This is a transcript of a presentation at the HubSpot User Group meeting in London (London HUG) in September 2017.
You can download the slides from the presentation here.
So welcome back to part two. Part two is shorter than part one, which I'm sure everybody is happy to hear. And we're going to cover 2 things in part two:
Hi everyone. My name's Ellie. I'm a video strategist at StoryMe and I want to talk to you about combing video as an inbound tool, so let's start with inbound.
You first start with the story. Everyone likes a story and again, it's against my better judgement. A couple of months ago I decided it was good to learn French. Don't ask me any French, it didn't go well, but I was always shopping around and online. I was trying to find good classes in London that I could go to, which ones are close to kind of where I work. What would the learning styles, class sizes will that stuff. I got quite deep into the investigation and I'm on a website for a company called International House and I suddenly, out of nowhere, I see this video, a sort of testimonial style video.
It's a couple of students talking about their experience with the program and my tutor-to-be, Bruno, talking about how he taught the lesson and that's the company that I went with. It wasn't the only website that I visited with a video on, they basically all had video content, but what International House did right was:
So they knew exactly what I already knew, what information was important to me, building trust at the end. And they got my business, so kind of what I want to do in the talk today is I'm using the HubSpot Sales Funnel here and bit different than the Karen used earlier. I want to explain how you guys can in the process get the right video to the right person, at the right time, on the right channel.
So, that's kind of what you can take from today. I can't spend too much time on convincing why video is an awesome channel to use, take it from Zuckerberg here, it's a mega trend. He thinks it's going to be as big a change in the way we communicate as mobile has been.
It's the most engaging way of communicating (apart from face to face) it's, you know, scalable, shareable, measurable content. It's good stuff and we should all be very excited about it.
So in terms of the Funnel, I'll probably actually start above where HubSpot are, here on this Funnel in terms of brand awareness. That's the first thing. Just slightly above. Well, I think visits fell a bit too warm for me. So let's start with strangers. Let's start with brand awareness and to key questions:
And to answer the first question, I think it's a video and how you can make the most of the attention span by sending a video.
So that's how you're going to get your content across and build your brand in terms of. Can you maximize the attention span? Can you hack it? Yeah, you absolutely can. And I'm going to tell you how.
The first thing is how can you get that person to engage with the content. So the thing that you've got to come to terms with is how little time you have.
I used this one here, you see all the different cooking videos on various social Channels. They always start with the thumbnail of the thing that you're going to eat at the end.
It gets you excited and makes you want to watch and you should do that with your Business Brand as well. Give them something that's engaging and also use emotional Content. Or if you can comedy, but sometimes isn't always work to try and get people engaged in that first few seconds. And that's what's going to be most important. So what that means is don't stick a big fat logo at the beginning of the video because it's going to be a huge turn-off.
As I'm sure you already know, if you put a logo at the beginning of your video, Facebook has an algorithm to detect that and it will push your video down the newsfeed because they want to monetize from all the marketing material that is on their platform. They don't want you to be getting freebies for nothing. So
So:
And the other thing I'd say at this stage, I know I did a lot about social. If you're B2B, which I guess quite a few of you guys are, don't make the mistake of thinking that your decision-makers are not on these platforms because they are. There are 2 billion people on Facebook, your decision-makers will know that too. And don't underestimate the power that this is when people are going to be open to new ideas. And this is kind of when you want to be putting your brand out there.
So you've just created great brand awareness stuff, you manage to get them onto the website and what do you do with the next?
And so again, how do you get as much information across as quickly as possible? And, how'd you make it as interesting as possible? I'll, I'm going to tell you is video and I've got a nice example here that I love: just won't watch the whole thing. It's a 60-second-long video, but I just want you to watch the first 7 to 10 to 10 seconds, look how colourful it is, look how it gets the - as I say - emotional part (but you know, it's sort of). It understands the Buyer Persona and gets what they're worried about. Just look how many times the image moves in the first 7, towards a 6 or 7 seconds mark and hope you'll see what I mean.
Interesting? Yeah, exactly. So maybe watching it again would be a bit of overkill, but around the six or seven mark the image moves bam, bam, bam. And that's the kind of visuals that you're gonna want to put in your video. That's when the person is thinking: 'Maybe I'm going to just look over and over here, maybe I'm going to scroll down and click off'. And this is the kind of Video Content that is going to be most impactful.
