Use Video to Create Marketing Magnets

Video might just be the most underused marketing tool sales people have in the toolbox. It’s free, it’s powerful, why not use it?

While the younger population is out making videos of everything from outdoor adventures to embarrassing family episodes, most of us are cranking out form letters and spam-looking emails. Video is a great tool to reach out to new prospects.

Making Video Work For You…

1. Make sure your company supports the use of amateur video. Put some pressure on your company to allow you to create videos for your marketing. For some reason larger resellers and manufacturers have these sales-inhibiting rules that force the sales team members to go through some long bureaucratic nightmare before they can create a YouTube video for a prospect or mass email. This is really silly if you think about it. What’s the difference between creating a video and writing a long sales letter – as far as content? Probably nothing.

2. Use expert interviews to build your list. List building is hard. I know a lot of companies are buying lists, and that’s okay for a start. But moving from a cold purchased list to a list of opt-ins is a whole lot easier when it comes to contacting them. I would much rather call someone who opted-in on a video offer than make a call to someone on a list who doesn’t know me, and who doesn’t want to know me. This video (above) is a segment from an interview I did with some of my Peak Performers members over an hour discussion on Google+. It was easy to create. It’s just one of the tools this reseller will use to grab the attention of the people they are targeting.

3. Withhold the Video Until They Opt-In. Rather than just sending out video – the idea is to advertise the video as something worth seeing. I’ve purposely grabbed just a short portion of this to give you an example. The actual interview focuses on the SMB market and security trends. We talk about transformational technologies like BYOD and Cloud, and how these changes will impact security. From here we will go out with a letter/email campaign offering this recording to a list of prospects. We’re basically creating a campaign here.

4. Make it Looks Great. The video was created on YouTube because it’s free. We set up an event using Live Events on YouTube, held a discussion inside the Google Hangouts On Air meeting room (Which automatically records the session), and then edited the downloadable MP4. You can do the edits online if it’s just a matter of clipping it (front and back). Or you can download the MP4, edit it, add music and a splash screen, and upload back into YouTube. The latter gives you a lot more control over the final – but either way, it’s pretty easy to do. I recommend using iMovie or ScreenFlow on the Mac. You can add some music if you really want it to look good.

5. Finally, I recommend setting up sequences of email and mailer events. You might go out with the video and then follow up with a special report, or drive toward a live event such as a lunch & learn. Space things out, send out sets of three emails or post cards, and do it periodically with different topics that will capture your market’s attention.

Any sales person looking to build a territory could be doing this. It’s simple, inexpensive, yet effective. One thing you might need to do is invest in an autoreponsider application. This will help you avoid the delays in getting back to people who opt in. Constant Contact or Get Response are both good options. I personally prefer Get Response, although recently I’ve replaced it with a more powerful application called Infusionsoft.

Give it a try and let me know how it works…

P.S. Do you have my Special Report on Turning Prospects into Customers? If not, get it here (CLICK).