VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
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Video tips and tactics to improve sales and customer experience with Ethan Beute
- Video is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to convert as well.
- You create and win more opportunities when you get face to face with people. But we all know the challenges involved in that. They basically break down to time and distance. We either don’t have the time or we can’t overcome the distance.
- I like to encourage anyone who is running a business or running some aspect of a business to look at all of your customer touchpoints and where could you afford to be more informative or more helpful or more personal or to bring people behind the scenes?
- And if you get honest with yourself about how you could be communicating with your customers and future customers as well as your partners, vendors, suppliers, everyone else involved in your success, you’re going to find places where video could be a benefit to you and your business.
- When you get one-to-one, you’re going to do it to make that bigger impact, especially in this thank you scenario. If that’s the only way you use video, I promise you will see benefits from that commitment.
- It’s that gift of time and attention that people really appreciate. If you send 10 videos, I promise you’re going to get at least two responses that say, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much for taking the time to make that video for me.” Oh, by the way, you probably save time by again talking instead of typing.
- The more specific you can be about why they’re getting this message, what’s in it for them and how to proceed, the more likely you are to get the outcome that you desire, which is again that reply, that response, a schedule on your calendar or whatever your call to action might be.
- Faces are deeply part of the human experience, static or dynamic. Live face to face in-person is obviously the very best. Second best I would say is synchronous videos you described. We use Zoom at BombBomb.
- The idea that it is not overly rehearsed, it’s not scripted, you’re not reading a teleprompter, you didn’t do 15 takes and then have someone edit it together. The idea that it’s just simple, personal, honest, authentic.
- When you create an outline for your video, no matter what the video is for, whether it’s to be sent in an email through BombBomb or another service, or it’s to be embedded in a blog post or somewhere else, anywhere that you would put a more casual style of video, go ahead and show that outline.
- Yes, and I recommend that whether or not you’re using video, I think the more targeted and intentional we are, the better off we are.
- I do like batching the activity. Maybe start a “thank you Thursday” habit where you’re going to just go to express gratitude for 20 minutes out of your email with a video.
- So, I understand that video is a new skill. My first 15 videos were not nearly as comfortable as my second 15 videos, but I will tell you what, when you get comfortable looking the camera in the lens and talking to people regularly, the benefits go so much farther than all of the immediate benefits that simple personal videos provide.
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VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Video is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to improve sales.
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Doug Morneau: Well, welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing, Real fast. In the studio today I’ve got the Ethan Beute joining me. we’re going to talk about what Ethan does in the process of increasing sales and increasing customer experience and doing that using simple personal videos with the company that he is part of called BombBomb. I think you’re going to enjoy the conversation. There’s lots of value, lots of really easy tips for you to take away and a very simple solution to help all of us to be more personal and have that deeper relational connection with the people that are on our email list with our prospects and our clients. I’d like to welcome Ethan Beute to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast today.
Well, hey, Ethan. Super excited to have him on the podcast today. So welcome to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast.
Ethan Beute: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity. I’m looking forward to the conversation myself.
Doug Morneau: I was so excited when I looked at your background and what your company’s doing in the video tool or the application that you’ve gotten, how simple it looks to use. Do you want to share just a little bit of your background and the back story of what you guys are doing and then we’ll get into kind of the, how to make it work for people?
Ethan Beute: Sure, absolutely. I love the adjectives that you use because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. We’re called BombBomb. It’s just the word bomb twice, B-O-M-B-B-O-M-B. Our premise and what our customers have told us, we’ve been at this for about a decade now, so it’s really been co-created with our early adopters and then a larger group of folks as we go on and on is that you’re better in person, that you create and win more opportunities when you get face to face with people. But we all know the challenges involved in that. They basically break down to time and distance. We either don’t have the time or we can’t overcome the distance.
And so, video, in place of so much of the faceless digital communication that we rely on otherwise, is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to convert as well. And so, we want to make it really easy for you to record and send videos. We do that in Gmail, we do it in Outlook. We have a couple of different mobile apps. We have a web app, we have integrations with Salesforce and outreach and in just a number of other platforms. We want to be where you are to make it easy to get face to face when you want to and to know exactly how people are interacting with those messages.
Doug Morneau: Well, it’s been quite interesting watching in the online marketing world how it’s kind of transformed. And finally, a video is the thing. I remember back when I joined the Chamber of Commerce years ago, guys carrying these huge video cameras on their shoulders, that you had to be strong to lift it, and try to build corporate videos. It just never really seemed to catch on. And now everyone’s talking video. So where do you think the opportunities are for business today to dive into this? Because it doesn’t look like you needed much equipment? I heard I think it was Kevin Harrington said that you’ve got more power in your iPhone than, he says than I had when I first started shooting infomercials.
