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Katya Allison

Director of Marketing
Content at GRIN

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GRIN Gets Real

About GRIN Gets Real

Welcome to the GRIN gets real podcast, the show for people who want to maximize their marketing potential. From influencer marketing to eCommerce strategy and everything in between, each episode will feature industry experts that share their insights and provide actionable tips to help you achieve your marketing goals. Subscribe and stay tuned!

Subscribe Season 3, Episode 5 feature image with Jon Mowat

Video Marketing for Social Media with Jon Mowat at Hurricane

In this episode:

Jon Mowat

Marketing Consultant & Author at Hurricane

MD & founder of Hurricane; video-first thinkers who help brave brands cut through the noise. A UK leading marketing agency that offers video strategy, production & activation. Author of Video Marketing (Kogan Page). Now in its second edition book and currently available in 5 languages.

Season 3, Episode 5 feature image with Jon Mowat

Full episode details

On today’s episode, host Katya Allison welcomes Jon Mowat, MD, Marketing Consultant and Author at Hurricane.

For Jon, leveraging video effectively means keeping a few things in mind:

  • Tailor different types of video to target different parts of the marketing funnel.
  • Use video to create an emotional response that can then drive customer action.
  • Use other marketing channels to provide product information and features. Video is meant to provoke emotional decision-making.
  • Embedded YouTube links drive traffic away from your site, so host native videos using another platform.
  • Fill marketing videos with genuinely useful and compelling information to keep the audience engaged.
  • Research and planning have to precede video production to target a specific market segment effectively.

Insights from Jon Mowat

As Jon sees it, video is one of the most valuable assets marketers have. Using it well can be transformational for a brand’s approach to storytelling.
Use the code VIDEOMK20 for 20% off Jon’s book, “Video Marketing.”

#content #PR #Affiliatemarketing #influencermarketing #creatormanagement

If you enjoyed today’s show, please leave a review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more information and links to all of the resources mentioned in today’s episode, visit Grin.co.

Quotes from the episode

Jon Mowat quote and headshot image

“A brand story has to be wrapped in increasingly important and interesting information.”

-Jon Mowat

“Technology will make the video landscape more complicated, but also more interactive with much higher engagement rates.”

-Jon Mowat

“Video marketing is about understanding a problem and solving it with one piece of content.”

-Jon Mowat

Jon Mowat (Guest) (00:00):

It’s such a complicated area. It’s not difficult, but it’s complicated. So I think the first thing is to think about where is my problem? I talk about the digital sales funnel, which we’re all very used to, but have I got an awareness problem? In which case I need to do some search, I need to do some paid ad videos. I’m looking at my click throughs, reducing my cost for acquisition. It’s all that kind of, nobody knows who I am. And that’s the kind of hero films at the top of the funnel.

Katya Allison (Host) (00:32):

Welcome to the GRIN Gets Real podcast, a show for marketers by marketers to talk shop, and share insights on the ever changing landscape of the digital world. My name is Katya, and I am your host on this exciting journey as we talk to our experts who join us. Now, GRIN is the number one creator management platform designed for the next generation of brands who recognize in the creator economy authenticity is everything. To get insight on how GRIN can help you manage your creator strategy, visit grin.co. That’s G-R-I-N.co.

(01:04):

Now, my guest today is Jon Mowat. He has over 30 years of experience in television and video. He’s worked at the BBC for 15 years as a producer and director of factual documentaries. After leaving the BBC, he set up Hurricane, which is now one of Europe’s leading specialist video marketing agencies, working with clients in Europe and in the U.S. In addition to that, as if that wasn’t enough, he is the author of two books on video marketing, and has a track record of creating effective campaigns for highly respected brands and organizations. Now be sure to listen all the way to the end, because we’ve got a discount code for you at the end so that you can purchase his book on Amazon. Highly recommended. Until then, put your AirPods in, turn up the volume and get ready for my guest today, Jon Mowat.

