The Video Strategy Every Advertiser Needs To Win

Bob sells rugs.

Frank also sells rugs.

Jane owns a house.

Now Bob and Jane are really old friends. They go way back. They watch each other's kids. Their families go on vacation together.

So one day Billy - Jane's mischievous son - spills a bunch of paint on the floor. (This has been inspired by real life events.)

Nice little Billy. Nice. Appreciate that, buddy. So now Jay needs a new rug.

Here comes Frank "Hey, I see that your son's still paint all over your rug. That's awful. I've got a sail going on right now on rugs. Do you wanna buy a rug?"

Then Bob walks up "Oh no. Jane, what happened?"

"Billy was playing Power Rangers again. Apparently the paint was the bad guy. Now I need a new rug."

"Oh, all right. No worries. Let's get that replaced for you, really fast."

"Oh, can't wait. Thank you!"

What's the moral of the story?

Don't start with attention.

Don't be Frank.

If you wanna be massively successful for your own business and for your clients - build relationships first. You heard this before, we're gonna say it again, and I'm gonna show you how you can do it in one video. Build relationships first, ask for stuff later. We all need reminders about this when we are running paid ads. The same goes for your video ads.

If you listen carefully and actively 40 minutes from now - maybe 35, I don't know, I haven't timed it - you will be able to make billions of dollars in online advertising, create an ad strategy that's future proof and let millions of people be magnetically attracted to your brand. That's what we're gonna do today.

Cold to Sold, The Video Strategy You Need to Become Wildly Profitable

First thing we're gonna do is we're going to revisit the structure of our funnel. Y'all know what a marketing funnel is, but how often do you actually think about how it impacts messaging and how often do you short cut it to get to the wrong place at the wrong time?

What's the goal rule of marketing?

For me, it's meet people where they are.

So if the golden rule of marketing is meet people where they are, we need to revisit the funnel. So we're gonna start with the cold audience. By the way, did you guys know that if you sell a product or service online, it has nothing to do with you at all, that you are not important whatsoever? So what's important? If you're not important, what's important? The customer. And what about them? Their emotions. Their thoughts, their feelings, how they wake up in the morning, how many kids they have, how many of their kids spill paint on the floor, all these things.

So this is what they think about you. When you're running as to a cold audience this is what they're saying "I don't know you. I don't know you from a hole in the wall. I'm super skeptical. I may or may not even know that I have the problem that your product solves"

So these are the things that she is thinking, right? How often do we talk to, let's call her Samantha, how often do we talk to Samantha? Keeping in mind that she doesn't know you from a hole in the wall. And she may not even understand you. These people need a problem/solution video. They need it bad, they really do.

Step one here is that you need to lay out the problem/solution framework, which is just a little thing that I created that helps you meet people where they are; the golden rule of marketing. I created this little system and it's super cool because if you do it, it will unlock all the messaging for your advertising.

Essentially what you do with the problem/solution framework is you're going to simply rate how problem aware your avatar is - avatar, being your ideal target customer. So you need to do the work to know exactly who your ideal target customer is and what they care about, what their pain points are, what makes them tick, what keeps them up at night, all those things. And we're going to rate how problem aware they are on a scale of 1 to 10. And how solution aware they are. So this is very, very different, depending on what it is that you sell. And when you rate these things, it absolutely unlocks all of your marketing messaging.

And by the way, this is beyond video ads. This is for everything; writing a social post, doing an image ad, whatever it might be. This unlocks your messaging. But since video is so incredibly personal and it needs to really meet people where they are, we rub this in. And I'm a big fan of planning your video content to take people through the funnel stage where they're at. So we have to understand the problem solution framework.

This is very different depending on what your business is. For example, we have a client called HYDROVIV. They were on Shark Tank and they create custom water filters that are built for the water in your zip code. So essentially, your Brita sucks and your fridge water filter sucks because if there's lead and PFAS and all this other junk in your water, the Brita and the fridge are doing nothing.

How many of you knew that? Three people out of, at least 700 in this room I mean, look at the percentages. So you don't even know that you have this problem. You're probably sitting there at somewhere around a 2 on the problem aware scale and so on a solution aware scale, like, I don't even know I have the problem as far as the solution goes, I'm like 1. What does that mean from the messaging?

You gotta be educational. You have to teach people. If they're not problem aware what's gonna happen vwhen I go to a cold audience, Samantha, who doesn't know your brand from a hole in the wall, and you're like "Samantha, here is 15% off my custom water filters" and she is going to keep scrolling because its not a thing, they don't even know that they have the problem. So we have to educate them about the problem.

And then there's plumbers. How problem aware are you with the problem that a plumber solves? Very. We were joking about how I had to call a plumber once because I saw water in my ceiling and I was like, "yep, my tub's gonna come crashing out on me and a family. I got a problem!"

