Video Marketing for Manufacturers

Live with Alaska MEP

Join us for a captivating live interview with Jeff Long, a distinguished expert in Manufacturing & Industrial Marketing, as he unravels the secrets to leveraging Video Marketing for manufacturers.

Live Summary

Join Sami Jo Lewis from the Alaska MEP and eCommerce Evangelist for Manufacturers Curt Anderson - Founder of B2Btail as Jeff Long from True Focus Media unravels the secrets to leveraging Video Marketing for manufacturers.

With an impressive repertoire of skills, Jeff specializes in Website Design, Development, Optimization, and eLearning/Courses to drive revenue growth and streamline operational costs. Based in Dayton, Ohio, Jeff's expertise extends far beyond, catering to businesses nationwide. Discover how to captivate your audience, build trust, and increase sales through cutting-edge video strategies. Whether you're a seasoned manufacturer or just venturing into the industry, this interview promises to be a game-changer, equipping you with the knowledge and tools needed to take your business to new heights. If you want more information on how the Alaska MEP can be a resource for you, reach out or schedule an appointment with one of our team members.

To learn more about how the Alaska MEP can assist your business, connect with us online: https://alaska-mep.com

Key Highlights

• Why is video such an important tool? 0:08

• Why video is such a powerful tool for manufacturers? 2:50

• The importance of having a content roadmap. 16:52

• Focusing on the customer. 21:42

• The importance of value bombs and video content. 26:35

Transcription

Sami Jo Lewis 0:08

All right. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We have a great speaker today and we're super excited to kick off this Thursday and talk about video marketing for manufacturers, as always are my wonderful co host Curt How you doing Curt?

Curt Anderson 0:22

Oh my goodness Sami Jo. I am doing absolutely wonderful. Summertime. It's it's a sizzling hot and boy. Talking about bringing in the heat. We have none other than our good friend, Jeff Long CEO President founder of True Focus Media. Jeff Long. How are you my friend?

Jeff Long 0:41

I'm doing good. I appreciate both of you having me on. I'm excited for the topic and looking forward to it here today. Excellent.

Sami Jo Lewis 0:51

All right. Well, we can get kicked off with the first question. That sounds so can you go into why is video such an important tool for manufacturers?

Jeff Long 1:03

Yeah, this is obviously near and dear to my heart, right. I've been residency for 20 years which is kind of crazy and one of the reasons why I love working with manufacturers. That's kind of our go to industry. Central visual company, right? Like I'm making cool stuff. Typically their company has a really interesting story on their people. Video so 73% of people are more likely to make a buying decision after watching a video or videos explaining a product or a service. So like, video can help. Like I just said, tell your story or string or some showcase your expertise. And it can do it 24/7 365 days a year there's no sick day holidays like once you create that video content and put it online it's working for you. So it duplicate sell your sales people, your team, your whatever that is. Video is so important. I'm so excited and I think there's tremendous opportunities because I'm still not seeing enough meaning if factures really take the video and those think a lot Hamsun like hey, we just need to have a company bio. We'll talk about ourselves, and that's good. So we'll talk about later maybe some differences, too, to give the audience there but anyway, those are just some of the ideas I have. Perfect, so are recommendations of videos.

Curt Anderson 2:50

So see me, you know what I think God, we're having a little tech challenge today. I see me Are you seeing that on your end?

Sami Jo Lewis 2:56

Yeah, it's kind of cutting in and out. Yeah. So

Curt Anderson 2:59

Jeff, I'm going to ask you a huge favor even though we're live I hate the word of COVID chatbot do me a favor, punch you pop out real quick and pop back in. If you don't mind. Sami Jo cover it for a second. And so this is super exciting to me, Sami Jo. So we'll just hop back in. We can start streaming to memorize mentioned to you when you start screaming for each other's LinkedIn. So you know hey, whatever like hey, let's do it. While we're waiting for Jeff, can we go down to settings? Click Settings. Can you see guests over? To your left?

