George B. Thomas from Impulse Creative and SprocketTalk gives us the inside scoop on how to use personalized videos in your sales process and across your entire organization. This will help you both gain leads and retain customers. You don’t have time not to do this! It’s not about selling, it’s about solving.
GUEST: George B. Thomas of SprocketTalk where you’ll learn more about HubSpot sales marketing service tools, his agency Impulse Creative, Check out Sprockettalk.com/personalvideo for his personalized video course, and see him at “GeorgeBThomas” everywhere on social media.
HOSTS: The Video Marketing Value Podcast is hosted by:
– Dane Golden of VidiUp.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube
– Renee Teeley of VideoExplained | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
VIDEO MARKETING TOOLS MENTIONED:
Soapbox by Wistia
Ecamm Live
GoVideo by VidYard
Loom
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
It’s time for the Video Marketing Value Podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden from VidiUp and VidTarget along with my cohost, she’s R-E-N-E-E T-E-E-L-E-Y, Renee Teeley from Video Explained. Hello, Renee.
Renee Teeley:
Hello. It sounded like you almost forgot how to spell my name. It’s part-
Dane Golden:
Well, I’ve created this Memonic, really cool device and it’s still a little hard to say.
Renee Teeley:
Oh, it’s true. So I’m pumped to be here. Excited to kick off the show.
Dane Golden:
Pumped, excited, show. Today we have a special guest, George B. Thomas from the Impulse Creative and Sprocket Talk, which is his podcast and video show. Welcome, George.
George B. Thomas:
Well, thank you and by the intro of this podcast, I can tell that we are about to have a blast today.
Dane Golden:
It’s like when we’re in person at conferences except on audio now. George, we asked you on today to get a better understanding of personalized video. Some people might call it one-to-one video or sales video. What is the best term to call? What’s the common term?
George B. Thomas:
Well, first of all, I would just call it communication at its basic fundamental level in this digital world that we live in. But I just call it personalized video that, I mean, it is one-to-one, sure. It is really a targeted kind of thematic, like here’s what I’m going to say to this one person, depending on if you’re solving a problem, if you starting a conversation, but really personalized video is the easiest way to say and think about it.
Dane Golden:
Okay. When we talk about this approach and then the tools so that’s what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about the approach and then the tools and then sort of getting comfortable on videos. Does that work for you?
George B. Thomas:
Yeah, absolutely works for me, Dane. However you want to take this, I am literally a voyager in your ship today.
Dane Golden:
Wow, that’s neat. I’m the co-captain.
George B. Thomas:
There you go.
Dane Golden:
So why would someone use personalized one-to-one video?
George B. Thomas:
Yeah, so I can give you a good example, and really, it comes out of necessity to be honest, because in this world that we’re in, there has been a major shift where the buyer has control because of things like Google and Bing and Yahoo and a bazillion other sites that you can search and find information before you ever step into a building, before you ever call a sales rep. This is where we’re at. The buyer has control. So therefore any CEO, CFO, COO, salesperson or a human being that breathes air, drinks water, eats food, by the way, AKA, that’s all of us, needs to understand that there’s a new way to communicate in this digital sphere and that is not only these kinds of one to many videos that we’ve talked about for years for marketing and sales and HR, but really getting into the micro, the weeds, the I’m going to go back to the old school where my grandpa used to kind of spit on his hand, shake and be really human and personalized video is the necessity of needing to be helpful, needing to be human and needing to be in a one-to-one scenario where you can’t necessarily…
George B. Thomas:
I can’t just go to Georgia or to the UK or Japan, but I can in a personalized video. Here’s the thing why this is important is because of this dramatic shift that we’ve been facing. Our BS meters are on point so therefore… Right, right? As consumers, our BS meter, we’re right there. So if you can see me, now all of a sudden you can hear me. You hear my tone, my inflections. You see how my eyes move, my body moves, my hands move and you inherently start to know, like, and trust me quicker with a personalized video versus a personalized email that we love to get so much.