I'm very problem aware, right? Extremely problem aware.

And how solution aware am I? 10! My sink is broken. I need to call a plumber.

Problem and solution aware. So did you see how this can completely craft your marketing? How much education does a plumber need to do in their end versus the amount of education that HYDROVIV needs to do in their end?It's a lot, right. Because they don't even know they have the problem. A plumber has a different problem by the way, because the plumber now, since it's a 10 and a 10, everybody is so problem aware and so solution aware that there are lots of plumbers, likely. So they have to compete against all these other plumbers.

So it's going to change their messaging to be much more trust and relationships. That's going to be much, much, much more important. Why would I choose you over the other one? That's the market. Whereas HYDROVIV, they don't have competition, but they have some ways that are bigger hurdle, which is, their audience has no idea that they even need this. It costs like 250 bucks or something. So it's not cheap. They're under sink water filters and you can install them 15 minutes, it's super easy. But before I said that you probably immediately thought since I said under sink water filters that it was gonna be super hard and you don't even want to deal with it. It's actually super easy. The amount of education is intense. We've worked for a lot of Shark Tank companies, and this is actually what they all deal with. The avatar is just simply not a problem aware.

Then when you're creating the actual video ad, that's going, remember, we're on this stage of the funnel, because what we're talking about today is mostly talking about Facebook, Instagram, YouTube ads right now, but I will talk a little bit about how this applies to ads on TikTok. By the way, a lot of stuff I'm covering today is so strategic that you can apply across it the board. It's tactical and it's strategic. And this goes for TikTok ads as well.

You want use the 4 R's framework to create video ads for the cold audience, people that have no idea who you are, they may not know that they even have the problem that you solve. And this is the framework that you want to use:

Relate

Rile

Reveal

Release

Essentially this is a derivative in some ways of problem/solution advertising. This is basically how we're gonna script our videos, but you can also look at it as a basic structure. So I'm gonna show you a couple of examples of how we made high converting Facebook and Instagram video ads specifically using the 4 R's framework, but it is a structure that you can bring to any platform where the audience does not know who you are and what you do. They have no relationship with your brand. you've done the problem solution framework, and you're trying to figure out how to actually do this thing.

The first thing that you do is RELATE. So my book is about producing empathy because I really believe that the reason why anybody clicks anything, buys anything, watches anything is because of empathy, because they emotionally identify with. We need to emotionally identify with the problem. So you're gonna see a lot of my videos that are directly to a cold audience calling out the problem. Great beginning, but not just a problem, like "my water filter doesn't work" or something, it needs to be emotional. Empathy, not just identification but an emotional resonance.

"I'm frustrated." Right? People are emotional beings. So all of our work in advertising and social media, all of this stuff as a marketer, it's here, not here. Like we need to get through their heart, not to their head. Their head might put them over the fence to be able to actually buy the product or service, but it's gonna be their heart that gets them into the funnel. And if they're not on the funnel, it's game over. So we need to speak to their emotions and we don't do that by talking down to them. We do that by talking about empathy.

Then that's where RILE comes in because we may state the problem from our emotional identification and we need to stir it up emotionally. So it's not just simply "I found out that there was bad stuff in my water and that sucked" it's like "I found out there was bad stuff in my water and I was really nervous and afraid that my kids were going to get sick and I'm just actually being a bad dad or mom doing a disservice them by giving them the water that could have had lead in." So now I'm riling it up, right? A lot of what we're doing in here is very much strength training. We're contracting the muscles and hitting anything under their reach. We're riling it up.

Then we REVEAL the product or service because this is cold audience marketing so they don't know necessarily that they have of a problem or solution. They don't know much about you. So you relate by first, then you reveal how many ads do you see that? They're just basically like, "I got this thing, it's cool. It does these four things and you can buy it." That's essentially every ad I see on Instagram, but there's a reason that doesn't work, they're not meeting people where they are. That's reveal.

RELEASE is where we take all the emotion that we've riled and the reliability and the problem. And we just, exhale. We just take all the contractions. I got so frustrated. I couldn't solve this problem. I'm worried about my children. How many of you were parents? Right? Is anybody worried that they're gonna be led in their water after I told you this? Like you might there some research, right? But this is legit. Like this client of mine started this company because it wasn't even gonna be a company. He built these for Flint, Michigan because of their water crisis and turned it into a company that was really successful, but you didn't even know you had this problem. It's scary. So now we get to all of you that said you were probably a little bit scared then I released that, but it's an emotional release, tense it up in the R stage. I'm confused. I'm frustrated. I'm upset. I'm scared. I release it emotionally by being comfortable, at peace. I feel like I'm doing everything I can as a mother or father, because that is the benefit and outcome.

