Joseph Wilkins | Funnysalesvideos.com
While there’s no formula for making a video go viral, there IS a tried and true process for creating a funny video that will get significantly stronger business results than your typical corporate video.
Joseph Wilkins has been helping businesses make marketing and sales videos for years, but it wasn’t until he started using his 8 step process for creating humorous videos that he saw consistently strong ROI for his clients. Today, he uses that process as the foundation for his work at funnysalesvideos.com.
On this week’s episode of The Inbound Sales Podcast, Joseph breaks down the details behind each of the 8 steps in his video creation process and shares details on everything from hiring writers and actors, to using your ads budget to test different iterations and discover the right combination of opening hook, video content, format and channel.
Check out the full episode to hear more.
Resources from this episode:
Visit the funnysalesvideos.com website
Connect with Joseph on LinkedIn
Check out Joseph’s LinkedIn vlog on opening hooks for videos
Subscribe to Joseph’s podcast, How to Make a Video Go Viral
Visit the Harmon Brothers University
Joseph and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:03):
Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Joseph Wilkins, who is with funnysalesvideos.com. Welcome to the podcast, Joseph.
Joseph (00:27):
Thanks, Kathleen. It's great to be here.
Kathleen (00:29):
This is going to be fun, not just because the name and your company includes the word funny, but because we're actually going to be talking about how to use humor in your video to get better results. Before we jump into that topic though, will you please take a minute and just do for my audience? Describe a little bit about yourself, your background, what you do and what funnysalesvideos.com is?
Joseph (00:53):
Absolutely. So 20 years ago I started a marketing agency that was solely focused on using video to sell products. And we started out producing infomercials, you know, 30 minute long, huge productions that would take a year plus to produce. And then we would run those on, on television. Our very first infomercial was the little giant ladder infomercial did over $200 million in sales of, of one infomercial. And that's kind of what got us hooked. We were a very small part of that production, but after that pretty much for the next 15 years, our main focus was how do we use television to sell our clients' products? Whether it was on long form, 30 minute shows or you know, 32nd or 62nd TV commercials. The problem is when was the last time you watched TV Kathleen?
Kathleen (01:50):
Well, that depends. Are you talking about network TV? Are you talking about,
Joseph (01:55):
Hey, well just the fact that you answered the qualifying question, right? Yeah. You know, most people don't sit and flip through channels with a remote control. Right. And that's how we used to get you. Right. We would try to grab your attention while you had nothing else to watch. The problem is these days, people just don't do that. Unless you know, that they're watching live sports or news,
Kathleen (02:19):
I was going to say, I watched the news and I watched like, there's a morning show I watched, but my husband has this thing he calls the Greenfield rule named after a family that we know, the greenfields who do the exact same thing. And the rule is that when the commercials come on, you mute the television. So you might even be watching, it's still not paying attention.
Joseph (02:41):
Yeah, exactly. And those people basically doomed the success that we used to get.
Kathleen (02:51):
Sorry.
Joseph (02:52):
Oh, it's okay. We forgive you. We've moved on. But as our, as people, you know, kind of cut the cable and to going online, our results started dropping down and down and down with charging the same amount for production. But our clients said, we can't keep this up. We got to figure out a smarter, we've got to find out where those people are going and advertise to them there. And that's why about five years ago, we launched funnysalesvideos.com. And it's kind of a funny story to give you a quick compare and contrast before we launched funnysalesvideos, we would tell people when they called us and asked for a funny video, we'd say, sorry, we don't do that because you got to do it. Right. Yeah. It's so true.
Kathleen (03:34):
It's like when people are like, can you make me a viral video?
Joseph (03:36):
Yup. Right. And we'll, and we can talk about that, but unless you've got the right team that starts with brilliant writers, nothing will sink your brand quicker than trying to be funny and then looking silly. And so that's why we would never take on those projects. But about five years ago we decided, okay, the way that people are really getting engaged with online sales videos is by using humor. And so we really tried to figure out how do we do this, right. And to compare and contrast before, you know, the first 15 years in business, the most views that we'd ever got on a video online on YouTube was a hundred thousand views, which we thought was pretty good. Pretty good. The very first campaign that we launched after we put together this team of writers and launch funnysalesvideos was for a super niche company.
Joseph (04:37):
And we got over 7 million views on that campaign. There's a secret to that. And I'll, I'll talk about that. But more importantly, we got over a half a million direct subscript subscriptions to the service, the SAS service that we were advertising fast-forward to today, our biggest campaign is about to hit a hundred million views. Oh my God, millions and millions of millions of dollars in sales. And it's because we've kind of figured out and we've followed some other peoples in the industry that have, you know, done bigger and better things like the Harmon brothers. They're a huge influence on us. And we went through their Harmon brothers university. But you know, just compare and contrast a hundred thousand views before we learned how to do what we do now, a hundred million views and millions of millions of dollars in sales, literally company, transformational videos, if that's a phrase, right. But, but the way that we market now, we've never seen anything more effective in the 20 years that we've now been running this video production agency.
