directories are a great source of information for your local optimization efforts. If you want to harvest keywords that tourists are using, read relevant reviews.
3. Don’t Change Your NAP
Although your city keywords may now have to be oriented with neighborhood keywords, don’t change the NAP (name, address and phone number) that you have been using. Your NAP is integral to a successful local SEO strategy.
4. Have Traditional Values
Shift some of the focus on your local optimization to traditional SEO optimization tactics. According to Moz, on-page signals total out to 21% of local ranking factors. So place your keywords in the title tag, work on increasing your on-page domain authority, and pump out that optimized content.
5. Don’t Panic, Make a Good Website Instead
Finally, to quote “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” – Don’t Panic! As with any major change in the SEO community, the initial reaction to Pigeon seemed to be very large. After the dust settled with it, however, the feelings about it became somewhat neutral, according to a poll run by BrightLocal during a webinar called The Impact of Pigeon Update back in December 2014. 53% of the respondents thought the change was negative – making the consensus about 50/50. 69% felt that the user now enjoys positive changes from Pigeon, and the majority felt as though there were little or no changes to their business.
This of course varies in context – the niche and circumstances of the business definitely come into play. Most local SEO experts now advise local businesses to beef up their brand recognition and focus on optimizing for location.
The Bottom Line:
Although at this stage in the game, this last word of advice may seem cliché, it will be offered. If you place most of your focus on just maintaining a quality site that is relevant and helpful to your audience, you should be able to navigate through algorithm changes with ease. The fact is Google wants to keep its job as a search engine, and it does this by returning quality sites that are relevant to what users are looking for. Focus on this fact, and you ultimately won’t find yourself pigeonholed by updates to algorithms.
Kristin rankin works for BBEX ,An internet marketing consulting company located in Boca Raton,Florida.BBEX is one of a top SEO company in Florida specializes in website designing,SEO,Social media and other online marketing strategies to assist your company for getting more leads and business .
Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
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Saturday, December 26, 2015
9 PR Stunts that Backfired Big Time
PR is undoubtedly a critical aspect in modern business. Well executed PR has the potential to yield significant brand recognition and revenue. Bad PR on the other hand… it has the potential to completely cripple a company’s integrity. Any publicity is good publicity you say? Well you will surely disagree with that figure of speech after reading a few of these.
1. Paramount Pictures PR Fail
2014 saw the long awaited Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie grace our silver screens. However, an unfortunate coincidence with the poster sparked anger across social media.
Clearly, paramount’s less than diligent marketing team failed to pick on the link between the release date of the film and the shelled quartet leaping from an exploding skyscraper. Needless to say, Paramount pictures received a lot of negative press for this blunder.
2. UK Supermarket Horse Meat Scandal
Who could forget this sensational scandal? Back in 2013, the UK media practically exploded when Irish food inspectors announced they had discovered traces of horse DNA in the meat products of many top UK supermarket chains.
As a result, sales of frozen meat products plummeted overnight, with many supermarkets forced to offer public apologies in the form of adverts and newspaper spreads.
Inadvertently, this scandal helped drive sales for many UK butchers in a kind of ‘knock on’ effect. I bet the supermarkets weren’t anticipating that!
3. Ghettopoly
Although this scandal is old enough to be considered ‘retro’, it is still a perfect example of PR gone wrong.
‘Ghettopoly’, based on the popular board game monopoly, caused a major stir after offending many minority communities in the US. This controversial board game substitutes hotels for crack houses and even replaces the loveable thimble with a rock of crack cocaine.
Needless to say, Hasbro (the creators of monopoly) aren’t too happy with this parody of their iconic board game and are even using the negative press surrounding this pariah to launch a legal dispute against the game. Unfortunately, Hasbro lost the dispute due to the fact that they do not own the rights to monopoly.
Peter Herbert, the chairman of the society of black lawyers is quoted to have said: “I can’t remember seeing anything quite as racist or stereotypical for a long time. It’s the sort of game the SS would like to play”.
4. Belkin review scandal
Consumer electronics conglomerate Belkin suffered a spate of bad press after an employee advertently used a crowdsourcing platform to generate positive reviews.
A Belkin employee utilising Amazon’s crowdsourcing service – Mechanical Turk – to generate fake reviews can only be described as a PR blunder of monumentally idiotic proportions.
The actions of this individual have caused the company to come under scrutiny from the tech world, forcing the company’s president to release a formal apology and a swift dismissal for the offending employee,
5. Auto industry CEOs fly in private jets to plead for bailouts
In possibly the most furiously ironic PR fail ever, CEOs from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler flew to Washington in their private jets to plead for a $25 Billion bailout of taxpayer money.
Now, don’t be so quick to judge. Those CEOs are probably so used to travelling in uber-luxury that they’ve forgotten their dire financial situation.
It has been estimated that their plane journeys cost approximately $20,000 each. Pocket change when you’re begging for billions. Still, this stunt infuriated a fair few members of the public. However, the CEO’s have acknowledged this and will be attending in hybrid vehicles in future
6. Sainsbury’s 50p challenge
Now, you really must be fresh out of marketing ideas if you hang a poster in your store window ASKING people to spend more. Well that’s exactly what UK superstore Sainsbury’s did, and became the butt of many jokes thereafter.
Except this poster wasn’t meant for the public, It was actually intended to be displayed in the staff room in a bid to get employees to encourage more spending amongst customers. Needless to say, these types of PR stunts work better when the customers are not aware of your motives.
Perhaps even funnier still, supermarket chain Lidl released a poster in the wake of the Sainsbury’s gaffe, encouraging every one of their customers to save as many 50p’s as possible.
It just goes to show, one can always benefit from someone else’s bad PR.
7. McDonalds twitter fail
If you’re looking for a good source of PR fails and blunders, look no further than twitter. Whilst twitter may be an excellent platform for companies to connect with their audience and increase brand recognition, it also gives your audience voice, much to the dismay of McDonalds…
McDonalds started this twitter campaign – #McDStories – with the honest aim of spreading good news about the fast food firm… and you could say that it backfired big time!
