Are you thinking of adding funny videos to your sales strategy? This eight-step framework may be just what you need to create successful sales videos. Joseph Wilkins has been creating sales videos since the half-hour infomercials that appear on TV. When his clients stopped getting the results they used to, he knew it was time to change spaces and switched to making videos for social media with his agency FunnySalesVideos.com. In his interview with Jason, he explains his eight-step framework to making successful sales videos, the process to make a solid video script, why you want professional comedians and actors involved in the process, and why you should never prioritize the comedy over the sale.

3 Golden Nuggets

Eight steps to making funny sales videos. Joseph has been producing funny videos that sell for many years and has developed a list of eight steps that have worked for him and that will surely serve as a very good framework for anyone that wants to create these types of videos. These steps take you from really understanding who your audience is before even starting to think about ideas for the videos, getting in the habit of writing down at least 50 bad ideas before thinking about the ones that could actually work, the process of making a script that works and adding the comedy punch, hiring the rights talent, and more. And that’s just 50% of the process.
You’re not trying to make the funniest videos. When it comes to videos like these, and as Daniel Harmon when he spoke with Jason about video ads, remember that you’re not trying to create a video that is just funny. You're looking to create a video that creates sales. The comedy has to support the sale. If it doesn’t, if it distracts from your main objective, then you should cut it out. “Some of the funniest jokes never end up in the video,” Joseph confirms. This is why the creative director will always have to push to get a video that is different and new for the brand, while also being laser-focused on the sales aspect.
On agency owners appearing in these videos. “Don’t do it!” Joseph puts a lot of emphasis on this point. This kind of video is a top of funnel first impression video. You want to give it a good chance of grabbing the audience's attention and keeping it and getting them to click into your funnel. It’s not completely out of the question for the company CEO to appear on a video at a later point in time, but always keep in mind they should not be the comic relief. Comedy takes true skill and Joseph prefers to leave it to the pros.

Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM

Leave The Comedy To The Pros & Follow These 8 Steps Funny Sales Videos

{These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.}

Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here and I have another amazing episode and guest where we're going to talk about how to create funny sales videos that don't seem salesy that really get people's attention and convert. So let's go ahead and jump into the show.

Hey, Joseph. Welcome to the show.

Joseph: [00:00:24] Thanks, Jason, it's good to be here.

Jason: [00:00:25] Yeah. I'm excited to have you on, so tell us who you are and tell us a little bit about your agency.

Joseph: [00:00:30] Sure. So I own FunnySalesVideos.com, which is kind of a recent breaker or rebrand to my original agency, which was Procreative.

For 20 years we've produced videos that sell, and I'll give you a quick background. We started primarily in television. So back in the day, our very first project, we were focusing on infomercials. So, you know, those huge 30 minute long infomercials that people would find in the middle of the night flipping through their channels.

Our very first project did over $200 million in sales and that kind of got us hooked and for the next 15 years that was our main focus, was television. But as you and I well know the way that people watch television, if they even do anymore, has dramatically changed in the past decade or two.

And so about five years ago after producing, you know, tons and tons and tons of TV commercials, infomercials and web videos and we'd work for, you know, some of the biggest brands on the planet, Google, LinkedIn, Chevrolet, McDonald's, um, we're a very small boutique agency, but we like to pretend to be clients that we're not so that we can compete with the best of them.

But anyway, after about 15 years, our clients basically said we're not getting the results that we used to, you know, we're spending the same amount of money running the creative we're spending sometimes even more for the media buying because it wasn't getting any cheaper, but the results just weren't there because the eyeballs weren't there anymore.

And so our clients started saying, what can we do to get back to the results that we used to get? You know, the return on broadcast ad spend that we used to, to see. And about the same time is when the Harmon Brothers, uh, launched their mentorship program.

For many years we had kind of watched them and they're actually just down the road from us here in Utah. And, uh, you know, I watched everything that they had been doing with the Squatty Potty, with, uh, Poo-Pourri, Purple Mattress, Chatbooks, Fiber Fix. And, uh, right when they launched their mentorship program, it was kind of a perfect time for us to pivot and really decide is this the new vehicle, that's going to get us the returns that we used to get?

And I'll just give you a couple of quick case studies and then we can talk about something else. But before we launched Funny Sales Videos, you know, when clients would call us and say, hey, we saw this really funny video. We want to do a viral video. We would say, sorry, we don´t do that.