(02:06):

Jon, welcome to the GRIN Gets Real podcast. Super excited to have you on here, not just because I’ve read your book, but I am so interested in the topic of video in general, and using it as a storytelling tool as a marketer. Welcome.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (02:22):

Hello. Thank you very much for having me. I’m excited.

Katya Allison (Host) (02:24):

I am too. Okay, so let’s dive into it. Give the audience a little high-level overview of just kind of who you are and just your expertise, and why kind of I’ve brought you here is because of your expertise.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (02:37):

Okay. Who am I? That’s a big question. I’ll keep it brief.

Katya Allison (Host) (02:40):

Exactly, don’t start grade school.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (02:41):

Yeah, yeah. My professional career started at the BBC. So I was a documentary maker at the BBC, so I was a content maker. I learned how to tell engaging stories in emotive films and traveled the world making documentaries, which is cool when you’re in your twenties. Then when I got to my thirties, it was less cool, and then left the BBC and I started an agency called Hurricane, which is a leading video marketing agency, which is based in Europe. We work with companies around the world. Basically what we do is we help C-suite and marketers and people like that to harness the power of video, really. I’ve moved from being a publisher at the BBC to an advertiser. I’ve written two books on the subject, one called Video Marketing Strategy, and then the new one’s called Video Marketing. I’m officially a nerd on all things video. And I work as a consultant for all sorts of people.

Katya Allison (Host) (03:30):

This is exactly why you’re on here because I nerded out as I was reading your book, the amount of tabs that I put in here. I’m going to ask you to do a workshop after this-

Jon Mowat (Guest) (03:40):

Yeah, up for it.

Katya Allison (Host) (03:40):

But I figured I’d leave that for a surprise.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (03:43):

Get him to say yes while he is on the radio.

Katya Allison (Host) (03:45):

Exactly. There you go. Let’s dive into it. Why does video even matter right now?

Jon Mowat (Guest) (03:52):

Okay, why does it matter? It’s a really good question. Obviously, it is just massive. It’s everywhere. But I think the real reason it matters is because videos will help brands grow. It’s the most powerful thing that advertisers ever had. It’s very much evolved. Every brand is now a publisher, as well as an advertiser. It’s an enormous appetite for video. What we do with… I think the difference is between video and video marketing. I think we should probably start with that definition. Video’s massively popular. Video marketing is massively effective.

(04:25):

In video marketing what we’re doing is we’re taking data driven insights to deliver video content to multiple audiences across the sales funnel. It’s on multiple channels, so it’s a very thoughtful, sort of complicated area, but that’s how we deliver better sales, better click through rates, all those kind of things. The reason it matters is because it’ll make a difference at any point of the sales funnel from “Nobody knows who we are,” all the way through to “We need to make a sale.” I think that’s pretty much it. Also, your competitors are doing it, and they’re going to benefit. So it’s important to get on it and do it.

Katya Allison (Host) (05:00):

How can you leverage video marketing to just kind of grow your business in general?

Jon Mowat (Guest) (05:06):

I think that’s a really good question. Obviously, I spend a lot of my time thinking about that. I think it’s such a complicated area. It’s not difficult, but it’s complicated. I think the first thing is to think about “Where is my problem?” If I talk about the digital sales funnel, which we’re all very used to, but “Have I got an awareness problem?” In which case I need to do some search, I need to do some paid ad videos. I’m looking at my click throughs, reducing my cost per acquisition. It’s all that “Nobody knows who I am.” That’s the kind of hero films at the top of the funnel. But if people know who you are, but they’re not converting, then we’re talking about consideration content in the middle of the funnel, we’re talking about increasing dwell times, telling our story, convincing people we are really good.