Within minutes, thousands of twitter users descended on McDonalds, each describing their gruesome tales of their own McDonalds experiences. Even animal rights activists PETA got in on the action!
8. Malaysia Airlines Ultimate Bucket list
Now this doesn’t sound too offensive, I mean, everyone’s got a bucket list right? There’s nothing offensive about a bucket list is there?
Well, let me just say that Malaysian Airlines timing could not of been worse with this social media campaign. Since the disappearance of MA flight 370 and the destruction of MA flight 17, in which a total of 537 lives were lost, a bucket list seems a bit insensitive considering.
Malaysia Airlines agreed and has since rebranded the campaign to ‘win an ipad or flight to Malaysia’, thereby avoiding further potential PR fiascos.
9. Hurricane Sandy Sale
Many Americans will remember hurricane Sandy as the most destructive force on the East coast for generations. Not to mention the people who lost their lives. Clothing Company American Apparel on the other hand was capitalising on the disaster.
Using the slogan “In case you’re bored during the storm” and offering 20% off everything, American Apparel launches a marketing campaign to profit from the disaster.
Many were appalled by the underhandedly exploitative nature of the sale and vehemently voiced their opinions on twitter.
About the author
This post was written by Mark from Phipps PR. Mark is an online PR fanatic and he loves finding creative ways to get better exposure – hopefully with making a faux pas like the ones above! Mark’s background is in business management but he is also part time coder and loves everything related to the internet.
Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
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Thursday, December 24, 2015
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
5 Exceptionally Important Tips for Sales Engineers Creating Pre-Recorded Demo Videos
It’s no secret – B2B buyers are more enabled and empowered than ever before.
But they’re also a little shy….
Before a potential customer reaches out to your team, they have combed through your content, read your blogs, watched your videos, and consumed as much information about your product or service as possible.
In short, they have been avoiding talking to you for as long as they could.
They want to avoid the sales pitch, and… you kind of have to sympathize with them. Being techno-savvy researchers of the 21st century, your potential customer is comparing your solution to 5-7 competitors. The thought of talking to each one of these sales-hungry companies on the phone is a little daunting – so they’ll avoid it at all cost.
In fact, if they are talking to you, it might be because you have tucked away some crucial information – such as pricing or a product demo – behind your walled sales garden.
It’s time to do your customer, and yourself, a favor. It’s time to set free the demo, and let it live within the liberating winds of the cloud.
A carefully crafted demo video can speed up the sales cycle, save your sales engineering team hours, and help weed out unqualified leads – inevitably giving your sales pipeline better velocity and improved accuracy.
Most importantly, it’ll give your customers even more reasons to feel empowered, and therefore make you their number one choice.
Now… how do we get started? Check out these 5 steps to building a great product demo.
1. Research the Purpose, and the Audience of Your Demo Video
Before you whip out your dictation tools and start writing down your go-to demo catchphrases, ask yourself the following questions:
- Where in the marketing funnel is this going to exist?
- Which role are we targeting?
- How long should it be? (More importantly…how short should it be?)
- How technical should it be?
Recorded demos should be much shorter than live demos. They should have a clear purpose, a quicker pace, and show only what is necessary.
For example, if the purpose of the video is to educate c-level decision makers, you might want to keep the video to a 2-3 minute highlight reel correlating features to value propositions.
Similarly, if the purpose is to educate your key target users to help qualify them for a more meaningful conversation, then you might want a 5-7 minute video that goes a little deeper in terms of functionality and usability.
Or, you might be building video content designed to support Proof-of-Concepts – which will be as long as they need to be to explain necessary configurations or deployments.
In any case, you will want to err on the short side. Live demos can often stretch to 20, 30, or even 40 minutes long. It’s better to send your potential customers 4 highly targeted 5 minute videos, as opposed to one 20 minute video that casts a wide, and ineffective net.
Before you write your script or record – you will need to decide who you are targeting for your content to be truly effective.
2. Pre-Plan Modularizing the Demo for Personalization
Now that you know “why” and “what” your video is showing, you’ll want to ask yourself the following question:
Where can this video be personalized for our different verticals and target markets?
More often then not, your technology or services will be utilized across different industries. And ideally, when you conduct live demonstrations you are “speaking the lingo,” and, “throwing down the jargon,” so that your prospects know that you truly “get them.”
Before you begin writing your script, carefully plan to include some simple edits that will allow you to make multiple versions of the same video – which all, magically, seem crafted specifically for a single industry.
This could include:
- Book-ending the demo with a few slides that communicate key value propositions related to that industry.
- In select areas, editing the voiceover track to include industry terms.
- In select areas, swapping video screen captures with elements (like integrations) that target a key target market.
Alternatively, you could also build a “Choose Your Own Adventure” demo so that this personalized path is delivered organically, on demand.
When using a “Choose Your Own Adventure” approach, you can allow viewers to build their own pathway through the content directly within the video. Or, you could use one of these editing methods to create personalized demo videos for different target markets.
This will save you time in the long run, and also tell your customers that you are thinking intently about their needs.
3. Create a Shot List and Script
In live demos, it’s a cardinal sin to read off a script. In recorded demos, a script is going to be your new best friend.
During live demos, the subtle screw-ups of a human add an authentic experience that is inadvertently persuasive. Conversely, during recorded demos, a speaker’s weird word choices and fumbled phrasings are annoyingly awkward.
When a video is recorded, there is a higher expectation from the viewer that the delivery be without fault. A script will ensure that.
More importantly, a script paired with a shot list will make sure that you don’t skip over any key features.
Writing a script is a little upfront investment that is actually going to save you time in the long run. If you can – record one of your better live demos, listen to it while taking notes, and break down your demo into a shot list and associated talk tracks.
Then, practice the script aloud to remove clunky sentences and unnecessary words.