Kathleen (05:49):
That's amazing. And I know that everyone listening is wanting to ask the same question that I have, which is okay, how do you do it? What's the, what's the formula creating this like, cause obviously you made some very specific changes and you instantly saw dramatically bigger results.
Joseph (06:06):
Yes. So now maybe the time to break everyone's hearts and let them know that those views that I'm talking about, weren't organically viral views. So it's not the kind of thing you can go out and create the funniest video ever, and then upload it to YouTube and it'll get lost. Nobody will see it because there's way too much content online now. I mean, you may get lucky and you may get somebody, a big influencer that shares it. Good luck. Cause I've never got a video to go quote, unquote, organically viral. So here's the big secret. What we do is we don't create organically viral videos. We create videos that when you spend a dollar to promote it smartly to the right audience on the right platform, that video will bring you back for that. For every dollar that you spend, we'll bring you back 2, 3, 4, $5 in return. So it's all about return on ad spend, not organically viral. I try to explain it, like if I was to build you a vending machine, Kathleen, that was full of a hundred dollar bills, but it costs $20 to use that machine. How many times would you want to use that machine?
Kathleen (07:27):
Yeah.
Joseph (07:29):
That's basically what we're doing. We, we create videos that are so much more effective than your traditional boring sales pitches. We create stories that firstly engage, you, grab your attention, look different than anything else that you're scrolling through on Facebook. Then tell you a relevant story that you all of a sudden say, oh, I actually do have that problem. And oh, that actually does look like a good solution to my problem. But I'm keeping your attention the whole way through from second one through to three minutes or so, which sounds like a long time online. But if you're creating stories, Netflix has still proven the model that you can keep people's attention for a long time, if you create compelling content.
Kathleen (08:17):
And so, all right, so how do you do it? Like you, you I'm down with, I'm totally down with putting paid dollars behind promotion. I mean, I think, you know, this is the inbound success podcast, but, but this is not like inbound marketing of 10 years ago where you think everything's going to happen organically. Like there's definitely a role for paid dollars behind your, your content, but you still have to have amazing content. Like, you know, all the money in the world can't make a bad video successful. So how do you, like if somebody comes to you and says, I want to do a funny sales video, how do you approach that project?
Joseph (08:51):
So we have a very structured process and, and your listeners can download a free ebook that goes through a lot more detail than what we have time here today. But it's basically eight steps that we take every project through so that we're not get guessing. We're not using luck to see if this video will, you know, be effective, but we're using a proven formula. So I'll run through the steps, feel free to stop me and quiz me on any one of these. So the first step, the one that most people they, they kind of think that they get it, but a lot of the times they skip it. It's marketing 1 0 1, doing your research, understanding. What's the problem that I'm trying to solve for my customers. Not that you're trying to solve for yourself. A lot of people start a business because they think they understand what they're trying to solve.
Joseph (09:43):
But when the product goes out there, there's actually a whole nother reason why people decide to buy and continue to buy your product. It's like I tell people, you would never write a letter and then walk to the mailbox and then decide who to address it to. But that's what most people do with their marketing. They just go out and they create a video and they, and it's, it's not specific enough to individuals. So I always tell people, create a target avatar, identify as, as, as much as you can name the person, talk about what that person does, what their habits are, what their problems are, the closer that you can get to hitting that target. The more people will resonate with the message and a, and a cheat for your listeners to do is go and read a hundred customer reviews and create common, a list of common themes, common things, reasons why people say they like your product or reasons why they say they don't like your product because you need to overcome those.
Joseph (10:46):
If there's enough of them. So that may be it's too expensive. Or if it's too expensive and you don't tell the why it's too expensive, they won't buy it. But if you tell them for every one of ours, you know, you have to buy three of these cause they break and ours is better quality. Therefore you're saving money in the long run. You got to overcome objections if they're commonly voiced. So typically what we do in that research phase is we're going to find, and if you don't have a hundred customer views, go look at your competitor, go look at the closest, you know, company that's doing what you're doing and read a ton of reviews. That one exercise alone could give you huge insights that you really haven't used before in any of your marketing, not just in a video, but you know, everything that you do.
Kathleen (11:35):
I also find the other little hacks I have. In addition to that, one is read your, if you have a website chat feature, like that keeps logs of chats, you can read that. And then you can also, if you re record sales calls, those are goldmines. Those sales conversations.