Whenever people asked for that elusive thing that they think is just push a button and you'll get a viral video. But we don't do funny because frankly, the worst thing that you can do is try to be funny and end up looking silly if you don't have the right people in the bus, as far as the scripting, as far as the acting, as far as the editing, you know, comedic timing, and we can talk about all of those in a minute.

But we don't want to do something unless we can do it fully a hundred percent. And that's kind of the missing piece that the Harmon Brothers helped test to figure out with their courses. And I, you know, I, I'm not an affiliate, but I always plug harmonbrothersuniversity.com to anyone that's looking to up their marketing skills, whether it's funny or not.

And so our very first video, when we launched finally sales videos with this new information that we had got, got over 7 million views, and more importantly, over a half a million dollars in subscriptions to a SAS service that was a very, very niche audience. And so we knew were on to something.

Fast forward to today, our biggest campaign is, I think, I got a chat with the client, I think we've hit a hundred million views and just millions of millions of dollars in revenue. So we kind of feel like we've come full circle back to our original days of just killing it on television, that there it's a whole new playbook to work online and also to use humor to essentially trick people into watching a video.

Jason: [00:04:51] Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. I've had the Harmon Brothers on the show and, and had a lot of fun chatting with them. And I even worked with people in the past that have been on those Squatty Potties and that kind of stuff… not in the videos. In producing the videos not, not using the Squatty Potty. I don't think anybody would admit that.

I remember one of my buddies was like, well, before I get behind any video, I need to try it. And then he was like it works! So it was funny.

Let's go ahead and jump into it. Let's talk about kind of the eight steps that you found that really works for your framework. What's the first one for someone creating a really good sales video?

Joseph: [00:05:37] Yeah. So we, uh, this is the ebook that anyone can download from our website funnysalesvideos.com. We basically just put it together because a lot of the time we’ll have clients that want to do a video and we only take on kind of two or three clients at a time.

So the very first step is, you know, it's marketing 101, it's understanding who your audience is, what their pain points are, creating as detailed customer avatar as possible. And again, your audience is more savvy than most, but a lot of people I tell them you never write a letter and then walk to the mailbox and decide before you put it in the mailbox who to address it to, but that's what a lot of people do when they sit down and they write these scripts, they just think about the product and they think about why did I start this company? Or why did I invent this product?

And unless you really do the homework to figure out who is your customer and what they already saying about your product? We get too caught up in drinking our own Kool-Aid and, and an exercise that the Harmon Brothers taught us that everybody should do is go out and spend a good chunk of time reading through dozens and dozens and dozens of customer reviews.

Find out, what are people saying about your product? What do they like? What do they not like? What could you improve upon? Or what do you need to address in your marketing that will overcome the objections? You know, whether it's price, so you have to build a value proposition that, you know, yours is more valuable in the long run, or whatever it is, but really spend the time to identify the key selling points that cold traffic…

And these videos are top of funnel videos, right? So they're not that they're intended to convert cold traffic into clicks to your sales funnel. And so you've got to get them very quickly with the top-selling points. And then, if necessary, if there are objections that you've got to overcome, you know unanswered concerns never lead to a sale, so you've got to figure out what are your key selling points? What are any objections you need to overcome?

And then these kinds of videos when we launched them on number one comment that we look for, and frankly that we get very often, is I loved watching that video because that person just felt like me, or it felt like a friend or it felt, I want to be friends with that person.

Well that's because that person is you. We've stolen lines that you've written in your customer reviews and we've created a character that is so close to the customer avatar that it connects on a much, much deeper level.

And just a final thought, you know, some businesses will say, well, what if I don't have a hundred reviews to read through? Well, go and steal from competitors. Go read what other company’s clients are saying. If their products are close to yours, it's the same market.

So number one is just do your homework. Don't set pen to paper until you have a really solid understanding.

Jason: [00:08:41] Yeah. You know, I always tell agency owners that they have to have a real clear understanding of who their audience is and really in your marketing, it should be going after a specific audience.

And I really like what you were talking about overcoming objections, because that's a really good one. Like if you think about, when you're talking to your sales team and thinking of like, here are the objections. And like literally if you called them out and you were like, here are the objections and then like on the video, you're going to get their attention. So what’s number two?

