Episode 95 – Immersive video allows people to experience something.

My guest on the show today is David Feinman. David co-founded Viral Ideas Marketing with Zach Medina which creates online...

The post Episode 95 – Immersive video allows people to experience something. appeared first on Sideways8.

My guest on the show today is David Feinman. David co-founded Viral Ideas Marketing with Zach Medina which creates online video content for clients ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 brands. The company’s mission is to help brands create to inspire.

Adam: [00:00:09] Hi, and welcome to the Good People, Good Marketing Podcast, a podcast about digital marketing and how to make it better so the good people and good organizations can have good marketing as well. I’m your host, Adam Walker, co-founder of Sideways8, a digital marketing agency and 48in48, a nonprofit dedicated to hosting events that build forty-eight websites for forty-eight nonprofits in forty-eight hours.

 

[00:00:29] My guest on the show today is David Feinman. David co-founded Viral Ideas Marketing with Zach Medina which creates online video content for clients ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 brands. The company’s mission is to help brands create to inspire. David, welcome to the show.

 

David: [00:00:47] Adam, thanks so much. I’m really excited to be here.

 

Adam: [00:00:49] Yeah, I’m excited to chat with you. I don’t talk to a lot of video people, so I’m really kind of intrigued to where the conversation’s going to take us. I’m ready for it though. It’s going to be great. Are you ready?

 

David: [00:01:00] I’m ready, I’m ready (inaudible 00:01:00).

 

Adam: [00:01:00] You’re ready, you’re feeling good? You’re feeling good, okay? All right, well then let’s dive right in. So related to digital marketing, can you tell us something that has worked well for you?

 

David: [00:01:10] Absolutely. So just a little background, we talked about our bio and a little bit about the area that I focus in is on the video production side and the video distribution side. So Viral Ideas, our company, really focuses on doing those things on behalf of clients. So the learnings from that that I love to share with the audience from a simple perspective are we’re really seeing a lot of value in companies creating content for the Facebook environment and the YouTube environment and then using that particular content to re-target back to your page. So we have clients that are doing this all the time and driving a tremendous amount of value from that.

 

Adam: [00:01:56] I like that. So essentially, just to make sure that we’re saying things so that everybody’s on the same page, so people are going, they are interacting with the content on Facebook or YouTube and then based on that interaction, you’re now re-targeting them across those same platforms to continue to get more engagement with them. Is that correct?

 

David: [00:02:18] Yeah, exactly. It’s kind of from what we’ve seen finishing out the funnel for people and we have a client in the hotel industry and when people actually go to their site looking for a hotel room, they might not know what the full experience is. So when they leave the site and they go to Facebook, all of a sudden this hotel room pops up and they can actually see a video image of the hotel room, the area around the hotel and kind of see actually what it’s all about. So that actually drives purchases versus just simply showing off a picture or something like that.

 

Adam: [00:02:56] So you’re really kind of advocating for more immersive video experiences to kind of really showcase something more fully, is that what you’re saying?

 

David: [00:03:04] Yeah, exactly. Really, you’re just allowing people to experience something versus just showing them it or telling them it within a blog post. It allows them to really experience it on a firsthand basis and we’ve seen this across multiple industries and seeing that video content, when placed in various different places in various stages of the funnel, works tremendously well. For example, even if you put a video within a landing page, it actually will increase the amount of time people are spending on that particular landing page. So just focusing on doing that versus just other different types of content is definitely game-changing.

 

Adam: [00:03:44] Now related to video, as far as catching people’s eye, there’s this fine line that you walk between video length. So it helps them to stay longer, but how long is too long because at some point those eyeballs begin to drop off as a video goes on. Do you have a recommended length of video that you prefer?

 

David: [00:04:03] Yeah, it’s actually one of the most frequently asked questions we get. And in a way, length doesn’t actually make too much of a difference, but at the same time, it does. So I’ll give you a few scenarios. So people will sit there and watch a two-hour movie, no problem, right?

 

Adam: [00:04:21] Right.

 

David: [00:04:21] They’ll watch an hour and a half movie and they won’t get up out of their seat, they’ll actually physically sit there and watch it. And the reason because of that is because that has an interesting narrative from start to finish. It’s something that pulls you in. Same thing with a television show. You’ll sit there and binge-watch Netflix for sometimes hours at a time and you won’t get up out of your chair, but the second an advertisement comes on, that’s a different type of feeling. So it really depends on what type of content you’re making and where you’re using that concept.

