Episode Transcript
Welcome, everybody. We are live. Welcome to today’s session. The man of the hour, though, really is the man next to me on your screen, whichever way he’s going, Daniel Borba, founder of Spark portal. Daniel, how are you doing today, man?
I’m hanging in there. I got the snuffles, but I’m here for this. I didn’t wanna leave people hanging, so we’re here. But, yeah, I’m excited to get into it. I have I have some cool stuff to to share.
Awesome. I’m excited to get into it today. Daniel, for context, give people a little bit of the story behind these ten thousand plus videos, why you and your team are, the ones talking about video, especially for b to b SaaS today.
Yeah. So I started doing video content twenty twelve, and, you know, worked with hundreds of marketers, and we Produced probably over ten thousand videos, in this whole time. And then twenty seventeen, we became an agency, and and, we wanted to do something different. We didn’t want to do project based, so we came up with a video service, solution.
And, we also only work with software and b to b companies.
And, now we’re about doing about a hundred and twenty videos per per month for different clients, and, some months higher than others. And but, yeah, that’s that’s kinda, like, where we are today.
Yeah. I love it. Alright. Well, we’re gonna we are we’ve kicked it off. The Q and A is open, so drop your your questions in there. Before we get to answering some of those questions, Daniel, tell us a little bit about the framework that you guys have developed that kind of surfaced after, you know, doing thousands and thousands of videos for b two b brands here.
Yeah. So, essentially, the plan for today is we’re we’re gonna do q and a. We do some polls and giveaways. But, essentially, we we have a framework that we’ve developed, to help marketers and and, understand how to really properly think through video because the biggest waste or the biggest challenge is not so much to produce a video, even though there’s challenges in producing.
The biggest challenge is to make sure that the video that you’re doing is gonna have a lot of impact for the goals of your company, whether you’re a marketing, you know, CMO or or or, you know, a a marketing manager. So if you see here, what a lot of people do is and I put orange, on my little, drawing board here. A lot of people go from marketing plans and goals. So they they go from marketing strategy.
They go directly to video idea, And that’s all they’re planning. That’s that’s kinda like like, that’s basically how, like, most marketers think through video. And that’s why a lot of these efforts always fail because they spend so much money, because they only get to do it a few times a year. And so there is no process of, like, figuring out what would be the best use case for our company.
And so what this allows you to do is really think through those, ideas. And so, believe me when I’m telling you, this is that sim seems simple, but it’s a huge, huge, framework that you can implement that has or a simple, this is a simple framework that you can implement that that has huge impact on aligning your team, to create videos that are actually impactful. So what we usually, do is, and our clients do is we say, okay. So what are the major marketing, strategy stuff that that you wanna keep us in mind?
Okay. So we are the go to, for example. Right? So that’s kinda like, some companies, wanna make sure that they, that’s their their their goal for the first year or the first two or three years is, like, hey.
We’re gonna become this for a marketer.
And so below that, then we start analyzing, okay. So what are some strategic, POVs that are happening? Do you have any events coming up? Do you have any, are you releasing any new major product?
Are you trying to become what what are you trying to become as a company? And once we have a a little bullet point of strategic POVs, then we make a list of initiatives. And this is this is kinda like campaigns already. This is kinda like, okay.
We we use a lot of email. We we have six salespeople. We have we do a bunch of events. Or we don’t do events, but we do a bunch of ads.
And so this is where we start to figure out how do you how does your marketing how is your marketing currently engaging with customers and prospects?
And so now we have a whole picture before we even come up with video ideas and initiatives.
After we have that, then we start to determine, okay. So we should do video for LinkedIn or no. We should do webinars and repurpose them or well, well, maybe what we could do with a place to start is to do explainer videos.
And so, it it really comes down to that. And notice how I haven’t even mentioned the the, the the competition. Because oftentimes, what we see, a lot of marketers, make that mistake of saying, oh, our comp competitor is doing this, so we need to do a better one.
And that’s good sometimes, but that’s not a good place to start with the whole world.
They just had this viral video. How can we create a version of that? That’s the marketing strategy connecting to the video idea. Right?
Yeah. So oftentimes, you do have competitors, and it’s nice to compete on some some level. But if you notice that your data is telling you that a lot of people are going through your YouTube channel, let’s say, and your, and your competitor has a bunch of videos on their website, you might be tempted to do explainer videos for the website. But if if if the data is telling you that a lot of leads are coming in through webinars and through YouTube content, then you you might not even have to mess around with your website so much as like, video and website as much as video on YouTube.
Right? And so sometimes it’s kinda tricky because as marketers, you get pressure from your boss or, you know, like, oh, our competitors doing this. And sometimes you have to just pick your battles. And, and I get it.
It’s it’s tough. But what we’ve learned is if you focus on on these sort of pillars, right, these four, or three pillars, I should say. Right? One, two, three.
That is you’re gonna have a lot of insights, as far as where you can leverage video. And so and I’m happy to get into it, to kinda contextualize this for each person to ask a question, because you’ll be surprised at where you end up finding out where video can make the biggest impact for your company. Right.
Yeah. And often If you guys have specific I’ll just call that out right now, Daniel. If you guys have specific questions about this framework, go ahead and drop them in the q and a. If you could go back one slide real quick, Daniel, and then I I wanna go to this one.
We’re on the same page there. So what I hear you saying is, you know, take a look at your overall marketing strategy. Right? Are you doing category creation?