Ethan Beute: Sure, I’ll bet that’s true. I’ve even heard similar, there’s more computing power in our smart than whatever system sent people to the moon 50 years ago. I don’t know if that’s true, but it seems like one of those things that I’ve heard a few times. So I guess it might be worth Googling. But yeah, absolutely. I think video historically has been time-consuming and expensive and heavy, just based on the equipment you described there. So, I think it left a lot of people on the sidelines. And of course, over the past, I would say a decade, in particular, the ability to record videos, edit videos if you want to and distribute videos is just all the walls and all the barriers have come down. It’s less expensive than ever. I work with all kinds of folks using video in all kinds of ways, and we’ll get into what we specialize in particular, but I just like to encourage anyone who is running a business or running some aspect of a business to look at all of your customer touchpoints and where could you afford to be more informative or more helpful or more personal or to bring people behind the scenes?
It’s simply a communication medium. It’s a container for your message. So just like in some cases, you’re building, say a drip automation sequence of emails to onboard a new customer and so you’re using typed out text in the email, sometimes with graphics or pictures or maybe an animated Gif to walk people along. Video is just a more human way to do it. We speak very naturally. We read expressions of people’s faces intuitively. We can do it from birth and we all do it universally. No matter what culture or time in history we were born into, we were all able to read emotions off other people’s faces automatically.
And so, this ability to just look people in the eye through the camera lens and communicate with them. And then, again, if you want to get into production and cut in other shots and do screen captures and do a variety of other things you can like do a real show and tell. At a really high level, video is not a strategy or a tactic or a technique. It’s simply a way to communicate. And if you get honest with yourself about how you could be communicating with your customers and future customers as well as your partners, vendors, suppliers, everyone else involved in your success, you’re going to find places where video could be a benefit to you and your business.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, I think what I’m most excited about is the fact that it’s gotten to be such a light application. So the days of setting up a camera in green screen and all the production stuff, no, I’m not saying there’s not a place for that, but like you said, to be able to grab my phone and to a pop open the app, record a short video saying, “Hey, Ethan, I’m super excited that you’re on my podcast today. We’ll let you know when it goes live. Thanks for being such an awesome guest,” and hit send, that’s a 60-second effort and it’s highly personalized and probably has a lot more impact than getting a canned email a couple of days later that my VA sent out.
Ethan Beute: It’s exactly right. And there are a variety of reasons why. You just spoke to really what lights me up the most and most of our customers find most effective. With BombBomb or some other services, you can record and send a video or upload and send a video to a list of 10,000 or 100,000 or 500 people or whatever. But this one-to-one video you just described, again, this replaces a little typed out thank you note or something like that, or even a handwritten note. This is kind of a modern-day handwritten note. The key things are of course you’re allowing yourself to be seen and heard, right? This is your ability to control the tone and the message and to convey, in your scenario there, convey your gratitude and your enthusiasm and your sincerity for the time that we spent together and what we were able to hopefully provide in terms of value for the folks that are clever enough to listen to your podcast.
So it’s you being seen and heard, but it’s also my ability as the recipient, as someone involved now in your success as well, we’re staked in each other’s success now through this time we spend together, you’re allowing me to know that I’ve been seen and heard and felt and understood through the gift of your time and attention and that’s what this is all about. When you get one-to-one, you’re going to do it to make that bigger impact, especially in this thank you scenario. If that’s the only way you use video, I promise you will see benefits from that commitment. There are a variety of other ways to use a truly personal one-to-one video, for example, a customer inquiry, it’s going to take it three or four paragraphs to type out the response and you can just hit record and talk to that person.
They’re going to understand you more clearly. You’re going to save a ton of time by talking instead of typing. Other examples, again, positive or negative emotions. If you need to break bad news or make an apology, the ability again to control that tone, let people know that you’re sincere, let them know that you appreciate them, you understand what they’re going through and how you’re going to proceed and make it right is a really, really winning play. It buys you a lot of grace. When you give that gift of time and attention and people know that you actually care. There are just a few easy ways to use this in a one-to-one way, but ultimately it comes down to being seen and heard as fellow human beings, and that is all we ultimately desire.
It’s that gift of time and attention that people really appreciate. If you send 10 videos, I promise you’re going to get at least two responses that say, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much for taking the time to make that video for me.” Oh, by the way, you probably save time by again talking instead of typing.
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VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Video is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to improve sales.
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Doug Morneau: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I heard John Lee Dumas speaking at an event a with Chris Ducker, and he said, do some stuff in your business is not scalable. I’m not saying this isn’t scalable, but to do the one-on-one, like you said, it shows more of a commitment than me sending out a mail merge if I’m trying to cold prospect when I take the time to talk to somebody one-on-one, because you can’t really manage more than probably a hundred contacts if you’re prospecting anyhow, so while you might have a list of 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 names, it really lets you drill down in, as you said, get a little bit more intimate with people, and I do that in social media. It’s a great way I think to communicate with social, the people who are your evangelists who share everything that you put out there and comment on the stuff that you do.
It’s a great way just to communicate with them, like you said, to express your gratitude. So give us an example of a client or two, and name the client or not name a client, it’s up to you, on how they use this to grow their sales in terms of maybe prospecting or marketing or follow up.
