Last updated on June 14th, 2024
Matt Ballek of VidiSEO talks about the 2019 Video Marketing Playbook
GUEST: Matt Ballek of VidiSEO. Check out Video Ads Live and VidiAcademy.
HOST: The VidAction Podcast is hosted by Dane Golden of VidAction | LinkedIn | | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
It’s time for HEY.com. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you, grow your customer community through helpful how-to videos. My name is Dane Golden and today, we have Matt Ballek of VidiSEO.
Matt Ballek:
Hello, great to be here, Dane. Thanks for having me.
Dane Golden:
Welcome. We used to talk all the time on the Tube Talk podcast, years ago. That’s my intro for you, from that podcast, but got you on this podcast, the HEY.com podcast now.
Matt Ballek:
I know, it’s good to be back. I’ve been deficient in vitamin Dane.
Dane Golden:
That’s too funny. Okay so I asked you on to talk about your VidiSEO, that’s V-I-D-I-S-E-O 2019 video marketing playbook. What is this?
Matt Ballek:
That is a great, prepared question, Dane. I love it . My 2019 video marketing playbook is sort of the… The video marketing play that I’m really pitching and most interested in helping service for my clients and myself to showcase a sort of play that you can follow through with and hopefully get similar results. So this is a way to have a solid, defined plan for how you can use video to grow your business, drive new leads or sales, and you know, just something so you’re going in with a plan because if you don’t have a plan, then you’re planning on failure.
Dane Golden:
Right. So, it’s a full strategy, step by step. And you and I have been working on YouTube for a long time, you’ve made many, many videos about it and helped many clients, but, you know, the world evolves, why still YouTube and not Facebook video? Facebook has a lot of video.
Matt Ballek:
Yeah it certainly does and I do believe Facebook is a very viable platform for video marketing. But I chose YouTube to highlight in my video marketing playbook for a number of reasons but I think first and foremost is that, just the competition, when it comes to Facebook promotion and advertising is, it’s a very crowded space with your costs and impressions and click costs is going up as more and more people sort of jump onto the Facebook advertising band wagon. So I wanted to highlight that I think that YouTube advertising is still a very underutilized way to get in front of the right customers and it has a similarly massive audience as Facebook but with a lower amount of competition creating ads and advertising on that platform. So I think it creates this really great opportunity for marketers to still get on board before everyone jumps on the YouTube advertising band wagon.
Dane Golden:
Right and sure there’s many, many people on Facebook but the YouTube inventory is sort of endless.
Matt Ballek:
Yeah, it really is. And I think it’s also, people come to those different platforms in a different mindset. when you think about what mindset you’re in when you go to Facebook versus the mindset you might be in when you go to YouTube. I think Facebook is a much more passive platform, where when you go onto Facebook you’re not necessarily going there to discover something that you might want to purchase per se, it’s more of you catching people when they’re wasting time or in a more passive sort of scrolling experience. Whereas YouTube, you know, still being that second largest search engine after Google, you’re having people go there with a very defined reason, which I think can be very useful for marketers.
Dane Golden:
Yeah a lot of people go to YouTube with a plan, they want to find out how to do something or answer a question. Whereas, when I go to Facebook I don’t expect to be able to answer a question. In addition, you think of YouTube as a place, when you’ve seen a video previously, that helped you answer a question, you want to find it again, if you want to look for a Facebook video a second time, that’s almost impossible.
Matt Ballek:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. You pretty much read my mind there, because I was going to say for the evergreen aspect or just the longevity of your videos, YouTube is still the platform to be on when it comes to discoverability and re-discoverability of your content. Whereas with Facebook, like you said, it’s easy for that content to just get buried by all the new information in your feed and certainly the search capabilities on Facebook aren’t really up to snuff with what Google’s been working on.
Dane Golden:
On YouTube your video that you make once can essentially be an asset that you use month after month and even year after year. It’s something you made once and can still keep working for you.
Matt Ballek:
Absolutely, and I think that’s why, I lean on YouTube as a platform for that and also why a big part of my playbook for 2019 is a real focus on educational content because that kind of content can really stand the test of time and like you said, deliver those, that audience or those conversions, just month after month or even year after year if you choose the right kinds of topics.
Dane Golden:
So explain what you mean by educational content. We’ve heard this a little bit, it’s starting to grow into fashion, what does educational content mean exactly? As a term?
Matt Ballek:
Yeah I would say, I guess in simplistic terms, just if you’re trying to teach anything or relay some sort of information, then that would be educational in nature, so any kind of how-to video or tutorial or walkthrough kind of video. I would put those all within the scope or category of an educational piece of content.
Dane Golden:
And YouTube, the company, has been really talking up educational content lately, haven’t they?