Joseph (11:53):
Yeah. The number one comment when we launch our videos the number one comment that we crave and that we see time, and again is people that say I've watched that video and I don't know why I kept watching it, but the person in the video just kind of felt like it was me, or it felt like a friend of mine. And that's the golden comments that we're looking for that says we hit the nail on the head because we're really stealing parts of the script from your comments, things that you've already said, and we work those into the script to make it that much more effective. So that's that one, do your research. And again, there's a whole, whole bunch more in the ebook that you can read. Step two is stop brainstorming. Now this is where quantity matters over quality to begin with.
Joseph (12:41):
And so we typically encourage terrible ideas. So what I mean by a brainstorm idea is simply in this video, who is your main character and what's their problem. That's all, don't worry about anything else. So, you know, thinking about some of the videos that we've done, you know, our main character could be as simple as, you know, a stay a stay-at-home mom that is trying to do her laundry, but also conserve the planet and doesn't want to throw away plastic. That was our main customer avatar for true campaign. The one that I mentioned that now has close to a hundred million views. But sometimes we'll go completely outside of the box. We're just finishing up a campaign where we basically created a superhero character, right? That has this crazy problem. And, and so you're not within that first brainstorm. You're, you're looking to throw out 50 ideas of who is my character and what's their problem.
Joseph (13:43):
And obviously your product or solution has to solve that problem. So we'll typically throw out all of those bad ideas and then bad ideas will help you spin into good ideas. And then we'll boil it down to our top five ideas, spend a little bit more time writing a couple of paragraphs about the world in which that person lives, what that problem is, and really flesh it out a little bit more between before we, as an agency will present that to our client and then between us we'll figure out, okay, which is the one that we're going to take into step three, which is scripting. So step three is actually a multi-step process. So you've got to start out your script with your marketing copy points. And you've identified those in step one, where you did your research. And I typically tell people, you know, most of our videos are about three, sometimes four minutes long, and you can put a lot of information into that.
Joseph (14:43):
And so I typically will create a list of five key reasons why somebody likes or would buy your product and service. And that's a prioritized list. So the number one reason we'll get mentioned three or four or five times, number five may only get mentioned once, but there's a lot of different reasons why people, you know, they need to have certain objections overcome. They need to have certain key phrases thrown at them so that they say, sit up and look and sit forward and say, this is actually addressing my concerns. So the first step of scripting is marketing copy points. The second part is bringing in a creative writer, a storyteller, somebody that can take that character and put words into their mouth and take the marketing points and build a story
Kathleen (15:32):
Does that writer need to have any training in like comedy or humor writing?
Joseph (15:37):
That's a great question because that's step three, remember there's three steps of scripting marketing story. And then the third part is the, is the comedy. Okay? Got it. So I have about eight different writers on every single video. Cause I'm getting my marketer to write the copy. Then I'm getting a storyteller for the story part. And then I have at least five or six here, this professional comedy writers. Now these are people that for a living do comedy. Now that could mean they're literally standup comedians that work comedy clubs during the night and during the day they're traveling to the next gig and they freelance for me. So they're on planes writing and reviewing my scripts. They're not coming up with ideas from scratch. I've learned that comedians aren't storytellers. If you think about, you know, a comedian's set, it's just fragments of thoughts. It's not a one cohesive story. So they're very good at taking a script with an existing story. And just saying, it'd be funny if we added a joke here, or if we change this line to say, you know, something that's a little more witty
Kathleen (16:48):
Now with so many, if you have eight writers, how do you avoid the too many cooks problem where like where everybody starts to provide their inputs and then at the end, like, the whole thing gets lost in translation?
Joseph (16:58):
Great question. On every project, there is a creative director who basically is the facilitator that decides what makes it into the script and what doesn't. And it could be that the funniest joke. In fact, often the funniest joke never makes it into the script because it doesn't further the sale. It's not a, it's not a video that makes people laugh for the sake of making people laugh. It's making people laugh for the sake of keeping their attention so you can sell them some more and then finally move them into action. And so that creative director has to look at every single one of the comments. And each person is just putting their comments onto a shared Google doc or a Dropbox paper file. They don't actually write on the script, they're putting their comments in. And then that creative director is deciding which one makes it onto the script. If it furthers the sale and furthers the story.
Kathleen (17:56):
Okay. So you have, you have three levels of writing. You have marketing, you have storytelling and you have humor. And then like,
Joseph (18:03):
So then we add, sorry. So step four is kind of part of the script. That is the comedy, right? So after the script is finished, we add in all of the comedy that's step four, step five is the production. And I you'd think that somebody like me that's literally run a video production company for 20 years would say the most important part production is to buy the best cameras and buy the best lights and, you know, get the most expensive film crew. It's not, it's hire the right actor time and time again, if I've got a bad actor and a great film crew or a great actor, and somebody's filming with that iPhone, I'm going to take the great actor with an iPhone every time, because a great actor is going to be the most important part of delivering that script. The difference between taking a great script and delivering it perfectly and making it funny, or taking a great script and delivering it in a, in a way that just doesn't work,
Kathleen (19:04):
Nothing worse than wooden delivery and people who are feeling like they're reading something as opposed to talking.
