After Sales Video

I bought a case for my iPhone.

From a company called Peel that I saw on Instagram.

I got an immediate email... confirming my order. Saying 'thanks'.
Adding 'Here's a peek into what just happened in our office when we got your order'.
And a video...

What happened?

- my buyer's remorse - where you feel a bit down after a purchase, that maybe you're wrong... was I an idiot for buying a phone case from the US from a company I saw on Instagram?.. It vanished,

- a human connection to the brand was made. I liked them.

- I kept thinking about them

- I went back and checked out their other products

- Erm, turns out I wrote a blog post about them
 

Marketing isn't just selling

Marketing is always loaded ahead of a purchase. But actually once you've made the sale... that's a great opportunity to really cement a relationship. It's easier to sell to people who already bought from you right? Make them feel special!

Make people happy they've bought from you. Make them want to tell others about you.
Make them excited about what they're going to get from you.

Book a table at a restaurant - show me a video of the kitchen team prepping for me.

Put down a deposit for a holiday - send me a video of that area, the hotel, get me excited!

Book a place for my kid at a holiday camp - get a video of kids enjoying themselves, having incredible adventures (instead of feeling guilty I'm not with my kids, I'll feel excited of what's to come!)

Send my files to the accountant - show me the humans in that office excited to get to work on them (genuinely!)

The list goes on... So, how about you?
There's not a product or service that can't do this.
Build a human connection. Make me love your brand. Kill my buyer's remorse.

How will you say 'thanks'?

SONOS Win & Lose

Those sound dudes at SONOS have a new product.

SO, how did SONOS win and lose in launching it?

Well. I got a nice email.

I bought a SONOS product (or two) last year and they cleverly get your email address when you set up their gear.
I'm a prime target.

SO - a win for customer data collection.

What would have been nice is putting a thumbnail with a 'Play' icon on it in the image so that I was tempted to play their video.

Email with a 'play' thumbnails get higher click throughs.

And since, erm, this is a TV product, showing a play icon on a TV would have been a no brainer.

SO - I go to their site and there's a nice big image enticing me to watch the video.

Nicely done. 'See why'... a great piece of copy to pull me in.

It's a nice video! WIN.

What I like is they show the insane detail that goes into creating a product like this.
It shows the care. The science. (The justification for the price tag.)

Because after all... I already know how easy SONOS is to use.
I know how good the sound is.
I don't need those selling points.

This cements a feeling inside me that these guys care and that I'm buying into the brand.

BUT just as I'm having this feeling of 'need' for the product wash over me...

They embedded using YouTube.
And didn't turn off the 'watch this next' button. So I end up with this screen...

Argh! Suddenly I'm snapped out of the reverie of the product and I just want to click things.
I'm lost in the YouTube rabbit hole and not returning to their product's landing page. Crazy!

I've written about this before - it's so easy to avoid.
Like I did when I embedded it at the top of this post.

And if they used a business orientated site like Vimeo or Wistia they could have requested my email at the end if I'm interested... or a button to click ' buy' etc.

This is part of a sales funnel isn't it?

That said, YouTube is still a good place to have it out in the world..
But they LOSE here too with a killer careless mistake.

If I watched this video on YouTube to the end and I'm impressed by the product what will I want to do next?

... Yep. Click a link to find out more about it?

Yet the link in the notes below the video doesn't work!

MAJOR fail.
Especially as a couple of people had flagged this up in the comments and SONOS had ignored it (whilst replying to others).

Neither had they made use of the YouTube 'cards' system of having clickable buttons direct on the video that could have linked to their product page.

Do you want to sell this thing or not?!

Plus, they didn't use any of the video on Twitter...
OR on Facebook (not uploaded natively or posted from YouTube).

SO.. SOrry SONOS.

The video itself is good marketing wise.
But how you put it to use in the world... is another thing.

Sound judgement?

What can you take from this for your business?

Don't get so excited about the video and the 'launch' that you forget about the detail.

That you forget the strategy.

How are you releasing your video into the wild?
How will you turn viewers into buyers?
How will your video play its part within your landing page?
What additional tools in social and on your page can you use to cause people to take action?

As they say in the video 'making simple things is never simple'.

But when it comes to video marketing and sales you don't have to make it harder for yourself either.

SO - what will you do?

