How to Master Video Marketing

How do you go about creating engaging video content? How do you reach a large audience with your videos? How can you drive action from viewers?
To answer these questions I’ve had a chat with Aimee Bateman who is the founder of CareerCake.com. She’s a consultant, speaker and skills trainer, YouTube expert and she was a keynote speaker at #smlondon LIVE! 2014. She has no less than five million views across five YouTube channels to her name. You can listen to the audio podcast on iTunes and Soundcloud (embed below) or keep reading for an abridged transcript of our conversation. Questions by me, answers by Aimee.

Why is video marketing important to brands and companies?

I think firstly it goes straight back to Simon Sinek‘s Ted talk, I think it’s the most viewed Ted talk on YouTube, which is that, people don’t just buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And if you want to really engage with your audience, you want to make them feel something. You know, people don’t always care what you do. There’s often lots and lots of people that do what you do and there’s always more to it than that in terms of sort of getting a customer, especially in a market place that’s so full of noise. I think Gary Vaynerchuk describes it as marketers ruin everything. And I just think that video is a great way for you to show people who you are. And people will fall in love with you whether you are a personal brand or a corporate brand. If you want people to fall in love with you, you have to show them who you are and video is a great way to do that.
And I think every brand has a story. I think everybody should humanise the brand because your customer is always going to be a human. I mean even when it comes to… You know, people talk about B2C advertising, and then they talk about B2B advertising. I think that with the revelation of social media, I think that B2B and B2C have become the same thing in my opinion and even when it’s B2B, you know, a logo is never going to buy your product. It’s still always going to be a person.

Do you have a step by step guide for creating effective video content?

Yeah, I think the first thing to do is just break through the BS. And I think the first thing that people need to do is that, you know, understand that your consumer is intelligent. I think a lot of businesses, when they’re producing marketing content and video, they just forget that there’s a lot of variance in actual stuff out there and consumers are becoming more and more switched on. I think especially consumers can smell the BS a mile off now so I think it’s important that you keep it real. Keep it really, really real. But make sure that you’re adding value. If we just going to the internet to talk about your business and what you do, that’s great and you might get excited about that, but is anybody else? Well, I’m not so sure. People don’t always care about what you’re doing. It’s how what you’re doing is going to add value to me. So it’s always about adding real value.
And secondly, I think it’s really important when people are marketing their company to remember that they’re not always their customer and what might interest you and what you might think are your unique selling points aren’t always the things that your customers are going to want to know about. So asking questions… Remember, when I first started my YouTube channel about five years ago, before I created any content, I jumped onto social media platforms and started asking people what do you want to know? Like, how can I help you? And then I created my first 12 months of content that I created, was all based on what people had asked for. So I think that’s really, really important.
For example, in the recruitment space, that’s where I live, when you are promoting yourself, maybe as an employer of choice, it’s not just the case of this is what we’re doing, this is how big our business is, this is where our office is. It might be a case of well, let’s introduce some of the people that work for us. Let’s find out what they like about our business. Let’s take a video of them in the club next door cause this is where we go every Friday after work. And just keeping it really, really real but making sure you’re adding value.

What are some of the mistakes to avoid with video marketing?

Some of the mistakes I would say is that people make them too salesy, I think, firstly. Oh, we’re just going to make a video and pretend we’re just adding value but really there’s a massive, massive sales message through there. I think that there’s a lot of people that are doing that and making it really, really obvious. And I think a lot of people aren’t authentic enough so that I think that possibly thing to be something that they’re not.
And I think a lot of people with video marketing tend to make them too long. I think sometimes with video, there’s a certain attention span that you have to keep some of these attention so get that hook in really, really quickly.
Or they’re making brilliant content but they’re not sharing it, or they’re not using techniques, or they’re thinking, “Well, I’ve got this wicked video and it’s great.” And it could be, it could be wonderful but then they just stick it on the homepage of their website but they’re not integrating that into their entire marketing, their entire marketing strategies. You know, the wider social media strategy, how you can actually get people to view it.

What type of technical equipment do you need?