Joseph (19:13):
Yeah. And so a power tip is number one, and this is the hard truth. You as a business owner should never act in this kind of a video. Now, there are some videos that you should acting like if, if it's a message from the CEO, it needs to look real and authentic, but this kind of a video, this is what we call a top of funnel video, the very first impression video to get people into your sales funnel. So your employees, your friends and family, no matter how much they say, you know, I've done acting before, no, you need a professional actor that knows comedy. And, and, and the way that we do this is we go through about a hundred actors before we pick the right one for the role. And I'll tell you how you, how you can do this cost. You absolutely nothing.
Joseph (20:01):
So what we do is we have maybe three or four agencies here in salt lake city, wherever you are, there'll be an acting agency, fairly close. If you're in a decent sized town it doesn't cost you a penny to look, to send an email to these acting agencies and say, here's the script? Who do you think you have that would fit well for this role? And then we'll go through about a hundred, just looking at their faces on, on the website and then playing the demo reel to get a feel for, do we think that character would fit? Then what we do is we email the agencies and we say, okay, we'd like to have auditions from, and we'll typically pick about 20 of them. And this is where, just like what we're doing now on zoom, they'll record from home, they'll take a section of the script and they'll deliver it.
Joseph (20:48):
Then we'll watch through about 20 of those. And we'll pick our top three to five and then we'll do an in-person live zoom audition. So anyone can do a really good performance in the comfort of their home, where they can do 20 takes and pick the best one. But I want to know, can you perform under pressure? You know, I'll say to them, can you deliver that line again? But this part, I want you to do it quicker. I'll put the emphasis on this word or really sell this to me. And I can immediately tell by the feedback whether or not they are, they're really good at responding. And you're also looking for a little bit of improvisation. If you do your job, right, you'll pick an actor that brings more to the script than what's on the page. And, and so the second most important part, this whole process, once you've got a script that you really have done the right way is to get the right actor that will deliver that script in the best way possible.
Kathleen (21:46):
So I think that makes total sense. I feel like some people listening might be a little intimidated by hiring actors because they might not understand, like, what should you expect to pay? So can you give like any sort of general sense of, you know, what are we talking about here for professional comedy actor?
Joseph (22:04):
So it obviously wildly differs from city to city. You've also got unions that you're dealing with when you're in the major cities like New York and LA and Atlanta we're here in Utah. I mean, a decent rate for an act to here is, you know, a thousand to $1,500 a day. And most of our videos, you know, we're, we're shooting one or two days, so it's, it's not breaking the bank. And it's the most important part. I would tell people don't think about going out and hiring celebrities. A lot of people make that mistake. There's a couple of reasons why I don't like to work and I've done it before. Number one, they're going to be way, way, way more expensive. Number two, you're tying your brand to whatever gaff they make tomorrow. Like I've literally had campaigns when people have been in the news because of a scandal and I can't use the campaign.
Joseph (23:02):
So those are a couple of thoughts on, on, on actors. If you get a really good actor that brings your character to life, they will be just as compelling as, as an influence. And now the influences of good, because they have a base of people that they can get it out to. And that's a whole nother conversation about how to network with influencers, to get them, to share your videos. But while we're on step five production, the last thing I'll say is, yes, you a great actor with someone with an iPhone will do a good job, but the whole point of these videos is to stand out from the first five seconds as you're scrolling through Facebook, or as you're looking at that first five second, a pre-roll ad on YouTube, a professional production company knows how to visually make that look different than everyone else. That's uploading content. So a really good production company. If you're going to go through the steps that we're going through, it's worth your while investing in a good production company to get the kinds of results that you know, we talked about at the beginning of the show.
Kathleen (24:11):
When you say, like, making something stand out and look different right away, any, any meat you can put around that? Like, what are some ways to do that really quickly in the first few seconds?
Joseph (24:23):
So, well, we can talk about this in step six, which is editing, but what we do is we actually film three totally different opening five to second hooks. And, and think about that word hook. It's something that immediately digs in to your creative conscience, whether that's, well, it's all visual because 80% of people will have the sound off. So it has to be totally different. So we, I actually just did a vlog on LinkedIn that got a few thousand interactions where I show the same video with three different, totally different opening, five to 10 seconds version one did a two X return on ad spend version two, did three X and version four did a four X so that, you know, huge differences between them. And it's hard for me to describe them. If you view as want to go to my LinkedIn page, Joseph Wilkins and watch that, that's the best way I can show you visually three different examples, but you, you want to be shocking without being offensive. You don't want to get yourself banned or flagged on Facebook. But anything that you can do that will visually, literally within the first, second, the first frame of your video make it stand out and create curiosity.