(05:49):

Then, if people know who you are, they know your story, and they’re still not converting. It’s about bottom of the funnel stuff, re targeted ads to push them over the line, discounts, and also just case studies. It will affect your business by where’s your problem. I think the analogy that I always give is like a spork. I don’t know if you know what a spork is? A spork is a spoon and a fork, and it’s a shit spoon and a shit fork. It just doesn’t work. Video marketing is about understanding the problem and solving it with one piece of content. Then I think the other thing is it will affect your business because it’s actually quite a lot of work. If you decide to run a TikTok channel, or you’re going to run… I don’t know, a YouTube channel from scratch, it’s going to affect your marketing team because it’s a load of work. It’s a lot of work, but if you get it right, it’s super, super effective.

Katya Allison (Host) (06:40):

What I really appreciate about something that I read in your book when you’re talking about the funnel is that you make a very clear distinction that there is more video content that you can create, more content in general that you create, that’s in that consideration phase. You just described if people don’t know you, that’s that top of the funnel. There are a lot of people that think it’s more of a triangle and I wish I had a whiteboard, I could draw it out. It almost looked like this really fat pill in the middle of it.Do you know what I mean? Where you’re like “Okay, these are…” When you’re talking about the pain points, those are the answers that you want to be able to give. Video marketing is definitely the format to be able to give that. I understand all of that stuff, but what I think is really challenging in video marketing is what length does that..?

(07:34):

What length do I create that video? How do I tell a story in 90 seconds versus 30 minutes? If you give me 30 minutes, I feel like you can really build it up and it really unfolds that story. I’ll land the plane, I promise with my question, it’s more of a how do you story tell in short form and long form so that it is answering kind of those questions? Or do you save short form for the top of the funnel, and then the longer form for the middle of the funnel? Or is there even a recipe for that?

Jon Mowat (Guest) (08:10):

It’s the classic “How long should my video be?” question, and literally every conference, I asked… I get two questions. One is, “How do I do it with no money?” That’s the first question. The second question is, “How long should it be?” The answer is, it should be somewhere between six seconds and two hours, which isn’t a very useful answer, is it?

Katya Allison (Host) (08:30):

Yes. Great.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (08:33):

You’re absolutely right. It depends on where you are in the funnel. If you’re trying to get to someone on TikTok, you’re going to be six to 15. There’s all sorts of microdurational impacts there. If somebody is going to spend… Let’s say you are in a B2B brand and somebody’s going to spend a million pounds on a piece of engineering hardware, they’re going to watch a two hour film. It’s about providing the correct duration for where you are in the funnel. It’s going to be shorter at the top, it’s going to be medium to long in the middle, and at the bottom it’s going to be short again. But there is one… That said, there’s one general rule: less is more. Whatever you are doing, if you say less… It’s going back to the spork thing. Do one thing, do it really, really well. As soon as you start ramming in extra stuff and you go, “Oh, let’s not make it 20 seconds, let’s make it 30 and put more stuff in.”

(09:25):

It’s too long. If you can do it in 20, do it in 20. The temptation is always to add more. When we’re doing this in what we call messaging sessions, what we do is we get a whiteboard out, and we put the Post-it notes up on the wall, and we put all the messages that the brand team want to say in the film. Then we have a Post-it that’s like “So what?” And we have one thing, we are saying this one thing. And then we go through the Post-its. And if they don’t answer to the “So what”, to that one thing, we just pull it off the wall. We go from 50 Post-its to six, and applying that less is more to whatever you’re doing is definitely the way to go.