Below is a snippet of a sample shot list and script to give you an idea of what this might look like.
4. Record Audio and Screen Separately
Everything you have been planning has been leading up to this moment. Are you ready to shine? It’s time for a little voice acting.
As mentioned, recorded demos lack the interactivity of a live delivery. For that reason, you will want the audio for your demo to have some energy, be clearly articulated, and dance without missing a beat.
Unfortunately, it’s really f***ing hard to run a demo while reading off a script with enthusiasm. Not to mention the awkward pauses as you click through to the next feature you are demoing.
Fortunately, through the magic of video editing this problem is easily solved.
Start with the audio first.
Tune your microphone settings and pull your script up on your monitor. Practice test recording a few sentences so you have an idea of your tone and pace.
Then begin, and don’t stop recording until you’re done. If you stumble, just pause, return to the last sentence, and continue speaking without stopping the recording.
With some practice reading off a script, a 3-minute video shouldn’t take you longer than 10 minutes to record. Afterwards, just edit out the screw-ups and you’ll have yourself one-half of a demo.
Then, the screen capture.
Pull out your shot list, and take spaced out captures of the listed features and actions. Just make sure you take into the consideration the length of the associated talk track while recording. Otherwise you may end up with not enough video for your audio track.
5. Add a Little Production Value
“The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.” – George Lucas
Live demos are notorious for having absolute s*** video and audio quality due to latencies in screen-sharing tools.
Since you are recording your demo, ask your finance department for a little spare change to purchase a decent microphone.
Good sound on a demo video is often an overlooked feature but bad sound can make your demo video unwatchable. Investing in a mic will help improve the completion rate of the video, and therefore make your customer better educated.
Also, don’t be afraid to add some music to the background of your video. Just make sure it’s not too loud so that it drowns out the narration.
There are a butt-load of sites out there that offer inexpensive music tracks that would be sufficient for mid-funnel demo videos, Bedtracks is a great example. The music can lighten the mood to the video, add some humor, and make the whole experience of watching a recorded product demo far less bland.
In addition, adding the music actually has a very functional effect.
If you have edited your audio narration down from one recorded track, you may inevitably have some awkward clicks, pops, or volume mistakes throughout the recording. The music will cover these up, like the final glaze on a holiday turkey, so that the final product is as smooth and tasty to consume.
There you have it – 5 steps to a recorded product demo that will keep your prospects engaged and educate them on your product or service. Plus, you’ve freed up tons of time for your sales engineering team to tackle other revenue-generating tasks!
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Want to learn more about using video to optimize the sales process? Check out our on-demand webinar “How to Use Video in the Sales Process to Close More Deals”!
The post 5 Exceptionally Important Tips for Sales Engineers Creating Pre-Recorded Demo Videos appeared first on Vidyard.
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Tuesday, December 22, 2015
The Struggle of Holiday Classics: A Vidyard Story
Holiday classics are classics for a reason. The original ‘holiday classic’ definition dates back to the early 1900’s and states that in order to qualify as a holiday classic, every person must have watched the film a minimum of 73.6 times, every person must be able to recite the script while icing an upside down cake, and every person must sing the soundtrack in their sleep while also changing the sheets … in their sleep.
True story.
Really, everyone loves a good holiday classic. But they’ve also been done over and over … and over. And in marketing – when we’re all looking for ways to touch the hearts of our customers, stand out, and be noticed – we can sometimes abuse them.
But hey! We’re all on the hook for crafting brilliant, original content around the holidays – we get it! No seriously, we were swingin’ for hours trying to come up with an original holiday video! Check it out:
Happy Holidays from the Team at Vidyard!
The post The Struggle of Holiday Classics: A Vidyard Story appeared first on Vidyard.
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Monday, December 21, 2015
Making Money from Blogging
A lot of people blog for different reasons. Some do it to share their knowledge and experience, while others may do it for more professional reasons; blogs are very effective for building professional image and establish authority in certain fields. Whatever your reasons may be, you would want to make money from blogging. I have to warn you: making money from blogging is not an easy thing to do. That said, these next few tips will help you get started without a problem.
Establish Your Blog
Before you can start monetizing your blog, you need to have an established blog in the first place. If you don’t have one already, not would be a good time to start. You may be tempted to start with a free blog, one that is built using the available free blogging platforms; I can tell you right now, that is not the best way to start.
To have an established blog, you need a few things:
– A logo or a brand that signifies the name and values of your blog.
– A dedicated domain name and also get your blog hosted somewhere reputable. Use a name that represents who you are or what your blog is all about.
– Content. A lot of quality content.
Establishing your own blog doesn’t have to be all that complicated. There are a lot of tools that you can use to help you. When setting up your site, for instance, you can use a content management system (CMS) that you are already familiar with, such as self-hosted WordPress.
Now that you have your blog established, the next thing you need is….
High Quality Content and Resources
A blog is only as good as the articles and other content in it. Great design and pleasing visuals will get users happy, but it’s the content that will eventually make them stay (and return). Similar to establishing the blog in the first place, creating high quality articles and other content for your blog can be really simple.
Start with topics you are familiar with the most. You can share personal experiences and expertise on various subjects. Don’t worry about creating articles that sell just yet. Just focus on writing articles that users will find valuable. How-tos and tutorials, tips and tricks, news or updates as well as general stories can help build up your authority in the particular field you are writing.
Stick to a certain topic and let users identify your blog with it. I know how tempting it is to write about all kinds of things. To be honest, I started my blog doing just that: writing about anything from my day-to-day life to recipes and tech-related posts. Eventually, you will have to decide on a topic or a field you want to focus on.
Don’t forget to write. Just write. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Don’t even sweat the small details. Just start writing and start filling your blog with quality articles. The rest will take care of itself.
