Reb Risty - Marketing in the Virtual Universe: 5 Reasons Every Business Should Use Video Testimonials

This podcast is sponsored by TalkSpace. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. In TalkSpace, the leading virtual therapy provider is telling everyone, let's face it, in therapy, by talking or texting with a supportive licensed therapist at TalkSpace, you can face whatever is holding you back, whether it's mental health symptoms, relationship drama, past trauma, bad habits, or another challenge that you need support to work through. It's easy to sign up. Just go to Talkspace.com and you'll be paired with a provider typically within 48 hours. And because you'll Meet your therapist online. You don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule. Plus, TalkSpace is in-network with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0 co-pay. Make your mental health a priority and start today. If you're not covered by insurance, get $80 off your first month with TalkSpace when you go to Talkspace.com and enter promo code S space 80. That's SPA CE 80. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com and enter promo code. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 44222. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. My next guest comes up with some great information about marketing, and her name is Reb Risti, and we're going to be talking with her about basically video marketing. Why aren't you using video on your website? So Rev, welcome back. Thanks so much for joining me once again today. Hi Bill, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. My pleasure, my pleasure. It's always, always fun to have you on. Tell us, how has the whole COVID-19 situation affected marketing for your clients? What's changed? I mean, cause a lot of people are saying, you know, this is the time when you should. So what's been happening in your world? Our clients, um, a lot of them are in the professional services space, so we've really been challenged with, um, trying to be timely with the content that we're providing and the clients that they continue to market through everything that happened over the last few months have really um stepped up and then thought leaders um. Be sharing as much information as we can. So some of our largest clients are in the accounting and HR space and as you can imagine, those are two areas that are very important for businesses right now and just stay in front of their, their customers with always the, the aim of a place coming from a place of giving and really trying to help, help people. So hey, you were talking about how your clients have had to adjust some things. Now one question I have is, um, did you, were you, were you ready as a marketing company? A lot of messaging changed from buy our product or service to hey, we're all in this together, um, you know, we're here for you kind of messaging um did that create a a a. lot of business for you to change that messaging and were you ready for that? That's a great question and um we were ready always to help our clients re-message and reposition and most of you know the clients that I work, they, they're professional services so they really understand you know their voice and how they approach things is super important. What we were not prepared for was um. amount of content that would be coming out of our clients um I don't know if it was captured on on right before we got cut off but um our two largest clients happen to be in accounting and finance and they um service multiple businesses helping them navigate the accounting issues, HR issues. Just become a huge, you know, um, talking point for every business and so they're being constantly asked questions every day and then you had the PPP loan coming out so, um, guidelines are changing almost weekly so we were just constantly trying to keep up with just the changes and the different questions that were coming up so, um, we went from maybe posting you know 2 or 3 times a week on social. To posting multiple times a day, posting to the blogs, um, videos, we started producing videos, um, you know, ad hoc on Zoom. So the content and the level which we were producing it, um, grew exponentially just because the information that customers and people needed was just developing on a daily basis. So, uh, that's been fun and interesting. But we've done our clients have been very good, yeah. No rest for rebel marketing. OK, so at the same time, now I live in a vacation kind of town and I notice people are coming out more. Restaurants are starting to open. Businesses seem to be picking up. Is is it the right time for people to now be A moving their messaging back from we're here for you to come and get it if you will. Um, yes, you know, I think at the end of the day we also have to survive and as a business and especially restaurants, you know, are a great example. They need to let people know that they're open and that they're available, um, same with any other type of business, you know, because people have been quiet, they've shut down, but now they're ready to get back. Back out into the market they'll have to be sensitive of course to what people are going through. You don't wanna come off really salesy, but um it's OK to sell your service or product because as other businesses as consumers we understand it's time and we wanna start going out. Um, and purchasing and making decisions again, and I highly recommend any business that is gonna go out there. You need a 90 day plan. Don't wing it. Um, if you have changed up your services or your product offering, make sure it's very clear on what those new services and products are and how they help your customer continue to get through this period of time. That's an excellent point. And the other question I wanted to ask you was, is it now, I mean, I would imagine most businesses didn't have like a COVID-19 marketing plan sealed in an envelope waiting to open it, you know, should a pandemic occur. But should they now, I mean, now we're, and of course we're in periods of social unrest, all kinds