Video Marketing 101 With Michael Gebbs

Ezra:      It’s Ezra here from the tank in Brooklyn. I’m here with my man Gebbles. Gebbles, welcome to the show.

Gebbles:       I’m pumped to be here.

Ezra:      Thanks for coming, man. That’s sort of an official handshake. We should probably do some kind of a fancy thing.

Gebbles has come in to help me and my wife, who is shooting this, with our video production; to help us have
more engaging and higher quality videos because we know that people are 174% more likely to take you up on an offer that you’re making to buy if you’re using video. We know that the average consumer consumes an hour of video per day and that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world now.

It’s like people are consuming video. Nowadays, business owners, people who want to engage with groups of people the way we do want to engage with a community of people, relate with them and then make them some kind of an offer that we believe is relevant and video is really the way to do that.

Gebbles:       Absolutely. Video is so powerful.

Ezra:      I’m selling you, the video guy.

Gebbles: I know. You don’t have to sell me. Video is so powerful. I think we’d rather watch something visually because you can hear it and see it as opposed to just reading this long copy of stuff. There is a place for that.

Ezra:      The question is what makes a good video? What is it? Is it production value? Is it ease of flow on camera? Is it multiple shots? I think that’s the question. A lot of people are afraid of video even though they have the iPhones, Power Point and they have all of the tools to be able to create these videos, but what makes a good one? That’s a loaded question.

Gebbles:       That’s a loaded question. I think it really all depends. It’s all in the context of what you’re trying to do with the video. As we were talking before this, sometimes using the iPhone right in front of you doing something they call a blog and just getting that out and recording can be great.

There are other times where for me it really depends on the brand. What are you trying to represent? If you have a high-end brand, the little blog from iPhone videos every once in a while may be okay but not as your overall marketing.

Ezra:      You make a good point here. The first question to ask yourself when you’re doing a video is who are you communicating with? If you take our brand, Boom, by Cindy Joseph, it’s our biggest, most well-know, must successful physical product brand; all of our videos are super-low production value.

That’s deliberate because we want to come off as real. We don’t want to look like the rest of these polished beauty brands. We want to say, “Hey, we’re just like you and we have the same problems you have and we are up to the same things and have similar viewpoints and that kind of thing.”

Gebbles:       People connect with that. We were talking about that as well. Depending on who your audience is so important as well. For the beauty brands you are dealing with just average, normal people and you don’t want to create this disconnect by having it so polished and perfect that they feel like she’s not even real. They’ve got the lights to perfect and they’ve got all of this stuff.

If you’re a chiropractor, you don’t want this cheap look so that people will say, “Do I really want to do business with that guy?””

Ezra:      Look at us here now. This is the business opportunity vertical. We’re talking to entrepreneurs, business owners and people who are paying attention to production value.

Gebbles:       That’s right. It’s very important. For them, that becomes, like we talked about, you don’t need or you can’t. If you have it there’s are subtleties about spending more on gear that can make a difference. At the same time, for some of the bootstrappers just getting started out there, we’re in a day and age that when I started a 250 gig hard drive was $500 or $600 in 2006. Now you can get a 4 terabyte drive for $100.

The same thing goes for cameras and all of it. It’s all relative now where for under a few thousand dollars somebody could have a full-blown production kit to create high-quality videos. Then it’s just learning how to use that gear.

Ezra:      Let’s talk about formulas. One of the things we like to do in our business is have formulas and systems and ways of producing the same result every time through some kind of a process.

Our process for video is that we shoot a little bit of B roll in the beginning. Then we do a face-to-camera shot and say, “Hey what’s up?” We have our conversation and then a little bit of B roll in the [inaudible 4:30]. Is there a favorite formula that you have?

Gebbles:       For me it’s being able to do something that you can replicate over and over again. The more difficult you make it the less likely you are to be consistent. As you very well know, consistency for everybody out there is almost more important to an extent than just making a phenomenal video all of the time because if making a phenomenal video means you’re only going to do it once in a blue moon, then it’s better to create lower-quality video that is regular.