Joseph: [00:09:10] Exactly. Okay, so number two is kind of the fun one that is harder to quantify, but it's the brainstorming. And what I always like to tell people is before you get scared, you know, thinking about a blank sheet of paper or an empty whiteboard or an empty Word document, I tell people your goal… And so this kind of video, we're looking for two things in the brainstorming phase, we're looking for number one, who's the character, the main character that this video is about?

And number two, what is the big problem that they are going to present in the video? And obviously your product or solution has to overcome and solve that problem. But you're got to get really creative and come up with crazy fun, irrelevant ideas.

I tell people come up with 50 bad ideas. Don't judge them. Don't filter them, get as many people into your brain, share as possible as you're brainstorming this. But you're looking for answer the two questions 50 times. Now people will say, that's, that's crazy. And I say, yes, it is. And that's part of the, the method is that bad ideas will lead to good ideas.

And if you don't put any judgment on it, it takes away the fear. And so we will literally sit down in, in my agency we'll do it virtually. We do it, we throw up a shared document and my writers will get into a document and it'll normally take us about a couple of weeks between four or five of us to just throw bad idea of the bad idea.

And then once you've got your 50 bad ideas, now you put on your, your serious thinking cap and you look at okay, which of these speaks to me? Which of these has the flavor of a fun story? And that's what you're looking for. Forget selling. Right now all you're interested in is hooking people's attention and getting them to watch past the first few seconds.

And so the more fun that character can be, the more bizarre that situation while still being intellectually relevant. It doesn't have to be literally relevant. I mean, there's no relevance in a magical unicorn that craps out ice cream, but it's relatable to the Squatty Potty because you can draw a parallel.

And so don't, you know, sometimes our videos are very, very, the customer avatar is the hero of the video. And sometimes it's a completely fictitious character that is still relatable to that customer avatar, but you really have to do the brainstorming to be able to arrive at what are the best ideas? And then as an agency owner, what I do is I present my best five ideas to the client.

So as an agency that's, that's what I would recommend. Don't give them the 50 bad ideas because they’ll think you're a terrible agency. Give them the five best ideas and sometimes the worst ideas on the paper to begin with will spark somebody else to say, well, that's bad, but actually what if we flipped that and come up, you know, you can get great ideas by going off on tangents.

So step two is brainstorming as many ideas as possible only worrying about those two things. Who's the character? And what’s the big problem?

Jason: [00:12:33] I really liked that, the brainstorming. And I liked that you said present, you know, the five best ideas that you have. Now, one of the things that I learned early on is don't tell people, be like, hey, we have incredible ideas for you. These are the best ideas we've ever come up with.

Because if the clients hate it, then they're going to be like, you're an idiot. And they're going to think you're a real bad agency going forward. So just always preface as, hey, we've got some from five ideas to go by. Don't get really Gung-ho for them because if they do shoot you down, that's fine. Then you can go off to the next one.

Joseph: [00:13:09] Yeah. So before I go on to three, just another power tip, you know, since your audience are agency owners primarily. Uh, along the lines of what you just said, what we do is when we present those five ideas to the client, we tell them here they are, they're not in any particular order. We're not going to show you all hand of which ones we like best until we get feedback from you.

And so you basically, you're trying to get the client to get ownership, right? If they pick the best idea… now, if there are five ideas and there's one that clearly you feel like is going to have the best success as an agency you're obliged to then share well, you had, that was good, but, you know, have you thought about, you know, this, this and this?

So yes. Yeah. There's politics when you dealing with clients as always. So anyway, step three is scripting. This is where the rubber meets the road. You're going to actually develop your script. Now, the first thing you do is go back to step one and look at your key selling points that you identified.

And most of the time, these videos are three to four minutes long for the long version. We do shorter versions, but the hero version, which incidentally, typically tests out the best when you're on a platform that allows longer versions, you can probably communicate three to five key selling points in that video, in that amount of time.

Now your most mentioned reason why people buy should be, you know, hit over the head multiple times in that video. So it's a prioritized list, but you take your key selling points. You take any objections, that becomes your marketing framework for the script. Then you take your character and the problem and you bring in a creative writer to create the story arc.

Now in my world, I use many many freelance creative writers and people would say, well, what if I don't have a really good writer that understands this kind of comedy? Well this step it's not funny. It's just a creative storyteller that you want to do this part of the scripting. We actually have 6, 7, 8 writers on every project that we produce.