 

[00:04:50] So a lot of the (inaudible 00:04:51) funnel content, we actually see working really well as longer format content. This might be a show type style content. We actually did this whole episode on skydiving. It’s a ten-minute video, ten minutes long, but tremendously interesting. You watch it and you feel like you want to jump out of a plane (inaudible 00:05:12). We have other types of content that are more sales-driven, kind of “buy it now” type content. We try to keep that under thirty seconds, if not shorter, so it’s punchy, it’s to the point and you want to get your point across as quickly as possible. Deal-based content. We do a lot of product videos through our platform and those (inaudible 00:05:37) product videos, those might be ten seconds long and they’d be put on a sales page. So those types of videos’ short, to the point, but the whole idea that we live in this ADHD culture where people are distracted is true, yes, but to a same extent, people will sit there and binge-watch Netflix.

 

Adam: [00:05:58] That’s right, for hours and hours on end.

 

David: [00:05:59] Hours and hours on end. So you have to balance that when you’re creating. How long a piece of content do you want to do versus what utility and purpose does it serve.

 

Adam: [00:06:09] Right. That’s really clever. I really like that answer a lot and that’s not the answer I expected at all so I appreciate the depth that you’re thinking on that. It’s great. Okay, so next question. Related to digital marketing, can you tell me something that has not worked well that we can learn from?

 

David: [00:06:24] Yeah, sure. I would say in my role, it would be two things, two common first mistakes that I see people make. So they get their video and they’re really excited about it. They watch it and they think it’s the greatest thing in the world and they just plop it up on their Facebook and they get seven views and they’re like, “Hey guys, why did this not get any views?” Well, it’s because you didn’t actually promote it. So Facebook, as many of you might know, only shows your content to 2 to 5% of the people on Facebook. So when you’re releasing a video, you want to make sure you have a plan in place to extend that audience and to make it go a little bit further. So this might be posting in different groups, it might be sharing that content in different areas, it might be generating some press from your video or it might even be running something through the Facebook ad platform which leads me to the second mistake that people make, which is not properly setting your targeting on Facebook.

 

[00:07:25] And what this means is, the default setting on Facebook is the entire United States. A lot of times with smaller businesses or even larger ones, we’ll put in $100, $50, maybe even $500, but they won’t change the setting of the entire United States and will often say, “Well, everyone can be my customer.” Well, I can tell you from experience and being down in the niches of Facebook, everyone’s probably not your customer and if you can find the right niche on Facebook and run your ad at that particular niche, Facebook’s a goldmine. If you don’t, Facebook will make a lot of money off you and you will not make any money in return.

 

Adam: [00:08:01] That’s right, that’s right. It’s all about getting hyper-targeted, extraordinarily specific and when you can do that, I think you can really win on Facebook. But the people that say, “Oh, Facebook marketing doesn’t work,” are the people that are very broadly marketing and you’re right, broad marketing doesn’t work.

 

David: [00:08:17] Yeah, exactly.

 

Adam: [00:08:20] I think that’s probably true and broad marketing doesn’t work, so we should stop doing that. Let’s just agree to stop doing that.

 

David: [00:08:26] Yeah. Well, the caveats then, just to debate that point, is if you have a widespread brand like a Coke or a Pepsi or one of those brands because doing more grandiose marketing campaigns, it does actually work because you’re really just trying to get that brand recognition out.

 

Adam: [00:085:48] Right, but even within the context of those campaigns, there’re still at least psychographically extraordinarily specific. So I mean Coke’s open happiness thing, yeah it’s a worldwide campaign, but they’re going after a very specific feeling and targeting people on a very specific way. So I feel like even though it’s a worldwide broad campaign, it’s still got a very specific thing to it, you know?

 

David: [00:09:13] Exactly.

 

Adam: [00:09:14] Yeah, okay cool. I love that, I love that. So last question. Related to digital marketing, can you tell us something that you’re excited about?

 

David: [00:09:22] So recently I’ve been really getting excited about the real power of the Facebook pixel and I know I keep (unclear 00:09:27) on Facebook, but Facebook owns Instagram and they have this whole ad network; it’s really pretty far reaching. So we’ve noticed that the companies that we work with that have taken advantage of the Facebook pixel— And for those of you who don’t know, the Facebook pixel is something you can put on your website. It basically captures and helps Facebook understand who the people are that are visiting your site and allows them to then take that traffic and re-target it, create custom audiences based on people that are already visiting your site. We’ve kind of noticed that mining traffic and coming up with audiences from a pixel is just a goldmine for our clients and for ourselves even. Finding the people that are already visiting your site and that are already in your network and then slowly starting to branch out from there is is one of the most cost-effective ways to do marketing.

 

[00:10:15] Some of our smaller clients are spending just a nominal amount of their marketing budget on something that really carries them tremendously far because of the power of, again, like we talked about that niche targeting (inaudible 00:10:28) specific type of person that is (inaudible 00:10:30) person even that’s on your site and then people that are like those types of people that are on your site that might be interested in buying from you. And then what we’ll do is we’ll show them topical funnel type content and the bottom of the funnel type of content. Then even, we can get as granular as if you’re on a specific page of the site, we’ll show you a specific type of content on Facebook, Instagram through the ad network.

