0:00 Pat

Hi, Pat, the podcast editor here. What’s the secret to creating content that will generate opportunities for your business? Well, hot of the back of a recent video has proven to be a resounding success, download, explain how you can produce content that generates tangible opportunities for your company.

0:18  Dan

First of all, it’s generated over 70,000 pounds of new business opportunities for us, we had 13 leads coming in off the back of it all kind of mentioning, I saw this video and we want to work with you.

 0:28 Pat

you’ll hear the four key steps to help you create work that will engage, entertain, and put you in front of all of the right people.

 0:36 Dan 

It’s building all of these pieces of content that gives that potential customer what they want along the way to demonstrate that you’re the best solution to their problem.

0:43 Pat 

And if you want to see the video in question, head to Dan Knowlton on LinkedIn to check out service is selling. Right, let’s get stuck in. This is episode 96 of the business anchors podcast.

1:07 Dan

How do you produce a video that drives 70,000 pounds of opportunities in only one week, Lloyd?

1:14 Lloyd

Well, I have a feeling we might be discussing that in this episode Dan.

1:18 Dan

What do you think?

1:19 Lloyd 

Well, it’s just a consistent way. We’ve started episodes for the last sort of 50 episodes. So the question and then going into why or how we do that.

1:26 Dan

Yeah, it gives us a clue away, doesn’t isn’t it?

1:28  Lloyd

Yeah. But I mean, if you actually want some information? Well, actually, not answering that exactly. But a bit of a subject around that. I think a big part of this is actually creating an ecosystem around the video that makes people actually get in touch with you and interested in working with you. So we are going to be talking about the video and how we’ve done that and how that lead to 70,000-pound opportunities in one week from one video.

That’s pretty good. But yeah, the ecosystem of your website and your social content and things so that when people move away from that video, it’s not a completely different experience. And they think, oh, that video was great. But oh, now they look rubbish. And I can’t really see that they do a good job for their customers or their client. So that’s yeah, that’s another really big thing.

I’ll talk a bit more about it later. But outside of the video, I think that’s a really important thing as well.

1:44 Dan

Do you know how I know when we’ve made a video that is really valuable for our business?

2:32 Lloyd 

People contact you and say, Can I work with you?

2:35 Dan 

Yeah, that’s the obvious one. But when I go to anything in person, and everyone, not everyone, but like lots of people coming up to me saying, Oh, my God, your latest video, I love it. Because of that I recently went to the business bar crawl event in Folkstone, sleeping giant media. And immediately as I stepped into the room, this guy, the really nice guy came up to me as like, I’ve got to speak to you your latest video, I’ve shown it to all my colleagues.

And I was like, Oh my God. And historically, there’s been a number of, there’s a few key videos we’ve made where that has happened. That definitely doesn’t happen for every video. Yeah. But that alongside it generates the opportunities. Those kinds of signs are when you know, like, this has actually resonated with lots of people.

3:20 Lloyd

When the online world actually blended into the offline world. And you start getting people coming up to you saying how good it is. Was that a nice feeling?

3:28 Dan

It was quite up to you that

3:30 Lloyd

Oh, my God so good.

3:31 Dan

It was good. Just to give some hard data to the listeners. So we were going to give you a backstory of what the video is and stuff in a second. But we produced this.

3:42 Lloyd

It’s hard data. That sounds boring. Surely, I should be saying it.

3:45 Dan

You should but you haven’t prepped this. This video is, first of all, it’s generated over 70,000 pounds of new business opportunities for us. We had 13 leads come in off the back of it all kind of mentioning, I saw this video and we want to work with you. Not only that, it’s I looked at some of those. So it’s been played for a total of 15,470 minutes, which is 10.7 days. And it’s got over 1000 comments, reactions and shares.

I haven’t told you this, but it’s got us speaking opportunities. So I’m speaking at this one webinar, because someone saw it and said, I want you to talk about that on this webinar in a few weeks. And yeah, it’s done really well. And this podcast is all about sharing what we’ve learned from it and hopefully teaching others how they can go about creating something like this that will bring in lots of business.