And I'll talk more about that in a minute. So you basically take the story writer, the creative writer that takes the elements and build the story. And I always used Donald Miller’s story, is it StoryBrand? As a framework for how a good story should be written. So you got somebody who has a problem who meets a guide who shows them the solution, and then has the transformation that then shows how their world or their life is better because of that solution.

So that's the arc that we're trying to get. And we're also trying to call them to action. Now, once you've got your story, you also need to make sure that you spend a lot of time writing your big hook. That's the first five seconds of your video.

Nothing past that first five seconds matters if you don't create something that's attention-grabbing and the also works with the sound off, because 80% of people watching aren’t going to have the sound on. And we going to have to create visuals and titles and literally design in subtitles so that visually you're telling all of the story without the sound on.

And then, you know, the goal of that is to get people, to turn the sound on and peak their curiosity enough. So that's step three is writing the basic script. It's not funny, but it's fun, right? It's an entertaining story. And then step four, I bring in on every project, at least five professional comedy writers.

Now this is the difference between what I said earlier about how I used to say, I won't do a sales video because we don't have the talent to do that in-house. And so I spent a lot of time looking for good professional comedians. Now, how do your agency owners do that if they don't have any connections? Well, there are a lot of online freelance sites like Fiverr and Upwork and other places where good comedy writers in their spare time write for other people, you know, freelances.

I also watch a lot of standup comedy and I'll reach out to people. I'll send them an email or I'll go to the website and talk to their agent and you'd be surprised at how affordable some, I, I won't tell you the names, but some people that you would recognize from big sitcoms, the lead writers. They apparently don't get paid enough because they still want to do freelance work on the side.

I also have guys that worked for me that work on cruise ships as comedians.

Jason: [00:18:04] Are you looking for a reliable partner to increase your agency's bandwidth so you can take on more projects? You know, our partner at E2M wants to help you grow your revenue, your profit margins without increasing your overhead costs. Now they’re a white label web design and development agency that's been providing white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world.

Their team is over 120 experienced, skilled digital experts that's highly motive to help you get more done in less time. Now they can help you in all kinds of digital areas, including web design, development, e-commerce, SEO, copywriting, content marketing, and a lot more.

If you're not sure whether E2M is the right fit for your agency. I want you to check out their flexible and transparent pricing. Go to e2msolutions.com/smartagency. For a limited time, they're offering my smart agency listeners 10% off for the first three months of service. That's e2msolutions.com/smartagency.

So how much would you pay someone like you were talking about?

Joseph: [00:19:17] Now you're asking to me to give away all of my secrets. I would say a decent rate is like a hundred bucks an hour. And… really, oh yeah. Yeah, well, maybe not to the, some of the higher-end ones. I paid a thousand dollars to the guy that I was mentioning that they worked for a bigger show. But you got to understand, you're not looking for them to write a script.

All I'm asking them to do is review a sprit that already exists. Comedians aren't good at writing. They're good at creating jokes, right? They're not good at writing stories. They're good at bits, right? Fragments. Punch up, that’s the technical term. When I reach out to a comedian, I say, hey, I've got a script it's fully written, I just need someone to punch it up with some jokes, add in some witty comedy, a word here, a word there, a line here, a line there. That's all you're looking for.

And normally, you know, an hour or two for comedian. And then when you do that with five different comedians and everyone's kind of in the virtual writer's room, seeing everyone else's comments, it's kind of like Saturday night live. That's how they do it. They lock everyone in a writer's room and the riff off each other. So I do that in a virtual environment. Does that make sense?

Jason: [00:20:31] I really like that. And I like how they're all going off and building on each other's work rather than going, oh, we have five comedians. They all submitted it. Which one do you like? And then you're trying to make it better.

I really liked that. That's my favorite part.

Joseph: [00:20:46] That could be difficult sometimes because, I'll just be honest, It's kind of serendipitous how the script evolves depending on which writer put their comments in first because everyone's building off the previous one and there's no real stretcher for that, but the chaos just kind of seems to work.

I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a front part of the process. Probably the most fun.

Jason: [00:21:09] Yeah. I think that would be a lot of fun. So what's the next step after this?

Joseph: [00:21:12] Okay. So just one more point on comedy. You're not looking to create a funny video. You're looking to create a video that creates sales. And so, because of that, some of the funniest jokes never end up in the video.

