Tips'n tricks Archives

Selling the Invisible

June 4, 2020/in Knowledge, Tips'n tricks /by Oscar Hovland

What are your invisibles and how does making them visible, give your customers a great buying experience?

To illustrate this, about a year ago our youngest daughter, Tamarah, had just moved out and “lonely nest syndrome” was officially a fact.

Our house wasn’t as messy as before with 4 people living here, but we had lost our last little housekeeper.

So, the hunt for a great cleaning company began!

We went online and searched for: pricing, reviews, problems, reliability, quality and then compared several cleaning companies. We ended up at Freska.

Their website was amazing!!

Every single question we had, was answered – in detail. And for every answer we got, our trust in Freska increased. After getting all the information we needed, they elegantly led us to the page where we easily entered the size of our house, checked off which services we wanted included, picked a time and date from their digital availability calendar, entered our credit card details and boom! We had just booked and paid our first cleaning.

Without talking to anyone.

What did Freska do, to create that kind of trust?

They used content on their website, to make THE INVISIBLE – VISIBLE.

When searching their website, we not only found relevant, engaging and educating content about their products and services, but they also made visible to us their skills, expertise and knowledge. They did this so well, we felt

They were experts in cleaning private homes
We knew them.
We could TRUST them.
They could add value to the product we wanted to buy, because they showed us their other areas of expertise and knowledge that could help us.

They had convinced us that they would deliver as promised – and they did.

How did we as customers FEEL?

Happy we not only found a great trustworthy supplier but once we were customers, we wanted to stick around and see what they had in store for us next!

How can YOU give YOUR customers the same experience?

Your products and services need to be visible, but so does all the experience and added knowledge you have, that could potentially be useful to your customers.

That kind of visibility creates great customer experiences!

Making your invisibles – visible, creates TRUST and will not only attract visitors to your site but will turn them in to long lasting, loyal customers!

Think about it. The last time you bought a product or a service, what made you WANT to give that company your money? They shared knowledge you needed and by doing that, created

TRUST.

We all buy from companies we TRUST.

USE YOUR BEST EMPLOYEE

If we were to ask you: Who is your best employee? Would it surprise you that we know the answer?! Your best employee:

Talks to your customers 24/7
Never asks for a raise.
Is never sick.
Works day and night and through the weekends.
Never asks for a day off.
And will never leave unless you decide it’s time to go…..

YOUR WEBSITE – is your best employee Click To Tweet

Your website “talks” day and night. (even when you and the rest of your team are sound asleep!)

So please – think about your own website and imagine you are a customer looking at it.

Now being honest, would you see information about your products and services, answers to all your questions and at the same time be educated in all the areas where your company has knowledge and can be of help? Or is there so little information, that you quickly moved on to another website?

Customers, in general, complete 70% of their customer journey, alone, searching online. BEFORE contacting a supplier. They use that time, looking for information and help. You can make your invisibles – visible, by publishing relevant, trustworthy and educational content.

So, back to your website, your best employee.

Is there room for improvement?

DEFINING YOUR INVISIBLES

Your industry might differ from Freskas, but the principles are the same, regardless of industry. Your invisibles are:

Your company’s skills, subject expert areas and values.
Areas that aren’t necessarily main parts of your products or services but are areas where you have knowledge you know can help your customers.
Knowledge you have that makes your company stand out from your competition.

Most of our customers are Microsoft Partners, in the technology industry. So, let’s use that industry as an example. Let’s say you are an IT supplier and on your website, you clearly sell MS 365-packages or other plug-and-play products or services for a monthly fee.

But, are you in addition, building your customers trust by making ALL the expertise you have as an IT supplier, visible to them? Knowledge they not only need, but are willing to pay for?

For example, due to covid-19 there is an enormous need for new knowledge in areas like

Webinars – both participating in and creating
Secure remote working environments
Online meeting tools
Increasing digital presence
Increasing website content

And the list goes on and on……

Do you have knowledge in any of these areas?

Show it on your website!

This will not only increase your customers TRUST in you as an expert in your field, but can potentially lead to INCREASED REVENUE because you are offering help your customers need and will want to buy.

After defining your invisibles, you can use several ways to make them visible.

Articles
Video/Audio
Social Media
Video emails/campaigns
Webinars

We all love a great customer experience and how good we feel about ourselves when we increase our knowledge and get the help we need by making a great buying decision with a company we trust.

Your visitors and customers deserve the same experience, every time they interact with you and especially when landing on your best “employee”😊

P.S: Even though we at times miss our girls – lonely nest syndrome is a part of our past, we now focus 100% on each other and our cat Larsen, and our apartment is clean!