Sami Jo Lewis 3:33

I do that guests

Curt Anderson 3:38

and then see does it have a thing where you can invite guests to go live? This is like a little box

Speaker 4 3:45

or something in the middle. Is not I have guest constraint there. Yeah. Okay

Sami Jo Lewis 3:55

it says I need to upgrade for desperate dragon let me get Jeff back added to it though.

Jeff Long 4:04

Sorry about that. My my internet settings weren't correct. So I probably was all over the place with my connection. Do I look and sound better now? Maybe you are absolutely

Curt Anderson 4:13

perfectly sorry about you know what, if you don't mind, you know, we're live and so Hey, everybody, you know the world of post COVID We, you know, nothing's perfect, but we are talking about video for manufacturers. If you don't mind, give us like give us a little cliff note version that we can work it out. Give us a little cliff note version. And then what we'll do is we'll just make an adjustment on the video. Kind of slice that by just getting just we're kicking things off we have President Founder CEO it's just video extraordinaire, a really close dear friend to me, Jeff Long. Jeff Long to sticking to video just kind of give a little recap and then we'll dive right back into the program.

Jeff Long 4:54

Yeah, thank you again for having me on. And the reason I think that video is such a powerful tool for manufacturers is over the past 20 years I've seen video change and grow and be even more impactful. So you know some reasons why manufacturers should consider creating a lot of different types of content is it's an easy way to demonstrate your products to tell your story. It's a showcase your expertise and those three things are powerful today, right? I saw a stat that said 73% of people are more likely to make a buying decision after watching videos about your products and services. So they're already doing their their their research, I think Kurt says what can you do to help your customer Friday night at 11pm or whatever it is right and so video helps you do that it helps you duplicate yourself and your team, your sales team, and it becomes a 24/7 sales and marketing machine never stops. It only grows and kind of gets bigger like a snowball rolling down the hill like it's, it helps your SEO get bigger and better, helps reach more people and it's more effective.

Curt Anderson 6:07

Absolutely. We're gonna cover a lot here, Jeff, but even from, you know, a sales enablement, you know, you know, let's face it, we get the same questions over and over, you know, and one tagline that you and I love to share, like, hey, how do we help teach the competition? And so just, you know, just real quick and we're gonna hit back into questions, but you know, you are a child of a product of educators. You know, a college professor, your parents just talked about, like that education piece and how important that is, as manufacturers we need to be educated so people understand what

Jeff Long 6:36

we're doing. Totally, totally. I think it reminds me that the quote, let's see if I can remember it's something like nobody likes to sold to but we all like to buy. Right and the reason for that is we don't like it when a salesperson is bombarding us with information it feels like they're kind of imposing on us. We all like to do our research. We all like to learn more, solve a problem and figure out how to do that. So it's manufacturers, obviously, you know, sales people and a sales team is a huge component of that. But I think education is becoming more and more required, versus kind of the old school cold calling and somebody so you can almost do more with less by teaching by giving tips by showcasing your expertise by demonstrating your products and so yeah, Kurt I mean, I think education is the new I don't know what what insert you know, it is the new cold calling or something I'm not sure but it's tremendously valuable.

Curt Anderson 7:37

I love it and I'm you know, I'm showing my age here for our channel here, but there you know, there was a movie Glengarry Glen Ross, there's a famous scene where they're talking about you know, always be closing always be closing in I think, you know, Chuck, you know, what we're preaching now is like, always be educated always be. So, you know, Sammy, Joe, what's next on your list or for these types of questions for our friends or Jeff Long?

Sami Jo Lewis 8:00

So, I want to dive into investment requirements. Can you dispel the myth not all videos need big production costs and are always extremely expensive?