Ezra:      Let’s look at this in the context of media in general if you look at podcasts. We both run podcasts. We’re into long-form audio content. We like to engage with people that way.

The podcasts that do well are the ones that come out every day. Those are the ones that get the most subscribers so it’s about consistency of content.

One of the ways that we do that in our business is that we have Saturdays with Cindy. I learned this from a guy in our space. I don’t know who it was but it was a couple of years ago.

He was saying, “Television is gone. People used to show up at 7:00 p.m. for the Simpsons right? So we do our videos every single Saturday and people show up on Saturday so we get them used to that.”       Would you say that once a week is the minimum?

Gebbles:       I have a YouTube series and I found the exact same thing which is consistency but not just consistency where I do it once a week. Beyond that it’s being at the same time, the same day of the week, every week if you’re only going to do it one. My series is every Wednesday and at 6:00 a.m. it’s released.

If I release a video which I only release every Wednesday but a couple times I’ve done something on a different day, from my subscriber base I can get a certain amount of views very quickly on that Wednesday but that other day of the week they’re not going to look for it at that time. It is important to have whatever you’re going to choose and do it consistently at that time.

Ezra:      I’m still trying to sell why video’s great and here’s one more quick thing. Why don’t people get this? If you look at what Google does, when you search something on Google they’re pulling up a video result, an audio result, an image result, a text result and that’s because different people prefer to consume media in different formats. Some people like to listen, some people like to watch and some people like to read.

If you have this video that you’ve produced, you can transcribe it, you can have an image made, and you can pull out an audio.

Gebbles:       What is Google typically putting first if it’s there?

 

Ezra:      Video. There’s always a video result and they want it in that first spot which is a good thing for search optimization. Am I wrong about that?

Gebbles:       There are obviously a lot of guys out there that talk about YouTube marketing. Some of them out there will tell you to not even create great videos but have that content and use certain key words while you’re talking because it picks out those key words as you’re talking.

For chiropractors you would use chiropractic office in New York. If you have a video for that or you’re a lawyer, you’re probably going to be one of the few who has the video.

Ezra:       Forget about ranking. You can just buy visibility. That’s what we do. We don’t worry so much about SEO and all this other stuff. We just buy the visibility for our offer.

Gebbles:       Honestly, you’re the kind of all that stuff. There is that saying that slow and steady wins the race which is what I’m doing organically with my YouTube series but obviously there’s a lot of value if you don’t have that patience but you might have a budget.

Ezra:      Here’s what I recommend you do with your marketing budget. Basically what we’re talking about right now is the difference between direct response sales videos in marketing and consistent content creation for engagement in communities and when you get a group of people who are following you and engaging with you, you then make offers.

The way we do it with our budget is that 75% of our budget goes to direct response. We’re driving our visibility to an offer where we want to see someone either opt in, buy something from us or some kind of a direct response sales funnel where we spent this money and we got this result over 30 days, 60 days or 90 days.

Twenty-five percent of our budget in every business, physical products, information products and services is content just to engage.

Gebbles:       That’s engaging so the first part of the funnel is to get them and get that result. Once you’ve got them now you want to keep engaging them and keep them part of the community.

Ezra:      I have two questions. First, you’re like the dude when it comes to video. Everyone uses you. Tony Robbins, Richard Branson and everyone is using you. You’re like “the guy.”

What does “the guy” use from an equipment standpoint? What should “not the guy” use? If you’re just a normal person and would like to shoot decent quality video and would like to understand a little bit about how to structure the videos, what do they need? Can they do an iPhone with a Rode Lav mike?

Gebbles:       For me personally right now I don’t have very many regrets at all. I still wouldn’t consider this a big one but it’s how much money I spent on gear when I started. That is probably one of my only regrets. It didn’t make me who I am today.

Ezra:      What did you spend, dude?

Gebbles:       Since I was 19 I’ve spent over $100,000 easily worth of gear. Sure I can help others not do that. I can look now in my core when I go to a Robbins shoot or I go to these different things and I have under $3000 worth of gear that I’m still using.