Kathleen (25:49):
I'm definitely going to check that out. I'll put the link to that post in the show notes.
Joseph (25:53):
Yeah. I think, I think that will probably serve your audience better than me trying to describe something that's very visual. So step six is editing. Now you've heard before comedy is all about timing and that couldn't be more applicable than finding somebody who really understands editing and comedy, because you can film a great act of delivering a joke, but that joke can either be funny or full flat depending on where you put that cut. Yeah. So after I say a joke, should I leave it just a second for the joke to land? Or should I move on really quickly? Or should I cut it in between and punch in from a wide shot to a closeup to get emphasis on the face when they're delivering that joke coming, there's just little tricks that a really good editor that knows comedy can turn a good video into a great video.
Joseph (26:48):
I mean, how did you figure this all out? Like you didn't have a background in comedy when you did this to you? Well, I mean, after 20 years of working in the industry and I consume a lot, right? So I would tell people if you want to learn about comedy, watch comedy, right. Specifically stand up comedians, because they don't have all of the tools that we have as far as the visual, the sets, the actors, they just have, you know, a bit boring stage and a mic. And so, you know, just the more comedy you can consume and figure out what makes you laugh and then reverse engineer it. I mean, there's all sorts of ways that you can do that. The Harmon brothers actually have a really good course. They've changed the name. It used to be how to make, how to make funny ads.
Joseph (27:30):
It's very inexpensive. If you go to Harmonbrothersuniversity.com it's, there's a course just on how to understand and write good comedy, but check that out. Yeah. But again, I, I would only take it so that you understand the process, not try to become a comedian yourself to write it. You still need that writer's room of other people. So the last thing I'll say about editing is people don't start watching your video because it's long, they start watching because they get bored. And so if you watch our videos, you'll see they are visually and audibly, almost overloading. You, there's no point in any of our videos where you'll get bored. Now you make a lot of people will still click away, but it's not because there's a, a pause or, or a slow down in the tempo. And so keeping things very, very fast, like I will literally, you know, cut out breaths, cut out pauses.
Joseph (28:33):
I'll, I'll make one person's line overlap the other. So there's literally no point in which my, my viewer is going to get bored from those perspectives. So keeping it fast, keeping it, you know, almost too much, but not quite so that they deliver and communicate the message that you obviously want to deliver. So that's step six is the editing step seven is probably, well, I say there's many important parts of this, but once you've finished your edit, it's like going to Vegas and throwing everything on, on, on the Russian roulette table on one specific I'm not a gambler, but one specific part of that Russia brew lab five or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. If you only have one video, then you only have one chance to win on that roulette table with most of our projects. And this'll sound crazy. We deliver to our clients 32 versions of the same video specific
Kathleen (29:41):
Number. How did you come up with 32?
Joseph (29:43):
So the way that we do it is, remember I said, we film and edit three different opening hooks. So there's three different versions. Then what we do is with each version, we'll do three different offers. So one could be, you know, click now and buy one, get one free one could be click now and get 25% off. One could be click now for more information. And that's an evergreen version. So now we've got nine versions. There's three hooks and three offers. Then we'll do a full length version. That's typically three to four minutes, and then we'll do a half version. Now it's interesting that all full length versions, almost always outperform our shorter versions because our philosophy is the more you can tell, the more you will sell. And if you keep their attention, you'll earn the right to show them the whole video. But those shorter videos have really good for retargeting and platforms where you're not allowed to run a long video.
Joseph (30:38):
Instagram used to have a two minute rule. They've changed that recently, but there are other platforms out there that you need a shorter version for. Then what we do is we'll do wide-screen versions for, for YouTube and for your website. And then we'll create square versions for mobile. And we burn the subtitles in with a graphic designer. We never let the, you know, the platforms, auto-generate the subtitles because you only want seven ish words on the screen at any one time or else people it's too much. So if you do the math three hooks, three offers, that's nine two versions, a two minute version, a four minute version. Now we're up to 18 and then a square version and a wide version. Now we've doubled it to 32, but that gives the marketing agencies that we partner with that run our ads, the ability to say, okay, which version is going to work, which version tests the best.