Jeff Long 8:12

Absolutely. Yeah. So I think there's two sides to this coin. And to me, it's not an either or like, hey, it either has to be expensive all the time. Or it's always dirt cheap all the time. Whatever. Right. I think there's a time and a place for both. So let me explain I think as manufacturers, I mean, you have a lot riding on your your products, your business, everything right. So I think there is a time and a place for doing high quality video content. So that might be a product rollout. You're doing a big push marketing and sales promos and things like that. Or maybe you want to do a big promo about your company. Maybe it's your 25 year anniversary, or 50 or 100, whatever that is. So there's definitely a time a time and a place for for big, high quality, all that. In fact, just this week, I was at a manufacturing facility and and they have a product they're rolling out. And so we had three video cameras, a GoPro a drone, you know, we had our crew there. The fire department was there. For a certain part of this video just blasted away with our fire hoses at something. Well, that wasn't cheap. But they're doing a big Product Promo big product launch. They they need to make a splash Right? Kind of go with the water hose analogy there. But I will say this and this is what excites me and should excite the viewer. In the past 20 years I've seen a big shift from only high quality matters. Now I think authenticity is as equal or maybe more important, right? So people it used to be you had to have a professional spokesperson who said every line perfectly no arms or eyes or anything, no stumbles. Now when we're interviewing people or people get on camera or their smartphone, it's okay right? We all we all stumble on our words. Nobody's perfect. So especially millennials and younger, almost for you that is more trustworthy than the high polished, you know, professional hacker, things like that. So, because authenticity is so important these days, that's where the cost can be reduced by a lot. Which is exciting, right? So you know, we've done videos again, high quality, high end all that, but we have a lot of video content and services that is more simple on the you know, it's not a bunch of cameras and a bunch of studio stuff. It's it's over something like a zoom or other things like that, and we add some graphics and and B roll or shot to their products and abilities. Again, it's more about the authenticity of the content. So that's where I think those words like hey, it's not always all the time expensive. Maybe 20% of the time I don't know ratios here but I think a good chunk of let's say you have a video marketing budget. I think most of that should be in the authenticity bucket versus the high quality expensive bucket. So hopefully that helps.

Curt Anderson 11:22

Oh, that makes great sense. Jeff and you know, so for folks just out you know, that are out there and they haven't started you know, and I know this gets kind of beat beat to death, right? Done is better than perfect. But boy, break out the iPhone, break out your cell phone, you know, just if you're taking videos of family, kids on vacation, hope you're having some wonderful opportunities. For family time during the summer, in your breaking out the phone and video. Bust out that phone on you know, hey, you're sipping on a big pellet that's going out the door, maybe a machine that's running or maybe a little so and so's birthday on the team or you know a little celebration with your you know, your staff so, you know, don't be afraid to just toss out there. And it is so easy. Even a guy like me can do it. You hit a few buttons. You can drop it on YouTube, and just get it out there. Pete You know, our tagline was stop being the best kept secret. You just want to get out there. And as Jeff said to kick up the program. Video is just such a powerful tool. It's almost yeah I hate to say it's almost an excusable just not to use it you know, so see me Joe what's next senator plate for today?

Sami Jo Lewis 12:24

Thank you, Kurt. And I'm also I have no idea about that percentage of using videos, increasing sales by that much simply by posting a video, like a picture and that sort of thing. So I was really eye opening for me. So I appreciate that. All right. So going into the next question. Can you talk about what are some fun and exciting topics that you see manufacturers implement with their video strategy?