Katya Allison (Host) (10:01):

I can definitely appreciate that. I was formerly the director of content, so video design, the content piece is such a big part. I sit in the influencer marketing space, so I see a lot of creators putting together some really fantastic content. One of the things that I think that brands often get “stuck on” is the details that don’t matter on a video. What I mean by that is, “Oh, it’s got to be this color, and this font, and this image.” While I’m saying those aren’t important or don’t add value, I think that if you miss the underlying storytelling, it doesn’t matter what picture you use, what font and what color you use. I have this very strong belief that it’s the story that gives the message, and the video is the vehicle to deliver that story. Tell me what role that brand story… Or not even just the brand story, but whatever story it is that you’re trying to tell, has to do with video marketing for you.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (11:09):

Yeah. Okay. How story impacts is massive. I think, let’s just start at the beginning. It’s like when we’re making effective films, we need to engage emotionally with somebody. I’ll talk at length in a minute about why we need to do that, but we need to talk emotionally. As soon as you’re talking about features and benefits, people basically don’t care. That’s for written stuff. There’s a real temptation to, “If we put in enough information, we’re going to persuade these people.” If we… Can I ramble about system one, system two a little bit? Have you discussed this in the podcast before?

Katya Allison (Host) (11:46):

Yes, please. No I haven’t. But you go at length in the book about it. I love this breakdown. I’m here for it.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (11:51):

Okay, so let’s just think about how we function in the world around us. We have millions of decisions to make every day. We make about 12,000 decisions a day about food. We cannot apply the same amount of thinking as each type of decision making. We can think about the mind being split into two systems, system one thinking and system two. System one is the stuff that’s very instant, it keeps us alive. If you step out in front of a car and you hear a noise, you step back, you don’t think about it, you just do it. System one thinking allows us to make decisions very quickly without thinking too much. That’s how the brain likes to make decisions. Then we have system two, which is very thoughtful. If you’re going to choose a mortgage, or choose a partner or whatever, you’d have that sort of very detailed thinking, system two.

(12:40):

A nice analogy is if you’re driving along the road, you know, you’ve been driving along the road, sometimes you don’t really notice that you’ve driven anywhere because “Well how did I get here?” You sort of drifted off. That’s just system one has kicked in and it’s going left, right up, down, all the rest of it, without thinking. Then you pull up to your space and there’s a Mercedes and a Porsche, you’ve got to reverse into the gap. Suddenly your brain’s like “Right, I got to think about this.” That’s system two. That’s giving you an outline of the system one, system two. The thing is, we can change behavior by talking to… What we want to do is talk to system one, which is emotionally driven. Because the thing is, if you get system one, the quick emotion stuff to change its attitude towards you, it doesn’t even ask system two.

(13:24):

You make somebody feel something, and they will sort of contact with your brand basically. This is why a lot of marketing is becoming emotionally driven. However, if you just do the sensible system two, have a long conversation about why it matters, people are going to tune out. That’s the kind of thing. That’s what… I’m properly rambling now, but there’s a lot there, in the system one, system two is the core. Then what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about how storytelling impacts on that. Let’s just take for granted now that we want system one to be who we’re talking to. It’s driven by emotion. Okay? Stories are fantastic at changing emotions. When we hear a story, the chemicals that cause emotion, they kick in, they hijack your cortex, and you suddenly throw away all those objectively observant skills. Everything we think about, we start hearing a story, the classic sort of three part story, and we become emotionally engaged.

(14:22):

The amygdala, the hippocampus, they start kicking in to remember things. Suddenly our language centers spark up. We get this big rush of sort neurochemicals and transmitters, so oxytocin, dopamine, all those sort of things. When we tell stories, the human brain switches on, and we’re ready to be emotionally engaged. This has been really studied really, really well by a guy called Dr. Paul Zak, who did a brilliant piece of work on the future of storytelling. What Dr. Paul Zak did is he showed this really powerful film about a little boy called Ben. Ben’s dying of cancer, and his dad’s really upset because he wants to play with his son, but he can’t play with him, because he knows that his son’s dying and he just can’t deal with the emotions of it. He shows everybody, he showed thousands of people this film and he measured their blood chemistry before and after this powerful film.