//KOGGER

#BTCT

The Video 6 Methodology

January 7, 2019/in Knowledge, Stories, Tips'n tricks /by Tamarah Hovland

Zachary Basner the Director of Video Training & Strategy at Impact in Hartford, creates video strategies to help teams improve their sales and marketing efforts. Using this non-complicated but yet precise pattern helped us to be more organized when planning video projects.

In one of Zachary’s videos he explains The Video 6 methodology. His simple, but effective, recipe to creating great videos:

Teaser
Logo bumper
Intro
Segments
Call to action
Outro

Based on The Video 6, we made the following list where the thoughts we had about each point was specified. That way we had a clear opinion of what our target was, which content should be included and how this should be conveyed to our viewers. This was really helpful when preparing the content outline and during recording because this list kept us focused on what we were trying to achieve.

Step 1 – Teaser: Who we are, address a common challenge for our customers, concentrate on catching their attention. Atmosphere/feelings: catchy, smiling, create curiosity and a willingness to view the whole video
Step 2 – Logo Bumper: Aimed at a unique logo reveal but wanted to keep the process simple and low cost, so found a website with cool, inexpensive and adaptable, logo reveals at www.renderforest.com. We personalized the one we chose, by changing the colors so they matched the colors of our company logo
Step 3 – Intro: More in depth explanation, in this case The Packaging Workshop. Explain to the point, clear and precise. Atmosphere/feelings: energetic, smiling, create trust in us as advisers.
Step 4 – Segments: Questions/answers – why, how, who, etc. Keep in mind how we want to hold on to the viewers’ attention, by content-variation. Atmosphere/feelings: energetic, varied and interesting, create trust and convey the feeling that this workshop day can be tough but effective, beneficiary and exciting. Implement slides for some of the questions and add sound as the slide changed from video to a question
Step 5 – Call to action: Encourage viewer to contact us, Atmosphere/feelings: welcoming, smiling, eagerly waiting for their call
Step 6 – Outro: Our company logo. Atmosphere/feelings: create positivity to KOGGER by showing them our company acronym: BTCT – Be Transparent Create Trust

Finally, before recording, we changed the setting and lighting for the recording area.

The recording part was still tiring, but noticeably better than the first time. When we were satisfied with the recording, the editing could begin. Besides cutting, we added music, subtitles in English and then we could watch the final result – what a a feeling! Before publishing the new video and replacing the old one, we updated our English and Norwegian website pages.

BE PATIENT

The english poet, Samuel Johnsen, once said “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance” and when recording videos, we need to have perseverance!

We all want to get it right and create amazing videos. But there is a saying, “Rome wasn’t built in one day”, so we need to have patience.

Take one step at a time and don’t expect perfection but aim at honest, helpful and entertaining.

We can learn a lot from others that have video recording experience, but at the same time we need to use our gut feeling, prepare well, relax and have fun while recording! Last but not least, we need to trust what we know about our customers, be faithful to what our company represents and how we can help our customers and have a more personal relationship with them, by using video as a medium.

The result may not be perfect, but it will sure enough be a whole lot better than if you never tried at all!

Want to make a video but still need some convincing? Take a look at these articles and see if it can get your video “vibes” going!

//KOGGER

#BTCT!

Keep the “Content King” on his “Throne” – Create Videos!

January 2, 2019/in Stories, Tips'n tricks /by Oscar Hovland

The Iranian-American psychologist Albert Mehrabian said, “words account for only 7% of whether a communicator is likeable and the rest is determined by tone of voice, intonation, and body language” – all of which is experienced by watching a video.

Videos convey messages in a powerful way. We know that, you know that – but we tend to think we don’t have the competence, time or the resources.

Attempting something new can be a scary process. No matter how confident we are, most of us have a certain amount of nervousness when doing something we have never done before. Recording, editing and publishing a company video is no exception. You are not only trying to create by using a medium that is totally new to you, but you are even potentially going to share the result with everyone!

If you are anything like us when you first have an idea and want to bring it to life – you want it to happen “yesterday”. You want to know all about what you should do, what you shouldn’t do and the best way of doing it – to get an amazing result.

The “you-can-buy-new-technical-gear”card was too tempting!

In my wife’s attempt to convince me that we should make a video, Leah pulled out the «you can buy new technical gear card» and it worked!

But I do feel the need to defend my reluctance. My desire to create videos was there but felt I didn’t have the time or expertise to produce videos our customers deserve. The video process needed to be two-folded. Create videos for our own website but do it in a way that could encourage our customers to create and publish videos on their own digital platforms. So we needed to do some research about which equipment was the most economical with the best result, the do’s and don’ts of producing a video, etc. Our goal was to create a great videos using as little money and time as possible – by researching and preparing well.

