#17 Small Business Marketing with Brian Groves
There was a time when marketing options for small businesses were terribly limited.
In the 1990's, only mid-sized companies and larger enterprises could afford to produce a professional looking promotional video. The economics have change radically in the past two decades, and there are more options available to small businesses than ever before.
Doug and Bryan discuss the dynamics of creating quality video marketing content for your business.
Learn more at https://junglemedia.com
Doug's business specializes in partnering with companies and non-profits to create value and capture cost savings without layoffs to fund growth and strengthen financial results.
You can find out more at www.TerminalValue.biz
You can find the audio podcast feed at www.TerminalValuePodcast.com
You can find the video podcast feed at www.youtube.com/channel/UCV5a4QbT-dXhpgb-8HJHdGg
Schedule time with Doug to talk about your business at www.MeetDoug.Biz
<<Transcript>>
[Music]
[Introduction]
Welcome to the terminal value Podcast where each episode provides in depth insight about the long term value of companies and ideas in our current world. Your host for this podcast is Doug Utberg, the founder and principal consultant for Business of Life, LLC.
Doug: Welcome to the terminal value podcast. I have Brian Groves with me today and he is actually the owner of Jungle Media where he actually he specializes in helping small and medium businesses create video marketing. And I actually have them online on here today to just talk about the evolution in video production because what we were just talking about before the call is how in 1996 which isn't that actually a little while ago but not that long ago. If you wanted to do any kind of video project at all the cost started at about fifteen thousand dollars and went up from there rapidly. But what's happened is that the cost of creating really pretty high quality video has come down considerably and that's really just changed the whole dynamics of the video marketing industry. You know now of course the one of the things you also have to contend with is that there's a lot of people who are just doing point-and-shoot videos with their iPhone or with their Samsung and a lot of this is proliferated onto YouTube. And so Brian I'd love to get your input, your thoughts and also to help the listeners understand what are the things that make for really compelling video marketing.
Brian: Okay, sure yeah. I think how it might be easiest to begin is to break any kind of content. For marketing purposes that has video as part of it into several categories of how they're used and it's useful I think when you're talking about what your budget should be? or what kind of equipment you should be using? or what quality you need to remember that there's a difference between these three different categories. The first category which has been around forever is what I call immediate content. So this is the typical on tv mattresses are on sale. This weekend 50 off that piece of content announcing the sale of something is very immediate. It's very perishable. It's something that is only useful for a very short period of time so that's the typical commercial. Hey there's a sale this weekend come on down we've got we've only got six left or whatever it is that sort of thing.
Doug: Yeah. Generally speaking I've noticed that the more immediate your your content generally speaking the less effort gets put into production value just because it's going to be obsolete in a week anyway.
Brian: Right and I'll talk about that in a second because there's levels of what is needed in any of these three categories or.
Doug: Gotcha.
Brian: Levels that can be contained in any of the categories but immediate just means you're going to make it. You don't want to spend a million dollars on something that's immediate. Unless by the way if you think about it. Well no, iI'll hold that thought for a second. The second category would be informational or educational or inspirational. This is where you're not necessarily trying to get an immediate sale of come on down to the store this afternoon but you're trying to teach people something. Hey did you, were you aware of the fact that this particular product does this. Were you aware of the fact that this service is available to people. These tend to be a little longer in format so a minute, two minute, three minutes or you know sometimes you'll see people that will talk for 45 minutes about some some topic and the idea is that you're getting people warmed up to you or your business or your service or your product by teaching them.
Doug: Yeah.
Brian: And informing them and educating them. So that's what I'd call the second category of marketing content. And then the third one which is maybe it's been around forever but I think It's fairly new because of things like YouTube and social media and just the internet in general is top of mind content. So this is where you just want to remind people. I am here. I am here. I am here, I am here and you don't expect them to jump at every time you post a little 30-second YouTube video saying hey just wanted you to know I'm out here today in this part of town and you know I saw a beautiful sunrise and here it is. Top of mind is just sort of the equivalent of again, maybe radio advertising where I like to think of the Shane company locally here in Portland is just always on the radio with the Shane company. It's the Shane company, the Shane company, the Shane company.
Doug: And it's always the exact same spot.
Brian: It's always or it's almost the same spot. It certainly has the same flavor to it. it's just like here we are direct diamond importers et cetera et cetera et cetera.
Doug: The corner of highway 217 in Schultz's very rope.
Brian: Across the street from Washington square.
Doug: Saturday and Sunday till 5.