Promote – Reach Out – Build Relationships
Once you have enough articles on your blog, it is time to start promoting it. Attracting users is much easier than it was a few years ago. You now have social networks, multiple promotional tools and thousands of other blogs and websites talking about the same set of topics. These make promoting your blog a lot easier to do.
There are a few things you can do to jumpstart your blog’s promotions:
– Go on social media and start engaging users directly. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the main social networks to target. Share articles, talk about updates and don’t forget to respond to your followers. You’ll be surprised by just how quickly you can gain traction on social media. Here is a great article on how to double your visitors.
– Use paid promotions and ads, especially when you don’t have to pay for them. Web hosting companies often give away ad credits for free. These free credits can be used to place AdWords and Facebook ads and both are very effective for promoting blogs.
– Last but certainly not least, connect with other blogs. Visit other blogs that interest you and leave comments; genuine comments. Instead of spamming multiple blogs with generic comments, write insightful comments that will get the attention of the sites’ owners and other users. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with the sites’ owners for the possibilities of writing a guest post and doing a cross-promotion.
Spend enough time socializing and promoting your blog and you will be able to maintain a steady stream of traffic. Once the traffic reaches a certain level, you are ready to start making money from your blog.
Monetize!
From what we have discussed so far, making money from blogging is actually 80% blogging. The remaining 20%, this part we are in right now, is when you start capitalizing on what you have accomplished as a blogger.
You can make money from blogging thanks to a wide range of opportunities currently available, including:
– Image, video and text ads. Three are a lot of ad networks that allow you to earn money from your blog’s traffic. Find a good one to join, place the ads on your blog and you are all set.
– Paid reviews and advertorials. You can get paid to post an article on a particular topic. A lot of professional bloggers earn most of their revenues from advertorials.
– Offline revenue sources, such as seminars and talks. Once you have established yourself as the authoritative figure though your blog, you may be invited to do a seminar or a talk for a fee.
– Merchandising and online sales. You can start selling merchandises or other products related to your niche. You can even produce your own products that you think users will be able to benefit from.
I will let you in on a little secret: the key to earning a good stream of revenue from blogging is to actually implement multiple monetizing techniques. Understand your audience and choose the right opportunities to implement.
Still want to learn more about making money from blogging? Be sure to subscribe for more updates. I will discuss different monetizing opportunities in details on another post.
Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
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Saturday, December 19, 2015
How to Make a Full-Time Income by Adding a Storefront to Your Blog
Creating and selling your own product lets you open a steady flow of passive income that may last long.
Unlike monetizing your website with advertisements, you don’t necessarily need to have a huge traffic base to make a solid income. Other blog monetization models such as sponsored posts, paid reviews and affiliate marketing might come off as a little out of sync to your trusting audience.
That being said, selling products on your blog is not a get rich scheme. However, with the right strategies it is totally possible to make a full-time income by adding a storefront while selling your own product.
In this article, I will show you how to make huge profits by adding an ecommerce storefront to your blog.
What to sell?
Before jumping in to start a storefront on your blog, one of the first questions you should ask yourself is ‘what to sell’.
Unless you got hit with a brilliant idea, deciding what you should be selling on your blog can be tougher. With all the available technologies, though there are thousands of possible choices to create, everything might seem like as it’s been done by someone else already.
Here are a few suggestions for brainstorming product ideas.
- Look for an opportunity gap and try solving your own problem: Create a product that can solve your own problem. By solving your own problem, more likely you’re also solving a problem of others.
- Validate the market: Before creating it, ask your followers if it helps to solve their problems. You can also walk through your niche forums and sites like Quora.com to see if your product can solve a common pain point of your potential customers.
- Digital or physical product: Creating and selling digital products such as ebooks and online courses are easier than creating a physical product such as books. However, the profit margin will be huge when it comes to selling a physical product. Decide which option might be a good fit for you and go with it.
- Pricing: Pricing your product is as important as the product creation itself. If you’re not a well-known face among your niche circles, it might be harder to sell high priced products, so rather you should consider selling low priced products at first. After getting a nice start, in order to raise more revenue, you can think about expanding your product lines by releasing new products on a consistent basis or focus on selling a single higher priced product.
Should you start selling?
Once you decided what you should be selling, the very next step is to look at how to sell.
You might have started blogging for a while. However, it doesn’t guarantee that you could run a successful ecommerce store on your blog by simply rolling it out and thus make huge profits.
For instance, if you didn’t launch a product previously on your blog, chances are your readers might expect everything from you for free. That’s a wrong mindset to be in. As a seller, what you could do to change that mindset is to nurture your prospects carefully throughout each customer lifecycle, so that they eventually buy products from your store.
Define your unique selling proposition: You need to define who your potential customers are and why they’d need your product.
Create a minimum viable product: Launch your product to a small group of people and get early feedback. Yaro Starak uses this approach to sell his premium plugin. He made a preselling campaign and asked his readers to buy the beta product for just $5. This strategy has not only helped him to get early funding but also valuable feedback before launching the final product.
Choose an ecommerce platform
As hundreds of different ecommerce platforms are available, it is easy to get overwhelmed with different choices. In fact, each platform has its own pros and cons. Some of them will charge you on the basis of total sales whereas some others will charge a monthly fee. In fact, there are even some other open source choices that charge you almost nothing.
To get a quick idea about which platform is best suits your needs, you can use a recommendation engine such as WebAppMeister. What it does is it does a head to head comparison between ecommerce apps and helps you pick one that seems to be the best choice for you.
If you’re a WordPress blogger, below are some of popular shopping cart choices.
E-junkie- For selling digital products
E-junkie is one of the easiest ways to start selling digital products such as ebooks on your blog. All you need to do is to register an account on e-junkie and provide some basic info about your products and business. Copy the buy now button from the e-junkie admin panel and paste it on your blog where you’d like to sell it. Once you did it, E-junkie will take care about everything else.
Price: The monthly cost starts from $5 onwards.
You can visit e-junkie website here.