of other things that can happen, economic downturns, should they now be prepared for that for the next time it might happen? Absolutely. I mean, if anything, we have to learn from everything that's happened, um, and the world has changed. The way we do business, the way people work has changed. So definitely taking your lessons learned. I say a 90-day plan because I think they will continue to change and they are developing every day. So, what can you learn? How can you evolve? Um, one of the things I've been seeing is we went from a digital world to the virtual universe. So looking at your digital space, you know, from a marketing standpoint, where could you be stronger, your website, your social media, um, other digital. Say because that's where people are looking and they're trying to find you so maybe networking, for example, businesses that heavily rely on uh networking they're having to discover and figure out ways to do that differently so that needs to be part of your plan um and um put into the strategy for your marketing and business development. OK, you've been very indulgent. There was a lot to talk about. I wanted to get your insights. I appreciate it. The main topic you wanted to talk about today was 5 reasons every business should use video testimonials, not just, you know, videos about not all about you, but what other people are saying about you. Why, why aren't businesses creating more video testimonials? What's holding them back and why should they? You know, I think what's holding them back is the same thing um I'm producing any piece of content, especially video, is that there's some misnomers. They think it's expensive, um, they're afraid to ask their clients for testimonials in general and then um they for whatever reason find other forms of marketing tools to use when. Really, the number one reason testimonials should be, you should have them in your marketing list is they're just a great marketing tool. And then video testimonials give you so much more power because the minute someone watches a video testimonial, they are building, you're building trust with them. They see your customer on camera, they hear that person, you immediately. We are building any uh credibility and you're engaging them in a totally different way and what a powerful marketing tool so it really should be a part of your marketing mix and don't be afraid to go out and and talk to your clients because they want to help you you know this is another thing too. I've gotten so many offers of how can I help you and outside of saying. By my services or my product. This is another great way to help not just get help for yourself by getting client testimony. You could also provide testimonials as well to your, um, service providers or products that you really enjoy. So, um, it's a great way to give and get, uh, by, by doing testimonials and certainly making them videos, yeah. That's great. It's a, you know, what you think about it, we've kind of, well, not we kind of, we have been conditioned via things like Yelp. Whenever I go out to look at a new product or service now, I always go straight to see what other people are saying about it because, you know, and the thing about what you're saying is that if it's just typed out, anybody can, you know. Manipulate that or make that up, but if it's a video, it just speaks volumes about the the body language of the person. And so let's ask, let me ask this. Do you need a professional editor for these types of videos? I mean, can you do it with your phone or do you, is it expensive and is it complicated? Um, you know, I think a lot of it is about timing and also, um, So your, your branding and you can do different levels. So I always suggest if you have the time and you can go to your client's location or go in the studio and then get a professional editor to put the wrap it up, you know, the types of videos like that if you wanna put them on your website should absolutely be done, um, with a higher production value, but we recently because. The timing of for example the PPP loans that have come out for my one client we went out and asked their clients to recently received the loans and um we kind of helped through the whole process by our client that we asked them, would you be willing to do a video testimonial and we kept it really simple. All they had to do was get on Zoom because we all know how to use Zoom now and we just gave them yeah we do, right, um, and we made it really simple, uh, under a minute and I was so happy 5 out of 3 out of the 5 people we. said yes and not only did they do the video testimonial on Zoom they turned it around in like a couple of days. We got 3 videos um now we're still working with an editor on the back end to kind of clean it up, put the branding and all that good stuff and call to action, but. It was really, really, um, amazing to see how quickly the clients turn around because they were so happy and that's another key point where if you are asking for a video testimonial or any testimonial, it needs to be kind of within the timing of when you've completed the project or brought them on and they're really happy with you. You wanna capture them at that moment. So, um, those are turned out great and we're getting those posted and we're gonna be sharing and using them again as. A marketing tool, but it's a great soft way to um share your story through your customers. So excited to release those. Now in the in the field of radio and for commercials we have a saying like it's a minute to win it. If it's it's over a minute you're probably talking too much. And a minute in in radio scripting is about 120, about two words a 2nd, 120 words. Is that about the, you know, what's, what's the right duration for a video testimonial and is there a certain way to structure it so it has the most impact? Yeah, you know, I always like that minute time frame people can wrap their heads around that, plus, um, social platforms like Facebook really prefer videos that are under the minute mark, um, so, and it also then. Doesn't make it too onerous for your