Video has become one of the effective ways to produce sales leads and increase conversion rates. Many companies will be spending millions on marketing their videos this year, but we wanted to write a post for those companies working on a shoe string budget but still wanting their message to be heard. Once we’ve produced your amazing video, how do you push it out effectively? Here are three steps to marketing your new Ydraw video.
The Day Your Video Launches
1. Email Blast – Email campaigns are one the most effective ways to communicate with your clients and potential customers. We are always looking for new ways to build our email list with genuine leads and find what types of emails convert the best. One way we get high click-through rates is by including a thumbnail of the video and short description of the article.
By linking the article to a blog post or landing page with the video attached, it gives us the opportunity to educate our audience through both video and sales copy. We always include relevant links to previous blog posts and our homepage—the longer you can keep potential customers on your site the quicker you’ll increase your conversions (linking to previous articles also boosts your SEO).
2. Tweet Multiple Times – If you have a following on twitter, tweeting about your video 3 or 4 times the day it launches is a great way to drive traffic. This may sound spammy but because the Twitter community moves so fast, this behavior is acceptable. However not everyone has a huge twitter following, so how can you fix that?
Twitter can be hit or miss for many companies. It is easy to get overlooked by the millions of tweets that are going on all the time. However, if you can find your niche you can drive consistent traffic to your site and create a place to interact with fans of your company. Here is a great way to boost your twitter campaigns:
http://tweepi.com/ – This a site that allows you plug in the twitter URL of leaders in your industry and follow their followers. This a great way to reach out to tweeters who are already interested in your product or service. This tool also allows you to unfollow tweeters who don’t follow you back, this is important because Twitter limits the amount of people you can follow if only a few people follow you back. Tweepi is one of the most effective tools to build a genuine twitter following. This technique takes time, but as you gain a bigger following more people will be willing to follow you back.
Don’t forget to use hashtags in your twitter post. This will increase visibility!
3. Post On Google+ — This social media platform has become a way for business professionals to share their passions. Rather than seeing status updates on what your friends ate for breakfast, people are posting their latest blog post and tips to improve your company. The most effective way to post on Google+ is to use effective hashtags and link your post to a relevant community. If you do some digging you’ll find some communities of like-minded individuals who would benefit from your content and interact with your posts.
Be sure to build out of Google+ profile. Google+ posts are now ranking in Google searches, by filling out your profile you’ll improve your rank.
Writing whiteboard video scripts using Ethos, Pathos and Logos
When you sit down to begin writing the script for your online marketing video, you want to keep three little words in your mind: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. These are the modes of persuasion. When trying to persuade somebody to do something – say, buy your product – you need to make sure we sound credible, appeal to the emotions, and prove certain truths about our company and product. If you’re a good marketer, you’ve obviously lived by the E.P.L mantra, but with whiteboard animation things can be a little different. Here’s some information on how using ethos, pathos and logos in a whiteboard video can work for you:
Ethos is the integrity of the presenter. It is how qualified the presenter appears to be to the audience. When writing a script for a marketing video such as a whiteboard animation video, you have to rely more heavily on everything other than body language or presence to get your message across. If you’re trying to sell something, have an image of the CEO telling viewers all about the company. Write a part with some testimonials. Whoever your main character is, make sure they look the part, and that the audience can tell they are a notable figure and have vested interest in the company or product.
Pathos is triggering emotions. In your whiteboard video, throw in a metaphor or simile, or deliver your message powerfully and passionately. Make the audience feel something, whether it is sadness for the characters who don’t have your product, joy for the characters who do, or excitement at the prospect of purchasing your product themselves. Pathos may also be used to provoke fear in order to sway viewers – but it is always better for whiteboard videos to focus on the fun, positive aspects. Try to play on viewers’ hopes and dreams by describing how their life could be when they follow the call to action.
Logos is the logical appeal used when describing facts and figures that support your cause. Logos and ethos are sort of related – in the sense that using logos can strengthen your ethos by making you look even more knowledgeable on the subject. However, be tasteful in your use of logos when making a whiteboard video – you want your audience to retain information with ease. If you use charts and figures, make sure to incorporate it into the theme of the video, and don’t throw so many statistics at them that they can’t remember why they clicked play.
These are what you need to keep in mind when writing. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Thanks Aristotle.
We live in a virtual world where a new video is just a click away. Sites like YouTube have become experts in funneling users to videos that appeal to their interests. Let’s face it, we can’t help but click on those adorable kitten videos YouTube keeps suggesting to us. This virtual environment has made it increasingly difficult to engage an audience through video. If you plan on leveraging video to boost sales and grow your business, you must be aware of video abandonment. Internet users’ attention spans have become decreasingly worse. How often do you start watching a video and only make it half way through? Maybe only a quarter of the way through? How many people get sent a video and don’t even watch it? We’re all guilty of doing it aren’t we? I personally, have had a friend send me the same video three different times this week because I click on it to watch later, and then I end up closing out of the video. So what’s the secret to keeping the attention span of your audience? Whiteboard animation! Whiteboard animation is proven to be the most interactive form of online advertising.
I’m sure by now, you’re aware of just how much we here at Ydraw love infographics. So I decided to include one that talks about video abandonment and how whiteboard animation videos can keep your audience around a lot longer.
Thanks for checking out our statistics on video abandonment and how whiteboard animation videos can keep your audience not only around longer, but also engaged and entertained the whole time.