Woocommerce- For both digital and physical products
Woocommerce is a popular ecommerce plugin that lets you easily add a storefront to your blog. According to datanyze.com, Woocommerce is the shopping platform of choice for almost 22% of ecommerce websites in the Alexa Top 1 million sites.
It is best suitable if you’re looking for adding a storefront that can easily integrate with your current blog.
Price: The Woocommerce plugin costs free. However, you may require buying additional plugins for making a fully featured ecommerce site.
Visit Woocommerce official site here.
Start selling
Once you picked the platform, it’s time to start selling by adding a storefront to your blog and setting up the products on it.
Here are a few ways you can spread the word out of your new store.
Promote on your network: You can promote the news about the store throughout your blog and social network.
Special offers: Consider offering huge discounts to early customers.
Remarketing: It is a clever way to show ads to your blog visitors who haven’t purchased a product from your store. The best thing is that the CTR for remarketing ads will be comparatively low.
Invite affiliates: Invite other bloggers in your niche as an affiliate marketer for your product.
Have you ever considered selling on your blog? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
Author bio: Shahzad Saeed is a freelance blogger and content marketer who has been featured in top internet marketing blogs like Problogger and John Chow several times. Connect with him on Twitter @shahzadsaeed.
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Friday, December 18, 2015
If You’re Going to Reach Consumers with Video, Do So Quickly
The verdict is in, and the analytics are clear: if you’re selling products and services to modern customers, no tool has a bigger impact on sales than video. Marketing pros know it, too: video is the medium with the best ROI. But…what kind of video? How long should it be?
Death by Longevity
Cool fact: a video loses 90% of its audience after 100 seconds of elapsed time. Cool fact #2: There’s a science to fast-storytelling. The science goes like this:
- don’t wait longer than 0:03 seconds to surface a product benefit.
- And then don’t wait longer than 0:09 to surface your second product benefit, or to tell a joke, or light something on fire.
- If your viewers are still with you after those first 2 milestones, you’ll likely keep them until about 1 minute.
But making videos that entertain and educate can be an uphill battle. One reason for this is that ads encroach on consumers’ media experience so much – on their Twitter feed, Facebook timeline, and so on – that consumers have even less patience than they once did for marketing messages. They often want to escape them, not listen to them.
And the ‘inundation’ problem holds true for marketing executives, too – over 80% of C-level execs reported watching more online video today than they did a year ago, while 75% say they watch work-related videos at least weekly.
Back Off, Bud
So what do you do about viewers’ loving video but hating the hard sell? Simple – remember the following adage: “The less you sell, the more you sell.” Consumers at the point of purchase will buy if they see a helpful, neutral, editorially-toned marketing message; and they will run away if you get aggressive. Got a great product and want to shout about it from rooftops? Great — just stay up on that rooftop when you’re shouting. The further down the sales funnel you go, the more whispering you should do. Another way to put it: the closer you get to the point of sale, the less a customer likes prodding. So, ‘tell them, don’t sell them’.
Death by Shopping List
Tempted to jam 17 ideas into a single minute by listing all of your product’s benefits fast, like an auctioneer? Don’t do it. Customers want “proof” behind your claims, more than the claims themselves. Listing a number of benefits one after the other is simply failing to prove these claims one after the other. A single truthful claim, well backed-up by clear evidence, boosts consumers’ confidence and spurs their tendency to make a purchase. In summary, confusion never sold a product.
Now What?
Now that you know about best practices, you face video’s toughest challenge: how to get started. Here’s a simple roadmap.
- Make sure your video is about 1 subject — not 2 or 3. You’ll generate better viewer attention and retention.
- Keep it simple. Have you decided there are 3 or 4 or even 10 key concepts to communicate? No problem – break those 3 or 4 or even 10 concepts into 3 or 4 or even 10 videos, of 1 minute or less.
- Keep it short. Is your video 9 minutes long? Trust me: viewers will miss 8/9ths of it. They’ve clicked off and have gone out to pick up the kids, walk the dog, and rearrange their sock drawer.
- Maximize the chances your viewers keep watching after Video #1. Just add a call to action near the end of that 1 minute to drive them to the next one.
Cool Tip: If a viewer knows how much time they’ll need to invest in a video, they’ll watch longer. So, visually place total running time somewhere in the description under the video thumbnail or still image. Your text might be something like this: “This video explains the Affordable Care Act in 1 minute and 9 seconds.”
Next Steps
OK, you’re sold. You want to get started. Excellent. Go (quickly) to hire a writer. If you’re starting with almost no budget, the most important video resource you can spend money on is a scriptwriter. Why? Because they’re experts at writing text that makes sense when it ends up on screen. Remember, the hardest part of making a short video is making a short video good. By the time you say, ‘Hi, my name is Jim, and I’m here to tell you all about our amazing widget,’ you’ve just spent 10 seconds of your precious 60. A good writer, like a good teacher, can get to the point fast; and communicate a hugely complex subject in a way that builds confidence. For proof, stand in front of a mirror and try to explain why your listener should buy your Smart TV (or insurance product or fleet management software) …in 1 minute.
Why O, Why O, Why-O? Video Just Keeps Getting Stronger
The stakes literally couldn’t be higher when it comes to creating video content. Consumer video consumption will equate to 4 times the Internet traffic of web browsing and email this year. Yes, if you added up all web browsing and email, video viewing will eclipse that data usage by 400%. And B2B companies are joining the trend in droves, almost 90% are planning to use video in their content marketing over the next year. Video is, and will be, everywhere. Time to capture your B2C and B2B viewers with honesty and humor; boost their confidence, and close the deal.
The post If You’re Going to Reach Consumers with Video, Do So Quickly appeared first on Vidyard.
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Thursday, December 17, 2015
Monstroid Theme Giveaway and Promotion
A couple of months ago we wrote a review about a very cool WordPress theme called Monstroid. It was released by the Template Monster guys, and it works a framework on top of WordPress. It basically allows you to configure and customize your theme as easily as possible, among many other features!