Dane Golden:
Well, hopefully I know, like and trust you better. There’s some people I’m going to like less, and actually in a way I think that that’s okay.
George B. Thomas:
Oh yes, yes. It will divide the wheat from the chaff if you will. You’re either going to be really good at this or if you’re not fundamentally a happy, helpful, humble human, you’re probably going to be really bad at this, which is-
Dane Golden:
I’m sorry to interrupt you, but that’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m getting at is I tell this people with YouTube is that there’s some group of people that are going to look at me on my videos and go, for whatever reason, just something inside of them goes, “I don’t like that dude,” and actually that’s actually a huge time saver because that person was going to be a bad client anyway. There’s just something about me that they don’t like, and then there’s going to be a whole another group of people that are going to be, “That’s my dude.” What do you think about that?
George B. Thomas:
Yes, yes. Well, absolutely, we all have our tribe. We all have those people who are just kind of genuinely magnetized by the things that we say or who we are. It might be our hair, it might be our style, it might be our inflection. It might be the way that we’re actually creating our content, whether it’s the one to many or the personalized videos, but I totally agree. There definitely is a non-fit and a fit person for each and every one of us and there’s a tribe of those fit or non-fit people and I totally agree, Dane, that you should focus more on the people that are already a fit versus trying to be a fit for those who aren’t. It’s just a waste of time.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point and that’s one of the things that I love about video is it does help you kind of weed out the people that are not a good fit for you that may never actually turn into a client, so you don’t have to sit and waste a lot of time. Do you think that personalized video, I know that you said it’s about communication, do you think it’s primarily a sales tool when it’s one-to-one?
George B. Thomas:
So most people when you talk about one-to-one video, they do think that it’s sales and I do believe that there’s a very heavy value in sales being able to do this. Why? Well, because sales does a lot of the talking through the process and instead of talking through an email, you can talk and be human through video. But I will say that this can be used across and should be used across the entire organizational chart. So for instance, at Sprockettalk.com one of the things that we do when somebody signs up on our platform for a free membership, we send a personalized one-to-one video message to that person, every single one, just welcoming them to the free membership.
George B. Thomas:
Now, there’s no sales process because the website already did the sales process. They literally filled out a form. They’re now a free member, but we’re welcoming them, right? We’re being human as a matter of fact, we’re saying, “Hey, welcome to my house. Let me open the door for you. Let me show you where the living room is and the bathroom is, and if you want to go outside on the back porch, it’s to the left and down the hall.” Right? So you’re putting people at ease. So it can be for customer service, it can be for HR, it can be for sales, it can be for marketing. I go back to what I really kind of jokingly but really purposely said, it’s for anybody who is human who breathes, eats, drinks, sleeps, who needs to communicate in a digital world. So every part of your organization should be using it.
Dane Golden:
Now there is… Let’s just walk through some of the finer points what you said there. What I hear you saying is that Sprocket Talk is a freemium model. You can be a free or you can be paid. Is that correct?
George B. Thomas:
Yes, absolutely. We have gone, Dane, from being a YouTube channel and a podcast into now a platform where you can sign up for a free membership or a VIP membership which is paid, and then you get different types of content or courses and things like that.
Dane Golden:
Okay. So many companies are like this, particularly if you’re a SaaS platform, you might have an introductory level that is free or cheap, and then over time you want people to upgrade or get the premium solution. Now, what I hear you saying is that they sign up for the free version and you send them a personalized video message or someone on your team does. What does that actual process look like?
George B. Thomas:
Yeah, so first of all, it’s me and it probably will always be me until it’s absolutely unscalable. When I’m getting one hour of sleep at night because I’m making personalized one-to-one videos for everybody who signs up for free, then it’s probably going to be somebody else. But the process looks like this. I get an email, it lets me know let’s just say John Smith signed up for Sprocket Talk free. I look at that and I say, “Okay, I need to create an email or a video for John.” So I go ahead and I open up and I’m going to… I want to talk about the tools at a micro level on how people should use them, but in this explanation I’m going to talk about how I use them.