4:43 Lloyd

Yeah, because this video has done particularly well. But obviously, we’ve been putting out video content for years now with our own business. And we, I suppose this, this one where we’ve got 70,000 pounds of opportunities in one week that we keep saying, it isn’t a one-off thing. It’s something we’ve recreated multiple times and a way that we know if we need more business, we need to do this sort of thing.

So, you know, for a lot of businesses, you might be thinking, Oh, next month in my business is a bit quiet, or I haven’t sold as much in the last couple of weeks as I need to, you know if you can replicate this in any sort of way of having this in your arsenal to be like okay right, going to do this. And I know that I’m going to have a load more opportunities, I can do that over the next couple of days, weeks, months, yeah, hopefully, that’ll be really useful.

5:30 Dan

And also to give context, and to sort of touch on what you said earlier. This isn’t like a silver bullet. We’re not saying you’re going to create one video, and not do anything else. And suddenly, you get loads of business law, you made a really good point, Lloyd, about the ecosystem of you, need to be doing other things in other places to make sure once someone’s watched the video, you’re demonstrating your credibility and that you’re good at what you do.

And you’re making it clear and easy for them to get in touch with you. So there are lots of different things you need to do around this. But this video is key to bringing those opportunities.

6:02 Lloyd 

You can gradually improve that side of things over time to really, really increase the results you’re getting and the income you get from this thing.

6:09 Dan

Okay, so Lloyd, just for the listeners, what was the video? Because you were the mastermind behind this video. So what was it?

6:18  Lloyd

So the video was based on a viral video that is called Well, I call it services is selling or selling is service. And it was a viral video, it went viral sort of all over the world and for lots of different people. But it’s really popular in the kind of marketing and sales offices and stuff because it’s to do with selling and service and that kind of thing. So it’s this team of people in a weird shop, sing it made up this song and dance about service is selling, selling is service. And it wasn’t made as a comedy video, but it’s is very funny and weird.

And what we did is we knew that in our industry, that was a viral video years ago, people would recognise it. So we kind of piggybacked on that. That reputation that has already and that recognizability. And we shot a video pretending that we were behind the scenes. So we were actually shooting that video. And we wrote a comedic script about what was going on behind the scenes and put clips of the video in between, and it’s gone down really well as we hoped it would.

7:32  Dan

And if you want to watch it, probably the easiest place to go is my LinkedIn. It’s pinned on my profile at the top. So just search Dan Knowlton. And one of the videos in the featured section, it’s there. I think it’s the second one along Yeah. So why I guess before we dive into how others can recreate this, Lloyd, why do you think this works? So well? Have you got like, what do you think?

7:55 Lloyd

I think there’s a number of reasons I think, it’s done really well, we’ve managed to get the attention from our target market, which is a huge thing. And we’ve created a video good enough to hold the attention for long enough and create something people actually want to watch and they’re engaging with. And, yeah, there are lots of small tactics that go into it. I’ll go through maybe in a minute, but why do you think it worked so well done?

Dan 8:25

So I think a few reasons, okay. First of all, it doesn’t look like an advert. It doesn’t look like marketing. This is you know, if you’ve been here for a while, you will know that at Knowlton, our kind of mantra is to create marketing, content and marketing campaigns that aren’t disruptive and annoying. It’s actually enjoyable to consume.

And this was exactly that. It wasn’t us going to become a customer of Knowlton. It was something interesting and entertaining, that didn’t look like an advert for our business. So that’s the first thing. Secondly, I think it was a new style of content that we haven’t created before. So there are two grill groups of people that see our content, people that have seen our content before and are like in our ecosystem. And there are different levels of those people, some who are always commenting on our stuff and love it some who just passively consume it.

So there’s that group. And then there’s the kind of new people who have never seen our content before. And I think for the people who knew us already in our ecosystem, because this was a new style of content we hadn’t created, it was something new and interesting that kind of would grab their attention because they sort of would think, Oh, I haven’t seen anything like this from Knowlton before.