The Template Monster folks liked the review and contacted us asking if we would like to give 5 free licenses to the Monstroid theme to our readers, and here we are! The rules to join the contest are pretty simple:
1. Write a comment below stating what kind of website you would like to build with the Monstroid theme.
2. Next Wednesday, December 23, we’ll randomly pick two winners among all those who left a comment.
The name of the winners will be posted as an update on this same post next week, and we’ll also send them an email about it.
If you already have the Monstroid theme you will like to know that Template Monster is having a sale for the child themes. All of them are being offered with 30% discount, and the offer will remain valid until December 21st. You can check the child themes here.
Make sure to leave a comment below and to check the Monstroid theme if you haven’t already!
Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!
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Wednesday, December 16, 2015
5 Signs ABM Is a Smart Addition to Your Marketing Strategy
For the past decade, B2B marketing has mostly been exemplified by lead generation. Vendors use social media, SEO, and marketing automation to draw traffic to their site, capture contact info, and nurture contacts into qualified leads.
With the right nurture process and a stellar sales team, you can get a lot of return from “traditional” lead generation. But it has its weaknesses. Most notably, lead generation focuses on marketing to individual leads, which doesn’t always account for the complexity and scale of an enterprise purchase — often made by a diverse team of stakeholders after months of deliberation. According to CEB, the average B2B purchase now requires 5.4 signatures.
Why Account-Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing, or ABM, helps marketers compensate for this complexity by directing message and medium at buying groups within named companies, rather than individual leads. Let’s say you’re an HR software vendor, for example. Instead of trying to draw interest from anonymous hiring managers and COOs, you could name companies that are a good fit for your product (because of size, industry, etc.) and specifically target those companies.
By starting with named companies and delivering ads and content to groups of decision influencers at those companies, you cut out the whole process of discovery and capture, which can significantly shorten the sales cycle.
The idea of dedicating resources to specific accounts is by no means a new concept, but the nature of those resources is changing in a way that makes ABM accessible and affordable. The new league of ABM platforms give marketers the ability to target accounts by IP address, opportunity size, or sales stage and track engagement at a much more granular level.
Software vendors like Demandbase provide ABM analytics to help marketers
see which accounts are interacting with digital content.
It hasn’t taken long for ABM to prove its weight in gold. A SiriusDecisions report from this year found that 92 percent of companies recognize the value of account-based marketing, even if they haven’t used it. As ABM finds its place in the industry, you’ll need to answer the obvious question: Is it right for your business?
Here are five key indicators to help you decide. If you identify with any or all of these statements, ABM is probably a good fit for your marketing strategy.
1. You Have a Highly-Skilled, Well-Resourced Marketing Team
One of the most evident barriers to ABM is a skills gap. Roughly 47 percent of B2B companies feel they lack the skills and support to succeed at account-based marketing. So if you’re already there — if your team has a good handle on which companies to pursue, how to create the right messaging, and how to implement new technology — you’re about nine steps ahead of the competition.
Maybe your lead generation efforts are performing as expected, but aren’t exactly taking anyone’s breath away. ABM is a great way to step up your game and create some bigger revenue opportunities for sales. Just make sure you have a system in place for tracking these accounts through the sales development process.
2. Your Product Sales Are Driven by Buying Groups
The executive lead who single-handedly approves large purchase decisions is every marketer and salesperson’s dream. But in many cases, decisions are made by larger buying groups, which means they will take longer and require a different kind of support. Where focusing on the person can sometimes backfire (drawing more attention to disparate objectives), account-based marketing focuses on inspiring consensus within diverse buying committees.
Of course, this will depend on the nature of your product/service offering and the size of the companies to which you market. If your product is a simple web app for time tracking, you can and should go after individual decision-makers. If it’s an enterprise resource planning solution, on the other hand, you’ll need to get buy-in from executives, IT managers, financial consultants, and even middle managers.
3. You’re Struggling to Maintain Lead Volume
In a sense, the success of traditional lead generation depends on your ability to keep a steady flow of leads running through your sales pipeline. Generally, that means you need to bring in a high volume of top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) leads, nurture them, and zero in on the most qualified.
If you’re having a hard time pulling in volume at the top, it’ll be nearly impossible to reach economy of scale with your lead generation. If you’re a smaller business, expanding your reach may not be an option yet. But then, maybe it’s a myth that you need to attract hundreds of thousands of prospects just to convert a few. Why not start with the few and concentrate on nurturing and expanding those relationships? That’s ABM.
Some analysts even say this new approach calls for an upside-down funnel (i.e., a pyramid), where specific accounts are the target audience and advocacy is the desired end result, instead of the typical lead to purchase path.
Credit: FlipMyFunnel4. Your Sights are Set on Specific Prospects
Whose business do you want?
If your answer is “mid-market organizations in the banking and financial service industry,” your best approach is probably to generate leads in that industry and follow up with the most promising ones. But if your answer includes the names of specific companies, you might be a good candidate for ABM.
From an outbound perspective, that means retargeting named companies by IP address and tailoring content to the right decision influencers. From an inbound perspective, it means tracking engagement metrics at the account level — e.g., page views, downloads, video views from Company X). Having a holistic view of how multiple stakeholders from one company engage with your content helps you improve their experience and generate revenue faster.
5. You Want to Sell Beyond the Sale
In the age of revenue marketing, it’s easy to develop a kind of tunnel vision for sales. All of your efforts start to revolve around pitching products and services, incentivizing buy-in, and converting leads into deals. These are all important functions of marketing, but they aren’t the complete picture.
There’s an entire relationship that begins immediately after the buying transaction, and if you manage it properly, you can turn a positive customer experience into loyalty and advocacy, which means cross-selling, up-selling, and referrals … which means more revenue. Maximizing your relationship with specific accounts through ABM is one of the best ways to turn loyal customers into effective advocates.
