TL;DW: Bottom of Funnel Videos (Pt. 3)
Too Long, Didn’t Watch? A Three-Part Bite-Sized Blog Series on Optimizing Video Lengths for Different Parts of the Buyer’s Journey
It’s so exciting to see video messaging as the hot topic of 2017 among sales reps everywhere. The reason for this trend is that video is such an effective way to cut through the noise and get personal with your prospects. There are numerous rather trivial things you must consider when creating a sales video, such as background noise, lighting, smiling. The one that a lot of folks seem to miss is the length of the video. Too often, people are forgetting that an average human’s attention span is even less than that of a goldfish, at a mere eight seconds.
This is Part 3 of the TL;DW Blog Series aimed at helping anybody and everybody who is involved in the communications of a business, whether it's internal or external. The idea of this blog is to help salespeople put themselves in their prospect’s or customer’s shoes when creating this video messaging. Keeping a customer-centric strategic direction can help you optimize your outreach and sales processes in order to produce true results.
Cold Video Outreach
Revolutionize your business development teams by arming them with a free tool like ViewedIt to send personal video messages to their prospects. Now you’re not only dealing with the prospect’s attention span; you also have to consider all that noise you need to cut through.
Whatever tool you use, make sure you are embedding thumbnails with the video link attached right within the email (since email platforms do not allow for videos to be played within the email). The thumbnail will simply be more attractive and boost the click-through rates. Subject lines that work well in our team: “FIRST NAME, I made you a personal video”, or “FIRST NAME, a 90-second video introduction for you.”
Beyond that, keep these few points in mind:
This is cold. Why should they watch a long video from you, some random email marketer (in their eyes)?
Keep it simple and to the point. Why are you reaching out to them?
Don’t say, “I have some ideas for you.” Be specific. Don’t waste the opportunity you got from that click-through with vagueness and ambiguity.
If it’s your first touch point, keep it short, sweet, and strong. Give them a reason to respond. If they’ve watched your first video but didn’t respond, switch it up by sending them a video with screen share enabled. If you have a good feeling that they are interested even though they did not respond, make this one longer with some specific ideas. What I tend to do on this second video touchpoint is explain to, say, a marketer that their YouTube-embedded video on their website is leading people off their website - they’re losing leads!
My suggestion: 30 to 90 seconds on first touch. 60 to 180 seconds on second touch. Use your gut.
Example:
Warm Follow Up
My favourite way to keep that positive feeling from a great call going is to send a video message summarizing the call, the follow-up email and next steps. The email structure will be as follows:
Subject heading
Video with thumbnail of me holding a whiteboard that says “Thanks, Bob!”
List of follow up resources below the video player
Email signature
That’s right: no textual “Hi, Bob” or “Thanks again, Bob” in the email. Keep it all about the video, that personal engagement. Your prospects will appreciate you and the time you put into making that video for them a lot more than black and white email.
The length of this video really depends on the conversation you had and what those next steps look like. The best conversation will usually be a simple and to-the-point message. A longer video message usually follows a conversation with a lot of discovery remaining, followup material included, and next steps to describe.
My suggestion: 60-120 seconds.
Example:
TL;DR? Watch This!
What did you think of the TL;DW blog series? Are there other topics you’d like me to discuss? Let me know!
Missed Part 1 and Part 2?