Are you trying to come into a new sector as a disruptor?
Are you, you know, are you shifting into a new market? Right? What is what is kind of the main Yeah. What are you know, what are the main things going on at a high level from the company and the marketing strategy?
Then within that, what are the strategic POVs that are that you are executing, and you’re bringing to market with that major strategy? Right? What narrative are you bringing to the market? What message are you trying to convey?
Then you get into down to, okay, what are the initiatives? What are the tactics that we’re using to convey that message? Then how does video play a role in that? As opposed to, hey, we’re trying to do this big thing, this big, you know, what do they call it?
A BHAG, your big, hairy, audacious goal. I forget which book that comes from. Do you remember that that one, Daniel?
What book is that from?
I know.
It it’s one of those kind of planning, books, something like that.
But, anyway, what’s your big hairy audacious goal? And it’s like, boom, we need to do video. Oftentimes, you’re skipping those two, middle steps. So, if you guys have questions on this framework, specifically, that’s great.
Drop those in the q and a. Now let’s go ahead and go to that next slide. We’ve got kind of some areas of categories that you guys might have questions on. So kinda speak to these, and I think that might prompt some folks with, some questions they wanna put in the q and a, Daniel.
So, before we move into this slide, so one thing last thing I’ll say about channels, like Sure.
As you as you did as you have these three things already kinda outlined, before you even discuss, like, the video ideas that you wanna try, you also have to have a discussion internally or with a vendor about what are your strengths and weaknesses internally. Meaning, if you wanna do LinkedIn thought leadership video, for example, but you don’t have a thought leader in your company, then you might not wanna go that route even though the data is telling you to go that route. Right? Or you might wanna find a workaround. And so that’s why it’s very, very important to have these informations because that’s what’s gonna help you determine whether you should say, are we gonna do this big heavy lifting, or should we just go low hanging fruit and just try to capture, ideas, initiatives for video.
Low hanging fruit or or or bigger, effort.
And so, let’s talk a little bit about topics and potential sort of, challenges that people Yeah.
These are kinda some key areas that you see Yeah.
A lot of your clients asking questions and and struggling with.
So tell us about some of these kind of subtopics, if you will, Daniel.
And so I hope I don’t get to get I I don’t, get you guys dizzy, but, essentially because I’m gonna be going back and forth between slides. But, essentially, you have channels and distributions, for example. A lot of people are worried right now. Like, we need to be on LinkedIn, and we need to post every single day or we need to post often. And that’s okay, but we have clients generating a ton of revenue.
They’re not posting every single week on with video. Sometimes, we do. Right? So, again, it all depends on your strategy and your POVs and your initiatives, and you have to map your your video needs to map out, be aligned with those things. And so channels and distribution, it often comes up as a question, like, we want our our YouTube channel to be better. Okay. But why and how?
And that that’s sort of, like, the the the vetting process that I go through my mind before I suggest, specific video initiatives.
Also, a lot of companies have a lot of pressure to use AI and tools. And so what we’re seeing the biggest impact is in leveraging video, AI, not just for volume, but also for, creative excellence. Meaning, how can we use AI to increase the quality of our of our video and contextualizing it for for, audience.
What are some of the formats and styles that we should go after? This is what I was telling you before about understanding your your weaknesses and your strengths. If you are great at producing written content, for example, but but you don’t have a lot of video content, then you might not wanna do a lot of, like, scripted video content. You might wanna just stick with unscripted video content, for example.
Right? Oh, wait. Oh, sorry. The opposite.
And so that’s one area. Another another thing that we get, we often get asked is, like, oh, we wanna do a a a demo video that goes that is this long. That’s, like, ten minutes long. It’s and that’s good, but we usually wanna just concise it.
And so doing more videos, shorter, sometimes a little bit better than, doing long form. I’m not saying later, I’m gonna show you guys a stat, but long form, there’s a place for long form that converts at a higher rate than short form video. And so there’s there’s both k. Again, contextualizing the these initiatives is more important than to pick a style before you even, understand what what the strategic POV is of your company and and some of the initiatives that are you already have running.
Yeah. I I mean, I don’t know. Logan, should I keep going each one?
Or No.
I I think that’s good. One thing I I wanted to launch here, is a quick poll, on video challenges. I wanna see if this lines up with the, the survey that we did as people were registering. So let’s launch this real quick, and it may also give you guys some ideas for areas you’ve got questions. But what video challenges are you facing right now? The reason I wanted to bring this up, I wanted to see, and sorry for the typo there. But, essentially, we surveyed dozens and dozens of SaaS marketers, and we actually asked them to pick from four.
And this one, the winner is winning even between just the two. And we gave them four options. Videos take too long to produce.
We lack in house video expertise.
We don’t have enough bandwidth, and our videos aren’t performing.
Surprisingly enough, the our videos aren’t performing was actually the the lowest one. It was only about thirty percent of folks who, who listed that answer. The top two answers, which were represented by over two thirds of folks where videos take too long to produce and we lack in house video expertise. So it’s about the expertise and the bandwidth and the efficiency that I think most people are struggling based on that survey. How does that jibe with what you have seen, Daniel?
Yeah. I mean, this is so cool. And and, again, it may sound simple for you guys that are listening. Like, it may sound simple.