(PS. I also learnt today that I've been saying 'SONOS' wrong all along...)

Using Video To Promote Your Webinar

There are a LOT of webinars requests sitting in people's inboxes these days.

How to stand out?

Use video.

Above: the landing page (their video doesn't play full screen, I just didn't want you to squint)

This is the Landing Page I, well, landed on after clicking through from an inbox invite from email marketing company Emma.

It really grabbed my attention.

In such a short amount of time, without reading any page copy I'd found out when it was, what the content would be and felt that it was a friendly, slick company I'd enjoy spending time with and learning from.

After all, when we sign up to a webinar we're signing up to spend 30-60 minutes with the webinar host, so it makes total sense to have that individual personally invite us!

Let us see and hear from them.
Let them tell us what we can expect and why we should care to join.

Psycologically you're far less likely to stand up a real person than just a url and diary appointment. If they followed this up with a video reminder an hour before saying 'hey - can't wait to see you at 12...' for example, you'd almost feel guilty to miss the party.

Use it as part of an email campaign, use it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram...

AND it finishes with the cute call to action prompting us to sign up now.

It's a really smart tactic. Are you running webinars? Could you do this?

Of course you could.

If you're planning webinars far enough ahead you can easily record a batch of videos in one go.

You put so much effort into prepping and promoting a webinar, this small addition will really reap the benefits. Stand out from the inbox.
 

PS. I hugely recommend signing up to Emma's mailout: it's full of such great stuff.

Sadlers Wells Video Email Tactic

I received an email from Sadlers Wells, the dance theatre folk today. And was immediately struck by how heavily that email used video to help sell the shows. 5 out of the 7 listed.

Clearly dance is a very visual product and video can do so much more than a description, static photo and theatre critic quote. It can move you. And hopefully move you to click 'buy'.

Check out how they go about this and how you could do this with your business (whatever it may be!). Combining video and email is well worth making a song and a dance about.

Above: the sequence from my inbox to the box office

What's great, is if you click 'Read More' on the email, it takes you to the web page where the video is a still image that says 'play clip' or 'buy tickets'. BUT if you click 'Video' from the email, then when the web page opens it autoplays the video. Nice.

AUTOPLAY
The auto play click through, means the transition feels seemless. It removes the chance of us getting distracted by something else, we're drawn straight in.

SHORT & PUNCHY
The videos are quick, to the point and visually enthralling. The original trailer for the Motionhouse show 'Broken' that I've featured here actually has a YouTube trailer of 2m33. But Sadlers Wells (who could easily have just embedded that) has a shorter, punchy edit of just 49 seconds.  If I'm reading their email on my lunchbreak, I can watch the trailers for 3 shows from their email in the time it'd take to watch just one long one. Makes total sense.

EASY TO CONVERT
Remember that a video can only do so much. You need a good landing page to convert people. It's easy on the Sadler's Wells site to see how we can buy tickets with the big red button next to the player.
 

EASY TO SHARE
On completion of the video we see a series of 'share' buttons so we're prompted to share and given easy ways to do so. Again, this makes it easy for us to continue our purchasing journey. I could share this video with friends/family I might like to ask to come with me, or give myself cultural cudos by tweeting 'how cool does this show look?!' or, well, by using it in a blog post...

HOW CAN THIS WORK FOR YOU?
Clearly if you have a visual, emotional product: show, seminar, band, conference to promote then it's clear. But frankly, if you have products, the benefit of having product videos (click that link - I've banged on about it before) is really powerful, combine that with an effective email strategy and it's even stronger.

EMAIL AND VIDEO TOGETHER
Any business should recognise the power of nurturing leads using their own (growing) email database. Using video is a big tool in your armoury. Putting obvious thumbnails for people to click on is key. Autoplay when the site loads - briliant.

SALES METRICS
By using the likes of Wistia or Vidyard for your business video hosting you're able to benefit from amazing metrics. Unlike YouTube or Vimeo, these hosts tie into your email marketing platform (Mailchimp for example) and even Marketing Automation Software and CRMs. This means you can see exactly who from your email list has watched your video, how long for, maybe with repeat viewings... ie how hot a lead are they? And for that matter, you can see which videos/products/email thumbnails are working best so you're not just doing it on a hunch.

Making a video is only the beginning: it's the overture; it's how you put that video centre stage and let it perform for you that matters.