9:35 Lloyd

And testing new things in our marketing is a major part of our strategy. So although we found things like you know, video in general, and this type of video that works, we’re testing different styles of video and we’re testing different things constantly and some of them don’t work. Some of them work, you know, in an amount that’s below average compared to the other stuff we do and some of them work really well.

I definitely encourage other businesses to test different styles. If you’ve got, say you put out a weekly video in a certain style and it’s doing well, I would say, really try maybe even once a month just to put something out that’s different to that. Because over time,  you will uncover something that you’re that will perform even better than what you’re currently doing. Definitely.

10:22 Dan

And also another reason I think it works really well. It had a really witty comical script, written by obviously, Lloyd.

10:29 Lloyd 

Written by a really witty comical person.

10:33 Dan

Yes, questionable. So, that was another thing that really made it work. It also, as you mentioned earlier, Lloyd, we piggybacked off the success of another piece of content. So we know that this piece of content has already been seen by lots of people. And we showed clips of that in this video. So it would close people in who have seen these other viral videos, it was like that extra reach an extra relatability, rather than just us making our own video.

11:00 Lloyd 

We’ve put this on other social platforms and just piggybacked on that recognizability and people looking back and thinking, Oh, I’ve watched that. But actually, if your video content going on YouTube, there’s an added bonus if you do this kind of thing, and, and make a video that’s linked to the content of another video. And that’s that sometimes if your video is doing well enough, it can get suggested after people watch that already popular video, and can increase your YouTube views.

So if YouTube is a big thing for you, piggybacking on another video that’s been really popular in the past and making something with a similar title. And obviously make don’t just do it, give it the same title or make a rubbish video, making sure it’s good enough. That’s another benefit if you are using YouTube.

11:42 Dan 

Yeah. And one, I guess one final thing, and the reason I think this works really well is nostalgia. So this the services selling video went viral in 2007. And this is bringing back those memories. Like even I remember one of my old colleagues from my old job messaged me saying, Oh, I remember when we started working here, and you showed me that video and this was like, eight years ago. So it’s that nostalgia coming back from people who’ve seen it, that many years ago.

12:09 Lloyd 

Also, what’s great with that is if it’s if there’s a video or piece of content that’s really popular in your industry, or linked to your industry, people that might have seen it 10 years ago, and likely to be in more senior positions now making decisions and able to, to make those decisions or work with new businesses like yours. So that’s another bonus of that nostalgia thing.

You know, people that might have been starting out in whatever industry you’re in might now be in a higher up position making those decisions. And they could be your customer, a random thing.

12:41 Dan

Have you seen that guy on Tik Tok? This reminds me of his style of content, he gets viral videos on Tiktok. And then he green screens it and acts as if he’s in the video, please tell me you’ve seen him?

12:51 Lloyd 

I have this morning.

12:52 Dan 

Yeah. And he literally does exactly this kind of concept so I mean, it is like anyone could do this, you could think about a viral video that your target audience would have seen in the past. And then you can green screen it and act as if you’re part of it. It’s not that difficult. It just needs some creativity and some thought.

13:11 Lloyd 

But also there’s you know, you might not be into video, you might not be into this entertaining style of content, it might not match your business. But you can do this with any style of content. There’s might be something in popular culture 10 years ago, that if your thing is blogging that you can write a blog about and people go, Oh, yeah, I remember that.

10 years ago, everyone was talking about that. So it’s not just video, this can be used in a lot of different areas of marketing, depending on what you’re thinking and what you’re good at and what’s a good fit for your business.

13:41 Dan

So for the listeners who are thinking, I want to create something that generates 70,000 pounds worth of business and that kind of thing, what tips or what steps can you share that will help someone emulate the success of this video that we have created.

13:55 Lloyd 

So there are four steps, it’s quite simple. The first one is getting people’s attention. So we did this, as we’ve said, with a clip from a viral video we knew was recognisable for our target market in marketing. But you can do this in a number of different ways. So you need to get people’s attention on social, you can use a visual hook.