And ultimately you've probably heard other people say in advertising, at least, because we're doing so much direct response selling. The best thing we can possibly do is talk about benefits and outcomes. Not features, nobody cares necessarily off the bat that I can install this in 15 minutes because you haven't really told me the benefit and outcome. I always say this, like, do you want more money? I don't think you do, what really want is the feeling you have when you have more money, right? You want the freedom, the abundance. I can go anywhere. Do anything. I am limitless, right? It's not the money. It's the feeling. you've gotta test these.

So we're looking at a horizontal video sort of YouTubey version of it. That's the way that we always work personally, just cuz it's, you know, filming, it looks good. When a client hires us to make this type of video, for example, we make like 12 different versions of it. Long story short, make sure you make square version. Throw captions on it. Put a headline bar on top. I love like Clipscribe. That's like really cheap, but it's great for putting headlines and captions on things highly recommend. So just make sure that you test all these things, cause you never know what'll work best on Facebook and Instagram. For instance, these videos in our testing have done best with a headline on top that says something like, I think the hygiene one that made the most money was a headline saying they fixed the worst thing about water filters and then it had captions because you have to optimize it for without sound.

To the middle of the funnel...

We've got the top of the funnel and we know that these people don't have any relationship, our rent, we do the problem solution framework. So we know exactly what kind of messaging to deliver to them at the perfect time. And now we're gonna go to the middle. So these people are aware of your brand. Obviously they know the problem, but they aren't convinced yet. So your job obviously is to move them down funnel. We pre-anticipate their objections and make content around it. So what does that word mean to you? Objections. What's an objection? "It's too expensive." An objection is anything that will stop them from buying. They're different for every product or service, but a lot of them are the same - cost too much, is a piece of crap, you know, as anybody ordered something on a Facebook or Instagram ad and got a piece of crap in the mail as I have? That's an objection. How can I trust you? Have other people tried it? Will this work for me? That's a big thing. People always ask that - will that work for me specifically? I'm unique. Will this solve my specific problem? All of these types of things. First list out all of your customers core objections, like all the type of stuff that I said.

Think of it like an FAQ, right? You have an FAQ and this is how all your product page FAQs should be. It should be list of objections that you counter so that people convert higher when they actually get to the page. Say for coaches, you're always selling someone, right? Like you're trying to sell a booked call, or you're trying to get somebody to watch a webinar, or you're trying to get somebody to opt in as a lead, or you're trying to get them by a product. There are a bunch of objections that you encounter in this video material. And this can be as simple as just like text on screen, using like the Wave app a lot. Go ahead. You know, it's great. Just make simple text on screen videos about these things and just directly encounter them. In fact, it could literally be like FAQ. It won't take me too long to install this filter. Right. And then no, it'll only take you 15 minutes. Here's how you do it. Step one, this let's up do this. And then as, as I said, directly create content that counters and the other one is like a value process, which is why boxings are so important because people like, feel that they're like in that, right?

Like this is a fancy imposs. You didn't.

There's actually enough elements in this video that you can probably try it at the top of the funnel, but it's not super problem related. So you guys sort of have to test it if you did, hasn't done well for them. You can. But it helps show the value of the product and directly counter the difficult to install.

You know, it's great. Just make simple text on screen videos about these things and just directly encounter them. In fact, it could literally be like FAQ. It won't take me too long to install this filter. Right. And then no, it'll only take you 15 minutes. Here's how you do it. Step one, this let's up do this. And then as, as I said, directly create content that counters and the other one is like a value process, which is why unboxings are so important because people like, feel that they're like in that. This is a fancy unboxing. There's actually enough elements in this video that you can probably try it at the top of the funnel, but it's not super problem related. So you guys sort of have to test it if you did, hasn't done well for them. You can. But it helps show the value of the product and directly counter the difficult to install objection. And we made another video for them really directly encountered that objection. Like it was like step one, do this. Step two, do this - and it made a ton money. And it's just that directly countering now.

Bonus, don't be afraid to run value based content here, all the stuff that you're learning in your content marketing stuff here, like blogs, value based videos, things like that. Don't be afraid to run that stuff. Middle of the funnel - I don't really have time to go to your whole strategy around this, but I have a whole way that I've done it before, where literally take your lhot and most engaged audiences. Like Facebook, Instagram engagers or website visitors who have been there for the past 30 days, chunk them into an ad set and retarget those people with like a dollar or two a day on all this value, mixed content. Think of it like this is not a media buying session, but this is how I like to run content. You have lone campaign, that's a content campaign. And then you have a bunch of ad sets. They're essentially the same audience, a 30 day warm audience. And then each one is a different piece of content that helps move people down and funnel and build trust.This is great if you have a very long sales, right? Like you're selling a dime, a break it's $2,000. It's gonna take people a few months to be able to get through your funnel. And so when you're able to run content and boost content to very specific audience members. It helps them convert and greases the funnel essentially. So it's really powerful.