Like, that’s not oh, that’s not very useful. Like, you’re telling me that all all the people are struggling with what I’m struggling with. But this is why we share this framework because at the bottom at the at the end of the day, it’s really a a strategic problem. Because you have a need for video, but you don’t have a process to make sure that whatever videos you do will bring about the impact.
So now you know that video works, but I will. Like, now I I don’t have enough money or I don’t have enough talent to hire people, and and that you’re you’re stuck.
And so but if you develop initiatives and processes that are mapped out to your budget and to your capabilities internally, then you have no problem. Like, you you can do you can develop these processes and systems, easily. But it’s really it comes down to an alignment issue. You you need to make sure that your initiatives are aligned with, and what I mean by that is if you don’t have budget to hire, an animator to do explain your video, don’t go don’t do explainer videos. Do, maybe thought leadership videos. Right?
Yeah. Just kinda looking at the Venn diagram of
The Venn diagram of what what are what are we seeing, what video is working in our market and what we’re doing now, where we have the expertise, where we have the budget, you know, there might be a great idea, but you just don’t have the expertise or the budget to pull that off.
So what’s maybe more kind of in the middle that that overlaps there? Is that kinda what I hear you saying, Daniel?
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
I love it.
And then another another, another sort of consideration you should have or meaning, how is this important to you? Right? How is knowing that other people struggle with these videos are taking too long is because it’s a highly skilled endeavor, like, doing video.
Oftentimes, there’s more there’s a higher risk to overspend, not only money, but also time.
So that’s why it’s important to start with initiatives that are low hanging fruit. Meaning, they’re not gonna be these blow it out of the water kind of productions. You need to start low and test, test, test until you say, okay. We have something here. Let’s put some money behind this.
Yeah.
And so and I get it. You’re like, well, but we don’t have enough people. Well, figure out a way to just do something that takes no time. Right?
Simple. Keep it simple. And if you do that, then you’re gonna find it it’s gonna be easier to get budget because you already have a study that you did, an example, that you can just present to your boss and say, hey. We need more budget.
Look at this.
Like, if we did it with a high production value, we could probably, like, increase and if we do more volume and more high production value Yeah.
Boom.
Like, we could we can do more You got some data point to make the case, to to because you have to also understand it from a numbers perspective.
Like, if you’re if you’re if I’m funding the my com like, CEO if I’m a CEO of and I and I’m allowing you some budget and you wanna try something new, because that’s often the the the challenge. Like, how can I get more budget to try something? Right? It’s really hard for people to for them to give you a budget if you just wanna try for the first time. But if you present a case and say, hey. We’ve tried x y z. These are the, like, the takeaways.
Can you imagine if you if we shift budget and if we do the x y z, I would love to or or you can say, don’t give us the whole budget. Give us let’s do six months of this. Right? And so then you kinda, like, tie it up. Yeah.
I like that. So instead of, hey. Give me this big video budget or just give me this video budget for this campaign. It is, hey. We tested this here. We did the best we could with the resources that we have and the time available.
We saw these indicators. Let’s do a small test with a little bit more because we could level this up in this way, this way, and this way. You know, that kind of bridges that gap from these big grandiose video ideas that you have in mind and where you’re sitting with limited internal expertise and limited, bandwidth there. I wanna jump to a few questions here.
Charity had a great question. You’re not jumping ahead at all. So Charity’s question here, what are your tips for repurposing a single video into multiple formats? Social clips, ads, onboarding content, etcetera.
Charity Go ahead.
If she can come in. Yeah. She can come in, and and maybe we can chat. I don’t know if, Charity, if you’d be willing to do that. Even if it’s through audio only, you don’t have to come on video if you don’t want to.
Yeah. If you want to, Charity, just raise your hand. Otherwise, we’ll we’ll go with, with the written question here. Totally up to you. Yeah. Everybody, just raise your hand if you want to come on. If not, just drop the questions in the chat or the q and a.
Yep. So, this is a really good question, and I only, I often answer it with a caveat, with a a little, like, hey. We need to know more because repurposing is great.
Hey. One one one second. Charity’s raising her hand. Let’s see.
Nice.
Let’s go here. And I have not done this live yet, so we’re going here. Alright. Charity, you’re up.
Hi, guys.
Hey. Thanks for coming on.
Of course.
So, basically, you it seems like you already have some content that that you’re you’re generating video, but you wanna find out the easiest way to repurpose it through social and other channels. Correct?
Yes.
K. Tell me more about the webinar. How often or or the content that you’re capturing? Is it a webinar? Is it a like, what kind of type what what type of video is it?
Yes. So we do a little bit of everything that you can pretty much think of. So we started back with our webinars, but k. I wanna know, like, how like, what’s the best way to repurpose those into things that we can maybe use for social or things on that line. Yeah.
So how often do you do these webinars?
We try to do one once a month.
Once a month. Okay. And how long are they?
About forty minutes.
K. And how how is it structured? Is it a q and a? Is it a demo with a q and a? Is it a product walk through? Like, tell me a little bit about the actual the meat and potatoes of the webinar.
Usually, it’s I mean, I guess, anything related to the aesthetics industry, and then we never do them live. Well, I’m not gonna say never, but recently, we’ve been doing them prerecorded.
Eventually, I would like to move into, like, live webinars where people can ask questions, and we can kinda answer them there. But Okay. Most recently, we’ve been doing just, like, prerecorded.
