James: James Schramko here, SuperFastBusiness.com, chatting with my mate Will Wang from GrowthLabz.com. How are you?
Will: Good, thank you James. Thanks so much for having me back on.
James: I love making little videos with you. And part of the reason for that is I think videos, especially snack-size videos, are what’s working. It’s certainly – I’ve been doing it for four or five years now. I originally did it probably 12 or 13 years ago. I was a little bit before my time, it was a bit harder to do. Guys like Gary Vee inspired me way, way back. You know, his Wine Library TV. And then I stopped for a while and then I started again. Been doing it for years now. What I have noticed is I get a massive return on investment. Like, it’s literally worth 1000s of dollars per minute of recorded time.
But these days, there’s a lot more platforms that I can actually distribute the video content to. And I wouldn’t even ignore TikTok now. I mean, I’m not going to do dancing videos. That’s about as silly as we get, right? But I think there’s a market in different age groups and different demographics. LinkedIn, because it’s boring as hell, Facebook because people are there because they’re just goofing off. Instagram because it’s where you go for, you know, surfing and music and fashion and cool stuff. TikTok is just an addictive platform. I’m not even on it, by the way, just a strong disclaimer there. Twitter is now actually having a sort of a resurgence as a place where you can actually get really good information and news and so forth.
And of course, YouTube, how could I forget? That is somewhere in the conversation, anyone who’s kicking butt right now, they’re using YouTube. I’ve coached clients who have a million followers. They’ve been able to crack the YouTube video formula. I’ve got agencies who are doubling every few years in terms of revenue and success because that platform is going off. They all seem to love short videos as well.
So anyway, that’s why I’m making snack-sized content. But I’m wondering, is this just me, or is it reflected across the other people you’re working for, as an agency?
Will: It’s definitely not just you, James. I’m seeing this work so well. And you know, for the longest time, not anti-advocate, but I just kind of ignored videos as well. I’m a copywriter by background, I love copy. And I used to think, Look, if I can write some really good copy, it’s going to get my clients the results they need. But it was such a shortsighted kind of way of looking at it. Because I’ve started to realize, especially over the past year with all the tracking issues with Facebook and things like that, I’ve started to realize that you can really have short videos in direct response form, and they work super, super well, too.
So for example, we’ve started campaigns where we do a short video direct-to-camera, and we put ad budget behind that. And it builds a relationship with the people watching it, it gets in front of so many more people, and you can really direct people into what you want to do after they watch the short video. So I’ve become a massive fan of both long-form and short-form video. I think there’s definitely with both, long-form is great for nurturing leads you bring in, and short-form can bring a lot of good leads into your business. So we’ve really started to incorporate all of that into the ads we do, the pages we build, sales pages… Yes, we still do long form. But even with long-form sales pages, and even the long-form case studies we write, we’re starting to use short video snippets across all of that.
People are just really used to video now. It’s such a great platform for them, whether it’s on their mobiles or on the desktop, that we’ve started to go multi-format, in everything that we do, all the copy we write and all the pages that we build.
James: And it’s just so fascinating to watch. Because I’ve been online a little longer than a lot of my clients. I remember back when I started online, like maybe 2005. I mean, since the second time. I first started online in 1995. Nineteen ninety-six, I was dial-up watching the screen load pixel by pixel. Right. So that was my very first internet, then I didn’t have a computer for many years. And I got back in properly in 2005.
I remember when I started there was this product called Make Your Site Sell. And they had this formula. They had this framework of CTPM, and it was content, traffic, pre-sell, monetize. Now color me purple, but isn’t video a perfect foil for that? It’s great content, it gets the traffic, it pre-sells and then the monetization, yes; by all means send them off to the page with Will’s great copy, or long-form sales video. So I love that it’s a part of the mix. It’s certainly for me as a creator, and I never thought I’d say a word like that, Oh, I’m a creator. But it seems like everyone I’m surrounded with has 100,000 YouTube subscribers. It’s the easiest content to make.
And I resisted turning on the camera for years. My podcast was audio-only until a few years ago when our mutual friend Charley Valher said, you got to make the video. Make the video. So these short videos have actually been wonderfully easy to create, can do lots of them at once. It’s a great way to just have a simple, short discussion that’s easy for people to consume. And then you get to put the call-to-action anyway.
So in this case, I’m going to say, if you want some coaching, head over to SuperFastBusiness.com where I can obviously help out coaching. But if you want some help from an agency who’s really switched on, Will Wang, you’re my man, GrowthLabz.com. I appreciate having these little chats with you.
Will: Thanks so much, James. Appreciate it.
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