Improving viewer engagement: animated videos
The other thing I'd say is at this stage stick with animated video. Unfortunately, YouTube didn't want to give us any labelled axes for this slide, which is about practice. So we don't know how long the time scale is, but overall
And it also helps get across concepts that are maybe abstract or kind of difficult to explain. I'm a lot faster, you know, if you want to show that something's in the cloud then abstract's gonna, you know, that kind of abstract concepts going to play well in animated video. So stick to that and it should be good.
You've got people interested and you want to convert. And you want to get some kind of information about them. This is a really common drop-off point and is a huge pain point.
How can I get their information without scaring them away, without making them think: 'Oh God, I don't want a salesperson to call me, I don't want to get some spam'. And yeah, we had this as well as StoryMe. I'm gonna use a personal example. What we found worked well was our Inbound marketing.
Elke, we had her, it was a super. I mean. we are a video company so we made something a bit flashier, but this isn't something that has to break the bank. This is something you guys can do literally when you go home today: to introduce the person who's going be getting in touch with them and building that familiarity, building trust at this kind of drop-off point. And so you'll see what I mean.
'Hi there, I'm Elke, and I'm the first person welcoming you. I'm the one who you will be talking to in our chats and I'll be on the other side of the telephone when you fill out our contact form. I like Thai food. I love sneakers and my favourite movie is At a Shallow, so I hope to hear soon for an awesome video'.
When Elke did call them, they were happy to hear her.
The other opportunity to do this is if you've got common stumbling points or kind of common hesitations and businesses that we work with. Typically you have maybe the same 5 questions come back again and again. Video is gonna help you in terms of your time on the phone, but also it's gonna help people who've maybe got 1 or 2 reservations to get them over the finish line.
This is just a typographic Key Page, but like, it's so quick, it's just all too common to see somebody who's interested in your product and you give them this text monstrosity. And again, you know, like we heard earlier what Karen was saying, you do look through these kinds of things on your mobile and mobiles are inherently anti-tag.
In terms of the next in the Funnel. For me, MQLs and SQLs are more an internal distinction, so I use the same type of content, I'm going to adjust these at the same time because I don't see much of an external distinction between the two. I guess you are doing email marketing, you're nurturing campaign and that first point of contact with the Sales rep. I encourage you guys to use video in any nurturing campaigns that you're doing.
It's because people want to see videos and also, you get to 2 to 5 times increase increase on click-through rate with a video in the email. So that's something I'd encourage you guys, whatever kind of content you want to throw out there.
The other thing is getting drop-off rates. If you're doing a B2B business and people spoke in for a demo or for a callback or that kind of stuff, we know a company called SaleCycle. I love this Video, they did it all on their own, so clever, they were seeing a big problem with drop-off rates in terms of their Sales manager booking at a time to do a demo and then just getting no-shows. It was a big problem for the business and say this is what they did.
'Hi, I'm Mat Marchin, enterprise Sales manager here at SaleCycle. We can have a conversation fairly soon about how sales can help shape your customer journey online once I leave. However, I'm not just a Sales manager, I love my Rugby. Don't forget if you've got any questions, please drop me an email. But if you want to give me a call, feel free to give me a call on this number.
I love that. They saw their no-show rate dropped by 20%,, which is when you've got hundreds of appointments and it's gonna make a difference.
This is a tool that I want to share with you guys because it's actionable stuff that you can do this afternoon, it's free and it's something that I do personally. As daunting as it might be, it's done in your videos and your outreaches, or in sort of follow-ups. SO getting your sales teams to do that and making them feel confident to do that. You're going to see a much better sort of response and reply rate. And again, it's a chance to build trust and familiarity with your brand. So this tool is called Soapbox, and it's by Wistia. That's free and you can get just like a plugin, like a toolbox. You should try it today.
Basically what you can do is you can just record yourself with the webcam on the laptop or the phone and it also records your screen as well. So it's a great chance to talk people through what you're doing, it is a little bit more specific. Get your sales reps to have the time and this is going to be a real game-changing difference. The more I do it to people, the more positive responses I get and I'd encourage you to dabble in it.
The other thing you can do seemingly small but this is the amount of mine: I have a video email signature. In terms of those difficult conversations that you have over email, again, it's just an injection of your personality and your brand and a little bit of friendliness, making new compensations warmer.