I still use the camera that I bought from eBay for 20 quid. It was a ZI Kodak camera, ZI8 it was, and I still use that. So it depends on your brand really, but I just bought it 20 quid, it was second hand on eBay and I started making YouTube videos in my living room. Yeah, I mean but that was fine for my brand. It depends on what … I suppose on how you want people to view you. But if you can afford, if you’ve got a budget just to bring in an external company or to… Even if you want to make your own, then that’s fine. I would say that the one thing that is really important is your audio. I think even if you’ve got quite a basic camera or you’re making videos on your phone or your iPad, you know, that might be alright for your brand, but never ever compromise on audio, always invest in a good camera and a good microphone.

What are your best tips and tricks for video marketing?

If I just focus on YouTube maybe, firstly, cause there’s little things that I think that there’s a lot of platforms you can use, but firstly with YouTube.
A lot of people ignore the description area but I always think it’s important to blog in my area because people do read that. So if you are going to make a really good video then you want to add keywords, obviously and a title, you want to make sure that the title is really good. So numbers work really well, so “Five steps to…” or “Three ideas for…” Q&A titles work really well. But also, yeah, blogging in your description area. So making sure that you’ve got a link on YouTube, maybe a link to your website or a link to a really funky lead page where you can capture somebody’s email address and obviously implement that into your email marketing campaign to then build relationships with people. Optimising tags, that’s quite an obvious one on YouTube.
I always talk about the 12 second rule. You know what it’s like when you meet somebody and you make your mind really, really quickly but it’s still like that in video, so you have to adopt the same stuff that you would if you were in a room with somebody. You know, if you want to ask some questions, engage with them or you still have to do that on video so I always think creating movements is really, really good with videos.
A call to action, I think a lot of people forget to do that. I definitely forgot to do that, I made lazy, lazy videos in the beginning when I was at 20,000 hits, but nobody was coming to my website and I was like, “Why not?!” But I wasn’t asking them to.
Another really wonderful thing to do, which I haven’t done but I am so going to do it, it’s on my to-do list, it’s creating a video advising people or suggesting why they should subscribe to your channel. And Gary Vaynerchuk has got an amazing on his one which is “Why you really need to subscribe to my channel”. It’s like, “Guys, seriously, if you are not subscribed to my channel, it hurts me. And it hurts my soul.” And he just talks about the value you’re going to get from subscribing to his channel. Because your subscribers are up, that’s basically people who are just out there waiting for you to upload new videos. That’s amazing. You don’t have to worry about being found. They’re going to get an email straight to their inbox when you do launch a new video, so that’s really, really good.
Encourage comments as well. I know a lot of people that produce videos for YouTube and they just think, “Oh, but I disabled the comments” And I get that, considering how many views I’ve got on YouTube, for every 30 beautiful ones for comments, I do get the odd ones somebody says that they hate my Welsh accent so much they want to punch me in the face until I bleed or, you know, something horrendous like that. I would always say that if you’re worried about comments damaging your brand, then you can always switch them to ‘Approved’. But encouraging comments, so actually saying to people, “If you’ve got any thoughts on this video, or you’ve got any questions, please…” And even point down, you know, “Please add something in the comments”.
YouTube decide which videos to partner with brands for advertising revenue. It’s not just the hits. It’s also the engagement through the comments. So that’s super, super important. Joint ventures – you might not have a big market good to go. You know, you might not have 10,000 YouTube subscribers so find companies or businesses or individuals that you can joint venture with. So it might be an expert that you might want to interview. Or it might be… I know you and I have done loads of stuff together, haven’t we, on YouTube. For example there’s Firebrand Talent in Sydney. And I did a three video series, a how-to answer series so “How to answer your biggest weakness” and I just filmed those, joint branded them, sent them to those guys – I think those 3 videos alone are at 1.5 million hits – with a link then back to my YouTube channel and my website. So joint ventures are are always like a good idea. But just be really, really careful because the thing with joint ventures – and I’ve done this with AAT as well, but you know obviously I love AAT. I made about 25 videos for them at the beginning, and then that’s on the AAT career coach. Just be aware that if you are going to do joint ventures with people, that you are always going to own your content and even if it’s their channel, in 10 years’ time you might not want to be an expert in your industry.
You might want to move to the south of France and have a handbag shop and a hundred cats and not be on the internet. So you just need to be really aware that when you are producing content for other people’s channels that… just think about, not always that the short term financial wins or whatever. But, you know, it’s quite a thing to give somebody your content, your video content and let them own that forever ever, so that’s really important.