We were jumping on helicopters with him and I had this big, huge, shotgun case and all of this stuff with these big tripods but you can’t put those on a helicopter so had to go and got more portable tripods and stuff. One of them is the one that’s on this [inaudible 10:20] right there is a $100 tripod but you have to find your use.

I don’t need a camera that’s not panning, tilting or doing anything to be a $2000 tripod. It’s a $100 simple tripod. That being said, there are literally some DSLR Canons that people can get. I can name off a million of them but we were just talking about a 70D.

Because with a lot of the DSLRs you had to do manual focus so a lot of the do-it-yourselfers might not want to be video people. With lot of the DSLRs learning how to do the manual focus could be a problem but the 70D has this auto focus. You’re going to get the great look of a DSLR with the functionality of a normal video camera.

Ezra:      That’s if you want super high quality, right?

Gebbles:       It’s not super-super high quality.

Ezra:      For $1200, being in business, with the conversions and everything video can do for you, to spend a couple thousand dollars is not much.

Gebbles:       It is fuel.

Ezra:      If you really want to strip way down. You could do an iPhone and a Rode Lav mic.

Gebbles:       Let’s just say that again one time for people. Like we talked about, the cheaper the stuff doesn’t mean that it doesn’t produce quality but actually there are some inefficiencies and time is money as we know. The iMovies can get it done. They can produce a good video but it might be a little more difficult.

Ezra:      Let’s talk about what you mean specifically by that. Let’s say you got an iPhone and you’ve got a Rode Lav and you’re logging it into iMovie, that’s going to take longer to edit. In the long run how does that actually end up being . . . ?

Gebbles:       For me I’m the same-day edit guy. That’s what I became known for which is putting a quick edit together—an edit that someone would look at and think that it took eight or 10 hours.

Ezra:      Talk about what a same-day edit is real quick and what you did in the wedding community. Basically what you did is that you came into a community and you made an offer that nobody else was making that was a really good offer.

 

Gebbles:       I had a monopoly.

Ezra:      You generated visibility for the offer and then you sold the thing. It’s a business, right? You get people’s attention, you build a relationship with them and then you make them some kind of an offer. When you’re building that relationship, if you’re not genuine or you don’t have a good product then you won’t sell anything because people will feel that.

Gebbles:       It’s Word of Mouth. What happened is that people thought A Wedding Video literally sucked. Some of you may even link up one of them. The thing is that I would literally shoot all day and that night at the reception, maybe right before their first dance I would show a three and a half minute video.

At first I joked and said, “One other guy was with me helping today. He does them too.” You would show this and the first 60 seconds they think they’re watching a slide show and wondering, “What is this?” All of a sudden they’d say, “Oh my gosh,” and Word of Mouth just went crazy because nobody in any given town did that.

If any videographers happen to be listening, that’s something that . . . .

 

Ezra:      Same-day-edit is for any industry.

 

Gebbles:       I do it for any industry. I’ve obviously done it in this space. I was on Necker Island with Richard Branson and literally there were 20 pro tennis players. They watched my video and they were freaking out. I remember the person with me said, “They’re probably not going to be that impressed. These guys deal with the top of the top.” I said, “I guarantee they haven’t seen something like this.” They flipped out.

Ezra:      If you’re going to be in business and if you’re going to be in this line of work where you are selling someone something then it makes sense to build the relationship with them and find out about who they are and communicate with them. The most effective way to do that is with video.

One of the things that we like to do since we do a lot of this in our different businesses is to pay attention to how to do a better job at that and how to have people be more engaged. Are there are certain styles of shoots, different cuts or intros that increase engagement that you’ve found? I’ve got mine.

Gebbles:       Yeah. It’s interesting. I think that it depends on you as a person, like we talked about. I have my own [14:04] and I’m really engaging.

 

Ezra:      If you do say so yourself.

