Full Written Transcript of The Episode

MAtt: Every social media channel is now a video platform. Video is dominant and it’s not going anywhere. If you’re not doing video, then you are not growing your business like you could. On this episode of Midwest Mindset, we’re going to give you the three keys to a marketing video.

That actually works. Hello and welcome back to.

MAtt: Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing simple and easy to do for any business. I’m Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative, where we believe that every business deserves affordable and effective marketing.

Yeah, that’s just what we believe. It’s what we stand for. It’s our code. It’s our code motto. Yeah. Creed, Creed. It’s our creed. Yes. You were a big Creed fan. Ah, yeah, I love Creed. I mean, Creed is great. Creed is great. I don’t know why people criticize Creed. Why? I don’t get it. Yeah, neither do I.

Austin: His voice is incredible. Yeah.

MAtt: It’s like. It’s like Pearl jam part two. Who? What? Why are we judging you?

Austin: No. Yeah, yeah, I’m with you.

MAtt: Yes. Things got weird when you, like, fell off a building and China or wherever he was. And then the whole religious thing kind of got mixed in there.

And I don’t know what’s going on with that. I don’t care. People who I don’t get, people still say.

Ben: They’re like a Christian rock band.

Austin: You know that one of the.

MAtt: No.

Austin: He left he. No, he never was. That was like all.

MAtt: His dad was like a pastor or something. And he, like, rebelled against that by not doing the opposite of that. And then I think eventually he returned to his faith.

Austin: But like the last time I saw him, he was like a mug shot and he was like poor and basically homeless in Florida.

MAtt: I got to meet Scott Stapp.

Ben: I’ve met him. Great.

MAtt: You did? Yeah, I’ve met Scott Stapp. So when I used to do, I was the voice of Sturckow for like seven, eight years. So I introduced all the bands on stage, right.

Read announcements. So people hated me when I’d be like, hey, sorry, but there’s a rain delay. You know, uh, that guy was that guy. Um, and I’m standing there one day, and so a friend of mine, she loves Creed. So I got her tickets, and we’re standing in, like, backstage right next to the stage. She smokes, so she pulls out a cigarette.

She doesn’t have a lighter, and I’m like, well, shoot, I don’t have a lighter either. And then all of a sudden this hand pops in. He’s like, hey, here you go, lighter. And then lights a cigarette.

We turn around, it’s Scott Stapp, and we start talking to him. He’s literally probably top three most nicest celebrities I’ve ever met. Like Bob Saget was one. He’s the nicest. Like, Bob Saget was just incredibly nice. And I would put Scott Stapp up there at number two. Incredibly nice dude.

Austin: He still went to the bar and had a beer with Bob Saget. Yeah.

Ben: Um, Scott Stapp still has a great voice. Still singing really well, dude. Yeah.

MAtt: There for that album that came out, that broke. That album is great. Oh yeah.

Ben: They had the first.

Austin: Real quick though.

Ben: Have you the Creed podcast?

Austin: Because I got a, I got a welcome to Creed.

MAtt: Welcome to the Creed fan club podcast.

Austin: One of the best sketches, um, in my opinion ever is MADtv, the Creed sketch. And they changed the song to My shirt’s wide open and he’s on a cliff. And the guy, like, playing him. It’s his shirt’s wide open. Blowing in the wind. Yeah, it’s it’s hilarious.

MAtt: All right, so it’s time to introduce everybody and then get into today’s episode. Uh, up first we have, uh, Ben Tompkins. Ben looks like the kind of guy who owns a bowling jacket and bowling shoes. He wears them all the time, but never goes bowling.

Ben: I think bowling shoes are an underrated shoe. They are very comfortable. And I can just slide. You can.

MAtt: Slide? Yeah, I just.

Ben: Get a good momentum going. And I run down the hall and slide the rest of the way.

MAtt: Slide saves you a lot of time when you’re sliding because you have to walk. It’s nice. Exactly. Yeah. Uh, bowling shoes are weird. That’s weird that we share shoes.

That’s just kind of an odd thing. And then the bowling balls, too. I, you know, you’re eating. You’re eating fingers.

Fingers sticking in a random three holes and then keep eating, eating, eating. It’s just kind of what were we thinking?

Ben: Think about when.

Austin: You used to be able to smoke, too. Oh, yeah. So then you’re adding the cigarette smoke on top of it.

Ben: Yeah. Bowling alleys.

MAtt: Like I think back to bowling we did because we were on the radio show. We hosted a weekly bowling league. I look back at it and I’m like, how did I not die? Like, yeah, you know, I mean, that’s just all right. So up next we.