Account-based marketing may seem complicated, but technology aside, it’s a matter of priorities. If you want to drive revenue, you can either rake in as many leads as possible (the shotgun approach), or you can focus your efforts on the most valuable accounts (the dart gun approach). That means naming them, engaging them, measuring results, and maximizing value through loyalty and advocacy.
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242 How to Use Online Video to Build Your Platform – with Luria Petrucci
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How to Use Online Video to Build Your Platform
Who: Luria Petrucci
Blog: Geek’s Life
FREE Training: Geek’s University
Who is Luria Petrucci
Luria Petrucci (formerly Cali Lewis) is the founder of Geeks Life, a lifestyle network that focuses on passions – everything from food to music to Fun.
She was a pioneer in the world of podcasting, with one of the first video podcasts about technology, back in 2005.
She built her career around having fun with technology and all kinds of other geeky topics.
How Luria Started
After hearing Adam Curry talk about podcasting on NPR, she decided to check out what it was about. When Apple announced the first video iPod in October of 2005, she predicted that online video was going to be the future.
People would be getting the video iPod for Christmas, and they would need content. She wasn’t trying to become a video star. She was just having fun with the technology.
In December of 2005, she dug her heels in and attacked the podcasting world full force. Because of timing, her audience grew relatively quickly.
Her first show was called Geek Brief. It was about technology. She made that choice because she wanted to talk about something she loved. She loved technology and decided to embrace her passions from the very beginning.
Her first video was not great quality, but it proves that everyone has to start somewhere.
When she started, she did have hopes that it could become something big. Maybe it could help move her along in life, but she didn’t know that it would get as big as it did.
When the audience started showing up and loving it, that was a turning point for her.
She decided to approach Adam Curry. He was running a company that was trying to make it possible for podcasters to make podcasting their day job.
He brought her on his network, and the rest is history.
The Evolution of Podcasting
When Luria got started, it was tremendously harder to get a podcast out the door. You had to be a tech geek, know how to pull things in, work with feeds, and host your files.
But podcasting has come a long way. You don’t have to be as techy as you did by then. The same is true when it comes to online video.
However, it was a much smaller, tight-knit community back then. Today, it’s a much larger space. So to stand out, you have to do good work.
How to Get Started with Online Video
Choose An Idea You’re Passionate About
The first thing you need to determine is what kind of content you want to create. Usually, people look at online video as fitting into one of two general categories:
- Individual using video to create a show about whatever topic they are passionate about.
- Companies creating videos that are meant to bring in customers.
Luria argues that these two categories are one and the same – the same rules and goals apply.
If you’re a podcaster, you ARE selling. You’re selling yourself, your knowledge and passion, and you’re asking people to spend time with you. That’s the same thing companies are trying to do.
The question then becomes – how do I best position myself so that I’m selling in the right way?
Choose a topic you’re passionate about
If you’re going to spend time creating videos, you want to make sure you’re doing something that energizes you. Building an online platform takes a lot of work, but when you’re passionate about the content you’re creating, it’s much easier to see it through.
Set the Right Expectations
Set the Right Expectations
There are 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. This makes discovery a challenge.
Make sure you aren’t expecting the world. It’s not “if you build it, they will come.” Recognize that it will take a lot of time to build your platform.
Make the commitment that this is going to be a long-term thing. COMMIT to doing this and seeing this through.
Start with your Smartphone
Smartphones are an excellent way to create professional video. Whether you have an iPhone or Android device, you’re in a position to do great things with video.
For $200 to $250, you can get a gear kit that gives you stability and great audio.
Here are some of the different types of equipment you can have in your gear kit.
- The iographer – A great rig that gives you handles on either side of the rig, allowing you to hold it steady. It also gives you a mount on the top to attach a light or microphone.
- Manfrotto Mini-LED Light – This LED light is dimmable and allows you to get great.
- Rode Videomic Go – This mini shotgun mic will allow you to get great audio for your videos.
- Rode Smartlav – This is a lavalier mic that works with smartphones.
- iRig – They have connectors that will help you monitor your audio and connect to an external mic.
- Seramonic Sound Mixer – $150. It’s an all-in-one rig that even has an audio interface. It comes with two mics that you can attach and point in different directions. You can also plug other mics into this device.
Take home message:
- You need something to stabilize your phone
- You need an external microphone
- Get lighting to increase the quality of your visuals
- You need to GET STARTED
How to do well on camera
Even as someone who has done thousands of videos, Luria still gets a little nervous when doing some of her videos.
The important thing to realize is that this nervousness comes from a desire to please. You may also be thinking about whether your viewers will be judging you.
You have to realize that your video is not about you. You are just the delivery mechanism for the information. The viewer is watching for themselves. Remove yourself out of the equation and focus on providing as much value as you can for them.
Be Human
Be You
You have to be comfortable being the authentic you. It’s important to realize that humans just want to follow and connect with other humans.
It’s ok to screw up. It’s ok not to be perfect. People aren’t perfect. If they are watching your video and you are 100% perfect, they are more likely to feel that you’re being fake.
When you make a mistake, make fun of yourself :).
Side note: I do this ALL THE TIME :D.
Give a Little More of Yourself
Give a Little More of Yourself
The camera sucks away your energy. To come across well, you have to have more energy when you’re on camera.
Yes, you are still the same person, but for people to get the real you, you have to add more energy and let your passion shine through.
Prepare your Bullet Points
If you haven’t thought about what you’re saying, you can end up going where you didn’t intend on going.
For your videos to be concise and effective, you have to have a plan.
This gives the viewer a lot more value and gives you a sense of preparedness. You will feel better and more confident.
How to Get Exposure
When asked how we can get exposure for our videos, here were Luria’s suggestions:
Use descriptive titles for your videos
Use descriptive titles for your videos
The first thing you want to do is make sure you’re covering a very specific topic for each of your videos.
Once you know what that topic is, make sure to make that clear and specific with the title of your videos.
