Sales Videos are possibly the #1 most important sales asset for many companies.
If you run a restaurant or sell cars, not so much – someone needs to taste or test drive what you sell. For a lot of services though, the benefits are a lot more ethereal and complex – such as real estate, insurance, etc.
In the case of real estate, people are really buying you, or a set of complex benefits, so I’m not referring to a video about a specific house, though obviously those are useful.
Video is powerful because…
- It magnifies & multiplies your expertise with “service asymmetry” – just like movie stars and pro athletes. They earn millions of dollars because millions of people consume their product.
- Increase Referrals. Videos make it easier for people to refer you. Videos uploaded to sites like youtube can be shared on facebook, videos on your website can be easily sent to friends, and online videos can even be shared via multiple media – text message, email, chat, facebook, etc. Educational videos are a great way for referral partners to pass your benefits along while helping them look good.
- Internal Stakeholders Alignment. Frequently, a sale requires approval by more that one person, be it husband and wife, or employee who has recommendation power but not purchasing authority who must sell the idea to their boss, or business partners. Online video provides the message you want to give instead of risking them communicating and diluting your message. Remember the children’s “Telephone” game that results in a message getting mangled as it gets further from the source? Video protects the integrity of your communication.
- Retention & Comprehension. Obviously engaging sight and sound is more effective than simply reading for many types of communication, but video can carry even more subtext and supertext via style, music, metaphors, and emotional hooks. Even the style of video reflects your brand identity.
- 24/7 Sales Consistency. Because we can fine-tune video scripts and editing, a Swift Marketing video will be hands down your best sales person, who never has an off day, and with our blend of old school proven sales techniques, cutting-edge psychographic profiling, skilled copywriting training, you’ll have the best possible message delivered, every time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This frees up sales staff to spend more time gathering information and qualifying, and less time on education or talking at the client instead of with the client.
- Humans Shoot the Messenger. Video can deliver news your clients and customers may not want to hear (i.e. in real estate, that a client’s home is overpriced) in a gentle and professional and education-based manner that if given by you will damage your relationship, simple because it’s true: it’s human nature to shoot the messenger.
- Leverage Your Time. A 6 minute video might not sound like much, but imagine it’s watched 100 times a week. That’s 520 hours – over 21 DAYS of time you and your company gain, per year, just from that one video.
- Last, it’s “asymmetric communication” – so you can use the video to save you time when you most need it, and invest the time when you’re least busy.
Videos always do require a small up-front time investment, but if you spend even 2 hours to get a video created that saves you 10 minutes, you’ll be at break even in just 12 views (12 views x 10 minutes = 2 hours).
Generally videos fall into 3 broad categories:
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Attract
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Persuade
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Educate
Obviously the line between these may blur.
Videos to attract are short lead-bait videos, google SEO-bait videos, videos to share on social media, and even TV commercials. They don’t do a full persuasion job – they just increase awareness of the benefits and your brand. These are typically 30 seconds to 90 seconds most commonly, and are future-casting heavy i.e. “imagine how great your life will be when you have X”, or work to “pour lemon juice on a wound” – i.e. debt settlement services talking about garnishment and levies to illustrate how bad the problem can be.
Persuasion videos are often a bit longer, and used as part of a selling cycle. These include explainer videos or video sales letters, usually about 5 to 8 minutes. They go into more detail and can often make the sale on their own, for products up to about $500-ish most of the time, depending on the audience.
For a sale from about $500 to $10k, the audience will either need a lot of brand reinforcement and trust. This is done either with education videos (usually a webinar or long-form video such as conference highlights video, live seminar, weekend bootcamp, etc.). The same result can usually built through a “product funnel”, and thus the buyer has had a lot of experience with your brand and content. A typical product funnel is something like…
- A free newsletter, free reports, blueprints, videos
- A tripwire offer of $1 to $7, just to get the person to buy anything, then deliver massive value. This sets up the rest of the funnel, so these are usually massive value and a great bargain, as you want to purposely over-deliver.
- A main offer of $37 to $197 – this is where most people will land and stay
- An upsell of $497 to $1997 – this might be a weekend bootcamp or video series
- High end – $4997 to $20k or $100k. Only a tiny portion will get here, but those that do are highly profitable.
This is the classic “Authority Marketing” funnel, wherein it’s based on some expert about a topic who sells mostly information.
This is a bit off topic, but your price point will determine the videos you need, and also, who will see it and how much trust they have for you will determine the style of video.
I trust Neil Patel, Ryan Deiss, and some others in the industry. Most others? Not so much. Most do what’s best for themselves, and everyone wants to sell information because it’s easy, but at the end of the day, marketing is as simple as
Irresistible compelling offer, delivered to the right eyeballs
Video can make your offer and product irresistible, so much so that any logical person would be a fool to pass it up, as long as they are part of the audience you serve.
Video Script Outlines:
- Short Video Recommended Script – for Attract & Funnel Intake 30 second to 90 second videos
- Sales Video Outline – this works for both longer form webinars but can be reduced a bit for explainer videos or sales letter videos
- Education videos are mostly about delivering information, but our 21-step framework is a great place to refer to.