Matt Ballek:
They really have and they’ve actually been putting some investments into some production partners and channels and almost giving them grants to create more educational content. Because they know that viewers are clamoring for it. And I also think it’s a big part of their play for voice search and you know, smart home searching as well. Which I’ll elaborate on, if you’re familiar with the Google Home Hub or the Google Home type devices, similar to your Amazon Echos and what have you. If you do any sort of searches, especially for how-to in the kitchen or any sort of how-to types of questions, your screen is going to pull up, you know, you guessed it, a YouTube video, and usually it’s keyed into the exact time where that particular demonstration or tutorial is happening. So you can see YouTube as being sort of the feeder engine for these, you know, questions, to show a visual answer beyond just text. And I think that Google is looking to create more of that content on YouTube, so they have ready access to show it on some of these smart home devices as well.
Dane Golden:
Not to mention, Google, you know Google has done a couple of things recently, they’ve made this sort of, carousel where videos will show up on search and then there’s, I think it’s called Snippets? YouTube Snippets or something on Google, where a video might show up as the very first option already cued, to the point in the video where it would answer your question.
Matt Ballek:
Yeah, it’s almost like the timestamp of the video is within brackets on the bottom, so you’ll see when you, when you click through it’s just showing you just a little, little edit of the video instead of the whole thing.
Dane Golden:
So what are a couple of points from the video marketing playbook that you’ve put out that will help people?
Matt Ballek:
Well, I think the biggest, most simplistic one is to have a plan in place. And I do, really showcase my video planning worksheets, that I’ve created, which is actually a free to access Google sheet, that I use for myself and for my clients to plan out your video strategy for the month or even the whole entire year. And anyone who’s listening can grab a copy of that for free at vidiseo.com/plan and get access to that spreadsheet to start playing around with it. But, the other part, other than just listing out the kinds of videos you want to make, I think looking at how you structure your video content plan is really important. And I think a big mistake that brands make, when going into video advertising, is that they might have a specific, you know, goal or purchase in mind, when they’re thinking about, you know, what this video is going to accomplish and that’s a goal that might be all the way at the bottom of your sales funnel, in the purchase side of things. And taking a video from, you know, the very top of the funnel for awareness, all the way down to purchase, can be a pretty long journey for one video to take a customer through.
Dane Golden:
Right.
Matt Ballek:
So I think part of this planning and why you need to have a plan, is because you need to think about what videos you have or might need, throughout that entire sales funnel. And sure, if you are a marketer, you’ve seen many kinds of funnels but I just use the standard sort of, awareness, consideration, decision and retention and look at, for each video we’re creating, where it falls within that funnel and how it moves into the next phase of the funnel. I think being able to plan that out, somewhat visually through a spreadsheet, can be really helpful to see where you have gaps or maybe you have an abundance of content on one side or the other.
Dane Golden:
So just to repeat, you’re saying there might be four or more different types of videos with different goals because your positioning them higher or lower in the funnel?
Matt Ballek:
That’s exactly correct. So, just having a video, or all your videos having a goal of just purchasing a product, it’s just not a very strategic way to think about it and it’s going to be more difficult to really measure the movement of your customers through that journey. So, having a video and knowing that it’s going to be in the awareness stage of the funnel, I can then set smarter goals for that video, maybe a goal of an email submit or getting them into that next stage of the funnel where it’s, you know, consideration. So I think it helps, not just fill out a more cohesive video marketing plan but also helps you choose smarter goals to measure the success of those videos. Because you might see a video where it’s not getting a lot of sales, you know, it’s getting a lot of views but not a lot of sales, so you might consider it a failure if you’re just looking at it from a sales standpoint, but if you realize it’s an awareness video and you’re actually getting a lot of people visiting a product page or you know, entering their email address for something, that video may be a smash hit in terms of converting that, but if you’re not looking at it, you’re not measuring the right goal for the particular video, you might not realize the success you’re actually experiencing.
Dane Golden:
Well, so when you talk about a content plan, it reminds me of a beef I’ve got, and you tell me if you agree with this beef or disagree, because, some larger businesses now are having chief content officers, which commonly means you’re in charge of the blog and any social media pointing to it. But, or maybe, it might be social media or not. But the point is, is that, all blog materials are run by this chief content officer, sometimes you imagine YouTube might be in that, sometimes it isn’t. What that content officer does though, is have a content plan and really, they get to decide what’s on the blog, and what’s not, however, when it comes to YouTube, for some reason, anybody in any department who has shot a video of any sort, seems to have full license sometimes for a brand regardless of any goal of the video or any type of the video, or length or quality. “Hey, we have a YouTube channel, we should just upload” and I have a beef with this concept, what is your thought?
Matt Ballek:
Well, it’s definitely a shared beef, as well. I certainly see a lot of companies that just treat their YouTube channel, I like to say, as a video dumpster. So just anyone who’s got it, just dump it on the channel.
Dane Golden:
Right.
Matt Ballek:
And see what happens to it. So, I think it is an area, that really does require that same sort of, that per view into it, to actually organize and structure the content, ’cause I think that’s step one, is sort of knowing the content you have and content maybe you shouldn’t have on that channel, so that you can actually create meaningful goals and reports on it, otherwise it’s just a mess.