George B. Thomas:
So the first thing I do is I fire up Ecamm Live because I love Ecamm Live and the way that I can record a native video right to my computer in an instant, grab a camera, grab a mic. It’s just super easy and I mean digitally telling Ecamm Live, “Hey, use this Logitech camera and use my ATR2100 mic. Okay, hit record,” and I record that video and I may have a little scene that I’ll add in that will have their name in it or I may not. It just depends what kind of mood I am, but I’m definitely using their name and I’m walking them through the process of onboarding to the free membership. Once I’m done
Dane Golden:
Let me stop you, sorry. Let me stop you.
George B. Thomas:
Yeah, yeah. Go for it.
Dane Golden:
You are recording a personal video and you’re using Ecamm Live, but people can use other tools, but you’re recording a personal video and in that video you are personally repeating in a unique way what all the instructions are or do you insert another clip in that is-
George B. Thomas:
No. No, it’s no clip. It’s all live. But notice, one of the things that I do want to say to the viewers because they’re like, “Wow, how long would this be?” I try to keep these first video, personalized videos that I send them under one minute. So I’m literally saying something like, “Hey John, I just want to welcome you to Sprocket Talk free. By the way, if you haven’t headed over to the dashboard or the my profile areas, those are two places you’re going to want to hit. If you do have questions as you’re journeying through the free area content that you need, content that you see or you have questions about courses or even VIP paid because sometimes we get questions about that, just hit reply and let us know. But I want to say welcome, welcome, welcome, and again, we’re here to be your HubSpot resource,” and I end video.
Dane Golden:
How is that sent to them? Do you use like BombBomb or a different type of tool? What are you using? Just an email or what?
George B. Thomas:
Yeah. Love the question. So again, I’m explaining how I do it and then later you’re going to ask me, well, how should other people do it?
Dane Golden:
Yes.
George B. Thomas:
So I take that video that I’ve just recorded and what I’ll do is I’ll open that video file in QuickTime because in QuickTime is the easiest way to split a video track. So I get rid of the junk at the beginning and I get rid of the junk at the end where I’m turning things on and turning things off and I save that out as John-welcome. I then upload it to my Wistia account and while it’s uploading to my Wistia account, I go over to that email that I received and I click on their email address, which pops open my Gmail to me being able to compose a message to them. I literally in the subject line then say, “Welcome to Sprocket Talk,” and I usually put a thumbs up icon and I say, “Hey, I just want to welcome you to Sprocket Talk. By the way, here’s a personalized message for you.” I hit enter three times and I go, “Let me know if you have any questions at all. Thanks, George.”
George B. Thomas:
By the time I write that email, I can go up into my browser extensions and select Wistia and say insert video, look for John-welcome and insert it right into the middle of that email and hit send. It’s literally within probably two to three minutes that I have now created this personalized message, me saying their name, visually showing their name, sending them an email, welcoming them and making them feel like they’re at home at Sprocket Talk.
Renee Teeley:
So I love that you’re doing these personalized messages in a way that is actually personalized, that it’s you on camera saying their name as opposed to just inserting their name automatically in a way that some personalized videos do. So I think that’s great. Can we talk a little bit more about some of the different tools and options out there that you might be using and that you recommend to other people? Because I know that there’s a rise in different types of personalized tools out there like GoVideo by Vidyard. You mentioned that you’re using Wistia but you’re recording videos through Ecamm. I know Wistia has a product as well called Soapbox. So when would you recommend to use those types of tools?
