How to Triple Online Marketing Results with Video Marketing - And Why YouTube is Becoming a Dominant Marketing Channel

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Ryan.

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Ryan is a video marketing expert.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thanks for having me on Eric, Appreciate it.

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So why don't we start off by you sharing a little bit about who you are and what you do, so that people have some context to that before we jump into your remarkable story?

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Thanks for having me on.

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First off, my name is Ryan Snod.

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At Rhymes with Odd.

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I always say that because people struggle with the last name, so I just throw it out there.

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I own Snod Media Group, which is a video marketing business based here in Central Iowa.

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We specialize in helping different companies better leverage their video in their marketing to improve their marketing strategy.

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So I've been doing it for eight years now four years full time.

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It's been a really fun ride and love every day Awesome.

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So video marketing is a hot area.

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Let's hear a story about some of the best marketing you've done in that area, the marketing you're most proud of.

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I would say recently.

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One that comes to mind is I do a lot of work with fitness industry businesses, so like gyms and CrossFit gyms and supplement companies and stuff like that.

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So one of my clients came to me it was probably a year or two ago and we essentially took their entire sales process and we put videos at every single stage of that process to help retain people longer.

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So the example I'm giving is more of a boutique gym.

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So they were trying to use video to attract people with ads, get people to opt into normal marketing stuff right, Opt into a form.

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So we started using videos at every stage of that.

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So we use video for the Facebook ads, the Instagram ads.

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We had a landing page video when people hit the page.

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We had an email drip sequence that would send videos to them every day of different things that were going on in the studio, and then we also had sales videos that would close them at the end and then, once they actually purchased, they would continue to get more drip emails and then also upsell emails to have them become instructors for the studios as well.

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So we started testing this campaign over the course of about a year or so and it was interesting because all the key metrics they were trying to improve at all those different stages ended up tripling.

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So they were using still graphics for the Facebook ads, for example.

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They only had 1% conversion, then they get 3%, and so then we start seeing the incremental increase over the course of the whole campaign and it was really cool to see.

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But it's validating for me as a video producer because I know video helps move the needle and helps better communicate your what you're trying to do.

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But to see it implemented at every stage was a really cool project to be involved in.

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And that's really awesome.

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Do you think that the triple the metrics they were trying to get to is because video is three times as engaging as still photos?

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I would say so.

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Yeah, I would also say that with every type of business decision, I'm guilty of this as well.

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I'm actually making a pitch deck for a presentation that people were saying they did a survey that was like 87% of people would buy a product on Amazon if it has a video of it, just because it illustrates what it is.

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I recently bought a lawnmower and I was researching which one I wanted to get before I went to the store and I found two of them that had videos that explain all the features and why I should do it, and that's one of the ones that I found that I ended up buying.

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So it's these things come up a lot.

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I think it's not just it needs a video and then it'll sell, but it's more.

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I'm going to make a purchase decision that I feel confident and well-informed in, and video is an amazing way to do that, compared to any other marketing strategy out there currently.

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So what's the hard part about video marketing?

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What's the hardest thing about it?

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I think most people assume it's the production, but ironically it's not Meaning oh, you have to have a camera and audio equipment and lighting and all this stuff.

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I don't think that's the challenge for people.

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The challenge is scripting videos and implementing them in a way that is very cohesive for the audience to better understand, it's easy to watch and then it gives a clear call to action.

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So, having a really clear strategy and structure to your videos.

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For most videos, though, it just depends where the audience is engaging with them.

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For example, people would make a YouTube video and the assumption is oh, I have to sell in this video because I have someone's attention, where maybe you build that rapport, that no like trust factor, and then at the end of your video, maybe you give them an offer to opt into something that's for free.

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But Nick takes a step in the right direction, but doesn't?

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It's not trying to make out with someone.

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The second you meet them on a first date.

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You know what I mean.

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You'd have to warm people up a little bit.

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So I think that's the biggest mistake is that people over-assume production is the limiting factor, rather than structure, pacing and knowledge and understanding of what you're trying to execute for the plan.

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So you mentioned for the client example you gave that they got three times the metrics that they were looking for, so I would say that's pretty impactful, but broadly across clients.

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How do your clients track impact of video marketing?