Go ahead and steal our infographic. I dare ya!
Embed this infographic on Your Site: Copy and Paste the Code Below
<a href=”http://ydraw.com/video/key-to-eliminating-video-abandonmen”><img alt=”The Key to Eliminating Video Abandonment” src=”http://ydraw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/video-abandonment-549×1024.jpg” width=”549px” border=”0″ /></a>
I have had my eyes opened these last few weeks. It all started with a couple of books and it ended with a class in Dallas, Texas known as the GKIC workshop put on by Glazer and Kennedy. It was amazing and proved to be well worth my time. Hence the reason for this blog post.
Its all about the Sales Funnel
One of the most important parts of any business is sales and marketing, yet most businesses do not spend the necessary capital. If they do, they spend it on the wrong things. Small businesses can not market like large corporation nor should we want to. For us it comes down to leads, leads, leads.
If you do not create leads, you will not survive. If you do not have faithful customers, you will hardly grow. Simple, right? Well, it is easier said then done. Our whiteboard videos are designed and created to capture leads. We want people to call us on the phone or fill out a form on our site to capture info. That way they enter our sales funnel which has a nurturing campaign. Once a lead enters the door we have a series of videos or emails to follow up with the clients.
I learned this technique of survival back when I served a two year mission in El Salvador at the ripe old age of 19. We would spend hours each day knocking doors, talking to people, or asking for member referrals. It was tough to find people who would listen to our message about the Savior. Once we got into the door we would teach the first discussion and move them into the nurturing pool where we would follow up with 5 more discussions making sure to resolve doubts along the way. It was not easy and it took alot of work to get the leads into the pipeline and nurture them. Luckily for us, we do not have to knock on doors 9 hours a day. We have software that systemizes the whole nurturing process until someone is ready to act. Here’s a great quote.
“Most business owners and marketers lead lives of DESPERATION, because they do not know how to create a STEADY and SUFFICIENT SUPPLY of GOOD LEADS.”-Dan Kennedy
How to Capture Great Leads
Use Video- the first step is to create a video that is fun, educational and has some type of value proposition. We love whiteboard videos, but animation videos created by Ydraw, Epipheo, Demoduck, or Common Craft are also great. Once you have a great video the job is to put it in front of your target audience. If you have no idea who your target audience is, you will waste a lot money on advertising to people who do not need your product or service.
Create Landing Pages-Landing pages are a great way to capture a lead. You can use CPC ads or banner ads to drive people to a landing pages. That page needs a form on it to capture info.
Direct Mail- This is something I do not know a lot about, but I am implementing it and will let you know the results. From what I have read direct mail is still the most powerful way to generate leads.
Monthly Videos or Newsletters- Currently at Ydraw we are implementing this plan. Each month we create a general video that people enjoy watching hoping it will get passed around. The video is more for entertainment and fun than a business pitch.
Those are just a few ideas on capturing leads. Start with one and work your way up to where you have multiple avenues. The more leads you capture the better.
Nurturing your Leads
Once you capture a lead you have to nurture it. We spend so much time, energy, and money in capturing leads, it would be a shame not to get the most out of them. Nurturing leads is an easy step to automate, it just requires a bit of planning and design. Use Aweber, Mailchip, or Infusionsoft to start email follow ups. Be careful with bombarding your lead pool with too much advertising. You do not want to end up in spam folders or trash. One email per week works great. Make your emails educational, and entertaining; using stories, videos, receipts, and a direct mail piece.
Of course, most businesses will read this article and go on their merry way not implementing this strategy. It takes too much effort, organization, and discipline. Don’t be them! Jump in with both feet and become the 5% who actually experience sustainable success.
Getting your message out there can be one of the most troubling projects one can go after. It seems that there is just nothing that has the ability to get customers to focus on the message at hand and be able to remember what they have been told. This is where video scribing comes in. Video scribing is a form of video animation in which whiteboard video displays are created in order to seize the audience’s attention. In this type of video animation an actor or actress performs a type of animation that is actively occurring on the screen. It is done in multiple steps that are designed to engage the viewer and keep them looking forward to the next step.
This form of whiteboard video is having a great success in getting points across while being memorable enough to deliver long lasting and efficient results. It is especially useful for products or services that require a little bit of education to sell. The video scribing is done in a way that is simple to watch and can get hold of the focus of even the most difficult to reach group of customers. This is due to the fact that it is more engaging than making the customer read a block of text and is more dynamic than listening to a radio advert. Essentially, when it comes to video animation there is nothing that customers would more rather choose to view than whiteboard videos because they don’t feel like advertisements. Instead this form of video scribing feels like art, and art is memorable.
Length Benefits:
animated business videos
Because these videos are so engaging, it is easier to convert and get an audience to watch your video for more than the average viewing time on YouTube. On average, viewers tend to watch videos for a minute and a half, then clicking away because they lose interest. With animated business videos, the average watch time from viewers is much longer, because viewers tend to stay engaged with the video for longer than other video mediums. Amazing!
Process:
The process to make animated business videos goes into many different categories including filling out the questionnaire, script writing, storyboarding, creating the animations, doing revisions and going back and forth between the client and the company, editing the video, adding voiceovers, adding music, and more. Depending on the style of artist, clients can create anything they can imagine, it is limitless what can be done whiteboard animation. Whatever someone can think of, can be created.