(15:11):

What he showed was that, actually, there was a really strong empathic response to this very powerful film, but there was actually a very strong uptake in neurochemicals, cortisol, and oxytocin. We could show that powerful films actually made you do something. Then the super cool thing was he was able to show that oxytocin and that cortisol increase actually made people change their behavior. The people who had the largest uplift in those chemicals were more likely to donate money to a stranger in the lab, in a room. We were able to show how you can change behavior by changing brain chemistry. Make people feel stuff. They get this rise in chemicals. The chemicals then actually drive their behavior, because they’re feeling stuff. We’re changing behavior by changing brain chemistry, when we talk about stories. Super interesting stuff. Nerdy but super interesting.

Katya Allison (Host) (16:04):

But I’m sitting in this nerdy space with you, as well. I love hitting the emotion because you’re right. I am more likely to do anything when I’m tied to it. It’s interesting because the emotion that we’re talking about doesn’t necessarily have to be like this… I feel like when you’re describing it, when you’re trying to drive people to do something, it is almost like, it sounds a little bit like you’re trying to make people feel affection or love. I think that’s what I’m thinking about. But I almost think that it doesn’t have to be just the positive and not that I want to go dark on everybody, but I also think that a good brand storyteller can also be someone that shows you or makes you feel that negative emotion. But then to get your attention, and then shows you how that brand can solve that and relieve that. But they caught your attention with that negative emotion, as well, too.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (17:11):

Yeah, completely agreed. I think when we are making films, we talk about emotional drivers. I’ve just told you that story about Ben and when you’re working with charities, emotional drivers are easy. Somebody’s dying, somebody’s poorly, I’m empathic. But what happens if you’re a B2B brand and you’re selling widgets, or you’re selling little technical stuff. An emotional driver isn’t just happy, sad, angry. It’s also fear of missing out, jealousy, laziness. It’s the thing that actually makes people go, “Oh okay, I need this thing.” There’s a lovely…

(17:44):

When we talk about emotional drivers, we’re not talking about those big primary emotions. We’re talking about the thing that made people connect. There’s a great film by a company called Taulia. Now, Taulia, no disrespect to them, they make boring stuff. They make e-invoicing software, they make invoicing for electronic invoicing stuff, really hard to sell. But they do this amazing film, and I’ll send you a link later, where they’re basically like… Look, they’ve got this guy and he’s tapping away doing his invoices manually, but then he gets RSI and because he gets RSI, they give someone else the job, they give it to the intern. The intern fills in, the intern does a better job than him, the intern becomes his boss.

(18:21):

Basically it says, “Don’t lose your job. Use an electronic invoicing so that, you know, you don’t lose your job.” It’s a really comical kind of sort of situation. But what they do there is they go at the bottom like “Actually you should probably look at this because you don’t want to be shown up by anyone else.” That’s a real important driver for someone who’s looking at buying a new software or something like that. There’s always an emotion to leverage.

Katya Allison (Host) (18:47):

Yeah. Well and you described a lot of different things in there, too. You were talking about emotional drivers, but I see such a good play on humor in regards to that, as well, too. It’s this relief, it’s this humor. Oh I get it. You know, you’ve solved it in whatever length of time that was. Which I don’t mean to go back to the length of time, but I do think that brands right now do have this challenge because when we’re talking about videos and we’re talking about video marketing, this is not a secret. Obviously everybody is doing it, and they’re all trying to do it. I also think that this is the huge reason that there is such an influx in content creators when it comes to just kind of influencer marketing. Content creators are so good at hitting just kind of that emotion in the 90 seconds. I’d love to hear your thoughts on creators in this video space and what they’re doing right that brands can learn from.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (19:55):

Yeah, so you are talking about YouTubers and this kind of thing?