Jeff Long 12:47

Yeah, so I could talk for a long time about this topic, but what will kind of narrow it down and focus it right? So a lot of times we can kind of boil things down to you know, pre sale or during the sale or post sale. So I'm just gonna rattle off a couple of these and we can talk more about some of them if you want, but some that I think are are maybe at the top of the list our frequently asked questions, right? So a lot of websites have an FAQ page or maybe you have it internally or maybe it's easy to think of pick your top 20 Frequently Asked Questions, create simple videos for them, right? Just say hey, you know today's a FAQ video I'm going to tackle the first frequently asked question, which is this. Here's how we respond. Again, it doesn't have to be over the top multi camera Hollywood knock your socks off. It's all about the the authenticity and about the content. And here's what FAQ videos do is they're really good for Google, right? Because if people are googling that question anyway. Google will rank videos pretty high up there in the results. Plus, Google owns YouTube, plus, on social media. Most all social media channels prefer videos as well. So start with your FAQs. Think of those maybe have several different people in your company, create different videos, every FAQ is it doesn't have to be the same person, right? So maybe it's some of your sales, some of your marketing some of your shop people just get a different, you know, faces of the company to give a different look. A couple other things, our industry trends, I think, I think one thing that some manufacturers are doing tremendous well, is showcasing their expertise. So they're becoming an I hate to use this word, they're becoming influencers in their industry, right. And so, you know, you can you can kind of laugh at like, you know, Tiktok influencers and all those things, and I do too. It's like, it's funny that that's your career or thing. But in manufacturing This is where you can showcase your expertise. You can talk about industry trends, you can bring up industry reports and see, okay, where is our industry going and how is our company? Looking at that. That way you're showcasing your expertise you're showing that you are on the forefront? of the industry or this technology or whatever that is, and then people automatically, I don't know what magic video does, but it kind of just, it just elevates you. It's like, wow, that person must really know what they're talking about. And so it's almost like when you're speaking just when you're speaking on the stage, people just assume you are the infinite knowledge, whatever, you know, you know everything about every topic that you're speaking about, and I think video can do that as well. And then let me give one more, I think case studies are huge, right? So talk about different examples, right? So talk to your salespeople, hey, what problem did your ideal customer have? Why did they come to us? How did we help them? And then what were the solutions? Or successes? And then because of that, how are they happy? So you can talk about these things and create some really interesting SEO meaning google google ranking, SEO optimized content from that, plus a lot of manufacturers already have some really good case studies already white papers or things they already have in hand. So let me just kind of go off on a tangent here. Create content that you already have, right? So look at your top, producing articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers, create simple videos on those topics. You don't have to reinvent the wheel right away. just piggyback off of those things.

Curt Anderson 16:52

Yeah, that's fantastic. And like, and I know we could have a whole separate program, probably a series just alone. Sammy Joe, you know, had Daymond, my co host on our live stroke livestream show and the honor and privilege of hanging out with you and the amazing folks that last night p for a week, and we did live streams every day. And so you know, if you're on site at a conference, shoot a video you know, Jeff, I know you're big on supporting manufacturers on trade show, pre trade show during the trade show, post trade shows we could that could be a topic in itself, right. You know, we were on site with a bunch of Chicago manufacturers to the Illinois MEP. And we were going on site and what was powerful, is manufactured they were showing their products and their widgets. And then we went on the floor and we're doing lettering videos under the machinery and the one company had like a Ferrari there's like one machine or it's like when I'm on the planet. And of course we want to show that off. You can show off your from your team. There's just there's just so many opportunities as manufacturer that you can showcase. And just you know, as Jeff has seen, it's like it's bringing your facility to your customers door. You know if your customer is you know, 3000 miles away, we can't come visit you will hate let's bring ourselves to that, you know, and I just I absolutely love what you're saying here. Sammy Jo, let's, let's keep the party rolling. What do you have medicine to play?

Sami Jo Lewis 18:11

Really? So can we dive into what is a content roadmap?