K. I would yeah. I would strongly suggest to do some prerecorded, but then also some, live because that also gives you a a good pulse on on how people are referring to different questions and terminology and things like that.
So Yeah.
The feedback loop that you get there, Charity, I think is just fantastic. So I wanna encourage you on the live piece too. Obviously, we love live webinars.
It’s Right.
Yeah. I love it.
Go ahead, Daniel, and let’s talk a little bit to some of the repurposing. Yeah.
Yeah. And so then the last question I’ll ask is, do you have slides in that webinar or no?
Usually Yeah. We do. Person.
Okay. So, my suggestion will be to come up with a restructure a little bit better so there’s a light component, but you don’t have to do that to repurpose it. K? To repurpose it, what I would suggest is to plan it accordingly. Meaning, plan, I would say, four to five different sections where the person covers a specific, question or a specific topic.
And, and then make sure that you’re also recording the person. So, when you do the the recording, not just the audio, but the actual face as well. So then that way, you have three things. You have the audio, you have the video of the person, and then you also have the slides.
And so Yeah.
As separate recordings.
Right?
That’s okay.
Either either separate or together, but at least you have those three three things. Right?
I think Zoom does all three of them if you, if you need, like Yeah.
That’s a good shout, Jared. If you look in your recording settings on Zoom, there’s a there’s a spot to say, you know, record speaker and record, shared screen and then record them all separately. That gives you a lot more flexibility than just, like, if you have the recording from Zoom that has, like, you know, like, standard, you would just get this q and a slide and me and Daniel up in the corner. But because we told it, hey.
Record the speaker view as well, then that makes it much easier to repurpose because we could take a clip from Daniel speaking for thirty seconds. And we don’t necessarily need this q and a slide to show during that. But other parts, we might want the the visual as well. So, yeah, there’s some settings there in Zoom that you could tweak, along lines of what Daniel’s saying.
Yeah. So to recap, number one, plan it already. When you prerecord it or when you do it live, plan already on having, like, smaller segments that go up two to three minutes each or a little bit more, little bit less. That’s fine, but around there. K?
Okay.
Then, I would also prepare the slides accordingly as well so that you have a a visual.
Now that let’s say you do that and you record it, and then you end up with a thirty minute or one hour recording, whatever.
Now, you you can go two routes. If you’re limited internally and you don’t have anybody to to cut it cut the video and add graphics or anything like that, if you don’t have a vendor or an internal resource to do this, then you’re gonna have to use something like Canva or Descript or, like, a video editing tool, you know, either yourself or someone in your team. If that’s the if that’s the case, my suggestion is to use Descript to if Descript allows you to you you upload the recording, and it gives you a transcript, and you could edit, with, like, with the transcript. K?
Now, obviously, there’s a little bit of a learning curve. And if you’re if you don’t have the time to do this, then, obviously, there’s a no go. Right? Okay.
That’s that’s the that’s the non vendor route.
Or or, you know yeah. The the other route is to if you have a vendor if you have a vendor, and and they’re editing your videos, I was my first suggestion is to make sure that the first six seconds of the video are unique to the video.
Make sure that they’re not looking all this with the same graphic or the same color. At the very minimum, come up with, an array of different, I don’t know, four to six different, graphics that you can kinda, like, cycle through so that when you post these videos, they’re they’re not all looking like the same the same color. Make sense?
Yeah. It does.
Because because even if you do yeah. Even if you do have the like, a different question in the first six three seconds or whatever, you still wanna cycle through different variety of of of of content. And then, obviously, whatever works best, double down on that. Create more variations on that.
Okay? And then the last thing is so the the first six seconds, make sure that you stay between one minute, ninety seconds, or less. Never more than ninety seconds, when you’re trying these things out. After you have proved that, hey.
This is working, like, our people are consuming a lot of video, then you can go up in length. If your if your clip doesn’t allow you like, you have to cut it short, basically, then just cut it short and put a little graphic at the end that says, hey. To watch more, keep an eye out for the next video or something like that. But remember, people are consuming the video in their feed, so don’t be afraid of just cutting the point.
Even without completing the point, don’t be afraid of cutting it short.
Yeah. Awesome. Charity, great question. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Alright. Good stuff there, Danielle. Alright. We got another question here from Andrew. Do you have any examples of AI automations that save you a significant amount of time in the production process?
We’ve got another question about AI platforms to generate video. I think the question here is more about, you know, it could be in generation, but also just in the workflow of, producing videos. So what would you say to to Andrew and his team, Daniel?
Well, I would I would love to chat and see exactly, what’s his use case to really properly answer that.
But if you’re wondering how, like, and I guess the question is how to use AI to to save time?
Yeah. And there’s Automation’s in the production process.
Sounds like yeah.
I I don’t look at AI to save me time. I look at AI to give me a comp a competitive advantage.
Right?
Because if I use AI to save me time, most likely, others are also thinking about the same thing. And if we’re all doing the same thing, then we’re just competing for the same thing. And so then all of our videos will look the same, you know. So what we wanna do is we wanna start thinking more strategically than that.
How can we use AI to not only save me time, but to elevate and increase the impact of what I’m doing? And so what that means in video is, maybe what I’ll do is I’ll upload I’ll record the video, upload it to some like a tool like Descript or any other AI tool that can suggest clips. I think riverside dot f m does this as well. Some tools are better than others, and I’m sure there’s others as well.