Austin: Have Covid started.

MAtt: Up. Next we have our producer extraordinaire, uh, Myron McHugh. Myron, he looks like the kind of guy who hums Britney Spears songs annoyingly loud at work every day.

Ben: But then when you call him out on it, he’s like, no, I wasn’t. Yeah, he denies it.

Austin: Denies denies it. Yeah. He gaslights.

MAtt: Mm hmm hmm hmm hmm.

Ben: That’s oops. I did it again.

Austin: That was.

MAtt: Oops. I did it again. And, uh, last but not least, we have Austin Anderson.

Austin, uh, he’s the kind of guy looks like the kind of guy who he can, knows what type of wood it is simply by smelling it. Yeah. You do, I love that. Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. You definitely.

Austin: Look, I’m gonna start pretending I have that power. Just that you start smelling wood.

MAtt: Unintelligible.

Ben: That’s an oak, you know?

MAtt: Yeah. People will believe anything you tell them. I’ve told people a lot of fables.

Austin: Just to see when.

Ben: You call them fables and you call them fables, it’s not as bad as if you’re like, say, they’re.

MAtt: Not lying. It’s just a fable.

Ben: It’s a fable.

Austin: Fable sounds pleasant. Thank you.

MAtt: Yeah, well, thank you for lying to me. All right, so today we’re talking about the three keys to a marketing video that works. Now, guys like marketing, uh, on social media, every social media platform, as I mentioned in the intro, is a video platform.

Now, um, I want your take on, like, how you see video. Uh, just it’s everywhere. I mean, you talk about reels on Facebook and Instagram Reels or, you know, vertical shorts on TikTok, which is just a dominant video channel. You have YouTube with, you know, the regular videos and the YouTube shorts, uh, just blown up in the last three, four years.

Covet especially was like a, uh, accelerant added to this because I already needed video because you couldn’t meet in person and do all that. We do have our meetings by video now, you know, on zoom, uh, probably most of our meetings.

So video on social media, though, with marketing in particular, uh, what are you guys seeing as like the fails and the successes.

Ben: I think I mean, it’s a it’s a personal connection. I mean, you have this a way that it’s almost like you’re talking directly. To the customer, or the customer is talking directly to the business or whatever.

So it’s an opportunity to build that unique personal connection, probably more so than any other form. But I would say the oversaturation and just not going into it with a good strategy, it’s so easy to say, well, it’s just a simple video. I’ll pull up my phone and just and record something.

And if you have bad lighting, bad angles, bad messaging, um, it needs just as much practice and rehearsal as other things. And we’re going to get.

MAtt: Into that today. A lot of.

Ben: Businesses don’t put that time into it.

Austin: I don’t think that people like everyone’s making videos. Right. So it’s oversaturated. Um, but a lot of people don’t realize how much work goes into making really good videos with the lighting, with the camera, with the editing. Um, you know, I think a lot of people don’t have an understanding of, um, how long it really takes to edit something that’s really good. If you want something long, it’s the.

MAtt: Time and intent and effort to make something good that’s going to actually work, to do it right, right, right. To do it right. It takes work. So let’s get into some of the things like the statistics on video are crazy. I don’t have them pulled up in front of me right now.

But like I mean, it’s like something like, you know, 76% of consumers watch a video over reading, like people only read for 26 seconds and then they start scrolling, you know, and videos are I think it’s like 70 or 80% more likely to buy your product if you have a video. And if you don’t have a video for your product, most people will just skip. It’s like 77% will just skip the product entirely. If you don’t have a video for.

Ben: It, I would say. I mean, that’s 100% true and video is definitely the dominant form here. But that doesn’t mean to just nix the written word.

MAtt: No, we’re not because.

Ben: You need it. You need to know, I mean, your ideal customer is they might prefer that reading aspect. You need more than video. But yeah, you do need both. I look at that.

For me personally, Twitter is just a gold mine of entertainment and hilarity and all these things, and I much prefer reading those things than just watching a video personally. But that’s me, who I am, and there are a lot of other people.

So identifying who your customer is is the first step in knowing like what types of videos, what should I do with the written word, that kind of thing. Well, you have to.

MAtt: Yeah, you have to have both. So the written word and video both are scanned by Google. So search engine optimization, let’s say you type in a search for like cupcakes and you’re based out of here where we are Omaha, Nebraska. So you need written content for cupcakes and you need video content for cupcakes. And you know, we’ve talked about how podcast is like the most affordable and effective marketing tool.