The comedy has to support the sale. If it's distracting from the sale, if it goes off on a tangent that doesn't advance the sale, if it's too edgy, too offensive, obviously it's going to get flagged on Facebook or, you know, Instagram. There are certain rules that you have to follow.

So, but the hard part of as a creative director, and that's what I do, I, I kind of am the one that reviews everyone's comments and decides which ones make the cut. My job is to protect the brand while still pushing it to be different than, than anything that they're done before. Cause that's why they're coming to us in the first place, but also number on my, I need to be laser-focused on the sale.

So just keep that in mind. You're not just looking for the funniest jokes, you're looking for things that will advance, the story. Number one, get them to stay watching. And then number two, get them to advance, to click through to your sales funnel.

Number five is production. Now you would think as a guy who has spent literally 20 years running a video production studio… I mean, if we were to go in the other room, I could show this huge studio with, you know, million dollars of crap, man, you would think that I would say the most important part production is getting the best cameras and the best lights and the right crew. Not true.

The number one thing about production is casting. Finding the right actor to be your hero, to guide them through this journey. The two most important parts of your video success are the script and the actor. Everything else you can literally shoot with your iPhone and get better results than me taking a million dollars and having a bad script and a bad actor.

And in today's world, the democratize video, you know, this 4k camera here. I would have died for this 20 years ago. So if there's no excuses anymore, people can produce great content. Now, how do I find the right actor? Well, you might be surprised to hear that for every actor, and I'm talking to hero actor. There are supporting actors and other extras in our videos, but there's really only one hero actor. I will look at over a hundred candidates before I select my actor.

Now some agency owners may not know this, but the process of casting and getting actors to audition cost you nothing but your time. Here’s how I do it. I'll go to two or three good acting agencies here in my town, depending on where you live, you'll have more or less.

I will go to those agencies and I'll give them a portion of the script. You don't want to give them the whole thing. it'll overwhelm an actor. Just give them a good chunk of the script, maybe three or four paragraphs. But also before I do that, I'll look at the demo reel. I'll look at their pictures and I'll pick out of those hundred. I'll probably pick 20 of them to send the script and ask the urgency to have them do self-taped auditions.

In the world of COVID, everyone has a setup right now. With the zoom recording, whether it's the foreign that laptop, just like we're doing right now. And so I'll get back about 20 videos that are prerecorded auditions from these actors.

Then I'm going to select my top three to five and I'm going to invite my client to a joint zoom session. A lot of the times I'll have the actor come into my studio, or sometimes I'll just have them stay at home and do it. But what I'm doing there is I'm looking to see how directable, how coachable are they? Can they do this line faster? Can they slow it down here? Can they put the emphasis on this word?

I'm looking for how do they respond to me as a director because anyone can do a really good audition with no pressure and do 20 takes and send the best one, but can they perform on the day? The other thing that I'm looking for is what do they add to the script that I haven't written? What spontaneity do they bring out while we're filming? Because during the production, your script should get better if you picked the right actor.

And I love to cast actors that have experience in comedy specifically improv so that they can add things and riff off of what I've written or what my team has written.

And so acting, I could spend hours just talking about that one subject, but the final thing I'll say about production is backing up to what I said earlier. Yes, everyone has an iPhone, but guess what? Every single other video on someone's Facebook feed or Instagram feed or on YouTube, every other video has been shot with their iPhone or with their, whatever smartphone. So if you want to stand out and be disruptive, you should hire the professionals.

And so having both the right script, the right actor and a team of really good film production company that really knows how to shoot things, that's just going to increase your results.

So that's step five, production. And again, I go into way more detail in my ebook on each of these things.

Jason: [00:26:48] Awesome. I love it. And one of the things I want to ask you, because a lot of times, especially with agencies, you know, I tell them you need to position yourself as that trusted advisor, right? The Yoda, the Obi-wan, right? Rather than the Luke Skywalker.

And in doing that, and if you're creating a video and then you hire an actor and they're like, oh, that was an actor that wasn't us. So what are your thoughts on an agency doing their own video and having one of them being in the video? Because you know, one of the things…

Joseph: [00:27:25] No. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

Jason: [00:27:28] Don’t do it?

Joseph: [00:27:29] No, for this… I have very strong opinions on this matter, so feel free to disregard, but these are my opinions. Marketing is like a salad. You should have all kinds of different ingredients. This kind of video that I'm talking about is a top-of-funnel first impression video. You want to give your very best chance of grabbing their attention and keeping their attention and getting them to click into your funnel.