What is a good call to action in your videos?

Value. One, they have to really believe that you care and that what you’re… you know, that they’ve got to really engage and you really care about somebody. I know and for the first … I didn’t do call to actions initially. In fact, I didn’t really sell my product or any product or coaching services for a good sort of three months when I launched my business because I wanted to just focus on building relationships and trust with my customers, clients or, you know, my community. But a good call to action is just a link underneath and I would suggest building, signing up to lead pages. So either go back to your website or a really, really well optimised lead page and then you can capture people’s email addresses and offer things. So I offer downloads and free stuff, and then obviously you get that email address then and you can hopefully build a relationship, but it’s got to be based on value. Always, always, always value.

What is the best platform for video?

Yeah, didn’t Mark Zuckerberg say in the conference too, back in March, that he reckons that by the end of next year 95 percent of Facebook is going to be video or something. I know that that might not be right but it was a long nose lines and I was just like, “That is incredible, absolutely incredible”. I remember when I quit my job four years ago in recruitment, and I deemed what was quite a very good job in recruitment. And I remember people saying, “Is she seriously quitting her job to make YouTube videos?”. Some people said it to my face and some people said it behind my back. But they thought that I was mental but no, video is absolutely the way forward, so I could probably see that Facebook is definitely going that way. But I don’t think there is a best one, to be honest, I think it’s a case of finding a nice blend – if you want to put it that way – because they all do different things really. So I’m falling out of love slightly with Vimeo at the moment just because I’m a little bit obsessed with Wistia at the moment. So I think it’s fine that you blend between… personally I would look at between YouTube and Wistia for very, very different reasons but to use both of them.

What’s the reason you would use Wistia vs YouTube?

Well, the reason I like Wistia is that you capture emails. It’s a very interactive platform so from a marketing perspective it does things that YouTube can’t do and it’s an absolute dream. But YouTube is till the second biggest viewed website in the world, but Wistia is wonderful because, well, one, it gives you 25 videos for free initially, I mean you do have to pay, I think it goes to about $100 a month after that if you want to use the interactive stuff but you get much fave, I think it’s when people watch your video on Wistia or they click on it, if it comes up on Google they don’t go to YouTube, they go direct to your website and I love that. I mean it might be a case of they might… you might have to host that video on a very, very, very well optimised page for it to come up on Google but yeah, you’re going straight through to your website where you, obviously, you can sell your products or you know, talk a lot more so.
It is frustrating that when I host things on YouTube that sometimes those people will never ever come to my website, they’ll just stay on YouTube so that’s what Wistia does. The analytical engagement stuff I’ve be looking at, I’m launching some new products next month and I’m looking at hosting them on Wistia, it’s just… it’s incredible. I just love it. There’s a clickable link at the end of the video so a real call to action rather than just putting a link at the bottom in the bio section so it can go direct to a sales page, or obviously just to capture email addresses too…. And you can link in your MailChimp, Constant Contact or whatever email marketing software that you use. There aren’t any ads, which some people will like. Obviously YouTube ads pay my mortgage so I actually have revenue from my YouTube ads also in videos so but obviously there are no ads on Wistia which is cool. But for marketers you can control the look of it. I know you can do this on Vimeo as well, but you can control the look of it so you know, the colour, the size of the social media, share button icons so it can look really, really well. And then you can embed that video direct into your newsletter, for example, which is something, that’s one of the main reasons that I love Wistia is that you can embed it, you can copy the code direct and put it into your email marketing platform. For me and my marketing page that they have and it’s direct into your newsletter HTML which is, I think, fabulous. So you get what you pay for, I suppose.

How do you promote your videos once they are uploaded?