So in the first couple of seconds of the video, something that people are going to see that’s visually intriguing or interesting. Or you can do what I would call a scripted hook, which is asking the audience a question or saying something in the first few seconds that is going to at least get their attention and do the job of making them keep on watching for a few more seconds.

14:37 Dan

This is another massive thing on TikTok, when you watch TikTok videos, lots of the viral videos have a hook. Like do you want to learn how to do this really good thing in three seconds, and then it like draws you in and gives you like, I want to learn how to do that really good thing in three seconds and then you watch the rest of the video so.

14:52 Lloyd 

Exactly, that’s vital. So people are obviously you’re scrolling through and something has got to give you that bit and your brain is like Oh, this might interest me, I’ll be watching for another two seconds. So that’s one thing, we did it, as I said, by using that viral video clip. But there are lots of ways that you can do that depending on what business you have and what industry you’re in.

The next thing is to hold the attention with quality. So I said this a couple of episodes ago, but your video needs to be as long as it is good. So by holding attention to quality, I mean the video after you’ve got their attention, it can’t then just be you going. So Lloyd’s cleaning services are Hoover’s are the number one Hoover’s in the southeast area, except that one of the competitors, because then you’ve got their attention at the start and you’ve wasted it. Anything that is not interesting, intriguing, or entertaining, for your audience needs to go.

So if you’re new to video, and you’re thinking I’m not very good at this, your video might be nine seconds long. Because you might just think of something where you’re saying, Oh, do you want to learn how to do this? And then you’ve got your Hoover because you’re in cleaning and you do this hack and go click click click. Oh, is that now you Hoover’s two times as powerful? I’m, Dave, get in touch.

And that’s okay. I think a lot of people feel like they have to make long videos because like, well, I don’t really know what to do. So if I just do more, maybe that’s better.

16:28 Dan

I think something you’re really good at Lloyd on this point is having a critical eye on everything. And even when we’re looking at scripts and plans for videos asking, like, why is that bit in there? And it’s I it’s kind of rubbed off on me because when I’m ever watching our own content or our client’s videos, I’m always thinking like, is that bit they’re adding anything, even if we’ve planned for it?

Like, is it actually adding anything or should take it all taking it out, and keep the viewer engaged for longer. So all listeners, please do have that critical eye over your content to cut any bits out that aren’t actually adding anything.

17:00 Lloyd 

And we’ve created social ads for businesses that are over five minutes long as an advert trying to sell stuff. And that’s because we’ve had the budget and we’ve got the creative team to make that whole five minutes. Interesting for the target market entertaining, and they’re gonna keep watching but obviously not all of our video content, let alone your video content is going to be you know, we’ll have that budget and you’ll be able to put that much work in so.

17:27 Dan

So you think everyone should make a five-minute video?

17:28 Lloyd 

No, no, I’m not Dan. Only if you’ve if it’s going to be brilliant for five minutes. Okay. And also maybe just ask someone else if it is brilliant. Because sometimes you can be really proud of something but then you might need a critical eye.

17:31 Dan

It’s difficult though if you are really proud of something.

17:40 Lloyd   

I think you want to show it to someone that can be honest with you and be prepared to take the criticism and kind of prepare yourself because it doesn’t feel nice all the time. But you got a two-minute video, show it to someone and kind of say, is there any part in this video that you think isn’t as good as the rest that might not add much and cut it out.

17:40 Dan

Also, watch their reaction watching it as well. This is something you do with me to see which bits are funny in our content and stuff. So watch their reaction. If it looks like they’re nodding off after a minute, then you’d be prompt that it probably isn’t engaging enough.

18:17 Lloyd

You can watch their genuine reaction. Also, I’ve noticed when I know a piece of video content isn’t good enough. I find myself when they’re watching it go, oh, there’s a bit in a minute as good. Yeah, just wait just after this bit, there’s a good bit. If you’re finding yourself doing that to justify to someone they’ve got to keep watching, you’re not going to be behind the person watching your video content.

