Video Interviews

Well guys, here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. I asked Austin Craig, video marketing genius, the secret of how to make a viral video.  Luckily for you it requires just a few easy steps:

1. Win the lottery
2. Use your winnings to buy a unicorn
3. Train your unicorn to ride a unicycle
4. Enjoy your life as a YouTube hero

Ok so basically what I’m getting at is this; expecting to think you can make a viral video is ridiculous. Austin and I get asked this question all the time. Every time I hear this I just want to face palm myself. His response is a little more professional. He says “I don’t immediately condemn them because that’s not a very good business practice., but education needs to happen in a situation like that”.

What you’re running is a business. A viral video is like winning the lottery, and buying a lottery ticket is not a business strategy” -Austin Craig

Now that I’ve ruined your dreams of creating a viral video, let’s talk about what you can do instead that is 100 times more likely to help your business. What would Austin do if someone asked him to help them make a viral video?  He would first help them create a strategic sales video. Once they have found decent success in that, then he would be willing to try something a little more crazy so that the business would have a cushion to fall back on if and when their “viral video” only gets seen by 150 people.

Now you’re gonna say “Wait, but doesn’t Orabrush have a viral video? Isn’t that how they started?”. Kind of. Yeah they have a video with over 18 million views which I guess you could say is “viral,” but that didn’t just happen by itself. Orabrush has been promoting that video since the beginning to make sure that it would show up when people searched for relevant terms. On YouTube, there are 100 hours of video uploaded every minute. That’s a crap load of videos. How do you expect your video to get seen in all of that if you don’t promote it?

Planning for a Video to go Viral in your marketing is like planning on winning the lottery for your business to make money. It’s highly unlikely and it’s the worst marketing strategy you could have.

So what should your video marketing strategy be?

You need to gain people’s trust with a campaign of videos, like the Velcro Theory.

The Velcro Theory explains how to make a message or video stick.  On one side of the velcro you have hooks and the other you have loops, when the two come together it sticks.  The hooks represent Videos and the loops represent viewers.  If you only have one hook your message won’t stick very well.  For this reason you need to create a lot of videos to hook and stick with the viewers.

*  If you are looking for more tips and tricks on how to increase your YouTube views and following, you should check out this Free Video Marketing Course

I’ve been lucky enough to meet some pretty rad people in the world of video marketing. One of those people is Austin Craig. I first met Austin while I was speaking at a local conference and then also had the opportunity to work with him at Startup Weekend. Austin is a brilliant guy and has been the man behind a very successful YouTube video campaign for a company called Orabrush.

I sat down with Austin to talk about how he has successfully used YouTube to get his product (which is nothing more than a freaking tongue scraper) on the shelves of WalMart, Target, CVS, Walgreens, and other big name retail stores.

So in case you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know who Orabrush is, here’s a little bit of background. It wasn’t that long ago that Austin was just your typical college student studying Broadcast Journalism at BYU. When he saw that the industry wasn’t exactly taking off, he started looking into other options. During this little moment of soul searching he met Jeff Harmon, Chief Marketing Officer at Orabrush. Jeff basically said “Hey wanna help me sell some tongue cleaners online?”.

What would you do? Sounds like the business venture of the year right? Yeah it doesn’t sound like it to me either but it just goes to show that if you know what you’re doing you can use video marketing to sell just about anything.

Austin agreed to help, thinking he was getting into a one-time, fun little weekend project. They didn’t just take some expensive camera and take cool super slow-mo videos of their tongue scraper and cats or something then throw it up on YouTube.Before filming anything they started by researching what kind of videos were generally successful on YouTube. Research is often one of the most overlooked yet most important steps in any marketing campaign. Don’t forget it!

One thing that played a huge role in the success of Orabrush’s first video was testing different features like title tags, durations, thumbnails, and all kind of stuff in order to find out what brought them the best conversion rate.

They didn’t just make their video and upload it then sit back with their fingers crossed saying “Well, I hope this works”. They finally got the video to a point where they were their conversions were bringing in more cash than they were spending on advertising.

All of that extra money got put back into advertising and making other videos. It turned into a giant money snowball! They started hiring more people, making more videos, and with each video were making more money.

If you really think about this and you get creative, there’s probably a solution for your unsexy product or service that’s really going to capture people’s attention.”

-Austin Craig

The bottom line is this: Orabrush found success doing video marketing for a freaking tongue scraper, so who’s to say that you can’t find success for your product or service even if you think it’s kind of boring or unexciting. Austin tells me that the model that Orabrush used is “absolutely repeatable” and that “employing most of the same strategies today you could do a lot of the same things and see growth”.

I know what you’re thinking now, “Ok so what exactly did they do? How do I replicate Orabrush’s model?”. This is just the first video in a 5 part series I did with Austin. In the next parts he talks more about Orabrush’s success and gives some simple steps for you to follow, how internet video is changing the world of TV advertising, things to avoid in video marketing, and what everyone on YouTube wants to know: how to make a viral video.