There’s, tons tons of tools out there. So, again, I think that that’s great, but, the best way to do it is to say, okay. How can we use AI to really elevate the quality and the variety of video content that we can do? And so now I would say, some of the things that we’ve done is, we’re using AI to give us variation of different, graphics to implement throughout the video.
So now we can have more graphics in the videos that we make.
Yeah.
Versus before, because we were kinda, like, rushed, we didn’t have enough time to create, like, you know, in a one minute video, you can only have, like, you know, three or four graphics that you can kinda develop and and finesse and and make Yeah.
Just something that’s gonna illustrate the point that the speaker’s making, like, in a thirty second video.
So it’s not just their face the whole time, like, you got three or four to, like, show a little b roll or show a graphic or something like that.
Right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So now you can have more variations and more suggestions if you can have a if you can, give it enough context, or you can have the AI suggest you graphics to incorporate throughout the video to make it more engaging, especially for social media.
Okay. So you’re say that that’s a really important point. I don’t wanna I I wanna double double click on that real quick, Daniel, because you said not just using AI to help you, generate those graphics, which maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but, asking AI for ideas for what graphics could you put there. And that’s one of the things that I think a lot of people get stuck on with using AI.
It’s like, oh, gosh. I I have this idea. I don’t know how to how to create a prompt. Sometimes, what I will do is I will ask ChatGPT, hey, here’s the thing I’m trying to do.
Help me write a prompt and ask me some clarifying questions that I can answer so that we can then create the prompt. So that kind of backing up one step from, you know, just giving it a prompt to asking it to help you with a prompt, that’s the same thing I hear you saying here with video. Instead of just thinking about AI to help you create graphics or generate the video, use it almost as a brainstorming partner of, you know, what are give me three, you know, three options for, you know, graphics that we could input based on the transcript of this short form video. I I really like that backup step there.
Yeah. If you and, again, this is why I don’t look at AI as a time saving tool. I look at it more as an empowering tool. And so, because if you look at it as a time saving tool only, you’re cutting yourself short from expanding the impact of what you can do.
And that’s really where the money is. The money is into increasing the impact of what you’re doing, because oftentimes, more volume doesn’t necessarily mean more impact. Right? Or more return on your investment.
Because remember, now with AI, it’s easier to create a a bunch of clips and posting them on social media. But if you’re also doing the same thing and we’re all doing the same thing, then it it it’s not any valuable anymore.
Right.
So the volume the volume game is a is a scary one because, it’s a high risk, sort of activity or or goal. Yeah. My what we’ve seen is if you do a strategic approach, where you have a very focused effort into speaking and eloquently explaining the problem that the, that the audience is having And you can very well put it together, then you you you you found that should be the goal, really. Not necessarily do do five videos a week, for LinkedIn or something like that.
You know? The goal should be that’s why having this framework is important because then that determines, hey. If we have this big campaign coming up, the partner program that we’re gonna launch, and it’s gonna be a big, big company effort, that means that our social media content needs to match that. And so we probably need, you know, one video a week going out for the next month on that.
So how can we really drive that point home? So you see now the the thought of the thought is a little bit different than just, oh, let’s just interview somebody, record it, and put it on social media. It’s more more more, involved.
It’s aligned to the strategy. Yeah.
It’s aligned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, another question I wanted to ask you, Daniel. This is actually one that came in through, LinkedIn, before the webinar, but I thought it was a really good one from Rex Bibberson at No Fluff Selling. He said, what’s the eighty twenty rule application in video production?
Right? For those of us, you know, the eighty twenty rule or the Pareto principle, what’s the twenty percent of effort that is gonna generate eighty percent of the results? Because usually, it’s not, you know, one for one. Everything we do has as big an impact on the output, kind of what you were saying there.
Yep. So, basically, with that in mind, what’s the eighty twenty rule, application and video production? Where do we get outsized returns for our efforts by focusing or executing on specific tactics, for video? So what would you say to to Rex based on this question, Daniel?
Yeah. So, again, I I would love to have a conversation, but, to find out exactly what he means. But if I so I have to make some assumptions. Sure. But my, usually, my eighty twenty rule is start where you are.
Start where you are. Meaning, don’t fall for the high production value trap of we are a brand. We do this, and this is at the level that we are.
No. Your message should come through clean, and you should pinpoint your, your prospects, pain points and problems and day to day life, eloquently.
And that oftentimes means, for video. What does that mean for video? Well, what what that means for video is, don’t try to run faster than you can. Create maybe if you could start with webinars, start with webinars.
Repurpose that content for social. Test it. See if it’s hitting the, the if if it’s hitting the nail on the head. Right?
Like, messaging wise. Have your sales work with your salespeople and say, hey. Do we explain the problem properly here that you hear? Now with AI tools, you can you can kinda check that and say, and even don’t even you don’t even have to talk to salespeople.
You can go to the LME yourself and find out, like, what are the terms that people use, that your prospects are using. And so I would say start where you are. Don’t fall for the production value, for the production high production value trap. A crappy video that speaks directly to the prospect and and they feel like you understand them can make you more money and it could be more impactful for the revenue than any other high production value stuff that you could, you can think of.
And so and the same thing goes for volume.
The initiatives that you should plan should always be based on where you are today, not where you wanna be in the future only. Because remember, you you and this speaks to being more strategic than tactical because we for so long, for the past probably seven years, we’ve been too used to just, like, tactical, tactical, tactical, tactical, tactical. We wanna use video. We do social media.