So that’s, that’s something that communicates it might need adapting as well. So holding the attention with quality, so as long as you can make it good, but no longer.

And then really important to find opportunities to show how good you are. So I said about the cleaning, I just pitched my moustache in a really strange way.

19:04 Dan

All the viewers you were lucky enough to see that.

19:08  Lloyd 

Find opportunities to show how good you are. So if you are that cleaning, say you own a cleaning company. You’ve already found an interesting way to hook the people in you’re doing something interesting. See, like, do you want to know how hoovered up a pea from 10 metres away? And then you got them in and then they think even me not being in cleaning.

I’d be like oh yeah, I want to see that. And then you show you got this Oh, and then when you’ve got the attention finding a way to communicate why this makes your business good, why they should maybe consider working with you. And because a lot of people can make some interesting video of doing that. And then like, oh, what’s the point of that for my business?

Really? Yeah, that’s interest to someone but they’re never gonna get in touch. Yeah, but then just dropping in something. While once you’ve got their attention say something like, oh, this makes our cleaning teams two times more efficient. So we’re half the price of our competitors. And just a line like that. And then suddenly, it’s that light bulb moment of someone that’s down the road that needs some new cleans for their offices, like, oh, well, okay, it’s half the price that could save us some money.

20:16 Dan

I do think you’re onto something here. I think some people see the success of like, entertaining content and just think that’s it. Just make a stupid video. Oh, did stupid stuff. And then someone watches it, as their target market watches it and sort of like, Oh, that was funny.

20:32 Lloyd

It’s easier to get attention and views than it is to get real business leads of Interest and money, and income, real money that you can have in your business. So although it’s fun, and it’s nice to see your metrics go, we got 10,000 views on a video, and we got 100,000 views, it is genuinely easier to get those views than it is to actually do something with them.

And this is the hard bit. So this step finding those opportunities to communicate and show why your business is good at what it does and how you’re going to solve that person’s or that business’s problems. That’s the real skill.

And then finally, which is another step that needs to happen, which I mentioned at the start creating an ecosystem that basically makes it a no brainer for people to get in touch with you. So around that video. If they watch you thinking, wow, we hoovered that pea up from 10 metres away, and they’re still watching.

And then they hear you and you say you’re half the price of your competitors. And they go, Oh my God, that could actually save some money, and they click or they Google your business name. If the next thing they see doesn’t impress them as much as what they’ve just been impressed by, you’re probably never going to hear from them.

21:49 Dan

That’s a really good point. I think trying to understand the customer journey and what when they’ve seen you hoover that pea up from their metres or hey, what’s their journey their lives.

For example, if you’ve had a TikTok video of hoovering up a pickup from 10 metres away that draws them in, they’re thinking oh, and they’re half the price, they might go to your TikTok page, look at some other videos, do they look like you’re good and know what you’re doing, then click on your website, they might look around and look at your about page and background and look at if you’ve got case studies or testimonials, and it’s building all of these pieces of content that give gives that potential customer what they want along the way to demonstrate that you’re the best solution to their problem.

There’s a lot of work that goes into it.

22:22 Lloyd

Yeah, and I don’t know if you’ve seen these but I’ve seen it’s usually kind of crafty arty people on Tik Tok, that have got like 3 million views showing how they make their product.

And then they put out TikTok saying, like, here are my views, like 3 million views, and here are my orders and they got like four orders. And you think like, I would think if 3 million people watched a piece of my content, I would, maybe I’d get 150 orders minimum, or you know, maybe I’d get even 100 orders and it would be great for my business.

But I think that really shows you can get attention. But if you don’t, if the product or service isn’t good enough, or the way you communicate your product, and service isn’t good enough, once they move from that video, it’s not actually going to do anything to help you.

23:07 Dan

A really good activity to do to ensure you’re giving the potential customer all the answers and information they want is to either speak to your sales team, if you have a sales team or if it is literally just you think back to all of the kind of either question you’ve got from potential customers or queries or objections you’ve had from potential customers because they’re the things that are stopping that potential customer buying your product or service.