Gebbles:       I’m saying so myself. In my videos it’s like one camera angle and there’s nothing fancy. It looks solid but I’m not doing anything crazy. That’s also for sustainability again. If I started adding all of this crazy stuff and multiple cameras, it would actually be difficult for me to sustain.

Ezra:      First, this video is very fancy. We’ve got multiple shots. You don’t need that.

Gebbles:       You started with not [inaudible 14:31].

Ezra:      That’s right. I started without it. This is my first multi-camera shoot in quite a long time.

Gebbles:       That’s what everybody needs to do; just start. When you talk about the engagement, you could have a pro come in potentially and do your initial little intro or your little sizzle that they call it. It’s your B roll with these fancy little shot and then put that at eight to 10 seconds max. I had somebody [inaudible 14:53].

Ezra:      You could have one piece of B roll made and use it on every video.

Gebbles:       You could use it as an intro and as a bumper at the end. You can get this little intro or stylized thing put together. Honestly, probably even 10 seconds is too long. I had one buddy’s that was about 20 seconds. If they come back every week they don’t need to see a 20-second thing. Three to five seconds would be enough.

It would just be boom, boom, boom, boom, a cool little song, logo and go right into it.

Ezra:      I do want to just clarify that I do think you are very engaging. I was trying to make a joke and it didn’t come off well. You know how sometimes you try to make a joke and it doesn’t really land.

Gebbles:       [Inaudible: 15:26]

Ezra:      It sort of failed. The question at hand here is Number 1 no particular style works better than any other style?

Gebbles:       I don’t believe there is. I know you guys have tested a lot of things too but you can look across the board and there are people with the crappiest looking videos who are actually selling.

 

Ezra:      That goes back to what you said. “Just do it. Just get started.” Do you know what makes you good at something? It’s doing it a lot.

Gebbles:       It’s like helping Carey, your wife. She’s not at the one device we’re trying to get her to learn right now. She’s already had some little breakthrough moments in which she had a massive shift quickly but it will still take that practice. I told her if she only busts it out once a month she’s not going to get anything.

Anybody with any business right now, how did you become great at what you do? Did you just do it every once in a while?

Ezra:      Can I [inaudible 16:21]? Seriously?

Gebbles:       We are in a competitive world. You’ve got to leap to a certain level.

Ezra:      You can sell it once but you won’t sell it again unless you are able to actually deliver on the thing that you offered them in the first place. If you take one thing away here, do more video. Try to do one a week. It will benefit you. You will engage with your community of buyers, customers and prospects.

Gebbles:       I have to say something else. I joke about the engaging part. I do feel that way. There are only certain things I have my confidence about.

Ezra:      You are charismatic. Some people are not charming and charismatic.

Gebbles:       I will say that in 2010 I busted out my iPhone and did my first video for me. I’m the video guy but I was in front of the camera. It was very awkward and it didn’t feel comfortable but I did it. That’s the thing. You’ve got to do stuff. You can’t wait.

Ezra:      You get better. I just went back and watched.

Gebbles:       You can’t wait to be perfect.

Ezra:      You already are perfect which is a whole other conversation. We aren’t even going to go there right now. You’re fine as you are. Don’t listen to all of these people telling you that you’re screwed up, that you stink and that you need to buy deodorant. You might need to buy deodorant but just don’t buy into that and get started.

What I was going to say in response to that is I just went back. Have you ever heard of one upping? It’s like when someone says something and you immediately say, “I’ve got a cooler story in that area so I’m going to one-up you.”

I don’t know if it’s quite one upping but I just went back and looked at this product launch that I did back in 2012 and it was one of my first, straight, face-to-camera, long-form product launches. It was really scripted, hard core and just really rigid. It just didn’t feel good to watch.

Gebbles:       But you started.

Ezra:      Exactly. I started and now I feel like I’m a little bit better. At least my sales videos are significantly better than that. As you know, a lot of guys educate people and there are a lot of different forms of video. Some people will just pretty much never want to be in front of the camera.

Gebbles:       You don’t have to. You can do Power Point.