Once they're in your funnel, by all means, throw at them other kinds of videos. CEO videos, customer testimonials, be in more videos for sure. But unless like the Dollar Shave Club guy, which a lot of people don't realize this, unless you are a trained comedian and have experience with acting, don't try to be funny because you'll end up looking silly.

That's what I've seen. Now I've seen this, the rules broken a couple of times well, but I can't tell you in the 20 years that I've been doing this, how many times I've had a CEO that says, I think I can act, we get into the studio and they suck.

Jason: [00:28:41] I get that. I get that.

Joseph: [00:28:43] So it's a very specific kind of skill. Comedy is the hardest thing for me.

Jason: [00:28:48] Yes. And I'm glad you preface that because I know a lot of people listening are thinking about, well, I want people to recognize me, but this is just to get their attention and then you can get them later on because you know, one of the things I always worried about, and I think they think about with putting all this together is…

You know, I think about with, um, what was the T-Mobile guy? Or let's say there's like, um, Fey, uh, Progressive Insurance. Let let's say she's like, you know, she's in all their videos and then let's say they don't like her anymore. Well, everyone associates progressive to Fey. And now they have to find a new spokesman and then it just gets harder.

But I'm glad you explained that. Cause I actually agree with that as well, because I've seen some really bad videos. Hell, people have tried to mock some of our videos that we've done and I'm like, that was really, really bad. Don't do that again.

Joseph: [00:29:43] Yes, yes. Now there is one place that I'll, I'll make an exception. If during this video you want to bring in someone, you know, very short clip that basically says, here's the dude who invented it.

And I've actually seen the Harmon Brothers do this pretty well with Lumē, their deodorant. They had some scientists expert who was somehow involved with the clinical trial and they burnt him in just as a start, like a second, you know, I'm the guy that's going to make some credibility here, but then they actually make fun of him in the video.

There's a way that you can do it if you really want the CEO to be in the video, but don't make them the comic relief in the sense that they're trying to be funny.

Jason: [00:30:31] Yup. Got it. What's the next step? What number are we on? Um, I've lost track of the numbers.

Joseph: [00:30:36] This is number six and the two after are a pretty quick. So we'll go quick cases. For step six, you've always heard the phrase comedy is about timing and when it comes to step six, which is editing, nothing could be more truthful. The difference between an editor who understands timing, especially comedic timing, and somebody that just knows how to edit is very different.

And so I'll give you an example, you know, we'll do film shoots and we'll do a line and the actor, and it's very well written and it's very well acted. But when we get into the edit, something’s just not working. The line doesn't hit the way that in our brains we thought it would and a good editor can simply put a cut here and punch from a wide shot to a close-up or take out a pause or overlap two sentences, or bring somebody else in quicker or even rearrange the entire sequence. And all of a sudden it works.

It's all about timing and it's also, you know, not a people back to the point I made earlier. A lot of people are surprised to hear our videos are three to four minutes long. They say people don't have the attention to watch those kinds of videos. And I say, uh, have you heard of Netflix?

They still put out two hour long videos and people are watching them. People don't stop watching the videos because they're long. They stop watching cause they suck. They stop watching because they're boring. They start watching because they're irrelevant.

And so, if your goal is to not make your video boring, you got to speed it up. It's got to be action packed from beginning to end. Our videos, the script feel more like five minutes when we read them. But when we filmed them and edit them so tight with taking out breaths, with speeding things up with, you know, literally over cutting people's sentences talking over each other. So that at no point in that video can you say, oh, that feels long, or that feels boring.

You still gonna get most people that don't watch it through to the end. In fact, the Harmon Brothers have said that only 5% of people that watch their videos make it through to the end. But 5% of a hundred million people is a whole lot of qualified people ready to click into your sales funnel.

So you've got an editor who knows how to keep it snappy and fast, people won't get bored. The other thing that we do is for most of our clients, depending on what package they go with, we deliver 32 different versions of the same video. Because what we're doing is we're giving them a whole bunch of data to test. You know, you've heard of AB split testing, well we do A through Z split testing.

We're going to create three totally different opening hooks. We're going to test which one gets watched through the most. We're going to create three different calls to action. We're going to test which one gets clicked on the most. We're going to do the long version. We're going to do the short versions. We're going to do the square versions for mobile. We're going to do the wide-screen versions for YouTube and for desktop.