Katya Allison (Host) (19:55):

Yeah, and the TikTokers, also because TikTok is just definitely, it’s turned into such a new search engine. If I’m looking for a recipe, I can hit #foodtok and I’ve got all of the recipes on there. They give it to me in this very digestible ways that then I can click into something else. I think that they just do such a really great job in such a short amount of time. But also YouTube, it’s much longer.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (20:22):

Yeah, if you talk quietly off the record to Google people, they are very nervous that the young people, if they want to go out for dinner, they don’t Google Maps or google it on Places. They go on TikTok and they look what’s around the corner. People are Genzennials, as we like to call them, Gen Z and millennials, which is a wonderful word. You can have that. They are increasingly turning to TikTok as a search engine. Brand story has to be wrapped in, I think, increasingly important. Interesting information, I think when we’re talking about video, it’s really easy to go, “Oh no, it’s this or it’s that.” It’s all about understanding what you’re trying to do. There’s still a place for the brand film, there’s still a place for the explainers, and the interviews with… That’s the whole thing. But there is an increasing need for content that’s genuinely interesting.

(21:13):

We are working with a healthcare company at the moment, big international healthcare company about the future of healthcare and the environment. We are making a five part documentary series for them exploring the issue that the fact that actually the healthcare industry puts out as much carbon as the fifth biggest country in the world. But also, if we want people to be healthy, they’ve got to live on a good planet. Suddenly we’re not talking about this healthcare’s policies and this healthcare company’s policy. The lesson we can take is , is it genuinely interesting? Could it be a Netflix documentary? Could it be an entertaining thing on social in its own right? Let’s not have too many corporate messages, because people just don’t care, right? If it is a corporate message, crack on, fill your boots, brand film, brilliant. But if you’re trying to do something to capture people’s attention, how to make it genuinely watchable, genuinely engaging and not just a bit brand-y for no need, so that’s working really well.

Katya Allison (Host) (22:10):

I definitely agree, but there is so much noise out there that you have to really stand out. Do you have any tips for a brand who really wants to double down on video marketing in 2023? Right, like we’re going all out.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (22:26):

I’ve got a book full of tips. Yeah.

Katya Allison (Host) (22:30):

Well, scratch the surface. Give us some top three.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (22:35):

Okay. Number one thing is to start with the planning process. To go back to that digital sales funnel. Like we said, it’s narrow at the top because we can highly target who we’re talking to. We don’t need to do mass media anymore. But then the sales funnel gets fat in the middle. We need a lot of content. People will stay in that consideration phase for days, months, years, whatever. Then we need to drive them to take action. There’s a temptation, we need more videos, we need to make more content. Let’s just start with the problem. We are working with a big automotive brand in the UK, they’re an electric car charging brand. There’s lots of things you could do. We could do a TV commercial, we can get the brand known, actually that’s great, everyone’s going to know us. But actually let’s start on page, on site.

(23:18):

Make sure that the video content we have has got lots of reviews, it’s SEO friendly, it’s search friendly, and it’s driving conversion so that when we start doing a brand campaign and we’re driving people to the traffic, we convert them. There’s no point sending people to a page that doesn’t work. Number one tip is figure out actually what your problem is, and then find a piece of content that’s actually going to solve that problem. If you can reversion it into other bits, like ten second social cuts and whatever, do that. That’s number one. That’s tip number one. Number two is you have to have emotion at the beginning. We’re talking about three part films, emotion, fact, and action. Make that connection so that people go, “Oh, I need it.” Then give them some facts, as few as you can, but then give them somewhere to go, drive some action.

(24:00):

Give them a landing page. It’s like if your film ends with “The end,” or “Here’s my logo.” Or even worse, a link to the website when it’s on your website. It’s just like “Come on, don’t do that.” Tip three, this is a corker. Just don’t use YouTube for embedding stuff. This is everywhere. Every conference I go to, I say, “Are you embedding stuff with YouTube on your site?” Hands go up and it’s like, just don’t do it. The reason is this. If you go to your YouTube channel and look at sources, traffic sources in your sources thing, you will find your own website is listed in those sources. Sometimes it’s hundreds or even thousands of hits to your YouTube channel.