Ezra:      Here’s what I think with videos. This is my thing with sales videos. We write a lot of product sales videos and a lot of webinars which are basically just long-form sales videos and videos that are designed to engage on a consistent basis like blog-post videos and stuff. For me I believe it is all about stories. If you can tell a good story, you’re going to have a good video.

Gebbles:       Absolutely. That’s everywhere. Story is key.

Ezra:      How do you teach someone how to tell a good story with their video? What is the art of that because it’s in the eye of the beholder?

Gebbles:       It’s interesting because for me I’ve actually been the visual storyteller. There are just visuals which is what actually grew my business originally. Even my same-day edits of events like Amazing Song, you saw my film of that. That particular video I made that kind of sizzled for them to show at the end of their event didn’t have much in the way of sound bytes or any audio right?

Ezra:      No, it was all visual.

Gebbles:       I’m telling a linear story of that event. Everything has a story. You’ve got to find what that is.

Ezra:      With regard to stories, before, during and after is a very effective structure to think about. You want to tell someone some things like what happened before that thing. That’s context, right? How did it go? What happened during it? That’s your actual experience with your five senses. What did it sound like? What did it taste like? What did it smell like? What did it feel like? What did you think when it was going down?

Afterwards, what were the results? What came down afterwards? How did your life or experience change or whatever?

Gebbles:       Absolutely. You said the best right there.

Ezra:      Before, during and after. We’re going to come to an end here. Gebbles, thanks so much for coming on. Where can people find you? First of all, you won’t do video for people, right? However you’ve got content. You engage with our community as well.

Gebbles:       Yes. My biggest thing is that I’ve been transitioning. I do some selective work in the video space still but I love to inspire as well. I love for people to know that anything is possible. As people have that dream, that big, audacious goal or that big, hairy goal, they need to know it’s possible.

I still live in a small town of 30,000 people. I’ve traveled all over the place. That wasn’t my video space but I’ve achieved a lot with that and I just want to help others know that they can do that too.

Ezra:      We’re now not going to end because I want to talk about this a little bit. It was too soon, man. We’re having fun here. Let’s talk about that.

A lot of people do believe that they just can’t. They can’t have this thing or they’re just not good enough. I think a lot of that comes from social conditioning. What is that thing you tell someone who is feeling really overwhelmed by this goal that they have in front of them? They want to get somewhere and they kind of see where they want to go but they don’t really see how to get there. What’s the first step?

Gebbles:       You’ve got to find someone in the space that you’re in that you’re inspired by to begin with. I believe that there’s no competition so you don’t have to worry. In fact, that’s a good thing that there are other people doing it.

Ezra:      That’s because it shows you it’s possible.

Gebbles:       That’s right. It shows you it’s possible.

Ezra:      First of all that is framework. This is a really good one. If you see something you want and you see someone else who has it, if you have the desire to feel jealous or envious of that person because they have that thing, stop that, let go of that and feel joy, gratitude and happy for them because it shows you that this thing can be had. This thing that you want can be had and they’re an example of that.

Gebbles:       There are plenty of people so find that. I was at ASM recently talking to a few people who were achieving having great success in that. The biggest thing that I tell people is once you’ve found that person or that model, start taking itty bitty steps.

One person said that there were 30 steps and instead of getting all excited and doing a whole bunch in one day and a bunch the next day but then taking a break, she said, “I don’t care if the first day it takes me two hours and the next day it takes me 20 minutes and the next day it takes me 45 minutes. Each day I’m doing one, single thing and after 30 days I’ll have all 30 steps done.

Ezra:      Let’s look at us as an example. I had been seeing all of these fancy videos. Everybody had these videos that engaged me that I noticed something different about. I thought “Those videos are cool.” Then I saw a post in a mastermind that we’re both a part of. It was your intro post where you listed all of these videos that you’ve done. I said, “That guy did all of them. I want to find out what’s up with that guy and how he’s doing videos.” This is relevant to any area of your life.