And think about how you can create content that answers that kind of questions or queries or overcomes those objections. So for example, one of the questions you might get, you might commonly get is, I’m not sure if this is worth the money, but it seems quite expensive. I’m not sure it’s worth the money. How could you overcome that?

On the product page of your website, you could have a symbol showing all of the things that demonstrate value, like it’s got a 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s got a 50-day warranty. It’s got free returns. It’s made from this special material that lasts like double as long as your competitors, it’s good material, think of all the things and there’s a really good example.

So I remember if you go on like Jim sharks website, they’ve got a look on their product pages. And this is a tip for any industry actually look at the industry leaders in your industry, look at their pages on their website, and product pages and see what they’re doing. Because yeah, they’re probably investing millions in optimising that page. And you can steal those ideas for your page.

24:41 Lloyd 

Yes, to create video content that can have success like ours where we got 70,000 pounds of opportunities within a week. We need to get their attention. We need to hold their attention by only making videos as long as they are good. And then we need to find up to opportunities to show how good our businesses, our products or services is a product or service is learn how to speak.

And then we need to create the ecosystem around that video. So when they move away from that, that video, wherever it is on the internet, that they’re really impressed, and it matches the quality and they become a customer or they become a lead whatever works for your business.

25:26 Dan

I like that my favourite part is the ecosystem part, I must say.

25:30 Lloyd

I think it’s massive because people put massive effort into trying video to bring in new customers and lead video and social. And then I think people give up because they think, Oh, I didn’t get any customers. And it’s, it’s not actually because of the video, they’ve done well with that they’re doing well with their content.

It’s what people experience after, I think we’re helping, or I’m helping our local squash club because we really love the squash club and love playing squash. And they’re kind of wondering why they’re not getting new members. And the squash club is really great. The people are great. But when people get in touch, they usually wait a couple of weeks before they get a reply.

Simple things like that were like, oh, that didn’t match the experience I thought I would get. So yeah, it’s something to think about that ecosystem around your content.

26:17 Dan

Something you could do if you’re thinking maybe something’s happening along the way, my process is actually mapping out the customer journey and thinking, right, what’s the first touch point, they see us or they search on Google? What’s the second they go on our website, and they contact us via this form or call us and actually map that process out and ask each of those steps what could be happening that makes it rubbish.

26:37 Lloyd

That could highlight where you’re missing out on customers that actually want to buy from you. It may be that if they Google My Business Name, we actually come from the second page of Google. So then it’s like, okay, that’s something we need to work on. Because that’s where we’re losing people when they’re trying to get to us.

Or it might be when you click on our website, we’ve still got that old case study that doesn’t really reflect the quality of what they’ve seen in the video. And that’s the first thing that comes up, then that’s what you need to work on. Or oh, we only, we only do 30-day delivery. And now people expect to get it within a day or two.

That’s something you need to work on. I think like saying mapping out that journey, making sure it all matches the quality of the brilliant content you’ve put out is really important.

27:19 Dan

I just want to finish by saying thank you to your anchors, because I’ve noticed and I’ve been sending you stuff, Lloyd. A lot more of you are just posting and screenshotting the podcasts and sharing them online and saying that you’re enjoying them. So to everyone that is doing that. Thank you because it does help us reach more people and get more listeners to this pod. So thank you.

27:39 Lloyd 

Thank you, guys. Yeah, really, we enjoy doing it. And so please do that more. So we can do this more.

27:45 Dan

I don’t enjoy it that much.

27:46  Lloyd

It’s good for me because I get to talk to Dan also he has to talk to me. Yeah, not as good. But I’ve really enjoyed this one. I hope you’ve enjoyed us in your ears. And we’ll see you your ears and your ears next wee

Hopefully, this has been useful and helped you to understand how you can implement a video marketing strategy that generates new business opportunities. If you have any more questions or want to know how Knowlton can support you Start A Conversation.