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Sure, that's a great question.

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It really depends on what facet of the marketing they're trying to improve.

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I really try to steer people away from doing the traditional advertising that doesn't really track.

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Well, we're going to run a TV ad campaign and hope it works, but we can't prove it even if it does work.

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So for me it's like seeing the metrics.

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Like on a Facebook ad.

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You can go in the analytics and see.

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When we were using still graphics, we had a 1% click-through rate and now we have a 3% or a 5% or even a 10% click through rate.

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Sometimes that's tangible.

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You can see that in terms of the conversion rate of a landing page too.

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Those are things that people can easily track.

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It's okay, we have a hundred visitors to this website on this landing page and only 10 of them opted in.

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How can we incrementally improve that number over time?

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And that really does help quite a bit as well.

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So it really just depends business to business, where they're at.

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But almost every time that I am involved with someone, video is helping in some way.

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Even an in-person sales If you're doing a high ticket sales of an in-person project or a product or a service, having a salesperson with an iPad with a video that we've put together often will help because they can use the video as a sales tool to help illustrate what they're trying to get across.

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Confront rebuttals, all the different things.

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We can go really nerdy on this if you want, but that's really what it comes down to is tracking the ROI of what it was before and what it could be after implementing a video solution like that.

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So I worked for one CEO and we had hired some video marketing resources on the team and they worked for a year and at the end of the year I said we're getting a lot of engagement here.

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We got 20 million video views in the last year.

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It was actually a lot of people watching these videos and the question in the boardroom was what does that translate to in terms of sales?

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Question in the boardroom was what does that translate to in terms of sales?

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And I think some channels are more measurable.

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If you're doing it on Facebook or some of the other online advertising platforms Broadly, if you're implementing it across things like in-person events, emails, different parts of the website, sometimes I think tracking it across all the channels can get tougher, but it's interesting.

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The one thing that I saw was in the business when I would interview new prospective employees, where we got that many video views people would practically bring up oh yeah, I watched the videos that you guys have and so I knew that it was having an impact.

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It's just sometimes it's hard to measure the full impact of videos, but I believe that it was probably three times as effective at inspiring people to want to work there and inspiring prospects to want to work with us.

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So I think it has that magic.

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Yeah, even just being top of mind.

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You mentioned that like the awareness piece is huge.

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I try to practice what I preach.

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We do video strategy for clients.

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But on my personal accounts I have a podcast I do weekly.

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I have a YouTube channel.

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I have one of the largest Facebook groups in the world for videographers that I run that I'm publishing on LinkedIn Instagram.

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So publishing on LinkedIn Instagram social, like all the stuff and it's amazing when maybe someone watching that content at that time doesn't have a need for what I do.

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But then six months down the line, they're in a board meeting with their people and they say, hey, what are we, what are we going to do for marketing in this quarter?

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Hey, we should do a video.

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Who's the first person that comes to mind?

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It's the guy they've been seeing every day on social media talking about what it is that they need.

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So I think there is definitely a more crass approach to it, where dollars and cents people just want to see like I put a dollar in the machine, pull the lever and five come out the other end.

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But I think there is, like you said, a compounding effect of top of mind awareness with it and just being like a really great way to get your energy, your emotion, your personal connection across in a way that you can't do any other way.

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There's no other way unless you have all 100,000 people that would watch a video of yours come and sit down in an auditorium and listen to you talk, which is very unlikely these days.

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Now you can do it for free from the phone in your pocket, which is pretty wild.

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Yeah, it is wild how technology has evolved when you think about the technology we have today compared to technology a hundred years ago.

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They didn't even have hot showers a hundred years ago and now we can take a video on our iphone and send it to australia in real time pretty wild time.

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Yeah, and that's the kind of the thing I try to illustrate to my clients is a lot of them are very fearful of doing video because there's all these fears of not looking as professional, saying the wrong thing, looking stupid, my hair is messed up, whatever.

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And I always just tell them I'm like think back to the.

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If you ever watch AMC's Mad Men the TV show, it's like the only way you could get a message out at scale years ago was run a television campaign or a radio campaign and dump a bunch of money into it.

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Where now you can do that for free, why would you not do that?