For our first video we wanted to see how far we could get using an iPhone 10x as our camera. We found a good deal online for a tripod, extra lighting and a microphone set. We are lovers of online shopping but in this case, we went online to Japan Photo and just created a pick up list. We were so glad we didn’t buy all of it online! Because when we went to the store to pick it up, and talked to a video expert, we realized this wasn’t what we needed, and they helped us choose better, more economical equipment. It made the whole process so much easier when we could discuss with them what we needed and physically see the products.

I then wrote a manuscript for the first video – The Packaging Workshop. We set up all the equipment and staged the area where we wanted to record. We had to change the lighting, the level of the camera and the best place to stand, several times before we felt it looked right.

Leah’s job was to just to pay attention to what I was doing while recording and give me feedback.

Feedback I found both annoying and helpful.

“Smile more Oscar» «It looks strange when you tilt your head like that” “Relax more Oscar” “Your gestures look like you are attacking the camera”.

Why could I stand and talk in front of a large audience and usually be confident and relaxed, but be so intimidated by a little camera? Being used to Skype meetings, I thought this was going to be a breeze but quickly realized that this is totally different and new , and would take a while before I could relax and get used to talking to a camera.

These were definitely not our finest hours as a couple, but video-making was new to both of us. After several hours, we were happy with the result – and still friends:)

Editing. We didn’t want to pay someone to edit this video or any future ones, so we googled to find editing possibilities we could do ourselves. We found Adobe Premiere Pro CC and there were many good reviews about this product, so we bought it. It isn’t expensive, but the learning process can be somewhat heavy. I have some technical and editing knowledge, so that came in handy. We used several hours, editing, adding music, color, subtitles, etc. and in the end, we were happy with the result and published it on our website.

The importance of Facebook groups

After publishing we posted a copy of it into the Facebook groups Impact Elite hosted by Impact Inbound in Hartford and CMA hosted by the Content Marketing Academy in Scotland , just to see if we could get some feedback. That was the smartest thing we ever did and what we should have done in the first place! We are truly grateful that so many took the time to give us so much useful feedback.

This is some of the feedback we got: Using YouTube means getting a lot of strange videos recommended at the end of the viewing, so it could be wise to think about using another platform. The English pages linked to the video needed to be finished. Some felt 3 minutes was too long. One said the lighting in the ceiling that changed colors was disturbing. Others felt that maybe the setting was a little too personal. Col Gray (Pixelsink.com) gave us the advice to have a teaser first and then a cooler logo reveal.

After all this feedback we understood we need to do more research, so we joined another group on Facebook that is hosted by IMPACT. It’s called Film School for Marketers. Zachary Basner is the administrator and we watched one of his videos on how to make a good video great. He had a list of 6 points:

Teaser
Logo reveal
Intro
Segments
Call to action
Outro

After watching this video, we were convinced we had to redo our first video and forget about all its “blood, sweat and tears”. You can read here about how we followed The Video 6 in addition to some of the feedback we got.

The advice avalanche

In looking for information about creating videos, you will probably search the internet with words like, “Video creating” or “what are the most effective company videos” or “best equipment when making and editing a video” . That is a great start, and by all means, we don’t want to discourage you from doing those searches. But you need to know… the amount of answers that pop up can be quite discouraging. The advice you find is like this huge avalanche of information and you can end up not knowing where to start – or not starting at all.

Keep in mind that you want to create a video that reaches your listeners in your space – differentiating your company in your industry. You don’t want to do or say what everyone else is, you want to create something that humanizes your company and has your brand written on it. To do this, take some and not all of the advice . You know your customers in your space and you know what they are interested in. If not – then that is your starting point.

In our attempt to make this a little easier on you, we have created a list of the most important things to think about when you and your company start talking about creating a video. You can then decide on how much more “digging” you want to do, in means of details, to get your company started.

Choose 2-3 customers and create a customer profile based on what you know they primarily are interested in, need help with etc.
Pick a purpose, product or service and find stories that help you to focus on that
Make a reasonable video plan (start date, how many, how often, etc)
Find stories that will tell your story but will also engage and interest your audience
The video doesn’t need to look like a Hollywood movie but invest in research and preparation
Buy the equipment you need somewhere where you can talk to someone and see the equipment itself.
Depending on the subject – try to keep the video short. Ours started out at 3 minutes and we shortened it to 2 minutes. When it comes to a video on LinkedIn, the recommended length is about 1 minute.
Try to vary the setting.
Use graphics, pictures or animation to vary what the viewer is seeing, but when you start out keep it simple
Make the video, mobile user friendly
Try to use an outline instead of a manuskript, or preferrably just talk from your heart about the subject you have prepared
Use The Video 6 as a guideline
Get your video out there!

Bill Gates once said, “Content is King” and one of the ways we are going to keep that “King” on his “throne” is by producing more company videos in 2019!

// Oscar

KOGGER | #BTCT!