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.
If you do not know what a USP is, then you certainly need this information, so read on! This simple blog could change your business forever. I really mean that. USP stand for Unique Selling Proposition, it is a must have for any business. I am going to show you how to create the perfect USP step by step so when you leave your office today your customers will know what you do. Please spend a couple of minutes to do this simple exercise I paid big bucks to get this info and I am passing it onto you because I love you and I have seen too many businesses get a video who have no idea what problem they solve in the market place. Don’t be them.
Why should you develop a USP?
You will have a big advantage over your competition
You will have clarity about who you are
You will get more leads
You will have better conversations with potential clients
How to Develop the Perfect USP?
I will first tell you how I came up with the USP for Ydraw and the mistakes I made. Initially when Ydraw was started my USP was “#1 Video Scribing Company” Then it slowly developed into “Creative Videos that Inspire.” As you can see those do not work. I want you to do better. If someone came up to me and ask, “What do you do?” and I answered with, “#1 Video scribing company,” you can see how confusing that would be. I pretty much killed the conversation before it was even started. Those are slogans not USPs.
Here are a couple of things to ask yourself:
What are you awesome at?
How will you solve the problem of your target market?
Do you have a guarantee?
Are you believable?
How can you include your personality?
The Unlimate Questions is…..
Why Should I (your future client) choose to do business with your versus any and every other option available to me?
Here are a couple of examples
World’s Strongest Librarian
Get Stronger..Get Smarter..Live Better…Everyday!
Kiva
Kiva connects people through lending to alleviate poverty.
So after much thought and coaching I finally came up with this:
Ydraw
Ydraw creates #1 whiteboard videos that engage, maintain, and inspire any audience guaranteed…because we love you!
Where most people make the mistake is they try to get overly creative. Make sure your USP actually says what you do for your traget audience. Don’t make it too complicated, think simple. Get started on your USP and, like mine, it will most likely change overtime. Create a list then get the opinion of others. In a nut shell, you just need to answer the question.
If you are marketing your products or services online, your major objective is to draw more audience to your site while promoting your products. The use of videos is not a new marketing strategy. A different way of attracting website visitors using video presentation currently focuses on the popular explanation animation videos. They use video animation in order to catch the attention of your website visitors and to build more traffic to your site.
Explanation Animation
There is no doubt that video marketing is considered to be a fundamental approach to market products and services online. It can easily grab a viewer’s attention and you can easily convey your message to them in less time. Moreover, some potential customers do not like to spend time reading to understand what your market is all about. Presenting a video through explanation animation is a good way to keep them interested in your products and services while the artist of the video attempts to tell a story through entertaining graphics that move.
Click through rates are believed to increase with a video animated graphic presentation. Technology and internet are changing the way people obtain information. From the traditional method of email marketing comes into play the different educational and marketing videos that seem to be more entertaining.
You can use viral videos in order to drive traffic to your website. This marketing strategy is mainly used for distributing and promoting products and services, making it known to the virtual community.
When using videos on a homepage the video should be one that is informative yet entertaining to make them more interesting to your site visitors.
With a video animated presentation you are giving your visitors a unique form of entertainment. The use of dry erase board animation presents a different way of presenting your ideas which can take your visitors to a different journey using a video marketing tool. You also get an advantage position against your competitors that are likely using video as a marketing tool in promoting their market. Although you are also using video marketing, your video presentations in the form of explanation animation is quite different.
Just make sure that your video presentation is one that will educate, communicate and inform your online visitors in a straightforward but entertaining manner. Some marketers have been using videos as a promotional and marketing tool but they are not using it correctly. Your advantage is to understand your market and products and design a video animation that can communicate with your customers well with the entertainment factor. There are different risk and beneficial features associated with using videos to market your website products and services. But there is no denying that videos can be a powerful medium to drive traffic to a website and dry erase board animation is capable of becoming an effective viral video, a conversion video and educational video that can boost your site’s traffic.
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.
The Dilemma Marketers Face in Absence of Explainer Videos. Text is Boring. Give Your Audience Something Captivating!!!
Marketers face a serious dilemma everyday when trying to reach out to their audience. Conventional methods of marketing in the form of written text is boring and uninspiring. We are faced with the daunting task of reading each and every day and often with little or no interest in the topic. Explainer Videos overcome this dilemma by offering a visual experience that is truly inspiring and captivating.
It is a dilemma that marketers and people with a message to get across know all too well: text is boring.
Quite frankly people are sick of reading. We are bombarded with so many articles and pamphlets to read each day that the average person has little to no interest reading down a wall of text to come away with nothing but a good old fashioned advertisement. This has caused many would be text advertisers to go the way of audio messages. Some choose to flock to radio airwaves with very little success. Luckily whiteboard video messages seem to combine the best of both worlds while offering even more benefits than traditional means.
Sometimes known as an explainer video, whiteboard videos can be comprised of an individual drawing out a scenario or display of information in an engaging and highly visual way. Using a simple whiteboard and some markers they create and manipulate elements in the whiteboard video that gain the audience’s attention without ever letting them go. Best of all, explainer videos can be complimentary to the video SEO strategy of your company.
Just as any other video can be shared and spread, whiteboard videos can too. This ability creates a large web like effect for your website and companies video SEO, growing larger and larger as more blogs and networks pick up on and report its message. The explainer videos are also much more likely to go viral than traditional video advertisement. This is thanks to the uniqueness of their approach and how compelling the designs of a whiteboard video can be.
