Transcription
Foreign [Music]
Hello and welcome to Collective Clicks. This is your host, Brandon Bateman, and today I'm joined by Jeff Megs, who is a strategist with us at Bateman Collective. How are you doing today, Jeff?
Doing great. How are you?
You're doing excellent. Thank you. Awesome. Um, first time being on the podcast?
Fifth time for me.
Yeah, first time for you?
Yep. First time for me. Super excited, happy to be here, happy to talk.
Yeah, yeah. You're, you're more than welcome. Um, I want to start. So, so, uh, spoiler for everybody, today our topic is going to be on Facebook ads and specifically different creative that's working well for Facebook ads. Um, and but before, let's get to know Jeff a little bit. Got a couple rapid-fire questions. He doesn't know what's coming.
Number one, favorite digital marketing channel?
Favorite digital marketing channel would be Facebook.
Yeah, really? Facebook?
Ironic because that's what we're talking about today.
Oh, wow. I picked you just, I picked you just for the right thing. That's perfect. Why do you like Facebook compared to PPC or SEO?
I feel like it's a little more versatile for everything that it can do. Um, I feel like it changes often. The audience is extremely diverse. Almost everyone's on Facebook, so I feel like that's a good channel.
Yeah, or Instagram, you know, like one of their properties, right?
Exactly. Or WhatsApp, or everything else. Who knows what else they're gonna buy soon? So, yeah.
Exactly. Fair enough. Okay, that's awesome. So you're like, there's a broad spread of audience and all that kind of stuff. Awesome. And your day-to-day job when you're not being an awesome podcast guest, is that you work with clients at Bateman Collective?
Yes.
You help them build their strategies and all that kind of stuff. What do you like about that?
I like dealing with the clients who can be able to get to know them on a personal level, but also being able to see the success that we help them bring. It's nice when they bring a lot of enthusiasm to us and we can return that and say, wow, we love your enthusiasm because that drives us to bring you success. And when they're successful, we share in those too. And we say, we're so happy that you succeeded. It feels like it's part of our success too. When they have those, those good leads come in and those deals are closed, I would get really excited about it.
Yeah, that's, uh, the enthusiasm amongst our clients. It's, it's something where I, uh, yeah, I worked in a bunch of different industries before this one. I don't know that I've ever had such enthusiastic, excited clients. That's, that's one thing I absolutely love about this too. And yeah, you get to get all the feedback. You're on the, you're on the front lines. Yeah. So that's definitely cool.
So, so let's talk about Facebook ad creative. What's working? I mean, it's a question that everybody has. What should I, what should I put in my ad? Today, we're going to talk about the media specifically. So this is, you know, it's not like the, the copywriting, headlines, description, like landing pages. I mean, all of that is its own, is its own beast. But we're going to talk about like the image or the video that you put in the ads. And there's a whole bunch of different stuff that we use. Um, we've tested. I don't, I don't even know if we could say how many of these different things we've tested. Um, you would, you would be surprised. Like, some of the more notable things are your standard pictures of houses, graphics, animations, professional videos, weird videos. One time we had like a, like a Muppet, like, same on the news.
On the news. Yeah. This is just in, we'll buy your house. Yeah. There's an actual Muppet saying that. And by the way, it did not work at all. Um, we had a five-minute video of a guy eating a sandwich in which case, like, during which he kind of like put in little plugs for like, why you should sell your house to him. That also didn't work. So, I mean, we've tested. We tested a lot of stuff. Who would have thought ASMR on Facebook didn't work? I, I don't know. It was, it was a hilarious video. Like, this, this particular client, if you're listening, you're famous around our office. Yeah. We love the video. Unfortunately, it doesn't perform with, with the Facebook ads, but it was, uh, it was worth a shot. And I think it's hilarious. But we've tested tons of different stuff. And and I'd say our strategy right now for most clients includes, uh, maybe a little bit of graphics, um, some images, some videos. One thing, uh, first, I want to have a little bit of an overall discussion on what the different things are and and why it's important to have multiple and all that kind of stuff. But then we're also going to focus a lot on how you can nail a video for for Facebook. And Jeff is really good at that. Um, and so, yeah, he's going to share some of his insights. I know you recently did an analysis of all of our clients' videos. This is over 100 Facebook accounts. You analyzed all the videos in them, which ones are performing, which ones aren't, right?