Ethan Beute: Sure. I’ll speak to that somewhat generally. And then I will also speak very specifically to what you just described and we’ll say, I have a list of a thousand prospects and I’m actively dealing with 100. I’ll speak to that very specifically. When we came up, we found an immediate product-market fit with real estate and mortgage folks. Who they are is so fundamental to the service that they provide. They when through relationship and referral. And so, that’s where we spent a lot of our time and energy is building relationships and building software integrations and name awareness in those communities. We also do a ton of business in automotive financial services and in fan financial advisory, insurance, sales. And now, over the past year or two, we’ve done a lot more business with the larger inside sales team. So we can serve an individual agent or salesperson and we can do entire organizations.
We have executive teams using it, we have customer support and customer success teams using it. But sales I think is a really, really great and easy win because it is all about trust, it’s all about relationship, it’s all about generating that reply or response and initiating a conversation, it’s about having people feel like they know you before they meet you and having people experience both your warmth and your competence so that they can proceed, with again, that level of trust and confidence that A, you can get the job done for them. And B, you’re going to use that skill and that knowledge in their best interest. That’s the warmth side of it. And so, humans naturally judge both of those things intuitively on the fly. And so, when you’re able to send videos as part of your reach out and part of your cadence and flow, you’re doing some of those things that a voicemail or a typed out email can’t get done.
And, in the case that you can’t get together in person or you’re not going to be able to get together in person until you’ve made eight to 12 touches on average or 20 to 30 touches on average or whatever it takes you, you’re going to give yourself some of those benefits earlier in the process that makes all of the rest of the process much more likely to actually happen instead of going cold. Here’s that promise on, on what you suggested in teeing this question up or observing my response to the last question is, let’s say you have 1,000 or 2,000 people. Something you could do is record a video for all of those people and you obviously wouldn’t greet them all by, but you would know what they had in common. I wouldn’t recommend this, by the way, I would recommend breaking that group of 1,000 into, I’m just making it up, five groups of 200 so that you can be even more specific.
The more specific you can be about why they’re getting this message, what’s in it for them and how to proceed, the more likely you are to get the outcome that you desire, which is again that reply, that response, a schedule on your calendar or whatever your call to action might be. So, you can speak to groups of people about what they have in common and what opportunity you have for them. And then you use the analytics to decide who to follow up with on a one to one basis. And so, you can start with this I recorded at once and I’m going to use it for hundreds or possibly thousands of people. And then, as people reply, or I can look at the tracking on opens, video clicks in link clicks, you can make judgments on where best to spend your time.
You can layer these techniques to blend something like an evergreen, is what I call it, record it once, use it over and over again with a truly personal one-to-one video to keep the whole thing going. And again, this doesn’t replace all of your other messaging. If you find that throwing a piece of direct mail in on the seventh day of contact is useful for you, this doesn’t replace that. It compliments it and humanizes it.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, and I like to reach people in different places. When we’re looking at marketing, you said there’s direct mail, there’s email and then there are social platforms. I think when people look at each of those different tactics, they’re in a different mindset when you’re on social than you are when you’re in your business email versus when you’re opening your mail. But you’re right, it takes several touches and the personalized, even look at how busy Zoom and all those new video applications have got because people want to see people. I think that inherently we still want to have that human connection, and nothing beats looking at somebody you’re speaking to. Even when I’m podcasting, even though we’re obviously not in the same office, I pull up a picture. So, now I know who I’m talking to.
I’ve looked through your website, so now I can see that you’re a person. You’re not just a bunch of texts on a page.
Ethan Beute: Exactly, right. Faces are deeply part of the human experience, static or dynamic. Live face to face in-person is obviously the very best. Second best I would say is synchronous videos you described. We use Zoom at BombBomb. We love it. We do it on all of our discovery calls. When there’s someone who’s interested in our service wants to spend time with one of our team members, we always do it by Zoom for some of the reasons that we’ve already described. And then, I would say the third best is this asynchronous simple personal video.
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VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Video is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to improve sales.
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Here again, one of the key things that we haven’t talked about yet is the … I’m gonna use some soft-sounding words and depending on how you feel about them, we can go deeper or not, but you know the vulnerability you display by just sending a video of you to stand, I stand at my desk, but of you sitting or standing at your desk with your webcam speaking to someone directly like this is who I am, this is where I work, this is what it’s about, this is why I’m reaching out to you, this is the opportunity I present to you, is fundamentally attractive.
The idea that it is not overly rehearsed, it’s not scripted, you’re not reading a teleprompter, you didn’t do 15 takes and then have someone edit it together. The idea that it’s just simple, personal, honest, authentic. Again, using some, some soft-sounding language that I’m personally glad has kind of entered the popular business culture, I think it has some value. This is a special and unique version of the video. You’re seeing some of it online too. I see more of it on LinkedIn. You see it in Facebook live and some of, especially the live stuff because you can’t produce it out or overproduce it in a lot of cases, especially if you’re doing it from your mobile phone.