Yes. But why? Are we really like, do we really understand the prospect’s problem? Or are we posting just to post to meet the calendar the content calendar?
And so Yeah.
Like you said earlier, Daniel, when you said a crappy video, you just mean, hey.
This isn’t, you know, maybe as far as It’s a Zoom recording.
Yeah. Like, it’s okay.
But Alright. You know? Yeah.
That’s okay. The message, it’s it’s like when you go to your agency or your design team and say, hey. I need help building a landing page. Okay. Have you written a copy for it? No.
Well, what are we designing for? Right? Like, we can’t If we don’t know what we’re communicating and we don’t know, you know, the the words that are coming through, I’ve heard this before, from an author by the name of Donald Miller. Design builds trust, but words are what sell.
And I think that applies to websites and landing pages.
It also applies to video. Right? The design, the production value can build trust. Right? Don’t get us wrong.
You you guys at Spark Portal, Daniel, produce a lot of high quality videos for your clients day in and day out that are on your video as a service Yeah.
Program. But not But And not every yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Sorry.
But without the the words being ones that resonate, speak to a specific problem, and communicate that clearly, all the production value in the world isn’t going to save you. So that I’ll wrap it up there and let you take it.
So I’m gonna tell you a little bit of story to kinda illustrate this and and and, hopefully, you guys can apply this to yourselves. But a client came to us and said, hey. We had our biggest event last year. And I think this was in April. The they had the event in April, and we were talking, like, right after, like, in May.
And, our point of contact said, you know, like, we used to do, like, two, customer testimonies a month.
But because I’ve I’ve so he he used to be, like, the actual the person in charge of video, and they used to do, like, in person testimonials.
And but in the event where they host like, it’s their own event, right, that they do for the company and their and their own industry. It’s a big, big initiative. They said that, funny enough, a lot of their best customers came through YouTube first or or or YouTube was a pit stop for them to find out who they were before they even talk to sales. Right? And so then the guy told me, it’s like, it dawned on his name is Kevin. It dawned on me that, man, we it’s been a year and a half, and we haven’t even done any case studies.
And our client our our panels that we hosted in our own event are telling us that they stopped by YouTube, and that was, like, a big one of the biggest decision maker factors in hiring us and working with us. And so then I said, perfect. Let’s do some case studies. Like, yeah. But it’s gonna be really hard because we need to have them on board, and we need to schedule that and have a videographer. I said, no. Let’s just do Riverside.
If we prove the case study over six months to a year and we do twenty four again, then we can go to your boss and say, hey. We need this. We need to elevate this. Because at the end of the day, your salespeople are gonna leverage that video no matter what, whether it is blurry or not.
If it hits the nail on the head in terms of messaging, positioning, and problem, and and it resonates with the audience, it doesn’t matter the quality of the video that much. Right? Especially nowadays where we can add graphics and kinda, like, you know, put some lipstick on it. So, again, the idea is here to stay strategic, and I know that not every initiative needs to be crappy video.
I’m not I’m not advocating for that. But we’re we’re talking about what’s the eighty twenty percent rule here, and the eighty percent eighty to twenty percent rule is start where you are and don’t worry so much about the quality of volume just yet. We’re about developing processes and systems that allow you to leverage video content, and that allow you to really focus on content that resonates with your audience at in in the places and channels where they spend time.
Right? And so in other words, I mean, I yeah. I can go on and on this, but case in point, we now we’re doing, like, two to three video case studies per month. Right?
Can you imagine if can you imagine if we would have said, no. Let’s do, like, in person. They like, they would have spent way more unnecessary money. We wouldn’t have gotten nowhere near as many people.
Yeah.
And also the the caliber of, customer testimonials would have dropped because how many clients how many other customers are really willing to, like, book a time, have somebody fly in? It’s just a way heavier lift.
And just to Yeah.
Your conversion on that, even on your best customers is gonna be much slower. Yeah. And I love your shout out with, Riverside. I’ve used that for podcast. It’s great for customer testimonials, customer interviews.
Super intuitive. Super.
Very easy to use. Grab the link in the chat if you guys wanna try out Riverside as well. I love Riverside for recording. I love the script for editing. Those are two tools that Daniel and I use all the time. And that kinda, leads us into another question from Andrew. Andrew, thank you for the the multiple questions here.
He said, Daniel, you mentioned producing a hundred and twenty videos a month. That’s an impressive volume. Golf clap there. Could you share the size of your team supporting that output and how the workload is divided between AI tools, staff, vendors, and and freelancers a bit?
I love that question. We’re geeking out. So the way that we structure our team is very simple. And, we have a creative director that’s in charge of, planning and, conceptualizing the these video ideas.
Below that, we have a project manager that also it’s like a creative project manager. Right? Sort of like a a person that it’s more creative and not so much project manager. And then below that, we have associates that, animate, edit video, content writers, and designers.
And our process goes, depends on the video. But, essentially, each person uses AI to speed up their their, their step of the process.
A lot of marketing teams are making the mistake of having AI do the job of, like, my team. Right? Like like, a director, manager, creative direction, project management, designer, animation, graphics, video editing. But that’s not the way to do it.
Right now, AI is not there just yet, and it’s probably not gonna get there until a few years from now. So what what you have to do is develop the what I just told you and say, okay. How can I think of, like, a creative director and say, okay? Give me an idea for creating a video this long that covers these points.