Jeff Long 18:17

Yeah, so I think it's important you know, it all sounds really good, right? Hey, let's do all these videos and and let's be honest, right? There's a time cost. There's a cost a price cost in dollars and it's not something you know that it takes some thought and some care because I find that most companies, especially manufacturers, they're really good at telling their story, talking about themselves and their products and that's fine. But it's really important in the ones to me that separate themselves are the ones that are customer centric. They know exactly who their ideal buyers are. And I get it. There's distributors, there's, you know, channel partners. There's different ways to sell. But if you know who your ideal buyer is, you can talk to them a lot easier. So having a content roadmap about okay if we're going to if we're going to do more video content and I think monthly is a good way to go about it. What do we talk about every month, right? Because, again, most companies are like, Okay, we're going to talk about how we started our company. We're going to talk about product A and product B and product C. Then what you know, it's all again all inward. So, first thing is be customer centric or customer focus. And then one. One thing we do with our content roadmaps is we look at the buyers journey, right? So, in a given year, let's start off with Okay, let's say somebody's brand new to our company, they haven't heard about us, what do we need to try to say to that type of person? And then we create content for that. Alright, somebody that's already heard of us? Maybe they haven't bought from us yet? Here's what they need to know. Okay, maybe they've already bought from us. What did they need to know and kind of walk through that buyers journey? By creating content each step of the way? So that's what I say when it's a content roadmap. And then once you do that, because it's so customer centric and focused on them. Again, it's going to help your SEO your Google rankings because people are going to be already googling you know, a certain question, or how do I fix this problem? Or what's the tolerance to this or whatever that question is, and you're going to have content that's somewhat already aligned with that, and it's going to be this. This again, the snowball that gets bigger rolling down the hill, like I said before, so that's just what I recommend is instead of the shotgun approach of like, alright, what are we doing today, folks? It's really creating this content roadmap, going through the buyers journey. And then lastly, with that, another approach you could do is what I mentioned a few minutes ago it's what I call the unicorn principle. Right? So unicorns are young girls are 12 and nine, right? So they love unicorns. All right, so do I guess and unicorns are special, right? They're magical. They stand out. They're rare. So look at the content you already have the blog post the social media content, what is that content that's kind of rare. It's performing far above the rest, create content based on your on your unicorns, right. So look at those things that are standing out, create content on that. So there's kind of two different directions for a content roadmap. Some companies prefer one or the other. Sometimes we blend them, but that's what I would recommend to that answer to that question.

Curt Anderson 21:42

Okay, fantastic. And a couple of takeaways there, Sammy Joe, and there was like multiple mic drops right there. So I just want I want to cover a couple of things real quick chat, and unpack something there. So focusing on the customer, it's so easy to like, you know, hey, let's make it about us. But like you're saying like, put yourself in the other person's shoes. Like really, you know, understand that engineer, understand that buyer. The challenge is what are they feeling at that moment? Is it pressure from a boss pressure from a customer? What did they do to search to find you, Jeff, I love you know, for any of the folks out there that are like, Hey, I heard an acronym. I'm not quite sure what you're saying. S E. O. Take a minute. I know we're going to be coming in the home here in a minute. Please take a minute about explained SEO and how important like those keywords aka What are you best at what are your solutions, but let's just talk about SEO for a

Jeff Long 22:32

minute. Yeah, great, great question. So SEO is search engine optimization. All it means is, where do you rank in Google? Right? And so obviously, the higher the better. If you're not even on the first page, you might as well be on the last page, you know, so the more content you're creating, gets Google's attention, the better. That's why creating customer focused content is better than saying, Hey, aren't we great? Look at us, because I mean, really is anybody googling? How long has your company been in business? Probably not. Right? But they're probably googling a question or a problem. We're trying to find a solution. So Google is going to reward that versus something that nobody's gonna really be searching.

Curt Anderson 23:16

Definitely. And again, think so. For anybody out there this if this is a little bit new on your site, think about the problem you're solving with a solution whether it's a product or service, a CNC machining core if you make this widget and like, what's that key word that you know your ideal buyer is going to type in their friend Google, they've never heard of you before. And like Get that into your video. Get that into the headline. And again, you need it to connect with Jeff Long, true focus media. You will walk you through that much deeper but Sammy, Joe, let's take it home. I know you've got one more question here. We're gonna fire it. Chuck, what do you have here?

Sami Jo Lewis 23:47

Perfect. So last question. Can you share some of the best strategies for video distribution?

Jeff Long 23:53

Yeah, that's great. So this is something I've been thinking about for many years because a lot of times, video marketing companies, they focus on making great videos, and then they just kind of plop into your lap like, hey, good luck, right. And so that's, that's one of the reasons or one of the things that makes me and my company kind of stand out. It's like we're a holistic agency, that kind of helps you from start to finish and beyond of your video and your marketing strategy. So obviously, your website your videos have to go on your website, obviously, social media and YouTube. Okay, but let's talk about some other things like your email newsletter. A lot. Of Manufacturers have either monthly or regular email newsletters, if you can put a screenshot of that video so it almost looks like you could click the video in your email. You can link that picture of the video and link back to the actual video on your website or YouTube. That will increase clicks I don't understand for me, but it's a lot it increases clicks by a lot, whatever that

Unknown Speaker 24:54

means, right? Yeah.

