With so much of our marketing automated these days, how do you become really, really personal? I’m going to show you how to get very personal with your market today using personalised video.
Three ways to use personalised video as a marketing tactic:
- You’re talking to a prospect and you want to show that you’ve done your homework, you really understand them, things that they’re trying to deal with, and you wanted to appeal very personally to earn the right to a meeting with a high-quality target, or high-value target.
- A “how to” video using screen share.
- An apology. Maybe you just want to apologise or communicate a really important piece to a really important customer. Doesn’t have to be an apology, but if it really matters, think about video.
1. Personalised video for high-value prospects
I’ve talked about what Miller Heiman, the sales training company, call the “valid business reason (VBR)” in previous videos and blogs. The valid business reason just means a very personal appeal to a prospect that explains to that prospect why they need to meet you, not why you wanted to meet them. What’s the prospect going to get out of the meeting?
Now, if you’re trying to appeal to a high-value target, you’ve done your homework. You know what some of their issues are, maybe you’ve even had a few preparatory meetings with not the prospect, but somebody else who is coaching you. You need to convey very clearly, very simply that you’ve done the homework and that there’s a reason why they should meet you. In that case, the technology you want to use is going to be your phone, whether that’s a Samsung or an iPhone, and a little microphone that’s designed to be plugged into a phone called TRRS, that’s Tip, Ring, Ring, Sleeve.
Source: Cable Chick
Go and talk to your audio shop, they know what I’m talking out. It’s microphone made for phones. You also need a little tripod that holds the phone, similar to a selfie stick.
How to record a personalised video for high-value prospects
Set up your tripod to hold the phone, get your dedicated microphone, go and stand by an open window, say your thing. Do it in one shot. If it doesn’t work, do it again from beginning to end. You don’t need production technology.
Where you’re going to host the personalised video for your high-value prospects
Remember it’s a one-time video. We quite like to use a thing called Postwire. What Postwire lets you do is to include that video along with “Here’s a white paper that we wrote on a similar subject, here’s our logo board,” few other things you might want to collect just for that prospect.
You put the video and these other pieces of collateral together on a dedicated page just for that customer, and an email or phone call or letter that says, “Go read this stuff,” or “Listen to this stuff.” It’s pointing to a single page where you’ve got your video and all the other stuff.
2. A personalised how-to video using screen share
In this case, you want to show somebody something. Now that doesn’t need your face on the camera. What it needs is probably what’s on the screen.
The Softwares we use for personalised how-to videos
There are many screen-capture technologies, we use Icecream. It allows us to do a little bit of editing. We’ve got the paid version so that we can record it to MP4. You can go with the free one, it just has limited formats that you can record to. But we also occasionally use an extension from Wistia, which is called Soapbox and is free.
What Soapbox lets you do is, without having any technology, in fact, you don’t even have a piece of software on your PC, just a Chrome extension. You click the extension, start recording using the camera on your computer. Then, chop out the first and the last bit, because they’re normally pretty messy. And, decide whether to have your image or the screen or both, and you can section that.
A piece of advice
If you’re doing a screen capture you probably don’t need your own image, but why not start with it? Using Soapbox you can start with an introduction. You might look directly into the camera and say, “Hi, John. I promised I was going to show how to do that thing. Here’s how to do that thing.” You do the thing, then you come back and say, “Hope that helped.”
3. A personalised video apology
It doesn’t have to be an apology, but it’s a very personal message, not a sales message. I’ll give you the real quick back story. We had a client that believed we had done the wrong thing. Now, we didn’t think that we had. It kind of didn’t matter. Somebody had to swallow their pride, it was our turn, and I was perfectly happy to. Important customer, really liked the team. I wanted to be very personal in my communication with them, so I did a little video. In that case, I don’t need it to be produced, it needs to be personal.
Why would I use a video, rather than an email to apologise?
This is a situation where the customer was very angry. Again, whether that was fair or not fair doesn’t matter. Sometimes, somebody’s has to step forward and say, “I want to make this right. I want to fix this.” In that particular case, my fear was that if I sent an email, and no matter how carefully I crafted it, the chance was it got misinterpreted, or it looked too crafted and didn’t look genuine.
If I did a letter, which was advice that I’ve been given by a coach, maybe send a personal letter because my client wasn’t so much into technology, it was going to take too long and I’ve got the same problem with the written word being open to misinterpretation. If you think about emails that you’ve written or you’ve read and how often they’ve been misinterpreted. It’s so easy to misinterpret the written word, even a written letter.
The tool I used to create a personalised video to apologise
On that particular occasion, I used the Soapbox tool from Wistia. I used my computer camera. Production quality didn’t matter, what mattered is he heard it straight from me a little uninterrupted.
Imagine if instead, I’d rung him, angry customer, all right, feels like he needs to vent. I spend the first seven minutes listening to the vent, and then, my response sounds like it’s just in reaction, in response to the vent. I had the opportunity to say everything that I needed to say uninterrupted. Now, I know that sounds rude, but think about the use case. The story needed to be told in its entirety. It was only a five-minute video, but it needed to be told uninterrupted.
Personalised video is a great tactic to apologise
It’s personal, he could see I was genuine, I meant every word I said, in case you’re watching this. I mean every word I said, and he could tell that. No opportunity for misinterpretation. I could afford to be a little goofy and say, “Hey, somewhere along the line, we screwed up. You think this, we think this, it kind of doesn’t matter. You’re important to us. Here’s what we’re going to do.” That was the message. I think video is a great tactic, great channel if you prefer that language, for very personal communication.
Which technology you can use to make a personalised video – Recap
I wanted you really to understand the power of personal video, and a little bit of the technology that you can use. I’ve mentioned three tools. Let me remind you again. First one was Icecream. That’s a great screen capture software. Whatever your PC or Mac supports, there are lots of screen capture softwares. I quite like Icecream, but choose your own.
Second one was from Wistia, that’s a thing called Soapbox. There’s no software that you download. It’s just a plug-in to Chrome and it lets you do the editing inside the plug-in. Quite a cool piece of technology if you don’t want too much production and you don’t need to add anything else.
The third one I mentioned is Postwire. We like Postwire. It’s a great way to have a curated library of stuff that you need to use, PDFs, Word pages, videos, anything that you want to let the salespeople use. Put it all into libraries in Postwire, then you can select what to use on an individual page where you can put the video and other things that you want. You can even have a discussion within that page. Check all three of them out. I recommend all three of them for different reasons.
But remember, video is just one tactic…
As with every tactic, it needs to be used in context. I was talking just now about predominantly either sales or delivery tactics. What’s going on before that tactic and what goes on after it? For example, I’ve watched the Postwire, is there a trigger campaign that immediately occurs after the Postwire I watched? All sorts of clever things that you can do. You need all of these tactics to be thought about in their complete context, and you need the strategy to be clear. Who is my audience? What problem am I solving for that audience? With what solution am I solving that problem?
All those strategic questions, together with all of the tactics coming together, and that’s where Funnel Plan comes in.
Funnel Plan
In your Funnel Plan, map out the buyer’s journey. Choose tactics for every stage from finding names to closing deals. Remember, sales and marketing alignment is key, so design both the strategy and the tactics together – Sales, Marketing, Finance and Ops. Don’t have a Funnel Plan? Get a free one at funnelplan.com.
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I hope you got value out of this week’s show. I’ve got lots more lined up for you for next week and until then, may your funnel be full and always flowing.
Our thanks to:
- You for watching this week’s show
- Cable Chick for Understanding TRRS and Audio Jacks
- Lisbeth Pena for blog production
- John Ang for video production
- Hugh Macfarlane for scripting and presenting this week’s show