(24:41):

What’s happening there is you are spending a load of money getting people to your website, and they stay and they watch your video and they see the YouTube button, and they click the YouTube button and they bugger off to YouTube and you never see them again. You are actually sending people off your site by using YouTube and you’re just losing money. Use a player like Vimeo, TwentyThree, Vidyard, anything which actually allows you to own the data and own the audience, because really YouTube doesn’t care where they’re on your website… It actively wants them off your website, to be honest. So there you go. Three little, three little tips.

Katya Allison (Host) (25:13):

I like that. One of them is planning, two is use emotion. I like the three part, as well, too. Then the third is don’t embed YouTube, use something like Vimeo.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (25:25):

That’s really functional. Yeah.

Katya Allison (Host) (25:28):

Yeah. I like that. It’s true. I would’ve raised my hand, as well, too, with the whole embedding and the whatnot. That’s so crazy that you said that. I’m like “Uh-oh.”

Jon Mowat (Guest) (25:39):

You can just see people’s heads go, “Oh, shit.” Just like they spent all this money-

Katya Allison (Host) (25:45):

I did that, I did that. Internally I was like “F***.”

Jon Mowat (Guest) (25:46):

That’s amazing.

(25:46):

But you don’t think about it. But as soon as you see it, it makes total sense.

Katya Allison (Host) (25:54):

It does make sense, which is great if your goal is to drive more people to YouTube versus your website, but I think most-

Jon Mowat (Guest) (26:03):

You need to look at the two separately, anyway.

(26:05):

There’s a lot of people who go, “Well host it on YouTube.” You need to have a video strategy for your website, which is based around SEO, search, retention, conversion, all that stuff. Then you need to have a YouTube strategy, which is about nothing but growing your audience. Because really that’s all YouTube is good for, growing your audience quickly, scaling it, getting attention, brand awareness. It’s not about click throughs, it’s not about purchases, it’s not about putting things in baskets, it’s just literally becoming famous. Those two things are very different.

Katya Allison (Host) (26:38):

They’re very different. I think that there are a lot of people that, I don’t want to say miss that, because I think that sometimes as a brand, what we want to do is we want to grow everything and become this resource for people who are searching for answers that you solve. That’s essentially what we want to do. I think that YouTube is really great from a search perspective, in the same way that TikTok is really great from a search perspective. I’d imagine a video strategy in YouTube is this combination of those YouTube shorts, and the long form, and then also having the SEO-rich description, and title, and tags, and calls to action that you want from that. But ultimately it is also just kind of teaching people, too.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (27:26):

Yeah, YouTube is about hacking the algorithm, which is a trendy phrase that we use all the time. 75% of the views on YouTube come from “recommended.” You need to get recommended, and you only get recommended if you have over 30 pieces of content, 20, 25, depending on who you are, and you’re posting regularly and it’s well SEOed, and it’s well sign posted. It’s like once you hack that algorithm, your views will step up massively. I’ve done some work with YouTubers who are starting out, and nothing happens, but you keep up the frequency, you keep up the thing, then it picks you up. Then you get recommended and you scale. But that’s only if your brand goal is get famous. If your brand goal is deliver quick sales, then don’t bother doing it because it’s way too much work.

Katya Allison (Host) (28:12):

It’s so much work.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (28:13):

It just depends on what you want to do. Yeah.

Katya Allison (Host) (28:16):

It is so much work. I think honestly, one of the things that I love that you said at the beginning was how much time it does take to put together content. It’s less about putting together those 50 videos that you think that you have to have, and maybe just really concentrating on 10. 10 that you’re going to do throughout the year and that you’re going to really knock it out of the park, and do it well, and take your tips of planning, using emotion and not embedding something. But that one doesn’t feed into it. It’s the two tips that really feed into the video part. But I think that those are so key. I could really talk to you forever because, you know, you dropped some tidbits of your book in here and this could be a book club, as well, too. This happens to be always the issue that I run into with the guests that I’m super fangirling over. But at last, we have the prediction time question. What do you see happening with video and video marketing over maybe the next year?