Give me some visual ideas. Okay. Once you do that, then the next step is to design the graphics or or record the video, let’s say. And so then you, you have AI create the the the script, and you kinda edit it based on, you know, your knowledge of of your product and the positioning, the initiatives, and the strategy, kinda what we talked about.
Then after that, you you act as a graphic designer. So, okay, create the graphics, and then you record the video, and then you use a tool like this script to kinda, like, put it all together.
But do you see even that sounds very complex. And so, yeah. So, essentially, each role needs so at the very minimum, you need a creative director sort of step, Then you need a a a graphic designer step, and then you need a animator slash video editor step, to help you, co complete the process there. So I don’t know.
Again, I don’t know if you’re asking about, like, you know, specifically that, but, that’s kinda how we look at AI and then how we look at, how our team is structuring the team.
And so for each different videos video video category, you have different people being involved. Right? So for example, for webinar, we don’t need a designer because everything’s already kinda designed. The lower thirds, everything’s already kinda designed, so the designer doesn’t do anything different.
Now if we wanna repurpose that webinar into, then we create, like, a hook graphic, and we do those things. But, again, depends on the video style. So, and to give you more context, like, our team supports a pod. It’s usually composed by three animators and and video editors, one designer, one project manager, and one creative director.
So a team of six six support a pod of twelve to fifteen, clients, and we usually do about, yeah, about a hundred videos per client, per pod.
And, again, those those videos are all sometimes are explainer videos, sometimes it’s webinars. So I would say a good majority, probably forty percent is, like, promos and explainer videos. The rest the other, like, twenty, thirty percent is probably webinar, social media sort of, videos, and then the rest is, like, you know, videos for for events, sort of, like, random sort of video requests that don’t fall into those two categories.
K. Awesome.
Sorry if that’s too too geeky, but that’s kinda, like, what I’m trying to do. That that’s why I like to talk to people because I usually get more context. I can really give you, like, advice that is specific to that use case.
Daniel, where do you see SaaS video marketing heading in the next two to three years? Kind of alluded to a little bit of kind of what you see coming, with AI, but what are the things that you think maybe folks aren’t talking about now that we’ll all be talking about when it comes to SaaS video in two to three years?
I think, segmentation is gonna be huge.
So What do you mean by that?
Companies are gonna be able to go after several segments of their market, so expand beyond because, usually, that’s a challenge. Like, they they wanna expand, offer the same solution tailored to each vertical, for example.
And so, the challenge with video is usually, how can we make this video about this solution applicable to multiple, verticals or multiple use cases or or a case study? How can we do this case study but also, you know, their, this type of company, but they could I could see how this story could also align with this other vertical that we have. Right? And so that’s always been a challenge.
And I think that in terms of video, that’s gonna be easier because, you’re gonna be able to do more volume, And that’s why, it’s gonna be kinda challenging. Sorry. It’s gonna be a great solution. AI is gonna allow teams like us to to to be more valuable to our our clients.
And, also, if if you if you have internal, teams that or, you know, a freelancer that use for video or internal person to do video for you, they’re gonna be able to customize it, easier than before. In terms of video content, so that’s kinda like the, you know, high view, you know, thirty thousand foot view of of what where I see things going. We’re gonna see more custom customization. Right?
So in other word and, again, this goes this is in line with what I was telling you. Volume is great, but not for, like, today’s world, meaning, where you just do volume for everybody. No.
The volume should be contextualized to the person. Meaning, if, if you do, let’s say, two videos a week, you you post on LinkedIn and you repurpose it on YouTube and you repurpose it into different channels.
Volume for you may mean you can you could you will still be be able to do that video, the the same amount of video. But now you’re also repurposing it, right, through only for the specific, prospects, right, that you have in mind. So in other words, before you would get ten thousand views total a month or, you know, a hundred or a thousand, whatever your benchmark is, your views are gonna probably drop because you’re not having to reach this huge mass. Now you’re gonna have access direct directly to that prospect. So in other words, you don’t need the numbers. You don’t need the volume. You just need the the messaging needs to resonate to that to that one individual.
And in many cases, it’s not one individual. It’s like a like a a company. Right? But the the point is still the same, which means you you’re gonna have to shift your mindset from when you do this big effort to get these views.
Yes. Views is is great, but only if they’re the right like, only the right people are giving us are are being, viewing our video are are viewing our video. And so, it’s only relevant if if the video are being viewed by the people that matter to us. And so that’s kinda like where I see things going.
Even though, obviously, there’s a case for the top of the funnel, it’s always gonna be the top of the funnel. But we’re what we’re talking about here is where we see video going. Well, we see video going where it’s gonna matter the most. Meaning, what are those biggest deals, those biggest brand names that we want?
How can we create video that’s tailored to them over the next three to six months?
And, and while we still keep doing our webinars, but we’re still doing all these other things. Yeah. And so that’s why I always see Voluum not as a as a top of the funnel thing. I see Voluum and, like, how can we create more Voluum, like, at the bottom of the funnel so that we can Yeah. Like, secure some some some revenue. Right?
I love it. We’ve got about six minutes left here. Couple of things that I wanna mention, a prompt that might be able to help folks here. And as you were talking about kind of middle and bottom of funnel, customer testimonials are a great place there.
Right? Before, you know, top of funnel, you want to advance your POV. You wanna advance what is the narrative? What do we see as the shift in the market?