But this idea of peeling back the layers, taking off the sound effects in the music track and the big wishy open with the logo reveal in 3D and all of these other things that we’ve done historically, if you’re doing those and it’s effective, keep doing it. If you’re thinking about doing it because you think it can be effective, try it, but do not miss this opportunity to be more simple and personal and honest with video.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, I think what you’re saying applies to a lot of the marketing. I recently changed the style of my email newsletter and went exactly to your point there. And that was just more authentic, less business-like, and I thought, hey, you know what? What’s the worst that can happen? People can unsubscribe, which is great because it’ll help my reputation delivery rate. And then, the people that are there, I’ll have a deeper connection with because we have a deeper connection because they can see more behind the scenes and how real life is. And I’ve got tons of feedback since I made the change and it makes it more pleasurable.
I think the other thing is that doing what you’re suggesting is, I think it’s easier to do. It’s tougher to write a script, look at a teleprompter, I’ve done that as well than it is to pick up the phone and just speak from the heart and have, even if you say a few ums or look away from the camera, big deal. Now, welcome to real life. That’s how people really are.
Ethan Beute: Exactly, right. When you pick up the phone and call someone, you’re going to get voicemail because no one answers his or her phone anymore. When you get that beep, if you’re not using one of the services that automatically dumps a prerecorded voicemail and you’re actually going to leave a voicemail, you don’t struggle with what to say. You know why you called, you know who you call, you know what you need to communicate, you know what you want them to do next. And this style of video is the exact same way. So, it doesn’t need to be overly rehearsed. You do want to know what you’re recording the video for. You want some basic context for yourself. I would say if you need to hit three or four specific points and you fear you might not hit them all or remember them all, it’s okay to write those down on a piece of paper to create a little outline.
When I’m doing simple videos, say for a blog post or something, it’s not just for an email. Or I’m doing it for a newsletter to 120,000 people, I might a walk through my video once before I hit record and I might create an outline. In that scenario, and I’m going to tie this back into something else you already observed, about stripping down the overproduction of your own newsletter. It’s part of a much bigger theme, and generically, I’ll call it casual Friday. When you create an outline for your video, no matter what the video is for, whether it’s to be sent in an email through BombBomb or another service, or it’s to be embedded in a blog post or somewhere else, anywhere that you would put a more casual style of video, go ahead and show that outline.
If you wrote it down on a scrap of paper, it’s okay to hold it in the opening shot because that gives you permission to refer back to it. You don’t have to act as if you’re perfect and you memorized it all and throw casual glances away and hope they don’t notice that you didn’t remember point number four, right? It’s this idea of acting as if, for so long, especially in business, we’ve dressed ourselves up literally and figuratively. We’ve overproduced some of our emails. We feel like we need to look a certain way, and it does matter. I mean brand matters, aesthetics matter, it all does matter. But I think we go to so much trouble not to be who we are and not to be honest with ourselves and to be honest with the people, that we’re working with that we need to put on some errors or act bigger than we are or flex or pose or puff our chests and over-design things and overproduce things.
Because we’ve been doing that for so long, people are responding very well and very favorably, especially younger generations to this breath of fresh air where we’re not afraid to be a little bit more of who we are. I’m not saying you need to throw it all out and be casual in all the work that you do. You need to pick and choose your spots. You need to dress for the day, so to speak. But I think if more of us can give ourselves permission to be a little bit more comfortable in our own skin and to be a little bit more comfortable in the way we’re connecting and communicating every day, people are going to respond to that very favorably. I think you’ll find a lot more peace in success in that yourself as well.
Doug Morneau: Can we kind of dive into your product? I just want to walk through. So, if I’m a potential new user, so I know some of the objections and maybe you want to tackle one of these or you pick. So, I don’t do video, I’m not comfortable doing video. I hear all the time. I hear that very close sometimes in our own office from people that we’re working with.
Ethan Beute: It’s a big one.
Doug Morneau: But I think the more casual approach and the less gear for me anyhow is less intimidating. They’re looking at a whole bank of lights and a teleprompter. That’s one. And the other one is, it’s difficult to get this set up and get it working, get a launched. I know you guys solved that problem, so why don’t you just answer the … you’re going to onboard me as a new client. What’s this going to look like? Because you mentioned something that I had never heard before in a tool like yours, and that was analytics. So walk us through the process. I’m a brand new client. How am I going to get logged on, get signed up, use your product and what am I going to expect?
Ethan Beute: Sure. At the website, you can start a two-week free trial on pretty much every page of the website. Maybe just visit bombbomb-dot-com to check it out. And it depends on what way you want to proceed. Again, we work directly inside the Gmail inbox through our Google chrome extension. We work in a variety of outlook instances as well. You can just download the add-in. You can get our mobile apps. You can log in at bombbomb-dot-com and get into our main primary web app. And there are record buttons everywhere that you just hit record and you can talk to people and you put in the email address. I always recommend adding a line of text to go with your video to tell someone why to play the video. And then maybe a line of text supporting whatever your call to action is, instead of …
A lot of people, out of the gate, will make the mistake of thinking the video is magic because that’s the way a lot of people are talking about video these days. It’s not. The idea of just sending a video on its own may not be compelling enough, especially the colder the relationship, to generate the video play that you want.