Do your keyword research
You can also use tools like the Google Keyword Planner to do some basic keyword research to find popular searches with relatively low competition.
Keyword research helps when trying to get Search Engine traffic (i.e. on YouTube or via Google).
Share your content with everyone
Share your content with everyone
If you don’t have an audience to begin with, start by sharing your videos with your friends and family.
Beyond that, use your social platforms to get the word out there. If what you’re offering is valuable, don’t hold it back from the world.
Use Hashtags
By using hashtags when you post on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram, people will more likely find your content if they are searching for those hashtags. Also, you can also search your hashtags to find people who are interested in your content.
Network with others in your niche
Network with people in your niche
As scary as this might sound to some, networking can go a long way to get you connected with the right people. This is how Luria and I connected, and the result is what you’re reading (or listening to) right now.
Find people who are asking questions
By providing value to the people who are looking for answers, they will start to look at you as the expert. That’s exactly what you want.
Choose only a couple of platforms
When it comes to hosting your videos, the platforms Luria highly recommends Facebook and YouTube. Don’t try to focus on more than those two, because when you try to be everywhere, you can’t be anywhere effectively.
The same goes for social media. Don’t try to dominate every platform. Instead, focus on one or two and go as deep as possible.
About Geeks University
Geeks University is a new (and exciting) initiative. Luria and the Geeks Life team will be taking you through everything you need to know to do well with online video.
The actual course is launching in January. However, they have some Awesome free resources that can help you get started.
According to Luria, the most important thing is just to get started. If you are interested in checking out their resources.
Click here for some awesome stuff from Geeks University
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Using Online VIdeo
The post 242 How to Use Online Video to Build Your Platform – with Luria Petrucci appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.
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Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Your Sales Team Has A Video Problem
People buy from people: a core sales principal that is getting more difficult each year.
Best-in-class sales teams understand the importance of connecting emotionally with customers. However, today’s customers are leveraging the vast information of the internet to research, compare and review solutions without any sales assistance. Which means sales teams’ profound skills in connecting with customers, and using emotional connection to influence are greatly diminished in today’s world. We have less time to make an impact.
Further, as customers’ day-to-day behaviors have changed, the human brain remains the same as they were thousands of years ago: evaluating friend-or-foe exactly like New World explorers or African tribesman of days past. Anyone we interact with is deeply analyzed on physicality, tonality, and verbiage in a matter of seconds.
Our sales teams are increasingly in situations where they have a minimal amount of time to make emotional customer connections. A further challenge is today’s efficient sales teams transacting more telephone-based sales, reducing our customers’ interpretation of us to simply tonality and verbiage.
Physical presence is the anchor tenant of our brain’s interpersonal analysis, representing 55% of our observations, even when there is no physical stimulus. When we speak to someone on the phone, we attempt to determine what they look like, their age, and the details of their location. In the absence of physical cues, our brain will narrow its focus to tonality to help extrapolate hints about physicality. As a result, we teach our sales teams things like “enthusiasm sells” or “the customer can hear you smile over the phone”. Selling over the phone inherently limits our ability to create the deepest possible emotional connection.
Until now.
Video is the next best thing to being with a customer in person. Best-in-class sales teams create competitive advantage by establishing physical interactivity, via video assets, in remote sales situation.
Top Ways to Use Video in Sales
Here are some of the best ways we have seen great sales teams use video:
- Customer Testimonials – Portray smart people who trust your product or service with strong, in-person customer testimonials.
- Company Culture Videos – Convey your strong culture through interviews with executives and employees.
- Seller Videos – Introduce yourself, your approach and your beliefs to every new client.
- Video Proposals – Bring physical connection and trust to your proposals by delivering the executive summary in video format.
- Product or Services Demos – Include your sales people, or product experts, in online video tours.
Plus, top sales teams are tapping into the unique power of video: if you know what they are watching, you know what they are thinking. Today’s sales people are tracking content, like email opens or whitepaper downloads, and trying to guess what it means. With video, you can track second-by-second what your customer watches, or re-watches, or when they lose interest. There is no better insight into your customers’ thoughts and feelings than what they choose to watch.
How Video Supports the Sales Organization
Let’s take a look at how video can play a pivotal role in supporting a high performance sales organization.
Sales Development
- Increased Prospecting Conversion: video helps your emails stand out from inbox clutter
- High Quality Lead Conversion: Video highlights the customers who are truly interested, helping refine the message to qualify the opportunity
Sales Reps
- Improved Pipeline Management: Video can help AEs prioritize the best deals based on amount of video consumed at a given account
- Faster Closes: Video can help get at the truth of how interested a prospect is, where their interest lies, and focus on the topics that the customer cares about
Technical Pre-Sales
- Increase Pre-Sales Productivity: Sales Engineers can record a collection of micro demos that can be combined to create a custom demo experience tailored to an account
- Grow Bigger Deals: SEs can focus their time and resources on helping close deals and creating bigger deals – where they add the most value (vs. giving top of funnel demos)
Managers
- Lower Cost of Sale: Video can be used by AEs for early stage demos – eliminating the need to pull an SE in until a later time, speeding up the deal
- Increased Sales Effectiveness: Creating on-demand training assets helps arm new and veteran reps with the latest in competitive, product or sales best practices
Your marketing team is likely on their way with video since 90% of marketers say video is becoming more important to strategies and 74% of marketers agree that video converts better than other mediums. It’s time for sales to play a role in video operations.
In many organizations, sales teams are thinking about video as a tool, not a strategy. Video is seen as ‘a marketing problem’, however sales needs to be very vocal, and involved in video creation, distribution and analytics operations or they’ll miss out on massive benefits that video provides sales.
Sales teams that deploy video as a strategy will powerfully adapt to the reality of today’s fast-moving and remote customer, and outperform those teams that continue to sell without the emotion, efficiency, or deep customer insight that video delivers.
The post Your Sales Team Has A Video Problem appeared first on Vidyard.
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