Right. And kind of distilled those principles into a nice little package for us to discuss today. So we're going to go over that. But first, uh, just, uh, just curious to hear your perspective. Images versus videos. What do you think?
I think videos perform better if people have the captions turned on. So that's just something that they should do is turn on the captions on there. Because, which, by the way, if you're a client, we do it for you. Yeah. We do it for you. Yeah. Um, but it's, it's more interesting. But I think as long as it gets the message out quickly, it can be more grabbing, more attention-grabbing. If I don't have to turn on my sound, perfect, like I said, with the captions. But yeah, definitely, definitely videos. I prefer.
Yeah, I think videos are awesome too. Although, let me tell you this, I think I think that images are underrated. Yeah. Um, the reason being, people look at it, they're like, oh, it's lazy. It's just an image of like, you know, what's, what works surprisingly well? Images of ugly houses. Yep. And it's, uh, I mean, everybody looks at it. They say, this looks just like all the other ads on Facebook and all this stuff. But the other ones are like that for a reason. Yeah. Um, surprisingly, they also perform really well. Like, often better than videos. We also do have some accounts that perform really well with videos. Like, I'd say they both work well. Some significantly better than others in certain markets. But anyways, you have any comments on that?
I think surprisingly, when I looked at the, the different photos of the houses, I'm like, oh, wow, that's a pretty house. Like, I click on that. But it was just the common, everyday stock image that we had used 100 times that performed the best on those. So, yeah.
This is a one-story rambler stock photo was the highest performing one.
Yeah. It's, it's crazy. And they actually can work pretty well. Something a lot of people don't know about Facebook's algorithm is that you can actually do, it's, it's not about our images better or our videos better. It's actually about you will get better results with images and videos than you would get with images alone or videos alone, right? And this is where it comes down to how Facebook is just creepy because they have, you know, their their 2000 something data points per user. And they also know what ads they've shown to people before and which ones they've interacted with, which ones they've dwelled on, which ones they've clicked on, which ones they've converted on. And some people, believe it or not, prefer images. You know, they don't really have, they don't have the temperament to sit there and watch the whole thing or they're not as impacted by that. Or maybe they like to read the, uh, you know, the primary text more so than they want to, uh, they want to watch a video. Others do better with videos.
Yeah, I think I think the key to that is options. Is if someone's clicked on a photo last time, they're going to want it. Facebook's going to want to show them a photo this time. If it's a vertical video, they're going to want to show them a vertical video. So having multiple assets, creating horizontal, horizontal, vertical, and then photos is just a great mix.
Yeah, absolutely. On the other thing is, even based on other data from other advertisers, Facebook can predict what asset is going to impact someone the most. And there's ways that you can set up ads within Facebook. We love Dynamic Creative Optimization, if anybody's familiar with that. It's just you throw a whole bunch of assets into an ad, and Facebook kind of can put any mix, match any combination between those assets and show them. And what you can do in there, a lot of people think it's just testing these different things and it's choosing what works. That's not exactly it. Each person that is eligible for our ad ads, they Facebook predicts which asset is going to impact that person the most. And if there's a certain asset that's just way better than the other ones, then yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna go to most people. That's kind of how it works and it'll optimize that way. But it also takes into account that different segments of people might like different media. So this is where you could put an image there, and you're going to impact a certain portion of your audience really well, but it's not going to work as well with another portion of your audience. Right? You could put a video there, and you're going to impact a certain portion of your audience, but not the other. You put images and videos, and you can impact all portions of the audience, right? So, you know, together they're worth more than either one, essentially.
Baskin Robbins, all the flavors, so many combinations, you just mix it together, right?
That's, I wouldn't say that's a traditional understanding of Facebook's algorithm, but I'll take it. I'll accept it today. Thank you. Appreciate you accommodating me.