So all of these variables so that it's not leaving things to chance. In our early days, it's kind of embarrassing to admit this, but even to this day our most successful video, then now has over 50 million views on one video. We didn't do this to, we just guessed and we were right. But guess what? We're seldom right every time.

And so what we like to do now is give our clients every single opportunity to test so that it's not gambling on one version, we're doing the split testing. So a good editor knows how to create all of those different versions. So that's step six.

Step seven we've already briefly touched on it, but it's the testing. And this might be the time to reveal the dirty secret that none of our videos organically went viral. That's not what it's about. This is about creating a video that where you spend a dollar on advertising, you get 2, 3, 4, or $5 in return. I explained it like a vending machine that's full of a hundred dollar bills and it costs $20 to use. How many times are you going to want to use that machine?

So understand that once you've produced this video, that's only 50% of the work. You've now got to build a dynamite sales funnel, and you've got to have a dynamite media buyer who understands how to buy Facebook, YouTube, you know, hopefully in step one, we've already identified who is your customer and where are they viewing online so that, you know, where you're most likely going to end up.

But having said that most of our videos they're fairly platform agnostic. We test them on YouTube. We test on Facebook. Test them on Instagram. So knowing that this is a conversion video, not a organically viral video.

Now organic views will come, maybe five to 10% of all views are organic because people love to share them and comment on them. And, you know, engagement is just through the roof on these kinds of videos. So we do get kind of a cherry on the top of the cake, but the cake is paid ads. So know that and plan for it. And budget for it.

Final step, I've already said it, it's don't think that this is going to be something that you going to put her or this work into a video, and then you’re just going to go famous overnight. That's no business model that I could predict, control, repeat. And we've heard about people that win the lottery and go broke, kind of liken it to companies that, you know, sometimes get a whole bunch of seed money and don't really know what to do with it.

In the world of video hits there are so many examples of companies that did have videos that went viral back in the old days, but where are they now? You want a repeatable controllable business that you can count on. And, you know, we have clients that have done 7, 8, 9 of these videos because every single time it's worked, it's given them that return.

It's not a flash in the pan and going through the steps is the best way to ensure that it will predictably bring those returns that your company needs or your clients need.

So those are my eight steps.

Jason: [00:37:13] I love it. I love the eight steps and they're so simple, and I'm glad you clarified on a lot of them because I can't tell you how many times I hear agencies I was like, we need to get more attention and we need to create a viral video. Or, and they're just, I'm like, there's so many different things that go into creating a successful video.

And I totally agree with you on all the steps. I mean, they're very well laid out and I'm glad you've built upon other people's framework for, from, you know, Donald's to the Harmon Brothers. Because when I look at growing our agency and growing the mastermind and seeing other agency owners, it's no one ever invents everything. It's always like, especially with your creative process, it's always just building on that.

And I really do appreciate that and that's why you guys are really successful.

Tell us, um, if people want to know more where can they go?

Joseph: [00:38:06] Real simple, funnysalesvideos.com. Take a look at some of the examples videos there, there's some case studies there, but most importantly, that's where you can download the free ebook that will give you that. And I should just add if, if you're looking to follow these steps to do it right, we won't take on a client until they understand this is going to take at least four months.

To go through all of these steps you got to take the time to do it right. Just want to make sure people understand this isn't the kind of thing that you don't want your clients calling up saying, hey, we need a video in a week. What kinds of videos can you produce? Hey, I've just heard this podcast. Maybe we'll try that. No, it's gotta be, it's got to take the time to get the results.

Jason: [00:38:49] Awesome. Well, I love it. And thanks so much for coming on the show. Make sure everyone to go to their website and check them out.

And if you guys want to be around other amazing agency owners, where you can build on what they've learned over their years of scaling and growing their agency faster, so you can do the same and really do it the right way and avoid some of the pain. You'll never avoid all the pain, but I'd love to invite all of you to go check out digital agency elite and, um, see a band, just check out the stories from the other mastermind members there of their growth and their success and what their life looks like now, rather than working around the clock and not enjoying what they're doing.

So make sure you go to digitalagencyelite.com and until next time have a Swenk day.

3 Golden Nuggets

Sponsors and Resources

Subscribe

Leave The Comedy To The Pros & Follow These 8 Steps Funny Sales Videos

8 Steps to Create Funny Sales Videos For Your Agency

Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies