Is your website actually communicating the right message to your audience or turning them away? Don’t let yourself fall into the category of those who are doing things incorrectly! We’ve got plenty of tips that will help guide you to the perfect website and make sure you are sending the right message to your audience.
Take a look at this weeks Moron Monday video to learn what you should and shouldn’t be doing when it comes to your website.
If you missed last weeks episode, you can find it HERE! We talked about how to run successful video ads!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, what’s up guys? I want to welcome you to another session of Moron Monday.
It’s not Monday, we call it Moron Monday because we just show you the different things that morons do in marketing, and especially video marketing.
Today is probably one of the most important episodes we’ve had. We’ve only had three, but it’s probably one of the most important episodes you’re going to see and continue to see, because we’re going to talk about the words. The words we use and the messaging we use. If you are a business and you are creating a website or you’re creating a new video, it’s really important that you say the right things to get people to take action.
If somebody comes to your website, they need to know what it is that you do immediately. It needs to pass the five second test.
If you’re creating a video, they need to know “Hey, what is this video about?”. Don’t go into some long old story before you tell them what it’s about. It’s like a trailer.
Whatever it is that you are using to get your message in front of people, you need to have your Unique Selling Proposition there.
And then same with your video message, it needs to be in there.
STEP NUMBER 1
This is probably where we see people screw up the most, is with simplicity.
I am a big fan of keeping things simple, and a lot of times when a customer comes to us and they’re like, “Hey, we want you guys to create our script,” (because we do all the scriptwriting when it comes to our videos), most of the time there’s a bit of a clash because what they’re focused on is actually confusing the heck out of the audience.
There’s that knowledge gap where they have been working in that industry, they know everything about it, and then you have a consumer who knows nothing about it.
What happens is they try to take all their jargon, all of their message, all of their features, and they just cram it into a video, and usually it doesn’t turn out good and it confuses the audience.
What we try to do is get them to step back and say, “Hey, let’s keep things simple and do not confuse.” Because if you confuse your audience, you’re going to lose them. They’re going to jump over to somebody else who doesn’t confuse them.
STEP NUMBER 2
And then the next thing, everything that you do needs to be customer and problem-solution focused.
Don’t go out there and say we, we, we, we, we.
You need to talk about what it is that you’re going to do for them.
How can you solve their problem? Because people really don’t care about your awards, they don’t care about that kind of stuff.
Now, you do need to show social proof, I’m not saying go get rid of all your awards, go get rid of all your testimonials. No. That comes a little later, like if you’re creating a website, social proof should be down below.
But you don’t want to start off with “we’re the number one lawyer in the world”. And I’m going to show you some examples of different sites.
I’m going to jump over to a simple screencast and give you guys an idea of what to do and what not to do on what makes sense.
So the very first site we’re going to go jump into is a lawyer site.
Lawyers are actually notorious for confusing their audience, and they love cramming so much information on above the fold.
It just doesn’t make sense. And people don’t pay attention to it anyway.
So the very first one I pulled up was this NevadaDivorce.net. And you will see above the fold, which above the fold is above the crease, you have a bunch of call to actions.
You have a ton of paragraphs. You have no idea what it is that these guys do, I mean they’re divorce attorneys, but it just says Nevada divorce and document service.
Now they have some bullet points, they have a whole paragraph here, paragraph there, and bunch of links on the right, call us … You just don’t know what it is that they actually do here, so most people will bounce.
Compare that to this. Neil Patel. If you don’t know who Neil Patel is, he’s one of the SEO experts out there. He ranks for a lot of different things.
But on his website he just says “Do you want more traffic?”
Great. You come there and you’re like, “Oh, what it is that Neil does? He gets me more traffic.” Do you want more traffic lead sales? Enter your URL below if you want to grow your traffic and revenue.
And then he has a website. Now, what he’ll do with this website is more of a lead capture. You put your information in here, and that’s it. That’s what his whole website is set up to do.
It’s simple, effective, and I like to use some of his stuff.
Here’s another attorney. I just kind of make fun of attorneys, sorry. But their websites are usually the worst.
So they start off, here’s my number. They’re the 702 Firm.
Now, you have a smiley, a mean, a half-smile guy here, and they’re awarded the best personal injury law firm. That is a hundred percent me, me-focused, it is not consumer-focused.
Best injury lawyers in Las Vegas…personal injuries…
They’re trying to do a lot of stuff with search engine optimization and load it in here, but this whole website does not talk one bit about the consumer.
Compared to this. This is StoryBrand.
If you don’t know who he is, he actually writes about clarifying your message. So workshops to help you clarify your message, that’s what he does.
He does workshops to help clarify message. And then he just says eliminate confusion, connect with customers, grow your company.
You can see that that is customer-focused and it’s not about him, he doesn’t say, “We do this, this, this, this,” it’s like no, you’re going to eliminate confusion, you’re going to connect with your audience, and grow your company.
And then in the background he actually shows a good image of what’s going on so there’s just no confusion.
Compared to this one, this is a mortgage one. So hundreds of mortgage options under one roof.
Then they have this slider here that is going way too fast. They have nothing here, they just have some images and then this creepy little thing that pops up.
And then if you scroll down, there’s this long old paragraph here that nobody reads.
If you looked at the bounce rate and just said, “Hey, what happened?”
Now, if you space it out it’s okay to do some paragraphs. I’ll show you what I’m testing right now.
Okay, if you jump over onto this page here. I’m testing some longer form because long form sales letters do work.
It doesn’t all need to be simple, but if you hit the website, a YouTube Campaign can grow your business.
Then I go into these long form paragraphs here, where I talk about what kind of results we get for customers, and this seems to be working.
But you’ll see I space it out. I very rarely have two sentences per paragraph. I space it out, I highlight it. I don’t make it look all slammed together where people aren’t going to read that stuff.
You don’t need to eliminate all the writing on a website. This seems to be working, and we’ll keep testing.
But the main point it, just don’t confuse your audience.
Keep things simple, don’t confuse them.
Go back through your material.
The best way to get the most out of these courses that we do is go back through your material and apply these things that we talk about. Look at your website messaging and say, “Am I confusing my audience? If they come here, do they know what it is that I do within five seconds?”
And then another big thing, on a website you should have your headline. You can have a sub-headline here.
Make sure you have a call to action. You want to say, “Hey, if you’re here at my website, this is what I want you to do. Here’s what you’re going to get.” Don’t forget to put a call to action, and most of those websites that I did show you did not have that.
Same with video. So video, it needs to kind of fall in the same format, but it’s a little different.
What we like to do on videos is a headline, problem, solution, call to action, and then we’ll extend it out.
There’s a lot of popular videos that have millions of views that follow this same formula. They will do a guarantee, another solution, another call to action.
But don’t forget this call to action in your videos. You want them to do something. After they engage with any of your material, whether it’s brochures, website, videos, you want to ask them to do something so that you can do business. So don’t forget that.
And that is it. Go through your stuff, make the changes, and we’ll see you on the next episode.
Hey, guys. I want to welcome you to the second episode of “Moron Monday“. This is where we talk about the dumb things (and good things) people are doing in marketing. Last week, we went over a little bit about video remarketing. I want to show you a little more on this. We’re going to go over the different ways you can target your audience. Remember, I’m Jace with Ydraw and Marketing Hy.
Here are the different ways you can run ads in front of your audience. This is specifically for YouTube. One cool thing that YouTube came out with last October is what’s called TrueView for action ads.
This year, they also came out with being able to target TVs. So you know if people are watching your videos right on their TVs.
1. Placement campaigns
What is a placement campaign? We’re able to handpick the videos we want to run your video ads in front of.
If you’re a financial company and you want to get in front of other financial videos or in front of your target audience who is watching financial videos, you are then able to run them a placement campaign, and you’re also able to target your competitor’s videos. A lot of people like doing this.
If your competitors have a YouTube channel, you’re able to run your videos in front of theirs.
2. Remarketing
We went over this last week, but you’re able to target your website visitors and your YouTube viewers. If they watch a video on your YouTube channel, you’re able to run them more YouTube ads, or if they go to your website, you’re able to run them YouTube ads.
3. In-Market Audiences
There’s four steps, but I just combined these. I ran out of whiteboard space.
You have keywords and in-market audiences. In-market is kind of like your TrueView for action. If they’re searching for a new car, we can run them a video ad if we have a new car video ad,or if you’re a car dealership.
I don’t know why car dealerships aren’t doing this, but what they should be doing is running video ads in their local area to people who are searching for cars. Simple to do, nobody’s doing it.
Same thing for restaurants. If you’re in a local area and you want to get a little bit of traction, you might as well be running your video ads to those who are searching for restaurants, or just in your local area because it’s so cheap.
4. Keywords
The last one is keyword base. You can go and focus on certain keywords like you would a pay-per-click campaign, or a search campaign on Google Ads. You can do the same thing on YouTube.
If people are searching for running shoes, you can have your video pop up at the top for running shoes. Got it? That’s a simple thing you can do for video ads.
If you have questions, just go to our site ydraw.com. We’d love to help you. We’d love to create some of these video campaigns for you. It’s cheap, and we’ll post on there some examples and some results that some of our clients have got.
Teddy Roosevelt has been quoted many a time, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” And this goes especially for Marketing to Your Audience!
You see, you CAN begin your marketing by sharing your giant Pedigree* of Success, your giant Rolodex* of clients that come at your every beck and call, and your impressive collection of Vintage Star Wars action figures, boxed in mint condition. BUT THEY DON’T CARE!
Okay…maybe the Star Wars figures, I mean especially if they have that one Rare Boba Fett*…
My point being, don’t make your first impression with your audience ABOUT YOU. In fact, you may consider, minimizing the mention of “you” to the smallest amount possible. Your marketing NEEDS to be about THEM.
FOR INSTANCE!
The Mom who is exhausted carrying around a giant purse that contains everything known on the periodic table of elements. She wants to know that you care about her and her plight, when you sell her your amazing, mega-organizational handbag.
Spend the time in your marketing, connecting with her. Show empathy for how hard it is to carry that overgrown purse. Use humor to help her have a chuckle about it because she knows how impossible it is to find that lip gloss when her chapped lips are screaming for moisture, and the kids are clawing their way to find a granola bar in there too. She will totally think to herself, “Been there done that!”
By doing this, you will establish a relationship with your audience, in this case the Moms of the world. Now, they’ll care to listen to YOU! You have their attention because you relate to each other, on an emotional level. You are selling a relationship BEFORE you sell a product or service. So now, proceed to show some of the cool features of this “Heavenly Handbag” and again relate those features to them.
On a side note, keep your features explanation brief. They don’t need to know the process of “cutting and stitching every nuanced detail” that you researched; they just want the HIGH LEVEL facts that relate to them. This will keep them EMOTIONALLY engaged in your marketing.
In the case that you do spend time talking about YOU, make sure it’s to show how you relate to them. The purpose of sharing this piece of you is to connect with them, and not to gloat about you or in any way make you seem superior. If you don’t connect with them, be on their level, share their emotions, they will see right through you and go elsewhere for a solution to their need.
So…QUICK 5 POINT RECAP
Marketing is about THEM
Show Empathy
Use Humor
Emotional Engagement
Sell a Relationship
NOW, get your groove on and practice that Electric Slide together! It’s all about the relationship, and your audience will respond to you once they know that you care about them.
*Pedigree – Pretty sure it’s some type of dog food.
*Rolodex – The Stone Age variety of a contact list on your smart phone. Geesh, writing all those cards sucked.
*Rare Boba Fett – A Boba Fett figure that was designed exclusively as a cereal box mail-in item in 1979. It was advertised with a Rocket firing backpack, but the actual production firing rocket was made stationary, as it was deemed a “choking hazard.” This figure is still highly sought after by collectors and has fetched upwards of 20K at auction.
It’s a given that not all information is going to have people on the edge of their seats, especially when it comes to business content. Ideas, concepts and new products need and deserve exposure for sure, and video is a great way to make it happen.
But seriously..where is the logic behind investing time and money intosomething with no entertainment value whatsoever–even if it happens to be informative? At best, people are forced to watch and try to digest it, and worst case, it gets completely ignored and/or even criticized. Boring videos can be a waste of your viewers’ and your time.
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes.
Think about your life. Think about your typical routine from how you feel when your alarm clock goes off, to getting up and ready, to starting work whether you work in an office, from home, or on the road. Think about what you do and where your mind and mood are at different times throughout the day.
Now think about how you feel when you take a quick break to check your phone and surf the web, Facebook or YouTube. What kinds of things catch your attention and what will you skip over?
Finally, think of yourself at the end of the day. How does your brain feel? What do you want to think about and what do you want to avoid? Chances are, the last thing you want to do as you unwind is sit and watch some boring video explaining…anything. In fact, if you come across dry information not only are you likely to quickly move past it, you might also be slightly annoyed by it.
Boring Videos = Lost Messages = Lost Money
I think I can fairly speak for the general population and reiterate what has been said on this site before when I say that people just don’t like boring videos!
And yet, they keep getting produced. They’re everywhere! From promoting the latest scientific wonder of a supplement to hit the shelves to teaching employees about harassment policies, to rounding up support for a cause that will save the world; these important, informative and boring videos are being created, not watched…and…messages….are….getting…lost!
We all know that video is by far one of the best ways to market a product or idea. People remember more when visual is combined with audio, so yes, please, make videos and use them to put your point across. Just be sure those videos are attention-grabbing so any time and money you invest into them doesn’t go down the drain.
Entertaining Videos Can Make You Money
I get it; there are some pieces of critical information that just aren’t that interesting but can be if you present them the right way. Entertaining marketing and corporate videos can definitely make you money!
Marketing: It’s obvious how an entertaining video can help sell just about anything. Marketing is all about catching and keeping the attention of clients or potential clients as a message is delivered. With all the competition out there, you’ve got to be creative to get noticed!
Corporate: How can corporate videos be profitable? Good guestion. They’re necessary and people generally get paid to watch them. Step one is getting colleagues and/or staff to watch the video. Step two is keeping them engaged so they actually remember what it’s all about.
If your training videos are interesting enough, your employees will pay attention, remember what they’ve been taught and actually act on it. If they make your employees smile or laugh–even better! Happy employees who know what they’re doing, love their jobs and think their company is cool, work harder by default. When they work harder, production goes up and you make more money.
If your concept catches your colleagues’ attention you’re more likely to get their support. More support means more recognition and in most cases more recognition leads to…you guessed it…more money.
Ydraw Can Take the Boring Out of Boring Videos
Ydraw videos are well known for their high-quality art and quirky storylines that keep audiences engaged. It’s no secret that we pride ourselves on the effectiveness of our entertaining videos.
As our client, we ask that you be open to our suggestions as we work together to make sure your audience isn’t bored. That way we can deliver an entertaining, memorable share-worthy video that will help your company produce amazing results and increased revenue.
Thank you for reading Why Businesses Create Boring Videos!
Dealing with an audience is never as simple as it seems. We often take the things we know and have experienced and assume that the audience has experienced the same things. This can put up barriers of communication and can ruin any video. Complexity is the demise of corporations.
On December 4, 2012 I stopped in Vegas to get a little education at the SMX conference. I had just flown in from Dallas, where I had experienced a great workshop. The speakers were motivational. I left Dallas with a plan and some great ideas. When I arrived at the Aria in Vegas I saw an overwhelming crowd rushing into a conference room. I joined them and found myself sitting in the conference being held by Expedia, imagine that. How exciting for me to be able to listen in on a conference held by a huge corporation. I wasn’t an employee nor did I know anything about Expedia’s culture but I am a customer or should I say- I was a customer. My time in the conference room did not last. I was kicked out after the guy next to me saw I was taking notes on the speech of David Roche, the President of Hotwire.com. The reality is Expedia should have more customers sit in on their conferences. If they did, they just might change their message.
You see, I love seeing successful men get up and present in front of audiences it’s very inspiring. From what I could find on the internet, David Roche is a very successful business man. I set some high expectations for his speech and was looking to be moved. However, my expectations were quickly shut down. His speech was complicated and didn’t make much sense. Words like jargon, confusion, non-educational, and boring kept coming into my mind. He never mentioned one thing about me, the customer, nor did he mention anything about the employees. As the speech went on I became extremely bored, but I was not the only one. The audience, Expedia’s own, was yearning for entertainment and real education, which go hand in hand. He spoke nothing about making customers happy or the employees happy. He didn’t relate to them. No stories, no testimonials, no example- just plain confusion.
Remember that the audience isn’t always in on the story. Don’t make them feel like the third wheel with two friends who only speak with “inside jokes.” Speak to your audience in the way that you would want your product explained to you if it was the first time you’ve ever learned about it. Don’t be condescending either, just informative and patient. =)