I’m doing quite well in life. I wanted my videos to be better so I went and found the guy who was doing it the way that I wanted which was the first thing you mentioned. Find a mentor. You get what you want from people who have it.

Gebbles:       It will save you so much time.

Ezra:      It really will. You don’t have to worry about asking for help. It’s a good thing to ask for help. You’re not admitting that you’re . . . .

Gebbles:       I have a video on my YouTube channel where I’m asking for help.

Ezra:      Do you have one?

Gebbles:       Yes.

Ezra:      What’s it called?

Gebbles:       I think it’s called Asking for Help. I do that all the time and once a week it’s just a different phrase like that and then I jam off of it for a few minutes and whatnot.

Ezra:      Have you seen [inaudible 23:48]?

Gebbles:       Yes, of course.

Ezra:      That’s a similar phrase. That was a one upmanship by the way. I just wanted to throw it in there one more time.

Gebbles:       [Inaudible 23:57].

Ezra:      I wanted to do it quick so I could one up him one more time in the context of video. There’s another thing that you mentioned which is also a really key thing to pay attention to when you’re trying to get better at something. I tell people this a lot when they’re hiring help. I deal with a lot of small business owners, ecommerce folks, affiliates and people who are doing online businesses who are solo operators.

The key for a solo operator to scale is usually to get some help but they’re afraid and say, “What if I don’t use it very well?” You’ll buy 40 hours of help in a week. That’s eight hours a day times five. Let’s say you’re buying 40 hours of help.

Gebbles:       Are you talking about virtual?

Ezra:      It could be a virtual assistant or someone in the house. It’s just someone you’re paying $15 an hour. I’m using the lingo “buy help” to mean you are paying someone to help you out.

Gebbles:       I can give you context in my world too.

Ezra:      Let me finish. The first month, or the first 160 hours that you purchase from that person you may not use very well but by the third month that 160 hours is going to be worth way more.

Gebbles:       I was overwhelmed in my business. I didn’t know what to do. I had done so well for people and Word of Mouth was spreading. I had a good problem but the problem was that I couldn’t keep up. Editing was the biggest thing that I ended up outsourcing. In the beginning it was like you were saying. I said, “I’m having to teach this person,” etc. and you go through this kind of process but once you get done and you can step away it’s a big weight lifted off your shoulders.

Ezra:      It was worth that investment. It might have been tough up front. You had to spend all of this time doing the “I do it, you do it, we do it” method which we can talk about but basically it’s a method of how to train someone. It’s [inaudible 25:36] method of how to train someone. I don’t know if he invented it but he taught me.

First I do it myself and I document it. I make little bullet points and screen shots, etc. Then I take the person and we do it together and they follow my standard operating procedure. Then they do it one time. Don’t let them do it 10 times because if you let them do it 10 times [inaudible 25:56].

I think we really will end now. How do you feel about that?

Gebbles:       That’s fine. We can go on. We can make a different video.

Ezra:      We’ll make a lot of money. I’m Ezra Firestone from the Tank in Brooklyn with Gebbles. We didn’t give them your YouTube channel.

Gebbles:       It’s YouTube.com/MichaelGebbin. It’s Gebbs Juice on iTunes.

Ezra:      I’ll flash that across the screen. It’s Gebbs Juice. A daily dose of Gebbs.

Gebbles:       I do that seven days a week and I actually only do the video one day a week.

Ezra:      When do you do your videos?

Gebbles:       Every Wednesday.

Ezra:      Do you use Wednesdays for a reason?
Gebbles:       No.

Ezra:      No? Just Wednesdays sounded good and it was your birthday?

Gebbles:       It was September 4^th [26:31]. I launched it on my birthday and it was a Wednesday.

Ezra:      Are you going to say one more thing? You said oh.

Gebbles:       No, I said the video I only do once a week because it is [inaudible 26:41]. Trying to do seven days a week of high-production quality video was . . . .

Ezra:      That would be cool but it’s a lot. One day a week we probably shoot two, three or four videos sometimes.

Okay guys. Thanks so much. Catch you soon.