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It just takes a little bit of effort to put a message out there, which is pretty wild.

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So I had a question for you around platforms, because we live in interesting times.

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Congress has voted to ban TikTok.

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That's been an interesting sort of debate.

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We have YouTube growing really wildly.

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We have Instagram and Facebook.

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What is your view on the platform side of which platforms are most effective for video?

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Sure, no, I love that question.

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I would say I look at it more like an investing approach.

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Right?

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Don't put all of your retirement money into one stock, don't buy super, put it all on red and spin the wheel and just see what happens.

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I always say diversify your platforms.

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And what I try to do is take an approach that I can do omni-channel right.

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So say, I'll do a YouTube video that goes live on my channel.

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It's like an eight to 12 minute video.

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I can still take that video and I can share it on Facebook, I can share it on LinkedIn, I can share it elsewhere.

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So for me, reels are really popular right now TikToks, vertical video in general, right.

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So what I do is, if I do a vertical video, I'll share it on TikTok, share it on Instagram reels, share it on Pinterest if that's where your audience hangs out.

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Youtube shorts if it's under a minute.

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So there's a lot of ways you can leverage your assets omni channel to make sure that you're showing up in all those places with the content you've already taken to create.

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So that would be my strategy.

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Suggestion for people is to do omni-channel regardless and then have one platform that you really focus your attention on that you feel like your audience hangs out a lot at.

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For me, that's LinkedIn.

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I own a B2B business so I'm very prevalent on LinkedIn, but I'm also elsewhere, because there's some people that can find me through Instagram that don't follow me on LinkedIn or vice versa.

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So pick one place, pick one medium and then blast it all over the place.

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Once you feel confident in that first one and you feel like you are consistent in showing up, then you can parlay that attention into to another platform.

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Let me ask you about YouTube, because I think YouTube has been growing overall as a marketing channel.

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Compared to a lot of the other marketing channels that are facing interesting scalability and pressure issues for different reasons, I think YouTube has been steadily growing.

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I think maybe during the pandemic people stopped reading as much, stopped watching more video.

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That's one thing.

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Another thing is that I think the technology is there with phones now that a lot more video is just being created and people are interested in watching instead of reading.

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But I saw a stat that blows my mind.

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I'm still trying to get my head around this stat.

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It's so jaw-dropping that there's 300,000 YouTube channels that have more than 100,000 subscribers and that stat really brought home for me how much people are watching YouTube, and not just watching one video but are like, oh, that's an interesting channel.

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I'm going to come back to this one.

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Are you seeing this phenomenon?

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Do you feel this sort of growth in the YouTube channel?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I'm super bullish on YouTube.

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I've been telling everyone that I talk to that this is the platform that they should be focusing on, and if you're doing long form video properly, that's where you should be, Because one it's the second largest search engine in the world, right Owned by the largest, which is Google, so everyone's searching for things and I think that's the big piece that a lot of people don't think they think of, like Mr Beast, where they just do super crazy clickbaity videos and that's just all that it is.

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But it's no.

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It's.

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When I'm underneath my car trying to figure out how to change my oil, I'm going to get on my phone and look it up on YouTube.

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Or if I'm trying to figure out how to install something in the home improvement thing, I'll do it channel, which isn't it's a lot of people, but it's not like a million or something crazy.

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But when I look at my analytics, it's insane to see the reach that I still have on videos that I made 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago that are still getting views because I keyworded them properly and it's a high search term that people find right.

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I made a video on how to build an email list with MailChimp that find right.

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I made a video on how to make uh, how to build an email list with MailChimp.

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That video still has like 70 or 80,000 views and I think the last 20,000 of those have come this year, and I made that video like four years ago.

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It's crazy, Just like the search engine ability of it.

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But then also for me on my channel.

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I have, like I said, 16,000 subscribers, but I get 40,000 views a month on my channel and in terms of dollars and cents, yes, there's ad revenue there, but I also am getting leads from those every week.

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So I get like 10 leads a week that opt into my email funnels through all the videos that I've done that are fueling my online course businesses as well.

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So it's interesting just to see it from a YouTuber if you'll even call me that versus another person that's doing something similar, because a lot of people don't leverage YouTube the way that it needs to be with the search engine piece.