Mine is basically kind of similar to what you saw with Elke earlier. I won't make you watch it and also I'm painfully shy on camera, so we can avoid that. But again:
As I've already said, StoryMe uses Soapbox and other tools to talk people through proposals or complex documents, for example:
And that's going to be about trust. That's why I'd encourage, at this point, a testimonial-style video. This is when animation isn't appropriate (for the only times!), so get your faces on camera, get maybe your customer's faces on camera, and try and build the relationship, that way.
I absolutely obsessed with this example from TransferWise: it's fun, it's got that human element and explains their kind of most frequently asked questions and common misconceptions perfectly. So let's just watch it through.
"How does TransferWise work? Do you know? Yeah, I know exactly how it works. It's magic. It is a fairy as a unicorn and is sort of moving my money across the country. It's all about peer-to-peer, swapping money, getting matched. Peer-to-peer? Under the bonnet, it's this peer-to-peer matching service. TransferWise matches you up with people who do need the opposite currency to you. TransfertWise has two pots of money: one in your starting currency and one in your finishing currency. You put money into one pot and they take money out with the other pot to pay the recipient. And they have people transferring in and out of each of the boxes and then that money would not cross any borders. There's no bank admin in the middle and that's how they bring down the cost. You don't need to know that, it happens automatically, by magic. Transfers take care of all of it, you just have to click on the button. I really know is that it's cheaper than our bank. 10 times cheaper. It's faster than my bank. It's fairer. It's much easier. It's incredible. That's all I need to know.
I love that guy nodding at the end, he didn't say a word the whole thing. He is my hero. I hope is that kind of demonstrates my point.
The last thing for the sake of completion of the funnel also because it's so underappreciated, is his customer delight and retention of customers. How can you get that little bit of added extra? And I love this example again, going back to Soapbox (I'm such a fan girl). I made my first video on it and they sent me this little gift of the whole team, and it made me feel so good and I'm talking about it in my presentation, what else can I say?
I loved it and it was so easy to do. And again, super simple. You can do it this week. And customer delight is super-important. The other thing I want to ask is at this stage - maybe not quite acknowledged as a drop-off point - is: once you've got users on-board the system, either B2 C or B2C, how can you get them to get the most out of your features so that they stay?
But you know, it's going to be about how I can get them to get value from my platform instantly.
And so I signed up for LinkedIn. This is the email they got me. It's all well and good. That's some nice pictures but you know, there was a free trial and I got it. They got 800 pounds writing on this sale essentially, and they sent me this super long texting thing. It's like 11 in the morning. I'm in a meeting and I don't think I ever looked at this, to be honest with you. And you know you've got to figure out the average lifetime value of your user, but why not send them a video that helps them to understand how to get the most from your platform? You can keep making it as flashy as you want, but this is one of the simplest I've seen, they do it pretty well.
I think it's, again, super simple, and super cheap to make and this is going to help your salespeople get back to selling, helping your account managers focus on what they do best. I'm not answering this kind of common misconceptions or frequently asked questions and it's going to help your users make sure they didn't miss a trick. I'm on the platform, whatever that is.
The last example I want to finish on, and it's wrong not to finish on a HubSpot example. I didn't have the video, but I absolutely love this.
When you unsubscribed HubSpot's Marketing Emails, you got the head of marketing - this guy - essentially crying on camera to you: 'What did I do wrong? It's not you, it's me. I can change. It's good fun. However they saw a significant increase in the re-subscribers to the platform as well.
These are just little opportunities to delight your customers and don't get them to the end of the funnel and let them fall into a heap. So, finishing up:
It doesn't have to be an expensive thing, there are so many opportunities in the customer journey to harness it, maybe drop off points hopefully that you haven't thought of before. 80% of internet traffic is going to be video by 2019. So you're going to be in fantastic company and get started today!
You can get an idea of your lead heat, but also which of your content is boring. If you see all of the people stopped watching for 20 seconds, what did you say? At 20 seconds that was so terrible! That kind of helps you to do that. I think YouTube has analytics that can give you that information as well. But yeah, in terms of on the website and stuff like that.
It used to be marketing rose, was like arts and crafts for pretty things and hope it works. Now it's about proving where that actual customer came from, how many SQLs and MQLs we needed to generate that customer and how many visitors you need to generate that funnel.
You can download the slides from this presentation here.