Jeff Long 24:58

Your email signature This is one of my favorite ones because if you're like me, you send out way too many emails every single day. Multiply that times how many people are in your company. You know if you have a free, free real estate there, you can say hey, check out our latest video value bomb or you know, whatever you want to call your video content. So think about your email signature. paid ads, you know if you're doing a big marketing push or a product launch, that's where paid ads are really good. We don't really recommend just paid ads for paid ads sake. There's better ways to to use your money. But that's a good place to put your video content and then even sales pages right if you have dedicated pages for specific products, make a video or videos about each one. You know, maybe it's the problem that this this product solves. And you know the tolerances and you know just all the different technical questions that you might have. You could break those up into multiple videos, you know, limited to here, I mean in video there. So lastly, also we think about where your ideal customer is, and put your content there. Right. So we've had good success with even helping companies put their videos at trade shows whether it's the trade show organizers to kind of promoting them as well as other other catalogs and even print material can have promos for your video. So those are just some of the 40 plus different places. You can post and repost your videos.

Curt Anderson 26:35

That's fantastic. And I want a couple of things. I want to recap there Jeff and those are fantastic tips because it you know, we did a video a webinar recently at the Indiana MEP and you shared a lot. As a matter of fact, we have that recording available. You know, drop me a note it's on my website and you dropped a lot of value bombs as we like to say, and you know a couple of takeaways that I want to share with folks site are where do I distribute this off rate on that email? What a phenomenal suggestion or idea to put that rate in your email, you know, send it out. You know that sales enablement tool when you know, again, we mentioned like the FAQs with those repeat questions. You're now your sales team, you know, instead of answering the same cutter, your customer service team, what they love to have your expert salesperson on recording where maybe the customer service person doesn't know it as well as like, you know, Joe or Jane who's been in sales for 20 years and they know it inside and out. Now they have a video that they can just send out. I love that Jeff I want to wind down on one thing you mentioned like no case studies, white paper sometimes small manufacturers are like you know, boy, that's kind of academia, aka success stores. You know, when you deliver a when when you deliver a great product, you know, take us home I know we've got like a minute left. Just share a little bit like how important that success is for your customer with your video content.

Jeff Long 27:58

Yeah, I mean, all buyers have these what I call elephants in the room, right? We all have these big things that are stopping us it could be the cost it could be is this really going to work for our company is is what you're pitching to me really going to be successful. So if you can have I mean, start off with one but if you can have a library of success stories, then your ideal customer can go to that web page wherever that is find it identify themselves in that success story be like wow, that worked for a company A maybe this will work for me and my company so that's a kind of a quick reason why success stories, testimonials, case studies, etc. are so valuable. And testimonials,

Curt Anderson 28:37

thank you for first testimonials, testimonials, testimonials, great way to get that social proof that earn that trust gain that trust and just continue building your company. Jeff Long take us home my friend party thoughts, words of wisdom, how can people reach out to you? Let's take us home.

Jeff Long 28:58

Yeah, thanks again for having me on. I mean, I love talking about the topic. I love helping manufacturers. I'll give a two links here and I'll put them if I have time in the chat. My company's website true focus media.com. And then as far as these content marketing videos, we're kind of known for a service called Video value. So you do video value bomb.com and learn more.

Curt Anderson 29:20

Awesome. Thank you so much, Jeff Samy

Unknown Speaker 29:23

what a great program. This

Sami Jo Lewis 29:24

was this was fantastic. Thank you so much for being willing to come on and speak to us, Jeff. I know I even learned a lot. Like I need to start putting these live videos that we're doing our newsletters, so I'm gonna make sure I take that and go out that so I really do appreciate your time. Curt. It's always wonderful to have you helped me co host these amazing live so we have and catch us every other Thursday and we'll be doing another great live interview. Thank you