Brian: Yeah we know. We know, we actually have it buried in our psyche because it's top of mind content. They're just reminding you over and over again that they're there and look how well it works because it's the number one that I come up with at least in this market area.
Doug: That has been exactly the same as when I went through undergrad in the late 90s.
Brian: So, so to summarize there's immediate content, there's a sale this week, there's informational. I want to get you to know about something educate you and there's top of mind something you just do over and over and over again. Now here's where it gets interesting is up until 10 years ago or so let's say you really needed to still spend a fair amount of money on any of that content because the price of the cameras, the lighting, the the audio recording, the amount Of people you needed to create professional looking content was pretty steep. You needed to have all kinds of stuff to do that. And of course what happens now is we can take our iphones which just from a technology perspective are incredibly amazing. They have you know HD or 4k video recording quality. They look good, they're easy to hold , you know you can walk around and just do whatever you want with it. So a lot of times people think well then, I guess we don't need professional content anymore and some people, that's it's always the same thing people think. Well now that we have those we don't need this other industry anymore. Well there's a whole bunch of stuff that comes along with what we used to call professional video production that you don't get when you just pull your iPhone out of your pocket. And so here are some of those things; first of all what is it you're going to say? and people don't think about it but if you're just rambling on and there's no point and it's not creating any kind of urgency or creating any kind of memory in the audience. It's a waste of time. It's just annoying.
Doug: Wow and I think that I'm just going to stop you for a second because it's easy to walk over the what are you gonna say but really, really well done. You know kind of, you know basically sales videos you know. I'm thinking like infomercials. You know kind of direct response infomercials and you know some of those other direct response videos. The ones that are really well done can live for years, decades.
Brian: Right.
Doug: And and still be effective you know because I think that's the thing that the kind of the twitter, tiktok, Instagram culture has gotten everybody. Thinking is that oh you know, it's you know if it's old it's no good anymore. It's all about new.
Brian: Right, right.
Doug: But you know right talking about business marketing. If it works, don't ever stop using it.
Brian: Right.
Doug: The only time you ever change anything is when it stops working.
Brian: Right, Right.
Doug: It's all that it is until then.
Brian: No, that's a good point. That's a really good point. So, so I find in my customer base people will fall into two categories: those who have no idea what to say and that's and that's not a put down they just don't, they have all this information about their product or service they don't know what to say. And they think that those are the people that maybe are the hardest to work with. They're not, because then it's a simple process of saying well let's think about your customer. What is it they need? What is it you can tell them that lets them know you have what they need? The other category a person is the person who believes they know exactly what they need to say and a lot of times those are the bigger problems because typically, people in that category think that the way they're gonna convince someone is to tell them everything there is to know and they're just gonna like a plunger. They're just gonna shove all that information in someone's brain and the problem is when you create that kind of content. Unless, it's really compelling and it doesn't have to be high quality, be compelling but unless it's really compelling people tune out after four seconds. They just don't care. There's a we have filters built into our brains over the last hundred years. Anyone born in the last hundred years, that goes if it's a marketing message coming at me. I have filters that just tune it out.
Doug: Yeah, yeah. Although yeah although I was going to say the I think that there's actually one notable exception to what you're talking about though. And that is if there's somebody who actually wants to know all that information, that is a very, very small percentage of your you know of your overall population. But somebody who actually wants to know that will engage. The problem is getting from you know a large group of people.
Brian: Yeah.
Doug: Who are all mildly to not remotely interested down to that really small group because you know if because the problem is of course if you put a big long video out to a lot of people your conversion rate is going to be so abysmally low.
Brian: Right.
Doug: You know, that it'll you know that it'll just it'll be really hard to justify the cost.
Brian: Right.
Doug: And so it's almost like you need to have a sequential journey for your prospects to go through to where you can get them to self-select to the people who are interested in that. That insane level of detail about a particular problem.