Jon Mowat (Guest) (29:23):

I’m going to have more than one…

Katya Allison (Host) (29:24):

Give them to me.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (29:26):

Firstly, the landscape is going to become more complex. When I started out we used to… Well, we used to broadcast on television, then we used to post DVDs and then it was like, then we had to have a 16:9 and a 9:16 and a 1:1 and all these different formats, and more so. What’s going to happen over the next year is definitely there’s going to be more places you could do it, and more people saying, “My shit’s better than anyone else and you should put your thing here.” So it’s even more imperative that you go back to the plan and you figure out which one of those noisy platforms is for you. That’s definitely going to happen. The other thing that’s going to happen is increased personalization and interactivity. This is the super cool thing. If we think about video, it’s typically what we would call a lean back kind of thing.

(30:10):

You sit back, you watch it. How can we increase engagement rate by making it lean in? That’s by adding simple interactivity, click hotspots, what we call branching, where people are choosing their own adventure, watch a bit more. When we go back to the duration thing, give them 20 seconds of cool stuff, then give them an option to watch the four or five chapters that they’re interested in. That’s how you do that.

(30:35):

Then personalized video, which is increasingly important, which in summary is when you send everybody a different video that has their name in it or has something personal to them in it, so they watch it… We’re working with a bank and they send out an email that says, “Hi Pete, you have this much money in your bank, and you’ve invested this. You’ve made this much interest,” and it’s all in there and it gets delivered by email. Engagement rates are insane. Number one is, I think it’s all about technology. It’s going to make the landscape more complicated, but it’s going to make it more interactive with much higher engagement rates. I feel pretty confident about those, actually, I’ll stand by them.

Katya Allison (Host) (31:13):

Yes. What I think really speaks into just that prediction that you’re having is that we are living in a digital world. Everybody has access to everything in the palm of their hands, at their fingertips, quite literally. I’m starting to see a ton of what it is that you are talking about as well, especially with D2C customers, or not customers, D2C brands, right? It is the popup videos that come up on the website. There’s a lot more software that’s out there that is providing that kind of functionality that you are predicting. I think it’s more… It will be more rampant. You do have to have that, especially because people will double, triple down on video marketing in general, on videos and video marketing in general. I would say that more people are going to do video marketing, and I love that you had defined that at the top of the podcast that those are two different things, right? There is video, and then there is video marketing and that is the more strategic play. Well, thank you so much. I absolutely appreciate you coming on here.

Jon Mowat (Guest) (32:25):

It’s great to be here, so thank you very much for having me.

Katya Allison (Host) (32:27):

Thank you so much.

(32:36):

Now, the difference between video marketing and videos is what we kind of went over at the top of this episode, but we really, really dove into was the role of videos in the entire marketing funnel, and why video works to begin with. Really connecting with people on an emotional basis literally changes their mind, like a physical change. When we talk about emotions, we’re not talking about the Sarah McLachlan SPCA commercial. I’m hoping that everybody understands that reference or remembers, right? Very impactful commercial. We’re talking about emotional drivers. It’s thinking more about the FOMO, laziness, social proof, that’s just to name a few emotional drivers. He describes these as system one responses, right? With system one being the automatic, the things that you spend less time thinking through. These are just kind of some of the nuggets that I really just digested throughout our conversation, as well, too.

(33:40):

Now, please visit the episode page to get the link to his book, Video Marketing, or you can search it on Amazon and you get 20% off. Use the discount code VIDEOMK20 to get 20% off. That’s V as in Victor, I-D-E-O-M-K20 to get 20% off. If you want to hear more, be sure to subscribe to the GRIN Gets Real podcast to get the latest episodes, give us some stars, or share your favorite episode in review. Connect with me on social, you can find me on LinkedIn, Katya Allison. If you are interested in learning more about GRIN, visit our website, grin.co. Until next time, keep grinning.

 

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