That’s because if you do a video podcast, you get a video, you get audio, which is also search accounts for your your search engine results on on Google. And you get you can pull it into a transcript.

So you’ve got a blog and you can create all these video shorts from it. I mean, that’s what we do here for for our clients at Two Brothers Creative. Um, but it is you can get so much like ten x value out of just one 20 minute podcast episode, you know, um, so that’s why it’s super effective.

But you do need both. You have to have the written. You have to have the video. Yeah.

Austin: Um, I just think that with, uh, you choose video over the written word, if you really want to convey a certain tone, you know, because a lot of times, uh, if you read it, people will put their own tone to it. So I think if it’s really important with, like, how you want it to sound.

Ben: And I just think that today with AI and how AI is incorporating now into video production and with written the written word, there’s just such a tremendous opportunity. When you have a good writer, that good writer can just well, do be so effective. And same with a good video editor.

So you have like I who’s editing videos now, that’s going to be a very basic fundamental edit as opposed to if you have an actual video production guy or person, woman, uh, animal, anything, uh.

MAtt: Magical beast.

Ben: Um, who can actually put in the, the flair and the things that are going to attract and create that tone, then it’s going to be so much more effective.

MAtt: So like the template for us is like, okay, let’s say you want to do something for content, right? Write it out. Right. Write it out. Boom. You’ve got a script and you’ve got that. You can turn into a blog, right? You can take that script. You can use AI as a tool. Say, hey, I want you to incorporate these keywords into what I’ve written. That way it has your voice as your perspective, your unique everything, right?

But it also is going to be factored in for SEO. Uh, then you have that script, right? It’s prepped. It’s ready to go for SEO. It’s a blog post. Take that, throw it in your phone teleprompter script, and you do that as a video. And then the video, you take that, that the script and you paste the script, you copy and paste it into the description on YouTube.

You add all the keywords in your tags, and now you’ve got a video and you’ve got a blog post, right? You’ve got written content. Then you can take an AI platform and you can take that blog and say, I want you to chop this up into seven Twitter posts, uh, one LinkedIn post, uh, one Facebook post, and boom, boom, boom. It’ll do it.

Now, those are rough drafts. You don’t actually use those rough drafts.

Austin: Very important.

MAtt: You have to go through them and edit them and add your perspective and make sure, because you don’t want to use AI for the final version of anything.

Austin: They love the word delve.

MAtt: Delve. Yes.

Austin: My God.

MAtt: So you have to go through, you have to edit it. But that is an efficient way for any business owner to get a bunch of content. Right.

Austin: And then remarkable how it. How everything weaves together. You can take.

MAtt: That video and then you can use it. There’s one, uh, a platform. It’s called opus. And you just upload the video and say, I want you to chop this into ten video shorts, vertical format so I can post them as Facebook Reels, Instagram, blah blah blah, boom boom boom. It’s going to edit it for you. It’s going to add the animated titles, and it’s going to rank the videos on how they would perform for SEO, for search engine optimization.

So there are ways you can I mean, what how much time is that going to take you an hour maybe. And now you’ve got an entire week or week’s worth of content. I mean, an hour or two for an entire marketing plan of content marketing plan for a week seems like a pretty good deal, you know?

So that’s kind of just a, you know, a format, a template that you can follow as a business owner. But let’s get to the three keys to making a marketing video that actually works. First up would be the quality of the look. So videos now are your first impression.

Um, one of my like pet peeves is how people, uh, don’t take into consideration how they look on zoom, you know, like there’ll be a, you know, from home and it’s just a crappy background. Um, you know, I’ve, I don’t have, uh, maybe we can post the food.

Austin: What about when they change the background? But it doesn’t work, so they’re just going in and out of.

MAtt: Yeah. And, like, don’t blur the background. Just just set yourself up so it looks professional and don’t use any background filter, any of that stuff, because that doesn’t look good. It never looks good unless you’ve got a green screen behind you that’s lit properly so it can key it in, and there’s no fuzz and all that stuff. It’s it’s not going to look good. Now that’s your first impression in every zoom meeting right.

So think of that. If you walked into an in-person meeting and it was just a shit show going on behind you, that’s the impression they’re going to have. So like my office and we could probably pull a picture for the video and throw it in here for this episode and if you want to see it. But like my office, I literally designed based on how it looks on zoom, because that’s where all my meetings take place and it works.

So I have a high quality background. I’ve invested time and effort and money into making this look professional and legit. So then when I’m going to a customer saying, hey, this is the quality of services we’re going to provide. I’m also reflecting that quality in the video.