The bottom of the funnel, we're just trying to get people over the edge. So we want to leverage social proof, intensely and creatively. So testimonials, influencers, mashups, anything you can think they can add. So we've encountered their objections in the middle of the funnel, and we're gonna do that a little bit to the bottom of the funnel. And now we're gonna make people have a fear of this account. Which is just basically the right response market and like scarcity. It doesn't have to fake scarcity create time gated sales, you know, like literally be in this for two weeks or you're out and then actually clean them out. But they'll want to come back when you have the next one.

You don't even need camera. This is one that we do that converts really well at the bottom of the funnel, literally just B-roll text on screen with testimonial stiff. Y'all can make a version of this, right? Maybe not quite as fancy with the animation at the top, but you can do this. If any video editor does text, it does also help on you do have people as well, obviously, cause influencers and stuff, and here is a hot tip. Forgetting UGC and testimonial videos that don't suck because how many of you have asked for U GC from your customers or something and spend garbage, you know, like they've reported it and then it doesn't only look bad. Like it's not even about the looks, they literally don't say the things that you need them to say. So that again, people who buy the stuff, it's a really difficult problem. So since looks don't matter so much, I'm a really big fan of doing the like zoom interview technique or Skype interview. Zoom is like worst quality and Skype if you record it. So book of video, chatting them for 10 minutes, record it and interview them with four questions that guide them through the four RS, because that will sort of mimic the customer journey and then empathetically other customers are going to see that. And they're going to, they're gonna empathize to that relationship and it's gonna move them down the funnel. And it's gonna help push them over the edge. It's awesome. And then you just edit, edit simply you have the hook and you do this, right? These are questions. I'm getting you something at the end.

And that's essentially the transformation when you're always selling an emotion, you're not selling a product. So you're selling the transf. You're selling bridge essentially. And don't be afraid at the bottom of the funnel to go hard on direct response, asking to take specific actions and make an offer, add urgency and scarcity. Do we have to get them the edge at the bottom of the funnel? Cause remember like, I, I fall on this track too, like for, so like I gotta think my customers who like, always thinking about me, but they're not like they just think about even when they see your ads. So like, it's not like they're like, it's keeping them up at night. They're just like, they're making coffee. Should I buy this thing? I don't know. You know, they're like they drive, they're kinda small, still so confused about why I should find this is not how they live their lives. They think about you when you put your stock in front of them and that's why you recharge. They're just not thinking about you very hard. So you need to like go the extra mile and you give them a reason now, like some fighting on your butt and say, listen, you want to do this? Get it now, create your game over. Right. But remember Bob and Frank. We've built a relationship with you first, right?

Platform considerations. As I said, square videos with clear hook and text on screen for Facebook and Instagram always invest. You've gotta have that huge hook, which is like visual or like text on screen. Like with empathy, all that stuff, YouTube, you wanna sometimes attempt to segment your audience using like what I call a splitting sentence, which essentially is you wanna say something that is clearly like people that are not. That this product could service and are never gonna buy it. Get a heck out that video and skip this ad. And the people that do are gonna stick around cuz you only pay for people on you do best after 30 seconds and TikTok. You wanna tease them a hook that will pay off at the end because you do want people to get through the video. That means more looping which TikTok album loves more completions, more looping, lower CBMS, meaning it's it's cheaper to show your ads, lower conversions. Everybody's happy. Your boss is happy. You're happy. All. And don't forget to use this in your email follow. I just wanted to throw this slide there. Cause I feel like a lot of people don't like, they'll do all this work to create testimonial videos and video ads. And then you won't throw in your welcome series. Does anybody at chase? Diamond's amazing email thing on Monday he talked about welcome series and everything. Like when you're getting people through, throw it in there, like give people videos to click and I, and it's pretty scientifically proven too.

If you have thumbnails in there rather than just like, watch the video at this link band, just be clear. So use this content in your email follow up because essentially you're segmenting people through moving them down the funnel. I mean, it's happening multi-platform and now that everything going on with privacy, third party cookies, if you've got their data, then it's more important than ever to move people through and always be running this, right? Like a funnel, a machine that's always in front of. It's not like. So or something like that, it's a, it's a machine that's always going. And if you're intimidated from seeing these videos, cause production value is a little bit higher than you used to do not be too intimidated, because story is way more important than production value.

It's so much more important that you do RELATE RILE REVEAL RELEASE, and you can even think of ways to adapt this as a founder and make a founder of video that takes people through this, or tell a customer story. If you don't want to just like hire an actor or so. It's it's more about the story because it's about the emotion.