Joseph (31:40):
And just like the vlog that I sent, that, that you're going to put a link in. You know, if we had to just come up with that first version, our return for our client would have been two X, which, you know, maybe we'd break even once they've spent all of them, you know, money on the ad, spend in the product. But the difference between that and the hook that created a four X, that's the difference between success and, you know, branding, mediocrity breaking even. So the more versions you can create and test the more data you'll have to say, I'm not just guessing. And a lot of the time, I hate to admit it. A lot of the time, we're totally wrong. We think that hook is going to be the best it's going to kill, and it's going to slay it and it's not. That's okay.
Kathleen (32:25):
That's marketing though. Like we all that we just have to test and fail and iterate and figure it out.
Joseph (32:30):
Exactly. And a beautiful tool that you have in most software in most platforms is called the retention curve. And that's where you can see a graph from minute from second zero all the way to minute three, let's say if it's a three minute video and you can see where are people dropping off? You know? So for the average person, once they start watching the video, you know, if a second 10, you see there's a big cliff where you're losing people, you can go back into the video and say, okay, what what is a second, 10 that is loo it's getting boring. Now, you're always going to see a drop-off when you introduce the product, because people suddenly realize this isn't a sketch comedy. This is, and that's normal. I mean, even the Harmon brothers say, and they're the best in the industry that they have a 5% watch through rate.
Joseph (33:24):
So only 5% of people that start end up finishing that video. But 5% of a video that gets a hundred million views. That's still pretty huge, huge number. So I think that's enough on testing the step eight. We've actually already talked about it. Step eight is forget going viral. Now I'll qualify that we actually do see about five to 10% of all views, organically viral. They come from people watching, liking, and sharing, but you don't get that until you started the snowball rolling with paid ads, right? So from our campaign that has a hundred million views, how would you like to have 10 million totally free views that convert into millions of dollars in sales? So it's not, it's not all paid, but the it's kind of like the cherry on the top is viral, but the rest is based on paid ads. And that's actually a good thing because that means that you can predict it.
Joseph (34:28):
You can build a business model off of that. These companies that have had these flash in the pan, you know, viral hits, they scale up to keep up with that demand. And then all of a sudden they crashed because what do they do next? It's not repeatable. And that's why the steps that I've gone through that, that we've seen time. And again, bring in the, the action that we're trying to get people to do. And let's talk just really quickly about that. It doesn't matter if you're a B2B company, a B to C company you're selling a physical e-commerce shippable product. You're selling a software, or even a, you know, a consultancy service, whether you're generating leads, whatever the action is. That's what this whole video is based around driving people to take just the next step. Not the, you're not trying to get them to bite, you know, bite off the whole elephant. You're just trying to get them to take one step, to click the link below, to get into your sales funnel.
Kathleen (35:36):
So I, yeah, I was interrupting you. I, I, the question that I have is I love this whole step-wise process. Like I like that you've broken it down and made it really easy to understand. And I think, I think that, you know, you've, you've created an approachable method for creating a funny video, but I imagine that the real science of it or the art of it, actually, I should say not the science is in being funny, but then also figuring out a way to inspire people, to take action and then buy the product. Right? Like we talked about it. You can't just be funny for the sake of being funny. So, you know, traditional marketers, when they think about doing videos, they always think like we have to include a call to action at the end or whatever. How do you approach balancing the funny story with like inspiring the viewer to take an action?
Joseph (36:25):
Yeah, so the there's a very specific within the video. Our structure is attention grabbing opening hook. That's the first five to 10 seconds. Then establish the problem that the character has. Then it has to be relatable. Then introduce the solution and tell them to do something about it immediately. So within the first minute, normally we've covered those three things with, with grabbed your attention with told you what the problem is, we've revealed the solution, and then we're going to hit you immediately. These aren't branding ads. These are ads that you watch, and then you say, well, that's nice. What now it has to be crystal clear and super simple what it is I'm asking you to do. So the more you can create that low hanging fruit of, you know, a lot of our, frankly, a lot of our videos, we lead with click below to get your free sample or risk-free trial or click below to get, you know, something for free.
Joseph (37:37):
Now, if you can't offer something for free, a lot of these videos are leading to an offer. That's actually a loss leader, right? It's it's not going to make you money. But if you've got a really good marketing team that understands how to take somebody with the mindset that, oh, I'm going to get something for free and then build value. It's called a value stack in the sales funnel. So before they've ever, you know, left your page, your V your, your website should have one goal. And one goal only, which is to take somebody who is coming into a sales funnel wanting one thing, and just add something else to that cart.
Kathleen (38:16):
You mentioned, you started out by saying these are top of funnel videos. So that makes total sense. People are coming in. They're not necessarily thinking they're ready to buy it's your job to push them along or pull them along. The funnel, I guess, is better. Yeah.