The same premise is true for any video that you post on social media, right? So Ben mentioned, like, I’m going to grab my phone and do a quick little video. Now, you know, maybe behind the scenes stuff on TikTok works and performs. But like overall you want to look professional, right?

You don’t want to look, um. Too cold and, like, too polished, right? You want it to look real and reflect you, but get a ring light. It’s like 15 bucks. Yeah. Uh, shocking.

Austin: How inexpensive they are.

MAtt: It is. And they’re easy. I mean, in fact, I recommend getting two ring lights. You can do actual proper lighting. So it’s called the triangle. So you have like your key light in the front and you have your fill light over there.

So you have two lights lighting both sides of your face evenly. And then you have a backlight that’s going to light your hairline in the back. That’s proper lighting. And I mean, even if you did three ring lights, it’s what, 30 bucks now? 45 bucks, you know, so you need to light it. Well, pay attention to your background and what you’re doing now.

Phones today. Uh, the sensors have passed dSLR cameras like standard cameras. So if you have a new phone, you can use your phone. It’s just you need to set it up properly so it looks good in the back. It looks good in the front. You look good. It reflect yourself. Because this is the opinion.

This is the first impression people are going to have from you and it’s going to stick forever.

So if you want that first impression to be shitty, yeah, go out in the garage where you got freaking bunch of crap behind you and you’re walking around moving your camera. If not, then maybe, uh, maybe go for the professional look.

Austin: Or like the upshot, the classic upshot up the nostrils and everything. You’re like, my favorite is the 30 minutes.

MAtt: People who don’t know how to take a selfie, and they hold it way up high, and then they go, yeah, smile. And like, they’re cut off, like here and there at the bottom. I’m like, dude, what are you doing?

Austin: Yes. And stop taking headshots in the car and the bathroom.

Ben: I just throw.

Austin: Headshots in the car, like everyone, like for social media, their profile pic, there’s so many people. It’s just them doing a selfie in their car.

Ben: Oh, and the bathroom. I’ve seen a lot of bathrooms. Yeah, I.

Austin: Just don’t get it.

Ben: I don’t want to see yourself. There’s a toilet in the back.

MAtt: Yeah, I’ve never seen that. That’s new for me now.

Austin: That you know.

MAtt: Okay. So first tip, first key for a marketing video that works is the quality of the look. How does it look that first impression number two is quality of the content. What is in the video. Right. What is in the video. Is it substance that people want? I preach this regularly with clients and everybody because it’s true.

Um, you want to deliver something of true value, right? So let’s say you’re doing a podcast and an episode of a podcast deliver something of true value. Let’s say you’re doing a video for YouTube.

Are you delivering something of true value? That’s how you’re going to build trust with your customer, because your customer is going to say, wow, they gave me something that’s actually useful that I can actually apply to my life for free.

So that’s going to make them trust you. So then when they need to hire you for services, they’re going to think of you. They’re going to trust you. Right? So the quality of the content I think this is a big one, Ben, that like people skip right over. They don’t plan. They don’t think they just hit record and go.

Ben: Well, it’s like so many things in entertainment, acting, comedy. You see it on TV and you think, I can do that?

I tell funny stories with my friends, or I’m entertaining my my friends and I, we always have fun and, um, I’ll just get the phone out and just do the same thing. And as soon as you hit record, that all goes away because you don’t have the experience of the know how. You don’t didn’t plan, didn’t rehearse, didn’t practice.

Um, but it takes just as much work as doing any other profession. Yeah. You have to have that experience and know how before you do it. Or you have to find somebody who can help you and coach you and give you that experience.

MAtt: Yeah. And I think hiring a professional is what you need to do. And really you can hire people. It’s affordable. It’s not going to break the bank. But like just think about this.

This is an investment in your company that is probably one of the most important things you’re going to do. And if you go cheap or you try and do it yourself, I mean, we’re going to give you tips and resources in every episode of this podcast, but there is kind of a limit to what you can do, right?

Limit on time, limit on experience. You know, the limit on resources. So hiring somebody who’s a professional, who’s good at it, like, you know, I don’t know, two brothers creative and just tossing that out there.

But you know, you know, hey that’s us. I’m not biased at all. But you know, I mean, find it, find a marketing company or a production company that will help you with your budget, fit your budget, and help you do this. And then you can learn from them and maybe eventually start doing it yourself. Right.

So we’ve done that with a lot of clients or say, hey, we’ll do this for six months with you, get you all set up. But your foundation built at that point, you can decide, yeah, I want to continue with you guys doing it or I’ve learned enough and I want to do it myself, you know?