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And that's the thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that they could really be making a splash, or they're spinning their wheels and trying to get views on TikTok, but that's not converting into dollars and cents for their business or if they focus on a long form platform like YouTube that could actually convert into people that watch your videos, like what you're about and want to take the next step with you.

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Yeah, the time dimension with YouTube because it's a search engine.

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It's different than podcasts of people just listening to the latest episodes.

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It's people searching for a specific topic and in a lot of ways I don't want to say people don't care about how old that it is, but it's not their most important criteria.

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The most important criteria is how relevant is it, and then they might look at it if it's too old.

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But I think things are a lot more evergreen to your example of videos from a long time ago still getting a lot of views, and I think that's a fascinating dynamic.

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If you're creating content that is evergreen, so I think that's really great.

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What advice would you give marketers who want to grow their YouTube channel?

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What's the top one or two secrets you could share if we were having a coffee or a beer?

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Sure, sure, yeah.

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Number one would be find a search term, and there's tools you can do this.

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You can look these up there's two buddy and all these other things out there but find a search term that would align with what you would want someone to find when they're Googling for something that you do.

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So a good example was my first video that I ever ranked was called GoPro photography.

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I was my channel is all about helping videographers with the business side of freelancing, but at the time it was just camera deer stuff, right.

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So I knew I wanted to do that.

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So I went and I made a video called GoPro photography.

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I exported the video at a premiere and I named it GoPro photographymp4.

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I put the words GoPro photography in the description box probably 30 times, and I put GoPro photography on the thumbnail.

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I posted it.

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Lo and behold, it's got 300,000 views.

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It's one of the top five results when you look up GoPro photography on YouTube.

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That's literally like the foundation for how your channel should be right Making how to, educational, informational, searchable content with the intent on if someone were to type this into the search bar, how could they find my video?

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That's, if you take that approach and you do it expound that over a year, three years, five years, your business will be in a lot different place, and I can say that from experience, because it's just insane If you can use it as a proper tool to get what you want out of the search.

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That's really what it's all about to get what you want out of the search.

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That's really what it's all about.

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That's awesome.

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Final thoughts you'd like to share on video marketing with all the folks who are listening.

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What do you tell people who come to you and ask you for advice on video marketing, broadly speaking, and investing in it?

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Sure.

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No, it's a great question.

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I think, in general, most people are just afraid to do it right.

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It's this thing that, like you're seeing every one of your people, your competitors doing it, you're seeing it online and, honestly, it's the thing that, for some reason, people just can't bring themselves to do.

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I would argue it's the most important thing you could do as a marketer or as a business owner is to jump into video headfirst and do it and not be worried about the production quality, that you don't do it at all right.

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You have to crawl your way through it before you can run and then you're off to the races.

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I would say the other piece of it, too, is, if you're doing video marketing not just thinking content marketing, because that's what we've talked about this whole conversation but really looking at your business as a whole and saying where could I plug a video in that?

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We're leaking things, we're leaking money, we're leaking like we get 10 people to the sales page and no one converts, how can we put a video on there that would make them convert?

00:18:22.959 --> 00:18:38.559
Those are the questions that you need to start asking about and things that are going to actually make the impact in your business and in your marketing overall is how do we plug video in that's going to make a difference for us and that's going to help us get further and closer to our goals in the company and in the coming year as well?

00:18:40.863 --> 00:18:41.222
Awesome.

00:18:41.222 --> 00:18:42.545
I think that's great advice.

00:18:42.545 --> 00:18:45.232
Thank you so much for sharing these stories with us.

00:18:45.232 --> 00:18:47.258
Ryan, appreciate it.

00:18:47.258 --> 00:18:53.298
Encourage everyone to share this episode with your friends so they can get these video marketing insights.

00:18:53.298 --> 00:19:03.801
I'm going to link to Ryan's website in the show notes so you guys can easily get to him and learn more, if you'd like to, on the things that we were talking about today.

00:19:03.801 --> 00:19:07.335
So, ryan, with that, thank you very much for joining us today.

00:19:07.335 --> 00:19:07.915
We appreciate it.

00:19:07.915 --> 00:19:09.996
Thanks, eric, appreciate you having me on.