 

[00:10:52] (unclear 00:10:52) advertising, all of my friends and the people that are close to me text me all the time and be like, “Hey, I was playing Candy Crush and here your face popped up in my game.” And like, “Yup, that’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to really allow the most amount of visibility possible to the people that are most likely (inaudible 00:11:13).

 

Adam: [00:11:15] That’s right and I think the assumption there is someone that’s been on your website is someone that’s at least peripherally interested in your organization anyway, and so then if you can begin to retarget them to sort of bring back their attention to your organization over and over and over again, and then even re-target them with some specific information related to pages they were already on, so if they want a specific services page, you can serve up ads with that particular service, I think really increases the opportunity for them to engage with the organization. I think that’s what you’re getting at, right?

 

David: [00:11:45] Totally.

 

Adam: [00:11:47] I love that, I love that. I’m a big Facebook pixel fan as well so it’s a lot of fun building our audiences with that stuff. So well let me see if I can recap what we’ve talked about so far and then ask if you have any final thoughts.

 

[00:12:00] So question number one, what’s working well for you, you said video production. You guys do video production, distribution and creating content for Facebook and YouTube and then re-targeting viewers with that content has worked really well. You also said more immersive video experiences allow people to really more genuinely experience something, which also increases engagement. And you said that essentially video length doesn’t matter; what really matters is the content and how interesting the narrative of that video actually is. And to your point, people will binge-watch Netflix for a day at a time and that’s a lot of video, but they will not binge-watch some cheap sales video that is not interesting. So we’ve got to make our videos appropriate length based on the narrative and the interest level that we can produce from it.

 

[00:12:47] For question number two, what has not worked well that we can learn from, you said just creating a video and plopping it on a Facebook page with no promotion and nothing behind it doesn’t work. You can’t expect just to show something one time in a feed that no one sees and have people react to it. Instead, you have to promote it. You have to have a whole strategy around how to promote that piece of content and get engagement with it. You also said not properly setting Facebook targeting, so targeting the entire US and being extraordinarily broad in your marketing really doesn’t work very well, but the more you can hone in on specific markets, specific target, specific niches within the culture and organization, the better you can do.

 

[00:13:31] And for what you’re excited about, you’re excited about the Facebook pixel because you can build pretty amazing custom audiences based on who comes to your website and where they go on your website and then you can serve up very specific ads related to that to meet their needs specifically. So David, does it sound like I got all that about right?

 

David: [00:13:42] If only my employees listened as well as you do.

 

Adam: [00:13:46] So the people you pay to listen, listen as well as me. Is that what you’re saying?

 

David: [00:13:49] I wish they did.

 

Adam: [00:13:52] Oh, you said, “if only they did,” I see. If only. Well, part of being a good interviewer is listening well so that’s one of my goals in every conversation. Man, this is some really, really great information. Do you have any final thoughts that you want to share with our audience?

 

David: [00:14:10] No, I would say that the biggest thing that I’ve seen is— We work with a lot of what I would consider old school businesses, right? Businesses that have been around for fifteen, twenty years and a lot of them, when we start with them, do not have any internet presence or have a very minimal internet presence or check the box or paid some company a hundred hours a month to check the box of social media and online. And surprisingly, right? Big surprise, when we put these companies that have sometimes thousands or tens of thousands of really, really happy customers on the Internet, it just explodes their business within months and it’s incredible to see time and time again.

 

[00:14:53] We’re about to go through it with another company and I’m really excited about it, but as a company that was started— We’re only three years old. We’ve basically built our company on the back of the internet. But these companies that have been around for a while have not and to have this internet in place now and to have Facebook and YouTube and all these tools in place and to not use them, to me is borderline criminal. You’re just losing out on a whole audience and a whole world of opportunity.

 

Adam: [00:15:22] Yeah, I totally agree, totally agree with you there. That’s fantastic. Well, David, this has been great. I really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining me on the show.

 

David: [00:15:31] Thanks so much. Happy New Year.

 

Adam: [00:15:31] Thanks for listening to the Good People, Good Marketing Podcast. To get more resources about digital marketing, make sure to go to goodpeoplegoodmarketing.com where you can find more podcasts, blogs, and other fun resources. Also, if you want to find me, your host, you can find me on Twitter @ajwalker and on my blog at adamjwalker.com, where I blog about leadership productivity, habit building, and the craziness of having five kids. Thanks, and tune in next time.

The post Episode 95 – Immersive video allows people to experience something. appeared first on Sideways8.