So, um, but the quality of the content matters. You have to put the work in on the front end, like, what are you going to talk about? What are you going to do? What are you going to deliver of true value? Um.

Austin: And I would say too, that with video, I think audio is more important than the actual quality of the video.

MAtt: I don’t know, the statistics may disagree with that. So 85% of people watch videos on their phone with the sound off. So the animated titles, you see, the captions are more important than anything you do. If you don’t have those, you’re going to they’re going to swipe on you. But it’s 85%. Yeah. So it’s crazy. Um, yeah. That blows.

Yeah. Audio does matter. Like people will forgive poor video quality. Sometimes they won’t forgive poor audio quality. If you’re doing a podcast, don’t just do it on your phone in your car. Because I’ve heard those and they sound terrible. Um, all right. Last key to a marketing video that works is the format hook story CTA. So what does that mean?

Okay, so you have a video, let’s say it’s 15 seconds. Well, in the first three seconds you have to grab their attention. You have to hook their attention. Right. So grab them a powerful statement, a question, something funny, something to grab their attention. And you have three seconds.

That’s the limit. Because if you don’t hook them they’re going to swipe. They’re going to go to the next video. Then you deliver the story. That’s the substance. That’s the content. Right.

MAtt: So it could be anything in the video. Here’s a tip. Here’s a technique, here’s a funny joke whatever. But that’s the story right? So you have the hook. You grab their attention, you drop the story in.

And then the last thing is a call to action or a CTA. What is your call to action? What do you want people to do after they’ve watched this video? You know, what is it? And it can be subtle. It could be kind of covert where it’s just maybe it’s your logo animation.

You just want to brand your company. We do that a lot with clients, or I just want you to remember and recall my company and that we gave you something to value in this video.

Or it could be, uh, you know, click on the link and do this, or go to my website or buy my, you know, new, uh, slippers that are made out of human hair. You know, I mean, it could be anything.

It could be anything. Uh, so hook story, call to action format. So those are the three keys to a marketing video that works. Guys, do you have any other bonus tips you want to share?

Ben: Um. Just I don’t trust creative people. I know we get we.

Speaker4: What what I.

Ben: What I mean by that. What I mean by that is when we give a hard time sometimes that you can’t all be creative, that sometimes we just rely too much on creativity and that’s not enough.

But in this day and age, when you find a truly good writer, a truly good video editor, a truly good person who can help create that content, that person is more valuable in the long run than just about anything else.

And the opposite of that what companies are doing now, there’s they’re relying on the quick and easy fix of AI and those things where if you find somebody that can write a good script, that good script could pay dividends for years and years and years. If you find somebody who can edit good videos, those quality videos.

So the relying on truly creative people, I know that’s a broad terms and category, but that, you know, putting investing in that is a very, very good investment.

Austin: Yeah, I would say that, you know, when you say truly creative people, it’s the people that have made that certain thing their craft and have worked on it for years and like, like their passion.

Because what I’ve seen from experience is big corporations hiring just, you know, some 20 year old kid basically who’s like, oh, I’ve seen a lot of movies. I want to be a video editor. Or and they can get him for like 14 bucks an hour, but he really has no idea about like audio and lighting.

Ben: He’s young, he’s on social media, so he must know.

MAtt: So many businesses make that mistake. And it drives me crazy where they hire somebody who’s like 23 and they’re like, oh, they’re on TikTok. They’re on social media, therefore they’re a social media expert.

No, they are not. I mean, we don’t do this with anything else. No, we don’t say, oh, yeah, I see how they constructed that house.

I’m going to go build my own, you know, or it’s like, oh, hey, uh, you’ve taken a poop on a toilet. Why don’t you come over and fix mine? Like using the service doesn’t mean you know how to create the service.

Ben: I guess I maybe an additional step to bring it back to video is trusting a person and finding a person who is a good video editor. A good writer that’s going to help you in the long run.

I mean, don’t time waste, don’t spend. If you can’t do it yourself like we’ve talked about before, you can’t do everything if you’ve never written scripts before, if you’ve never edited before, might not be the best idea for you to dive into it on your own.

MAtt: Yeah, no 100% agree with that. You have to put the time in the work in on the front end to make it work to do it right? Right. Uh, well, cool.

Thanks for joining us here today on this episode of Midwest Mindset. As always, we have free resources for you, something of true value as we were just talking about in the show notes. Just click on the link and download it for free.

Or you can find out more about us and two Brothers Creative at the Content box. Com

Toodaloo.