Doug Morneau: I’ll pick a specific example then. So, next Tuesday, I’ve got a newsletter to go out and so I can do what I’ve been doing. I can write a text, I can insert some images, I can put in a few links in, but if I want to use BombBomb to get a video out to my email list, what would that look like?
Ethan Beute: Anywhere your list is, it will be exported as a CSV. You can bring it into BombBomb through services like PieSync and a handful of other ones. It’s very likely that you can directly sync your lists into BombBomb. Plus, we have direct integrations with a number of companies. Once you have your list in, you can use our email composer and it’s just straight drag and drop like a MailChimp or constant contact or something like that. You can still do some of the elements you’re going to do, but maybe you want to highlight one particular link or you want to do a piece of training that is not in the links but is maybe related to it or inspired by it or something. And so, you can use the video in a variety of ways in that scenario. In the case that you’re just getting started, you might just introduce the idea that you’re going to be doing some video communication and that you welcome people’s thoughts and feedback and opinions and whether they like it or not, and what they maybe want to see from you.
You can introduce this as something you’re starting to do. Then, as soon as you like it, you save it and you hit send and you select the list and it can go to your entire list of people. It will start delivering. You’ll be able to monitor as it’s delivering if you want to. I think that’s overkill for most people. You don’t need to see your emails as they batch out. And then, as people start opening, as they start playing the videos, as they start clicking the links, you can watch all of that on the tracking page or you can just … if you don’t want to hawk it really closely, you can just a check-in on it in 48 or 72 hours and you’re going to see how it’s performing.
You can look at a click map and see if you provided three links to three different resources. You can which one got more clicks than others, you can see who the most engaged people are. Again, if you’re doing something like financial advisory or something like that, you might be doing a market update or real estate agent or mortgage or really any business, you’re going to do like a market update kind of a thing like a check-in to stay top of mind. And then, if you want to, we show you the individuals who rack up the most essential points by interacting with your messages. And so, you could take the top 10 people who interacted with that email and then, again, 72 hours later you time block 30 minutes in the morning and you send 10 truly personal videos to those people. And you don’t say, “Hey, a BombBomb told me that you really liked my last newsletter.”
Doug Morneau: No. [crosstalk 00:24:27] freak them out.
Ethan Beute: You say, “Hey, it’s been a while since we connected, but I just want to check-in, see how you’re doing, see how businesses going.” You know these people, right? Or you should. You’re probably connected with a number of them online, so you might’ve seen that their son or daughter is captain of the soccer team or something. You have nuggets, you have reasons and opportunities to have conversations. That’s what this is really all about. And the video just makes it easier to do it because people again have the psychological connection to you. It’s called propinquity. It’s built through the frequency of exposure. And so, even in the absence of physical proximity where we’re standing next to each other or we have breakfast together every week? And so, we have this physical proximity. You can build psychological proximity with people simply through virtue of the style of exposure. Then the whole goal, of course, is to turn that into conversations and opportunities.
Doug Morneau: Well, I like the idea of kind of gating the content as well. You suggested following up on the people who opened it. We’ve heard Frank Kern talk about that a bunch of times when he sends out an email and it’s a video embedded and he’s making an offer. He said, “Teach people something. Add value.” So people, if they just watched the video, there’d be a great value there. But if they don’t watch the video, he doesn’t make them an offer. Further segment the list. So your point on segmentation, so break your lists into smaller pieces, be more personalized, speak to the audience more to their needs, opposed to blasting on 10,000 or 1,000 breaking a list of 200. He segments again, exactly like you’ve said, so the people who opened it, spent the most time in the video, maybe click the link or my warmest prospects and those are the guys that should follow up with first.
Ethan Beute: Yes, and I recommend that whether or not you’re using video, I think the more targeted and intentional we are, the better off we are. Something I always say is every email you send trains people to open or to delete your next email. Your name, your domain name, the email address when people get there your email on their phone. They start to build associations with it. This is an email I open or this is an email I don’t open. And they may be too lazy or the situation might not be right to unsubscribe at that moment. I think we all say subscribe to list that we don’t really find any value in because you know we just don’t think to unsubscribe often enough.
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VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Video is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to improve sales.
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But you’re training people not to at your emails if you’re sending kind of generic mass blast stuff that is not very specifically and intentionally and directly for and about them. And so, even if you make a 25% tweak, let’s say you cut your big list into three or four lists, even if you’re only charging 25% or 30% of the messaging, maybe you’re featuring a different story or topic in the subject line for one group than another, even though the email itself is the same or you flip the order or whatever.