George B. Thomas:
So a great question. I’m going to talk you through the tools that I have used historically. Then I also then the one that I use today, if I’m doing something different than what I just explained, more of a longer sales version of the personalized one-to-one video. So I like Loom. I think Loom is a great tool. Anybody who would decide to use Loom, you really can’t go wrong. I also like Vidyard’s GoVideo. I’ve used that historically before just because I’m a nerd and I like to try all of these tools so that I have the ability to talk about them, the pros, the cons and how it kind is to work with it when I get questions about it. But the one that I go to, the one that really is my standby for other than if I’m trying to customize visually the screen with somebody’s name or a fly in or a sidebar or something like that is then I will use Wistia’s soapbox, which again is a browser extension that you can click.
George B. Thomas:
I love it because you can record the video and afterwards you get some micro editing ability to show just the screen or show just you or the best version is kind of a one-thirds, two-thirds, one-third you, two-thirds the screen. The reason I love that is because part of this is storytelling. Part of this is simplifying the complex. So being able to visually show them on the screen and them see you and hear what you’re talking about really helps it connect with most human beings. So my go-to, again, if I was just going to say, “Hey salesperson, hey marketing person, hey HR person. You want a tool to use to do personalized videos, to do grassroots, happy, helpful, humble, human communication, then go grab Soapbox and rock the socks off of your customers and leads.”
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. But-
Dane Golden:
I’m going to-
Renee Teeley:
Go ahead.
Dane Golden:
I’m going to ask a weird question. So maybe I’m a business and I say, “Listen, I don’t have time to have one of my staff make a video for every single person that starts an account with our business. That’s a waste of time. We can send them an automated email. We can do some other thing that’s more scalable. This is not scalable.” What is your response to that, George?
George B. Thomas:
Yeah. My response is that is good luck because when your competitor does it, you’re going to get blown out of the water. I would also ask a question, are you more focused on actually gaining new leads all the time? Or are you focused on retaining the people that you already have? Because if you start from the beginning with great communication, AKA, personalized videos, you’re already on the road. The mindset of retention from the get go, great communication along the entire process. So it is, to me, if you say, “I don’t have time to do it,” for me, it’s you don’t have time not to do it.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I think sometimes companies overlook the value of great communication in retaining customers and throughout that entire process. What are some of the other hurdles that you see for companies that are just getting into personalized video?
George B. Thomas:
So here’s the thing, and let’s go into kind of the sell, the selling or the sales realm. Even if you’re not a salesperson, at some point you get on this video and you feel like you got to sell yourself or the product or the service or the company and oh my goodness, you start to get nervous and no, no, no, no. What you need to realize is that you’re just trying to get onto the camera, onto the mic, and it’s not a big setup either. By the way, it shouldn’t be a DSLR. It doesn’t have to be like studio thing. It’s literally personalized video is not about the production value, it’s about how personable you can be, hence personalized video.
George B. Thomas:
So what you want to do is just get on there with the mindset I’m going to be me because that’s who I am. Authenticity totally wins the day in today’s market. Then the next thing you didn’t want to think of is I’m totally going to add value to the person that I’m about to talk to through this video. So you’re going to be ready to say, “Hey, here are some things you can do. Or historically, this is how we’ve helped people,” and it really is, again, just trying to be authentic and valuable and creating that magnetism. So with that, I always tell folks, “Look, it’s not about selling. It’s about solving.” So you’re going to be trying to solve the problem that they have, which means you should lean into using the powers of questions, right? Asking them questions. Why do you want to lean into the powers of questions? Because then you’re going to get a reply.
George B. Thomas:
Now you’re most likely not going to get a video reply, but if you do, you know the game is on. But you’re going to get a reply via that email that held your video and they’re going to have to answer your questions. Now, what has just happened? What has just happened is you’ve started a conversation because you are focused on solving, not selling. You are focused on being happy, helpful, adding value. So it’s all about kind of the original or beginning mindsets. It doesn’t have to be production, it has to be personalized. It doesn’t have to be selling, it has to be solving. That’s really where people first get hung up on this stuff.
Dane Golden:
What about… Go ahead.