Joseph (38:28):
Yes. And then, and then remarket to them follow up. You know, it's obviously getting harder in today's world, post iOS, 14 of how to remarket people, but capturing their data in any way that you can. And, and, you know, this is probably a subject that I'm not as qualified to speak about. I'm a creative, but that's what the teams that we work with their whole focus is how do we take the click from a motivated person that's just watched this video, that wants to do something, whatever we've asked them to do, and how do we then turn that into a more profitable click?
Kathleen (39:04):
So, the question that I have is, you know, there's obviously so many different types of marketers from different companies that listen to this podcast. We have B2B brands, B2C brands. We have big companies, small companies. We have companies that are very like serious and stodgy and professional and others that have a lot of fun, you know, using humor in different ways. Like who is this appropriate?
Joseph (39:29):
I love, I love that question. So my, my stock answer is the more, and I'm saying this lovingly, the more boring your company, the better candidate you are for doing this, because it means that none of your competition are doing it.
Kathleen (39:43):
Nobody expects it
Joseph (39:44):
From you, right? Exactly. Exactly. It's disruptive. It's different. Now. I always tell people there's a line. You don't want to cheapen your brand. And so you have to speak to the level of the intelligence and the humor has to match the customer. So there's going to be a whole different tone to a video that we produce for a CXO, as opposed to, you know, a video that we produce for tween. It's a totally different type of video. You have to be respectful in the humor that you use, but you also have to be extremely edgy to cut through the clutter. And that's a very, very fine line to walk. But if you do it right, there's huge results. Because again, your competition won't be doing it. And I tell people B to B, B to C, these are words. These are terms that I like to throw away.
Joseph (40:41):
I love to use the word human to human. And if your audience is a human guess what they have emotions, whether you believe it or not, the, even the stuffy is corporate executive has emotions. And if you connect to those emotions, using relevant examples of problems that they come across, nightmares that could develop. If this problem was to be pushed to the extreme, that's where you really will connect with them, but it takes, you know, our average scripting process takes at least two months. Wow, we're doing the research, our videos take four months minimum. We tell people if you want a video next month, we're not, we're not the agency to work with because, you know, we, we want results and anything that's rushed. Won't bring results.
Kathleen (41:28):
Now, what about budget? I mean, is this, like, I'm not asking you to say how much you charge, but like, give me a ballpark. If, if a company is thinking of doing this, like how much should they be prepared to spend?
Joseph (41:40):
Two budgets that you got to realize you have to commit to budget? Number one is your monthly ad spend. Now, most of most businesses already had that. Whether that's currently been spent in a digital online environment or somewhere else you can create a video like this, and then just say, you know, maybe, maybe we'll throw this out there and it'll prove itself. And it'll create its own budget. No, you have to create a budget ongoing at least for a while to test this, to get to statistically significant results. Again, if we're creating 32 different versions of the video, you're going to have to run. In fact, I had this conversation last week with, with one of my media planners. He said for each video, just to test it, we want to spend at least $200 per day on each video. Now, I think he said in just a few days, you could figure out which ones were the winner.
Joseph (42:33):
It's pretty quick. And again, you probably know more about this than I do on the other side for the production. I mean, I'll just give you a real rough estimate. We, we definitely have competitors that charge a heck of a lot more than this. Our typical campaign runs between 30 and $50,000. That's that's for that whole four month production from co coming up with the idea of doing the research, coming up with the ideas, all of the production. It's a few costs on top of that for the cost of the actors and the locations. But, you know, that's, that's the average range that we work in.
Kathleen (43:15):
But I liked it. You broke it down earlier and you talked about like, if, if you need to cut costs and if you're, if you're a small company and you can never afford that, it seems to me like, from what you've said, the areas where you shouldn't cut, number one is definitely the right, the writers get, making sure you have the right writers working on your project. Number two is the actors. And, but then, you know, it sounds like you could get scrappy with some of the other elements and, you know, it might not be perfect, but like you could create something great.
Joseph (43:51):
Right. And I will, I can't guarantee anything because every campaign blindsides us in one way or another, but I'm pretty confident that if you do those two things right, and be scrappy with the rest of it, it'll beat what you're currently running, because what, you're, what you're currently running, probably isn't going to be as good as what I just described. If you go through those steps right.
Kathleen (44:17):
Now, what,
Joseph (44:19):
So, sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, if nobody is going to be scrappy and hit, you know, videos that are transformational, like some of ours and some of the Harmon brothers, I mean, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in sales from some of these campaigns.
Kathleen (44:38):
And then what are some examples of companies that you've done this for and the results they've gotten? Like you don't have to name names.