After my last blog post we know that Austin Craig knows what he’s doing when it comes to video marketing. He took Orabrush from basically nothing to being on the shelves of WalMart, Target, CVS, Walgreens and more basically only using YouTube. Now you’re thinking “How do I do that?”. In this portion of my five part interview with Austin we talk about some simple steps to using video marketing for start-ups like Orabrush once was.

The 4 C’s of Video Marketing

Content-

Probably the most obvious of the 3 C’s that Austin mentions is good content. People don’t want to waste their time with something that isn’t interesting. If they did, people would be going to hang out at the DMV just for fun. Make sure what your posting is visually interesting, or funny, or intellectually stimulating, or a clear answer to a specific question. Your video shouldn’t take people’s time, they should be giving it to you. Time = money. Don’t be taking people’s money, let them give it to you.

Collaboration-

Guys this isn’t school anymore. Use your neighbor/friend/follower to your advantage. You can collaborate with influencers in your market, online micro-celebrities, or even just fans to name a few. One thing that has worked well for Orabrush is that during their videos they will say something like “leave a comment below if…”. That has got people participating not only through commenting but sometimes in video responses which is basically free advertising for them. They also contacted a few different YouTube celebrities and had them make a review on the Orabrush. This will get your name out to a wider audience (not to mention to an audience that has already given their trust to your new spokesman).

Calls to Action-

The modern day consumer isn’t stupid, they just need to be told what to do. They don’t want this to be like trying to guess what you’re girlfriend wants when she says “I’m fine”. Just tell them what you want them to do or they most likely won’t do anything! In basically every video you make, have a button that says “Click Here To Learn More”, “Buy Now”, “Subscribe”, or whatever you want them to do.

Consistency-

Austin calls consistency “arguably the most important” of all of the four C’s. Your audience wants to know basically what they can expect. Be consistent in duration, frequency of upload, and style of video. Treat your YouTube channel like a mini TV station. On TV people know what day and time they can find their favorite TV show. If they just had to keep checking on that channel at random times during the day to make sure they didn’t miss their favorite show people would get upset and stop caring. Also they know what kind of content to expect. What if your favorite music artist had a different genre of music every time the released a new album? A few people might think that was cool but the majority of people would hate it because they want to know what to expect.

 

This is the final part of my interview with Austin Craig, spokesman for YouTube success story Orabrush. I hope that they’ve been interesting and that you’ve learned something awesome. If you have, share these blog posts with someone else who might find them interesting as well. In this last part Austin talks about what to avoid for those of you doing video marketing.

The thing that Austin talks about isn’t so much a mistake in action as it is a mistake in mindset. That mindset is that people see online video marketing as something that’s new and scary and different and so they avoid it. Don’t be scared of it! If you’re too scared to mess around with it, you’re never going to learn how to use it. You’d be like our parents learning how to use the computer.  They’re scared they’re going to break something if they play around with it so they don’t try and they don’t learn and then they turn their kids into their own personal Apple Care (am I right or am I right?)

If you don’t know how to use AdWords for video, go to the University of YouTube and learn yourself something useful. Dedicate just a small budget to promoting your video at first. If you lose $50 so what? Consider it an investment.

Think about this: Imagine you have no job and I give you a guitar. You could be too scared that you might break a string, or strum a wrong chord and just leave the guitar in the case. Or you pick it up and learn how to play, go out on the street and play for people as they pass by, earning a little cash here and there. Then you take that cash and reinvest it into your guitar playing. Pretty soon you’re playing for small private parties, festivals, concerts, whatever. You’re a rockstar. Don’t just let this opportunity to use these video marketing tools pass you by.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently”                    -Henry Ford

When I worked at ZAGG we ran a campaign for one of our invisibleSHIELD’s and put a bunch of money into it right at the beginning thinking we knew what we were doing. When we got some numbers back we realized we were getting a horrible ROI on conversions. But because of how powerful these tools are we were able to go in and see that 18-35 year olds were converting really well but the 60+ crowd was just wasting our time. So we paused the ads for their group and only showed them to the age group that cared. We kind of learned the hard way, but we did learn and that’s what was most important. We were then able to apply what we learned to our campaigns in the future.

Well guys that’s it for my insightful interview series with Austin. I personally think that the content, ideas, strategies, and advice from these videos could be worth $1,000. Knowledge is priceless. If you apply the things you learned from watching and reading these, it’s very likely to bring your business much more than that. But here I am giving it out to you for free. All I ask is that you don’t waste what you’ve learned. Share these with someone else and as always, let me know what you liked, what you didn’t like, what you would like to learn more about, or anything else.

 

I had a chance to interview Austin Craig about his experience funding his Kickstarter Project, “Life on Bitcoin” as he was going through the crowd funding process.  In this segment of the interview Austin Reveals what he did to raise over $70,000 on KickStarter.

“New platforms present new opportunities.”

Bitcoins are basically digital money.  They’re virtual tokens that can be exchanged for products and services at places that accept it.  Now that the Kickstarter campaign was funded, Austin and his now wife are going to document their first 90 days of married life, only using bitcoin.

Checkout Life on Bitcoin and You can follow Austin and Becky along there adventure