Renee Teeley:
I was just going to say I really appreciate that you said that you don’t have to use a DSLR camera because I think a lot of people do get a little bit camera shy, especially if they’re not used to being on camera the bigger the production is. So if you have a DSLR camera, you’ve got lights. People tend to get a little bit nervous and that comes through in video. So having a really simple setup, even just using your webcam, I think is better for people when they’re just getting started.
George B. Thomas:
Absolutely.
Renee Teeley:
So the lower production quality is actually a selling point. It’s actually good to go that direction. So really [crosstalk 00:19:07].
George B. Thomas:
Without a doubt. If you overproduce your personalized videos, remember, and this is like the second or third time I’m going to say this, their BS meter will go off. It will feel produced instead of personable.
Dane Golden:
George, what about, let’s say I’m a salesperson and I’m like, “I got into this to sell people. I didn’t get in to be on video. I don’t want to be a movie star. I don’t like video.” What is your response to that?
George B. Thomas:
So my response to sales is if you talked to humans to sell things and they’re going to be like, “Yes, I talk to humans to sell things.” If you found yourself waking up one day in a world where you could no longer talk to humans, could you still sell things? They’re like, “Of course not.” I say, “Well, guess what? You’re in that world. Right now, the consumer, they don’t want to read your book of an email. They don’t have time for that. For them, they’ll look at that brick or block or wall, depending on how fluid you think you are as a keyboard warrior and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, no thanks. Appreciate it.” They really don’t want to read your ebook, your guide, your checklist. They’ll leverage it, they’ll download it, they’ll peel pieces out of it, but really what they want is they want the 20% that’s really going to move the needle and they want it right now. Guess what? The words out of your mouth are going to provide that to them.”
George B. Thomas:
The other thing that I tell sales reps is if you are a sales rep right now and you’re not focused on building a personal brand where people look and go, “Oh, that’s the HubSpot dude or oh, that’s the pool guy or oh, that’s the, that’s the website guy or gal,” right? If they’re not saying that as you get on the meeting or while you’re on the meeting, then you are far behind your competitors. Because I can tell you right now, and I say this humbly, when I get on a call to talk to somebody about HubSpot or to talk to somebody about a video, they’re like, “Oh, that’s the video dude. Let’s pay attention.”
Dane Golden:
This is amazing insights, George B. Thomas. How can people find out more about Impulse Creative and Sprocket Talk and all the other projects you’re working on?
George B. Thomas:
Super easy. You can go to impulsecreative.com if you want agency type services. If you want to learn more about HubSpot sales marketing service tools, you can go to Sprockettalk.com and you can get a free membership and we even have a personalized video course where you can go to Sprockettalk.com/personalvideo, one word, and you can learn all of the things that we teach when it comes to how do you become amazing at the tools, how can you communicate in a more human way in this digital world, tons of stuff. Then if they want speaking or MC, it’s Georgebthomas.com. So those are the three main domains. By the way, if you search on any social for George B. Thomas, you’ll find me. I’m there, engaged. I love human beings. I love conversation. So make sure you hit me up.
Dane Golden:
Thanks George B. Thomas, and we’re going to put those links in our show notes, which is on your podcast catcher. Just click that link. My name is Dane Golden and my cohost, she’s R-E-N-E-E T-E-E-L-E-Y, Renee Teeley, and we want to thank you, the listener, for joining us today, don’t we, Renee?
Renee Teeley:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope that you love this podcast just as much as we do.
Dane Golden:
I want to invite you to review us on Apple Podcast or the app you’re listening to us on right now because that helps more people find out about us and help other marketers learn the tips that you’re learning and that’s what we’re here for. Renee and I do this podcast and our various other YouTube videos and speaking engagements and other projects because we love helping businesses like yours do YouTube and video marketing better. Thanks to our special guest, George B. Thomas. Until next-
George B. Thomas:
Until next week, here… Am I supposed to do that?
Dane Golden:
Do say it. Go ahead.
George B. Thomas:
Okay. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.