MBA2306 Q&A Wednesday: What gear do I need to create a great sales video for my site?

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform.

Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Product perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey, welcome to the $100. Because a better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar@100mba.net Today's question is from Brenda and Brenda asks, I want to create a killer sales video for my website. I sell online courses and I want to know what year I need to pull off a great sales video. Do I need to invest in a great camera or just a very good webcam, mic, teleprompter? What do I need to make this happen and have a sales video that helps me get more conversions? Thanks for your help Brenda. Love this question Brenda, because I've created a lot of sales videos in my 20 years of business experience and I'm going to give you all the options. I'm going to tell you what you need, what you don't need, how to decide what to buy, roughly how much these things cost and how to get started can make a huge difference in the conversions you make, how many sales you get for your products or services. People love compelling video. And when I say invest, I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about time, effort, creativity. That's really what's going to make your video pop. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Like I mentioned, I've created all kinds of different sales videos. Funny enough, one of the most successful sales videos I created didn't use a camera, a mic, a teleprompter, lighting. All I used was my laptop and I spent $50. Now you might be saying, how is this possible? Spent $50 didn't even use a camera or mic or any fancy equipment. Well, it's all about what the video is about. The idea, the script, the story you're telling. If that's strong, your video is going to be strong. I have also shot sales videos that were shot on location. Fancy cameras, great music, highly edited, use a teleprompter, used all the technology and it flopped. And again, it boils down to what are the words that are being conveyed, what is the message we're sending out? And there's a ton of examples I can give of really simple videos, videos that don't cost a lot of money to create that went viral. Whether it's the dollar shave club sales video or old spices videos where the guy is in the shower and telling women that your man can smell like me. If your concept is solid, it's really what matters. And let me explain where to get started so you know what? You actually need to pull off your vision. To pull off your sales video, you need to start with a blank page, a blank piece of paper, a blank word doc, Google Doc. That's where it starts. And you start with one goal. If there's one goal for this video, what is it? And don't say more sales because obviously we want more sales. But what do you want your audience member to walk away feeling thinking. For example, in that $50 video that I created, that was one of my best sales videos. It was a video to promote my software, Webinar Ninja. This is a video I created about five or six years ago. And the word I had at the top of my document was excited. I want people to get excited about my software. Excited enough for them to try it because there's a free trial. I knew if they excited to check it out. I've done my job. Now, once I nailed that Word, the word, the thing I want them to actually feel, think, walk away with, you're going to decide that for yourself. But once you start with that word, it makes your life a whole lot easier because then you start asking yourself, well, what makes you excited? In my case, you know, my word was excited. And I said, music pumps me up. So it's got to have great music. Action pumps me up, personally. Powerful words pump me up. When you hear a powerful quote or you hear a powerful sentence or a great speech, it really excites you. So I would write down a brainstorm and say, okay, great music, great words, great message. And that's how I came up with the concept where I said, I'm going to create a video that's all about typography and very fast paced, upbeat music, showing different images of our software and what it does and explaining why they should get excited about it. So that kind of is the way you can come up with a great concept. It's just starting with the word and then asking yourself, how do I get people to feel that way, to think that way? What would help me do that? Maybe your word is inspiring or feeling inspired. Well, maybe you need to show some inspiring images, maybe clips from your own life, maybe inspiring quotes or inspiring figures from history. And from there you start to realize, okay, in order for me to put this together, maybe I need to be on camera. Maybe I don't need to be on camera. In my case, with my $50 video, I wasn't on camera at all. There was no voiceover. It was just music and typography and images. I bought an after effects project and customized it for our needs. I bought the rights to a song that I thought would go great and would be punchy with this typography video. And that's all I bought because that's all the project needed. I didn't want to just bloat it for no reason. Now, your needs might require you to be on camera. Does it need to be a $5,000 camera, a studio camera? No, probably doesn't. You probably could shoot a GR with your iPhone, with your smartphone. Do you actually need great audio on the go or can you do a voiceover later on? Can you use music over the images and use words at the end of the day? Once you understand what you're trying to do, what you're trying to invoke in the customer when they watch this video, you'll know what you'll need. Now, I'm not a big fan of teleprompters because I know a lot of people, they're going to deliver lines in a sales video. They're going to do some teaching. Like, say, for example, in Brenda's example where she is selling online courses, maybe she wants to do a bit of teaching. Maybe it's better to share some clips of you coaching on a live video. I did this with a sales video for our automated webinar challenge course and it came out brilliant. And you should check it out if you want to see a good example of this over@webinarninja.com AWC now, the reason why I'm not a big fan of a teleprompter is because it's very hard unless you're a professional. And you do this every day to make it look natural, to make it look like natural speech, to look into the lens perfectly, like you're talking to somebody directly in their eyes. I like to make eye contact with the lens because it makes it a very compelling video when somebody feels like you're looking right at them. And I rather have three or four cuts me delivering lines that I've memorized. And I usually can memorize two to three lines at a time and cutting to a different angle or maybe a close up. And you can do this in post and edit every time I deliver a line. So it looks like a deliberate edit, a deliberate shot, and it comes off more authentic, in my opinion. So it starts with a concept. Then you start understanding, what do I need? Do I need music I need to buy? Do I need to get some graphic work done? Do I need to just get a bunch of footage and spend some time shooting some video? Maybe I want to shoot some footage of New York City or the city I live in. Maybe I got to do some interviews over video or in person. Whatever your concept is, understand. Okay, what do I need to pull this together? And then you'll know what equipment you need. If you're on a budget, ask yourself before you buy any pieces of equipment, will this make or break? The actual sales video will actually be a deal breaker in most cases. In my experience, it's not usually the concept, the message, the feeling you're trying to evoke is really what matters. People will tolerate less than perfect delivery or equipment. Of course, if you can afford it and you can go all in. Amazing.

At Amica Insurance, we know it's not just what's inside your home that matters. It's who you share it with. That's why we work even harder to protect it. Visit amica.com and get a quote today.

Okay, does this happen to anybody else? You sit down with a juicy QPC, some McNuggets and those golden fries from McDonald's. Then you take a long sip of your Sprite because you can still hear your mama saying, don't fill up on that drink before you eat your food. But you're grown now, so you do what you want.

Share and share alike with the 20 piece McNuggets from McDonald's for just $6 limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer.

So as you can see, your sales video really starts with the concept. Then you ask yourself, what do I need? Because often if you start the other way around, you're going to buy and invest in things. You just don't need to pull off your idea to pull off your sales video. I will say that the real magic happens in the script or the storyboard and in the edit because that's really where the story is told. That's where the video is really turned into magic. And if you're not strong with either one of them, maybe you can hire some help on upwork or on freelancer.com to help you with these tasks. This is where I would invest some money because this is really where you can differentiate your video from a good one to a great one. Brenda, I hope that helps answer your question today on Q and A Wednesday. If you have a question you want to ask, go ahead and ask me over at Omar at 100 MBA and I'll make sure to answer right here on Q and A Wednesday. If you love this podcast, hit subscribe, hit Follow. On your favorite podcast app, just hit those triple dots on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on Stitcher Radio, on whatever app and hit follow. That way you get our episodes automatically and you get access to over 2300 business lessons in our archives. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Creating a sales video is so much fun, in my opinion. It's such creative work. It's a great exercise of expression and a chance for you to show how proud you are of your work. When you do this, the viewer, the customer, they see it, it gets conveyed, and they get excited about your product or service. So don't be bashful, okay? Be proud of what you've created and show your pride. And in that video. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.