Joseph (44:46):
Yeah. Well, I mean, again, our biggest biggest campaign was for a laundry detergent, which let's be honest, that's not a funny or a sexy or particularly entertaining product. So we could do it for commodities that are B to B, B to C. We've done it for mortgage companies where we came up with a campaign that basically cut the cost of their leads in half using humor. We've done it for, gosh, I'm just thinking last week we were working on a campaign for a food product. We've got a home meal delivery service we've got gosh, I mean, it's all across the board. It back to my point, it doesn't matter the industry, the vertical, you know, the, the target audience, we're creatures that love a good story. And if it's about us and if it also solves a problem that we have, that that's the way to connect with people after 20 years of trying everything else, I've never seen anything as, as, as, as profitable for my clients that come back again. And again, to say that works, let's do another one.
Kathleen (45:58):
How you broke this down and made it so actionable. I'm going to change the topic a little bit, cause I have two questions. I always ask my guests and I want to make sure I squeeze this in before we wrap it up. The first one is that marketers constantly say to me that one of their biggest pain points is just keeping up with everything that's changing. Like you mentioned, iOS 14.5 is one great example, like so much has always changing. Whether it's platform changes, technology changes, new tools. What have you, how do you personally stay on top of it all and keep yourself educated?
Joseph (46:33):
So this is going to sound funny, but I have a not an, a unique advantage, but I have an advantage that I have three teenagers in my house. I literally believe when it comes to marketing, you've got to look at the up and coming generation. What are they doing? What are they saying? What are they consuming? What are they, what are they shining? I mean, you know, just think about the different social media platforms that you and I probably use on a, on a weekly basis compared to what my teenage kids use on a weekly basis can be, it couldn't be more different. And so I think keeping an eye to the younger generation in whatever way that that is to you keep active on those social platforms that you wouldn't typically be on so that you can see the trends so that you can see even, you know, literally the trends, right? That's what tick-tock is all about. These trends that we now can take and kind of make fun of in some of our videos or, or maybe we actually want to use those platforms if we, if we get a client where their target is those teenagers, but regardless of whether or not that that specifically is going to affect you, I think keeping an eye on the younger generation is, is critical for any industry.
Kathleen (47:52):
Well, amen. I have a 15 year old and then I have three 20 somethings. And so I totally agree with what you just said. And if my son is any indication, a lot of the humor that he's learning about and hearing, and the things that he, that he gets is if in his case, it's all from Reddit, which I think is so funny. But he's not as much a tick-tock guy, but all of his friends are. So it's just interesting to see even within them how it differs.
Joseph (48:18):
Yeah. And then on add to that, just constantly consuming creative, but also consuming, you know, education, listening to podcasts like this, listening to, you know, anything that affects your industry, just staying on top of trends.
Kathleen (48:36):
Yeah, absolutely. All right. Second question. This podcast is all about inbound marketing, which I define as anything that like naturally attracts the right buyer to your business who out there either a company or an individual do you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days.
Joseph (48:56):
So I'd probably have to come back to the Harmon brothers. There's, there's a company that started out just creating a new category in marketing, and then they've shifted to not just doing, but teaching through the books that they've written, the online university that they've created. And now they're shifting into creating unique content like movies and TV shows as, as well as, as that. And just by being the industry leaders, they're attracting, you know, inbound business, whether it's clients wanting to hire them or clients or students wanting to learn from them. So I think, you know, anyone can go out and say, I'm the best sign, the best sign, the best, but go out and create stuff that attracts referrals that attracts attention that creates buzz.
Kathleen (49:43):
I love it. All right. Well, we talked about a lot. We covered a lot here today, so I'm definitely going to be putting a bunch of links in the show notes. I'll put the link to to Joseph's LinkedIn post, where he breaks down the, the high-impact intros and the videos. As well as a couple of the other things that he mentioned, Joseph, if somebody has a question wants to connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that?
Joseph (50:09):
Two places I point you to number one is obviously funnysalesvideos.com. If they want to chat about campaign for their business, there's a form that they can fill out on the bottom. That's the same place that you can download the ebook. But then the other place I actually have my own podcast. It's called How to Make a Video Go Viral. I fully accept that the name is click baity given.
Kathleen (50:31):
That's so funny, given what we just talked about. Okay.
Joseph (50:34):
So if you, if you listen to the opening, it says the podcast that admits that its name is clickbait, but that's essentially what people are looking for, right? So we teach how to get the results, not the method by which to get them. So, but check that out on any podcast platform, how to make a video go viral.
Kathleen (50:52):
Love it. I'll put that link into the show notes. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. If you're listening and you liked this episode, head to apple podcasts and leave us a review. And if you know anybody else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, which yes, that is my Twitter handle. And I would love to have them as my next guest in the meantime. Thank you so much, Joseph, for joining me. This was a lot of fun.
Joseph (51:17):
I've had fun too. Thanks, Kathleen.