Obviously a lot of the platforms I’ve just talked about, they have their own services that can help you promote that, but I think that it has to be part of your wider social media strategy.
One of the things – obviously I would think most people listening to this will be totally familiar with – making sure that when you are producing this content, that you’re sharing them on your Google+, stick this on your Instagram, your Facebook, your Twitter. Once you get to a certain amount of hits on YouTube, that video will just promote itself. I think one of my videos, it got, it took about a year to get to 25,000 hits but then once I got to that, it’s getting about 20,000 hits every quarter now. So YouTube will do that.
You can also pay keyword advertising on Google for videos but I think it’s being really, really smart with how you’re doing it. So in terms of blogging and collaborations again. One other thing is interviews, if you’re interviewing somebody within your industry that has got quite a big social media platform, then obviously they’re going to share it with their markets and their network, and then they go back and they see your YouTube channel so they might look at your other videos. I always think that this is something that I am doing at the moment, is putting your YouTube channel or your Wistia channel in your email signature. I think that that’s a great way to get more of your videos views.
Using LinkedIn, actually embedding your videos into your profile on LinkedIn, I think a lot of people don’t tend to do that, they just use text but that’s a wonderful thing, you can add your videos in there. Allowing people to embed – not a lot of people put the embed section off, so I get people… I know for a fact that there are loads of videos, careers websites out there that have got every single one of my videos embedded into their websites. So then you think, from a commercial point of view, why would I allow that? Because there’s no reason for people ever to come into my website and buy my products. Because they can watch my stuff on other people’s websites and you know… But I do believe that allowing embeds will encourage other people to obviously share your content maybe on their blogs or their websites.
Playlists… if you can create playlists so that when one video finishes it doesn’t go to a video that YouTube have chosen, it goes to one of your videos. And making sure that you have really, really good titles as well. But I think a lot of it comes down to just finding influences within your industry that can share your content and people that are going to create real value and then using your marketing expertise and your marketing knowledge to build those relationships.

How do you measure ROI on video marketing?

And a lot of companies they think… Some companies are big enough to be able to do brand exercises but some people just need direct response campaigns. So the thing with ROI and video marketing is that it can be done, it absolutely can be done. If you’re being smart with your links, especially with Wistia, at the end of somebody watching a video, if there’s at the end of your video they can actually click on the video to subscribe or to buy the product or to sign up to your newsletter – I mean that’s a very obvious return on investment and then obviously you can track that mark, those email addresses or those potential customers in a separate section of your wider marketing campaign to sort of, I suppose, compare who’s buying what from that list as opposed to who’s buying from that list.

What companies are doing video marketing right?

I think that the one thing that stand out for me, I suppose one was the AAT campaign that we did, which was we created a AAT Career Coach YouTube channel, and every week they would send out emails, on social media, Facebook, Twitter, through their forums, through their newsletters and just saying to people, you know, what questions do you need help with. And then we would then literally engage with those people, say, “Thank you for this. This is Tom from so and so. This is his question. This is the answer.” That worked really, really well
The Job Academy by Total Jobs, that was incredible. You know, people think that Total Jobs it’s a job board but they generally care about people and they wanted to add value outside of just a platform where they promote jobs. So we took five young people – it was like a reality show – we took five young people and put them into a house in London and we put them through a boot camp. And it was a reality show, yeah, so it was… But that was a marketing campaign, that was an engagement campaign. We had five very, very different young people. There were a lot of tears, there was anger, there was laughter. It was a very emotional time for them but it was beautiful actually, it was absolutely beautiful. I think we won the creative show case award with that and their marketing team were just very well deserved. And I hosted that, I was their presenter for that. And the engagement we had was just incredible. People buy into people so anything, storytelling like that is really, really good.
And then you have people like Yolk Recruitment who are a small-ish recruitment company based here in South Wales and in Bristol. They are interviewing people from different industries,” How did you get into your sector? Tell me about your story. What was it like when you graduated?” And it’s just all about adding real value.
Find out more about Aimee at CareerCake.com and her main YouTube channel CareerCakeTV.