Dane Golden:
What about timing? Because some large channels will, or large brands will, upload videos whenever, essentially, the editor finishes them and delivers them. Like, they might upload one video last month and then seven videos on a Friday night because the editor finishes them. Do you agree with that cadence?
Matt Ballek:
Erm, I mean, it would be best to have, sort of, a hypothesis or a plan behind when a video is being launched. And there are plenty of tools out there, like TubeBuddy that can help you identify some of your better times to upload or launch a video. But, in certain cases, you’re just going to have a, like you said, editor finish, or project finish that has seven videos and they want them all up. And, in a lot of cases, I see, on the flip-side, some brands almost thinking too much about time releasing content. Where they feel like they, maybe have seven videos and they sort of have them banked and they want to just time release them, once a month, which can be nice to make sure you have some sort of upload schedule, because it is important to upload, at the bare minimum, monthly I think to keep, sort of, a pulse on your channel. But sometimes, over scheduling out, you can sort of lose out on some of the compound benefits of…
Dane Golden:
Uh-huh.
Matt Ballek:
You know, I think you’re just expecting people to then remember and come back to watch part two and I think that rarely, if ever, happens. So if you’re lucky enough to get someone’s attention once, make sure that you have other content that they can then watch afterwards or you know, I’d rather upload five videos at once that all sort of, interconnect, so when someone, if someone finds video number two, then they’re going to be exposed to video number three and vice versa, so once you do have someone’s attention, you can actually keep it and actually up some of that engagement and watch time across your portfolio by uploading all at once versus, you know, making people wait for no reason.
Dane Golden:
That’s assuming that the video is getting engagement, I guess?
Matt Ballek:
Yeah, and I guess it’s, all situational, but, if you have like five educational videos on the same topic or if you’re, if you have an online tool or something and you have some videos that show you how to actually use it, instead of uploading one every week, you know, part one, part two, you can create sort of a, you know a backlog of educational content on that product and then upload it all at once and interlink it.
Dane Golden:
And how does the educational content interact with the ads? How do you, ’cause any YouTube video can be turned into an ad, what is the strategy of what videos to take or how to amplify them. I mean, you go into this in great depth, but could you give us one take away that people could use?
Matt Ballek:
Yeah, absolutely. I think, like you said, you can promote or advertise any video, even if it’s like an hour-long video…
Dane Golden:
Sure.
Matt Ballek:
…you can literally run that as a pre-roll if you wanted. So, I think, you should also set up and tie these campaigns together based on where that video is at in the sales funnel. So not to be just a total funnel freak, but you could promote let’s say a video in the awareness stage with just keyword targeting. So you’re just targeting specific keywords that people would search to find your video, so you can get in front of them with an extremely relevant piece of content and just kind of get them aware of your brand. As you move a little further down a cool little trick that has been used for a bit on Facebook but works really well on YouTube is to actually, sort of, re-market or re-target your lower funnel videos based on the interaction of your top of the funnel videos. So, I feel like I sound like a total, just, marketing jargon…
Dane Golden:
That’s what this podcast is about.
Matt Ballek:
Great. So, an example of that would be, let’s say you do have an educational video that’s very top level, that would be a great piece of awareness content or it’s maybe a very broadly educational on a topic that people are just becoming aware of. But then you have, a little further down, say a product that helps solve that problem, faster or easier or just better.
Dane Golden:
Right, right.
Matt Ballek:
What you can do is re-market that product video to people who watched, you know a certain percentage, of that educational video. So you can see that, you know, people who maybe watched, you know, less than a minute, or less than a couple of seconds of the video, maybe weren’t that interested. But if you could, you know, people that watched, say more than half of that video, that’s a pretty good signal that they’re, they’re interested in potentially learning more, at least they have enough attention to watch, so they’d be a perfect candidate to then move onto that next video. And you can help, sort of, pave that path instead of hoping that they click and discover it on their own, you can get that video back in front of people that had shown those signs of engagement, in this case, a watch percentage, and re-market the next video in your funnel, based on the attention or watch percentage of that top of the funnel video.
Dane Golden:
This is great stuff. Matt, so it’s called the 2019 Video Marketing Playbook, and how can people find it and more about you and vidiSEO?
Matt Ballek:
Well you can actually find the Video Marketing Playbook by going to vidiSEO.com/playbook.
Dane Golden:
Fantastic, thank you Matt Ballek of vidiSEO, That’s V-I-D-I-S-E-O. And people will be able to find this episode by searching for “hey” and “vidiseo.” My name is Dane Golden and I want to thank you the listener for joining us today. I do this HEY.com podcast and the videos because I love helping marketers and business owners, just like you, grow your customer community through helpful how-to videos. Because when you share your expertise, in a way that helps your customers live their lives better or do their jobs better, you’ll earn their loyalty and their trust and their business. Thanks to our special guest, Matt Ballek of vidiSEO. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.