Just a little bit of thought there is going to go a really, really long way, but I want to double back. Going back to the video, I’m not a video person. Think about all the things that you’re doing today that you are not doing a decade ago or 20 years ago or the first time that you sat down at the piano for your piano lessons. This is a basic fixed mindset versus growth mindset stuff. If you tell yourself, I am not this type of person or that is not the kind of thing I do, this is a story you’re telling yourself that may or may not be true. But the more you say it and the more you entertain it as a legitimate thought and the more you hold it as a true story you tell about yourself, the longer you’re going to prolong that state of whatever it is that you’re evaluating.
So, I understand that video is a new skill. My first 15 videos were not nearly as comfortable as my second 15 videos, but I will tell you what, when you get comfortable looking the camera in the lens and talking to people regularly, the benefits go so much farther than all of the immediate benefits that simple personal videos provide. And those are already many. When I had to start hosting webinars, as the only marketing guy at BombBomb, it wasn’t nearly as hard because I had already sent hundreds if not maybe 1,000 videos by that point. When I had to start doing stage presentations when I started guesting on podcasts. When you get more comfortable expressing yourself in a different way, so many of us hide behind this faceless digital communication because we can control and finesse the heck out of it.
How many times have you typed an email, you knew it was kind of important, you maybe knew that the emotional tone needed to be managed carefully and you type it and you sit on it and you erase half of it and you re-type it. That’s fine, that control, we’re training ourselves to be overly attuned to choking the life out of things by over-controlling them. And so, this is going to be a new muscle and you’ll get a number of benefits once you get basically comfortable speaking to people a little bit more often. I think it will also help you feel more connected to other people as well. Another challenge we face culturally is an emotional and relational disconnection from one another, and I think faceless digital communication has a lot to do with it.
Doug Morneau: Well, I think we could do a whole episode on a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. Just that statement on its own, fill in the blank. I don’t like video or I don’t look good on camera. I’m not a good writer. I’m not a good speaker. There you go, listeners. It’s really simple. You can keep saying, “Hey, I’m not a good fill in the blank,” or you can just suck it up. Even if you suck at it, when you keep working on, it gets better. And then, move towards making more money. So if you’re wanting to grow your business, you’re going to have to do some stuff that you’re not comfortable with.
Ethan Beute: And do some things that other people aren’t doing. First and foremost, we are very, very early in this movement. We have about 45,000 customers. I’d be surprised if any of our direct or nearly direct competitors had more. I honestly don’t know and I really don’t care that much. My point in offering that is there are millions and millions and millions of people who can benefit from this. In North America alone, which is to say nothing of the rest of the world. We have customers in about 40 different countries, primarily the US and Canada. Secondarily, the UK and Australia and then you know a handful of folks here, there and everywhere. The point is we’re very, very early in this movement. And so, when you start mixing in some video, whether it’s an evergreen video or whether it’s a truly personal video or as I recommend some of both, you’re going to get significant benefits simply by doing something that most of your competitors are not doing right now.
And then, whether it takes three years or five years or 15 years for this to become a more normal practice for businesses and for customers and things, you are your own best differentiator. You’re the reason people say yes. You are the most uniquely qualified to be you, and video allows you to do that. And so, even when the active video is not as a standout, you remain the standout.
Doug Morneau: Well, I think that you’ve hit one point there that’s really important is that you are unique. I can hire a copywriter to write my emails, my marketing message so they can tune them, they can have to use all their insights and best practices for subject lines and attention-getting headlines and double readership path and all these things, these techniques. The downside is everybody can hire that same copywriter, but nobody can get me to do a video for them. So it’s unique. I think of the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, and it talked about there’s blood in the water. That’s where everybody is. It’s where all the sharks are, go someplace else where people aren’t. So this is an opportunity to go someplace where people aren’t.
Ethan Beute: Right. Again, for a variety of benefits, including your own kind of emotional liberation. These are just some basic things that we’ve seen over and over through survey responses, more replies and responses to my emails when I use video instead of plain typed out text, more clicks through my emails, higher lead conversion, a greater ability to stay in touch effectively, more referrals. These are all things that people have reported over and over again. It’s for some of the reasons that we’ve already discussed. But the benefits are immediate and notable. If you like these ideas, and you’re struggling to get started, start in a low threat environment. Start by sending 10 or 15 or 20. Not necessarily all at once, although I do like batching the activity. Maybe start a “thank you Thursday” habit where you’re going to just go to express gratitude for 20 minutes out of your email with a video.
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VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Video is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to improve sales.
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You’re going to think of a handful of folks and just say thank you to a few people every single week. This is a low threat. You’re thinking people because they’ve done some kind of kindness, so they obviously already like you and are acting in your best interest already, so they’re not going to judge you nearly as harshly as you judge yourself, and frankly, nobody does. So, that’s an easy way to get comfortable looking the camera in the lens and talking maybe before you send a video to your entire database or to a segmented portion of your database or whatever, this idea of starting one-to-one with an easy message that you don’t need a script for people who already like you, that’s a good way to start getting comfortable.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great idea. As you said, I remember when I start my podcast, I think I’m afraid to go back and listen to episodes like one, two, and three. We don’t over-edit them because that’s not how real life is. However, over time, it gets better, and it gets better and hopefully, well, at least, hopefully, it gets better. That’s the goal, but it definitely gets easier.
