Ian Whitlow

The Director of Client Strategy for Explainify, Ian has made his name as an innovator on the industry’s front lines. His expertise is brand storytelling and video marketing, with a special focus in the tech arena – be it SaaS, mobile, enterprise, or brand focused. He’s worked with NetSuite, Tyson Foods, and Moz – and a huge number of startups. The man knows video marketing.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Ian’s success

A rigorous storytelling/brand messaging research process to ensure that the message communicated through video is 100% right for a brand’s audience to hear

Result if you follow the steps in Ian’s session

Increase conversion rate, increase Facebook Ads CTR, shorten sales cycle and gain traction

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

I think the explainer video is critical because that’s really the first impression that a customer or potential customers gonna get of your brand. So quickly and clearly explaining your value proposition. It enhances your site copy, it gives you a little bit more to hold on to as a consumer, ultimately helps them to self select and qualify themselves as a potential lead and take that action.

So really up front, that’s what you’re trying to drive as you’re trying to drive people into the funnel. Once you’ve done that, obviously you want to continue nurturing those leads until they’re ready to make that purchase decision.

So we’ve seen a lot of things work here to help them make that buying decision on you know, if you have an explainer.

Just maybe, just add on to that before we move on, is that right now at the stage of the funnel that we’re at, is that people if it’s advertising, it’s kind of cold traffic that’s coming in need to explain a video, helps warm them up, gets them to know your product and service and the problems that your solution solves for them.

And now you’re talking about nurturing so taking them again, really, we’re kind of at the beginning of the funnel trying to get them towards being a customer.

Yep, that’s absolutely right. Yeah, thank you for calling that out. Because we’re, yeah, you’re definitely, you know, if you start with advertising, you’re talking about cold traffic.

Once you drive people to your site, or your landing page, or whatever that looks like, obviously, you’re kind of just making that initial touch point. And if it’s a good fit, you know, you’re turning that visitor into a lead where you obviously, you have their contact information, you can actually start building that relationship.

So once you get into the middle of the funnel, yeah, that’s when you have their permission to communicate with them. They are likely again comparing you with your competitors and other potential solutions out there. So that’s when it’s really important to help make that decision easier for them and establish that trust with your brand.

So what that could look like is, if you’re a software company, or even if you have a product that you know isn’t immediately intuitive, you can create demo videos, show people how to get the most out of your product and really highlight the coolest features about it.

And this works for anything. I mean, this works for, you know, a software or even if you are, let’s say you run a coffee shop, just giving people educational content about how to brew coffee, you know, there’s opportunities to show people how to make the most of your product through video.

It’s also important to establish that trust, right, so we talk a lot about customer testimonial videos. So if you’ve just made someone’s life, like if you’ve made someone incredibly happy as a customer, you can put that written blurb on your site.

But if you can get them on camera to talk about how much they love your brand, how much they love your business, you know, that strikes an emotional chord with consumers because, you know, obviously we’re made to respond to faces, that we’re biologically wired for that so you can get people on camera talking about your brand. That’s just going to be so much more powerful.

The same is true for maybe a company culture piece. You know, even if you’re just a one or two person team, introducing people to you as a founder, as a CEO, you know, as a business person and letting them know what drives you, what your passion is, and how you are here to serve them, again, can help build that trust because when they come to your website, you know, you’re really just, you’re a digital presence, you’re not a real person.

So if you can become a real person, I think again, that’s very powerful.