customer to have to come up with a bunch of content, so I think the minute mark is a great rule of thumb for, you know, social platforms like Facebook or um Instagram, Instagram you can we do more than a minute, so. If you want to do longer, maybe what you might call a case study video, then YouTube is a great platform and then you want to keep your uh video around 10 to 12 minutes. Um, and that would mean more structure, probably a little more coaching to your client, but, uh, after these just really quick tidbits, um, you know, when customers happy a minute and make it easy for them, you know, we gave. Uh, all the clients have simple instructions on how to do it on YouTube and like I said, they turned them around so quickly. I was really excited. So we're able to turn them around and get them out there. Yeah, that's great, and you know we're we're in this society where the message is too long. I mean, you know, billboards say just do it and they're very successful. So I mean it's a very few number of words. One thing I really like about your website is all of the available, you know, offers and. Information available. You have an excellent website which you would expect, of course, since you're in the business and you have you have testimonials scrolling across really a lot of great stuff on your website, but one of the things that caught my eye was the call to schedule a complimentary content audit. What is that? Ah yes, so what we've been finding um that a lot of business, businesses need is they just don't know where to even start, right? And we can create some amazing videos for you, but if we don't really know. What your messaging is or your branding or maybe it's evolving so we'll come in and just do a overview of kind of your digital space so we'll look at your website, we'll look at the messaging, the branding, we'll look at your social and then we pull it all together and it's a fairly uh. Comprehensive but high level uh overview and some recommendations of things that you could be doing um like one of the recommendations we usually give to uh most clients is that, hey, uh, add some testimonials to your homepage, really simple and they're all like, oh yeah, I should do. that it's kind of a light bulb and um from there then we can help clients that really want to dive deeper want to clean up their messaging clean up their digital space, and, and then create some really awesome videos around that to help them um promote and grow their business. And how much does that cost for people to check in on that? You know, if they go to the website, they can click on that tab and we do that first complimentary overview. It takes about 30 minutes. Um, well, on a phone call we do a prep and we'll give them the review, go over it. It takes about 30 minutes and that's all complimentary to them. And then from there of course our hope is that we found something, a nugget where they're like, OK, they really like to move, um, go dig deeper and further, and we can help them on that piece. That's, that's an amazing offer for anybody out there who is, you know, wondering if what they've put together could be better, and the website is really simple. It's rebel Marketing, and I'll spell that for you, R E Bl marketing.com, R E Bl marketing.com. Why aren't you on the website already? It's a great offer, great job, Rob. It's always, always fun to talk with you. Any any last minute. Tips or ideas or precautions for our listeners before uh before we finish up today. Um, yeah, you know, just that, uh, I know it's been a tough time, and marketing usually is one of the first things that gets cut or pause, and if I could just, uh, say anything, um, keep marketing if you know if you're moving forward even if it's just one thing that you focus on like your website or doing email. Just know that your customers do want to hear from you. They're in the same space as you are. We're all as we know, we're all in it together. So if you approach it from a place of giving, it won't feel like, um, promotional or salesy. It'll just feel like a conversation and so just don't stop communicating with your customers, um, keep communicating, keep marketing, uh, so when the guy who does bounce back, you'll be there and people know that you're there. That's great advice and uh you know, um, as I um do things and uh listen to economists and they all say, well, You know, we're we're in tough times, but it's going to get better, and when it gets better, it's going to get better quickly. You're going to be very busy out there. So this is the good time to really examine and assess where you are. So that free audit, complimentary audit, if you will, is a tremendous. Tool for you to take advantage of at rebelmarketing.com. Reb, it's always a pleasure to have you, and you know what, we always learn something. Hope you'll come back again soon and keep us posted on what's happening with you. Absolutely. Thanks, Bill. Have a good rest of your day. All right, thanks. You too. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. This podcast is sponsored by TalkSpace. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and TalkSpace, the leading virtual therapy provider, is telling everyone, let's face it, in therapy, by talking or texting with a supportive licensed therapist at TalkSpace, you can face whatever is holding you back, whether it's mental health symptoms, relationship drama, past trauma, bad habits, or another challenge that you need support to work through. It's easy to sign up. Just go to Talkspace.com and you'll be paired with a provider typically within 48 hours. And because you'll meet. Your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule. Plus, TalkSpace is in-network with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0 co-pay. Make your mental health a priority and start today. If you're not covered by insurance, get $80 off your first month with TalkSpace when you go to Talkspace.com and enter promo code S space 80. That's SPA CE 80. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com and enter promo code S80.