Ethan Beute: Yeah, to your point, the experience is not expertise, but I think if you’re listening to a podcast like this one, you’re probably able to turn your experience into expertise, and the gap there … Experience is just doing stuff over and over again. Expertise is that extra layer of being a little bit evaluative, learning and growing, trying to be better tomorrow than you are today and building on your successes and learning from your failures. Most of the people that invest their time and energy into podcasts and books and video training in these types of things, they want to better themselves. And so, I would say the bulk of your listeners are probably moving toward expert as they gain expertise. But if you pay a little bit of that focus to the way that you’re doing your videos, you’ll certainly become expert within 100 videos or 1,000 videos, certainly more expert than any of your competitors.
Doug Morneau: Now, do you guys have any case studies or any guidance? So if somebody is going to go sign up and will say, “Hey, this sounds good. I’m going to make a commitment to get started.” Do you give them some basic direction on how to get started?
Ethan Beute: Yeah, we have a variety of resources. The first and foremost, this is my favorite one. When you start a free trial with us, you’re going to obviously get some emails from us, welcome you into the trial and providing some education. But we’re also going to give you the opportunity to schedule a one on one appointment with one of our team members. And I highly recommend that. It is a discovery and diagnosis situation. I would be mind blown if we have not worked with someone who is doing something approximately like you are. I almost don’t care what you do. I mean, we’ve been generating thousands of trials every month and getting together one-on-one through zoom with as many of them as possible for years. We’ve helped a wide variety of people get started. We have action plans that give you very specific use cases.
We demo how you might perform that video so you can see an example of it. You’re going to get some very specific ideas. I think the action plans have 12 or 14 use cases described and demonstrated in there. I recommend picking one or two. The other thing I’ll say is our chief marketing officer and I committed around a year ago to start writing a book and it captures all the best stuff that we learned. It released in April. It hit number one bestseller in Amazon in sales, in communication and in customer relations among a couple of other categories. It’s called Re-humanize Your Business. And it walks out some of the themes that we’ve already talked about here, which is why this matters so much. But then, it goes into mini case studies, it goes into when would you send a video instead of typed out text, how to get more email opens, how to get more video plays, how to get more link clicks, how to follow up based on the way people are engaging with your message.
That’s another really great resource. It’s not very expensive on Amazon. I’ll send it to you today or tomorrow you can learn more about it at bombbomb.com/book. But we’ve been doing this for, again more than a decade. My eight years of full-time experience is what made it, not just possible, but so exciting and desirable for me to commit so much time to write a book and organizing all of the best ideas, inspiration, tactics, the full range of why should I do this, who’s doing it, when do I do it and then how exactly do I do it? We have equipment considerations in there how to set up for a cubicle or an office or an open environment. If you have a 10 by 10 office space somewhere in your building, how do I turn that into a place that my team and I can record videos? We go through all kinds of stuff there.
All of that is also available through the webinars we do in blog posts in social media, etc. It’s just the collected best stuff, organized in a very logical flow.
Doug Morneau: Well, that’s really cool, because like say you’ve got 10 years experience in this space, so those resources are great. So you’re not just saying, “Here’s the app, figured out. ” You’re saying, “Here’s the tool and here’s the training that support will give you to make sure you can squeeze the most value out of that tool based on your situation.”
Ethan Beute: Right. We can’t afford to do otherwise. We are truly pioneering this movement with, through and for our customers. So much of what I’ve produced in the blog and in the book and in podcast conversations and webinars and stage presentations, so much of it I learned through direct relationships with our customers. This is something no one was doing eight years ago or 10 years ago. We have to provide that because it is a new skill, it’s a new muscle. One of the parallels I like to draw just to walk it out because it sounds so crazy is, imagine you’re a salesperson before the telephone was on every desk in every office, right?
Doug Morneau: Yup.
Ethan Beute: You’re sending out mailers and you were going door to door and you’re trying to have conversations. Then all of a sudden, the sales manager roles in and drops 25 phones on 25 sales people’s desk and says, “Okay, this is what you sell with now.” There’s a curve there. There’s a learning curve. It’s like, I can’t see them anymore, this isn’t quite as personal, this is a new channel, this is a new medium. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re introducing a new tool to do all the things that we know we should be doing. And the best part is it blends the efficiency of these electronic channels, email, you can send the videos through social messaging, you can text the videos, etc, with the way sales is always done best, which is eye to eye, face to face, human to human, trust to trust. So, we’re just blending those. It’s kind of a new old way to communicate, connect and convert.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, and it’s funny that you mentioned text because I heard Gary Vaynerchuk just rattling on how excited he is about text and I joined his wine club. That’s a whole nother story. That’s been expensive. I want to wrap up and I’m going to ask you a few more questions. So what are you most excited about in the next six to 12 months for your business, for your clients, maybe for the technology where it’s going? Well, you decide.