What is kind of the old way versus new way? There’s lots of that. Right? Customer testimonials are kind of designed for well, I I think you might be able to solve my problem, but can I trust you to solve my problem? So you’re not necessarily leading with customer testimonials at the top of the funnel, but they’re great middle and bottom of the funnel. And I found a question, I think this was from Reddit. What are some effective questions to ask, for testimonial videos or how to how to structure the testimonial videos, maybe questions to ask and, lengthen that sort of stuff.
So, Daniel, I want to kick it to you in one second.
Before I do, though, I want to drop a link in the chat. You can get access to a ChatGPT custom or excuse me, ChatGPT deep research prompt if you, click on, the link in the chat, fill out that quick form. But, Daniel, talk to us about this question that was surfaced from this research about customer testimonials, man.
Yeah. Yeah. So customer testimonials are one of my favorite videos and, to to always suggest. Because number one, now we have the tools to capture those testimonials without having to, like, fly in town and get them to you know?
And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do that. You could do that still if if that’s a possibility for you.
But for most of us Maybe it’s yes and instead of either or.
Yeah. That’s okay.
So, case studies and and testimonials are great. But remember, you always have to battle with, the distribution aspect, meaning you have to make it concise, shorten it to be able to distribute it to so on social media, on website, on websites and and things like that. But now that we have chat GPT and all all these LLMs, you no longer have to do that only. Meaning, LLMs are now referencing your content in their in their, inquiries.
Right? To to their to their inquiries to to their prompts, the people that submit their prompts. And and so now there’s a lot we’re we’re starting to see in all of our clients that leverage, content libraries and also case studies, we can actually post the whole freaking interview. Right?
So the whole twenty, thirty minute recording, we can obviously, we polish it up. Right? Like, we don’t we don’t post stuff that, like, that’s gonna make him, look bad or whatever. But now we can publish the whole interview because the LLM takes care of analyzing it and showing the relevant part to whoever’s doing the inquiry.
And so, yes, you still do you still do the the the whole twenty minutes and and you take and you grab a two minute video, right, that that’s like, hey. Here’s a case study, and it’s on your website, and it’s on your YouTube, and it’s it’s, like, also on your LinkedIn, and your salespeople use it to to show it to to to distribute it to their prospects as needed, right, as a sales enablement tool. But guess what? Now because LLMs are crawling your website and reviewing your whole script, the whole transcript of that interview, you can actually post at the bottom of the page. You of that case study, you can post the whole video interview, the twenty minutes recording, and the LM is gonna take it and contextualize it to the, to the prospect.
In which case, the you don’t even know that there are prospects because but, usually, people just search their stuff before they even reach out to you. So so that’s a huge, huge, huge learning, and insight that now is the time to and we and and remember how we’re talking about volume? This is why volume is tricky because now I’m saying now I flip the coin. I say volume.
Go post it. Right? Post it. But I’m not saying post it on LinkedIn. Don’t post a twenty minute recording on LinkedIn.
What I’m saying is the allow the LLM to search through your long form interview.
Right? And so, and you can also do that on YouTube.
YouTube and on your website, And that also so we’re talking about, case studies and and testimonials. You should also do that with your, knowledge center if you have one. Make it public. Make it available because the elements are not referencing it. And it’s a huge, huge like, again, a person doesn’t go search like that.
Only psychos do that. Like me, like, I do that. Like, I’m like, man, I wish there was a tool that I can search the whole library for this question that I have. But most people don’t do that.
Most people just go through the YouTube channel, watch a few videos, and if they don’t find it, they just kinda move on. But now with through the LLM, they’re going through Jati Bitti or Claude or whatever, and they’re searching, hey. Here’s a problem that we have. Find me three or four vendors that are kinda talking about these topics.
But because LLM is so good at analyzing on all this data and contextualizing it, now this is your opportunity to actually post these long form videos. Again, not on social media because that’s not the place, and not on YouTube Shorts because that’s not the place. But maybe you could create it you could post it as a series on YouTube as a long form case study, like, you know, or not even case study. You could call it customer interviews. Right?
And that can becomes its own library. It’s it’s repurposed on the website, and then it’s also repurposed as shorts on YouTube, only, like, sixty seconds or less. But, again, that I don’t wanna go go too crazy, and then we have to move on. But but I hope that you get the point that now we have more tools and and that you can actually do long form video. And and and then as we see in this graph, even though it’s seventeen percent is let the engagement, it’s less for longer form video, that’s actually a good thing. Because if somebody sticks around for watching that long, that means that that thirty eight percent is probably your thirty eight percent that you should focus on.
So, again, as long as you’re in the right places, the length is always it’s always, applicable to the to to the place that you’re consuming the content or that they’re consuming the content. I love that. I love that.
There’s a big opportunity. If you’re doing long form video and you’re transcribing those and you’re putting those on your website and on YouTube, there’s a huge opportunity there. Thank you everybody for the the questions today, Charity, Andrew, and others who were asking questions. We appreciate it, and thank you guys for everybody who submitted, questions and engaged in the chat there. We really appreciate it. Daniel, thanks for being the man of the hour, for fielding everybody’s questions from LinkedIn, from live, from audio, and all of that. I really appreciate it, man.
Thank you. Thank you. And thank you guys for coming on.
Awesome, guys. Until next time. We’ll see you.