Brian: Right, right. So, I have two thoughts to share about that because this gets into you and I discussed earlier. When do you know whether your phone is good enough quality or whether you need to hire somebody or or engage in a higher level of production and the one thing I would say is exactly what you talked about how badly does someone need the information. So if you've ever noticed. if you go out to your auto and you want to try to replace the burned out headlight yourself because you don't want to spend whatever it costs at a repair shop. You will find for every vehicle ever made on earth you will find a YouTube video on how to replace a headlight. How to replace the battery. How to change the fan belt on that particular model. And what I've noticed is I don't care how handheld jiggly the iPhone is. I don't care how bad the grammar is. I don't care how poor the image quality is. If that person has a six minute video that shows me which three bolts. I need to remove and to be careful to move the hose before you do this or you're gonna crack something. I will watch that intensely and you don't need to spend money on producing high quality content to get that point across. But now here's where the marketing part comes in. I've seen many of those videos produced by auto repair shops who believe that because and let's just say they're in Gary Indiana that they showed a video on how to replace a headlight that the world is going to flock to them now and thank them and remember them as the best auto repair shop and they don't people. That kind of content. People think is marketing content and I'd say the only way it's marketing content is if you go to that top of mind. It's like well you're throwing it out there good for you.
Doug: As you as you just pointed out it becomes obsolete very rapidly.
Brian: Right.
Doug: And right unless you have a lot of money you can't. Most people, especially small entrepreneurs, can't afford to buy themselves to the top of everybody's mind.
Brian: Right.
Doug: And it's, it's they'd be much better off if your local auto repair shop. You'd be much better off staying top of mind by having a Facebook page posting stuff on there. It's fine, if it's the handheld video stuff. As long as and here's another thing that I see is a mistake people make if you're going to post top of mind hey I'm just going to give you my update here Tuesday morning I always update you. I see people falling into two categories there as well. The first category is people who fancy themselves as internet phenomenon. So in other words they want to become a personality.
Doug: Yeah.
Brian: They think that people will follow them like that. They can say oh I had ham and eggs for breakfast this morning and I decided to wear my blue sweater and aren't you glad that I'm telling you this. Well quite honestly the only people that can get away with that are very attractive people. Just flat out that people will watch because they're attractive. But it doesn't necessarily sell anything other than the fact that they're trying to become an internet personality.
Doug: Well and because yeah I think the and just full disclosure you know I. The older I get the less and less enamored I'm becoming with social media. I'm you know, I'm attempting to disengage you know progressively more every year. But the way that I describe the contemporary social media phenomena is like you basically have everybody simultaneously trying to be an internet celebrity.
Brian: Right.
Doug: You know or you know or as I was you know. I think you're during the middle of the year when there were all the riots and all that it's like basically you had you like millions actually in some cases probably more likely billions of people all simultaneously trying to be outraged celebrities
Brian: Right.
Doug: On social media and it's like right you can't just you can only have a few outraged celebrities. Otherwise nobody pays attention because everybody's just shouting about the same thing.
Brian: Right.
Doug: It's like trying to do what you're, you're describing.
Brian: It's like trying to make your marketing strategy be on the par with I'm going to become a NBA star. There's 10 million people that would like to do it and a team gets five or ten.
Doug: Yeah, exactly. That's it. Because yeah like you know the way that I like to say it is like let's just do some math here right.
Brian: Right.
Doug: Is you know there's what about 30 NBA teams and each one has an active roster of about 15 people and let's say you have 15 people in the D league. So that means you have the NBA represents the 450 best basketball players in the face of the planet and then your D league represents the next 450 best players.
Brian: Right.
Doug: Unless, you're one of the thousand best players in the entire world you really.
Brian: Out of seven billion people that's right.
Doug: Seven billion people you really have no shot.
Brian: Right, right. So that's why I find it I guess I just consider it to be maybe a learning experience for people who try that on their own to become the internet celebrity with their phone. And it doesn't mean that somebody won't do it because there's always somebody who's attractive enough. Oddball enough, quirky enough
Doug: Yeah.
Brian: Whatever they hit on some formula and that's fine. But if you're small, medium, large business and you're just trying to get eyeballs on social media. This is where I say do not grab your iPhone and put your and make that your brand.
Doug: Yeah.
Brian: Without some help because you quite honestly will likely do more harm than good. If people just go oh gosh I thought I liked that store or I thought, I thought that place was a pretty cool place and you see shaky hand-held. You know what I had for breakfast videos it's going to turn you off pretty quick.
Doug: Yeah well and I think one of the other things too that it's easy for small businesses to forget about is that you know people get really enamored with the hey get your name out. You know hey get people to know who you are but it's like if you can't convert that into somebody becoming a client what's the real value.
Brian: Right.
Doug: So it's like if you're a small business what you should be using your media for is to get some kind of offer out to where you can either you know. Get permission to send people more information. Get them to have a conversation. If that's too high a hurdle to you know to I don't know to come in and just learn about your products or service or something.
Brian: Right.
Doug: Because I think that's the other thing I see is like there's a lot of just...