Ethan Beute: Really, it’s conversations like these. I’ve had the privilege internally at BombBomb and building trust with so many of our team members and leaders to invest the time and having these conversations to learn what people are wondering, to share useful ideas and to continue to lead this charge. I hope that at least some significant share of people who listen to this episode will go out and think about the next time they click send like maybe this would have been better with a video, maybe this would be better if I added that personal touch. If they use BombBomb, awesome. If they use a different service, that’s okay too. The thing that excites me the most is that every day more people are recognizing this as an opportunity and taking advantage of the opportunity.
Because I sincerely feel this is going to create a better way for us to live and work. It truly does build a relationship through video, especially when you peel back the production. Honestly, it sounds a little over the top, but I honestly feel like the world will be a better place when we replace some of our faceless digital communication with simple personal videos. It’s not as good as being there in person, but it’s one of the next best things.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, that’s cool. I agree. I mean, the face to face you can’t replace, but we’re getting closer by having to access to tools and technology like this. So when you’re out at a cocktail party, you’re out at event someplace, what’s some of the bad advice that you hear around video?
Ethan Beute: A lot of bad statistics and things. I think a lot of people see it as, again, a strategy or a tactic as opposed to a way to work. I know there’s a fine there. It’s partly a semantic argument. I think a lot of people get attached to foolish, irrelevant arguments like 85% of the Internet traffic is going to be video by 2020 something. That’s more about our Netflix addiction than it is anything else. Honestly, and synchronous video communication too, that eats up a lot of bandwidth. The reason I like to beat those up, and I beat up several of them at the end of the first chapter of the book, is that these are not good reasons to participate. If you know that you create and close more opportunities when you get face to face, you should know everything you need to know about getting started with video.
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VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Video is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to improve sales.
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If you appreciate when a company or a client or a coworker reaches out and says, “Thank you so much, you did an awesome job. It was above and beyond expectation,” then you already know why you should be sending video. If you believe that you grow your business when you build relationships, you should already know what you need to know to be using video. I think so many people, they’re like, “Another one.” If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then one minute of video is worth like billions of words, which is just ridiculous. I did the math on that and it would mean that I could communicate the entire book in a two-second video, which is just ludicrous. These should not be compelling arguments and we should not be advancing them as facts. It’s just so silly.
I think the conversation around video is not as much about the human as it can and should be. I think that’s where the real win is.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, that’s funny. I mean, how people get stuck in the wrong space. Who’s one guest that I absolutely have to have my podcast?
Ethan Beute: Oh my.
Doug Morneau: Sorry, I didn’t pre-warn you when we logged on today. I forgot to do that.
Ethan Beute: No, that’s good. I think you would find some kinship with James Carbary at Sweet Fish Media and the B2B Growth Show. Entrepreneur, a really smart guy, recognized podcasts as a great way to build relationships, learn a bunch of stuff and create valuable content. I think you’d think you would get along really well with him. And he’s very relationship-oriented as well. That’s the first name that comes to mind.
Doug Morneau: Well, excellent. Hey, I appreciate that. So where can people track you down, connect, learn more of what you’re doing, take a demo, take a test drive and then talk to somebody on your team?
Ethan Beute: Yeah, you’re already kind enough to give me the chance to mention a couple of them, but I’ll restate a couple, bombbomb-dot-com, B-O-M-B-B-O-M-B-dot-com. If you want to learn more about the book, it’s at bombbomb-dot-com\book. If you have any questions, I welcome direct communication as well. You can find me on LinkedIn at Ethan Beute. The last name is spelled B-E-U-TE. Or you can email me directly, ethan@bombbomb-dot-com. It’s just ethan@bombbomb-dot-com.
Doug Morneau: Well, excellent. Hey, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day today to share with our audience. That was really insightful and I’m super excited about what’s happening in video these days and super excited about what you guys are doing so we’ll have an offline conversation when this wraps up.
Ethan Beute: Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate your interest and enthusiasm about it and I really appreciate your time.
Doug Morneau: So, there you go listeners. This is another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. And like Ethan said, don’t let your fears get in the way. You’re either going to build your business or you’re going to live in your fears. So do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? And I’d encourage you all to have a growth mindset. Go off, build your business, try some new stuff, stand out. Don’t be where the crowd is. Use your unique talents and abilities to communicate with people. So, I look forward to serving you on our next episode.
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VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Video is a very effective way to connect and communicate, and ultimately, to improve sales.
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Get in touch with Ethan:
Find out more about Ethan:
- BombBomb on Facebook
- Ethan on Twitter
- BombBomb on Instagram
- The Customer Experience Podcast
Links to other related podcasts:
VIDEO STORYTELLING TO MAKE AN IMPACT
CREATE YOUR OWN WINNING VIDEO CONTENT STRATEGY