Yeah, thank you. So anyways, images, there's a whole bunch of different stuff. I mean, I, I think there's a lot of graphics out there. We haven't as great a success with graphics. You know, that like say certain things. I think they just look too much like ads, honestly. And just the, you know, your standard images of homes and things like that, um, or maybe over your team and stuff like that works pretty well. It's also going to be different depending on your brand. Um, like, for example, we have a client that has a really strong TV brand where he has him and he has his two twins. And he's just known as like the guy who buys houses with twins. And it works really well on his Facebook ads to feature those kinds of things because it's on brand. Right? A lot of people think brand is like, you know, the colors I use or the font I use or something like that. But, but really, it's, uh, in his case, it could be his family and like those, those completely recognizable little twin boys that are in all those TV commercials or, you know, part of his brand and helps make that connection. So, so anyways, there's, there's all that kind of stuff. And and I guess we'll, we'll move on from that. Let's talk about videos because we've done all kinds of videos, everything from like little slideshows to like really well-produced videos. I know I've had a lot of experience with video marketing in the past with, uh, with other different types of companies, even outside of this industry. Um, why do you think that videos, um, so you said they're your favorite? You said they're a little bit more like interactive and those types of things. What kind of benefits are we typically seeing when videos work really well? What's the, what's the core difference there?
Um, I think it's honestly, I think it's just more entertaining. Um, when people see it, when they see a video, it just makes them more interested to engage with it. But also sometimes the placement of those videos, you're forced to watch those in the first place. So, and if you look at, if you ever go on YouTube and you go to watch a video, what happens before it starts? An ad, right? So when that ad starts playing, your finger's sitting right there on the skip button. Like you're ready, you're ready to skip it because you don't necessarily want to watch it. There's been times when I've wanted to watch it and I said, oh, hang on, let me, let me just watch this for just a second. It's pretty rare, but there are times. So when it comes to something like this, I really think that there's certain like guidelines. I think we're going into now that has to do with that with those ads that do make it more entertaining. But it's, it's just, it it keeps you interested for longer.
Yeah, absolutely. I want to note a couple things that I saw looking at our clients' data. The first thing is, believe it or not, very slight increase in lead quality is tracked to videos as compared to images. So that, that's that's an interesting concept that maybe people are qualified a little bit more through the video. You can transfer more information that allows people to decide if they are the right person or not for what you're doing. Lead cost in many cases is improved. In some cases, it's worse. So, so be aware and and optimize for that. Um, so, so anyways, it's, we've seen it work pretty well, kind of across the board. And the tough thing is, all videos are different, right? So, so that's where there's a, you know, we're noticing some trends across those, but it's, it's hard to know how much of a difference they can make because it's going to be different for everybody. But I definitely think it's, uh, it's worth, um, doing. One, one barrier that a lot of people have for this is it feels like it's a big deal. Like they feel like they gotta hire this film group and have to script it out and they have to stress out for, like, two weeks about what they're gonna say on camera and, you know, are they gonna look right? And you probably have a makeup person, right? Get your hair right, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that. And honestly, I think a lot of people make a pretty big deal out of it. And they think marketing with videos could be expensive. And from like a monetary and from a, from a, like time and focus perspective, and it creates a lot of anxiety, honestly, for a lot of people, especially those that don't want to be on camera and stuff.
What would you have to say about that?
I'd say don't make it harder than it should be. It really should feel like a grassroots, like homegrown kind of video. That's what people, people respond to the most. Especially when it someone pops up and you see just a nice friendly face just talking to you as a normal person. Being real is what you want to make sure that you do do with this because that's what I feel like it gets the most responses. We can all tell when it's an ad. But when somebody real pops up, a real person, I feel like our brains engage more. We can kind of sympathize and empathize with them and connect with them better than something that's too scripted.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I think we, we have to understand, like, not all video marketing is the same, right? If you're going to show this in the pre-roll before a movie in a movie later, it probably needs some production quality there. YouTube even, like a higher production quality video. Place Facebook on the other hand, most videos that are on Facebook are filmed with a phone. So we have to be aware of that and know that you actually stick out with like a sore thumb when you film something really professional. I worked with a company, this was outside of this, this industry, although it was just when I was like getting into this industry, and they hired this company and paid them a hundred thousand dollars to make them a video. And it was an awesome video, honestly. It's super entertaining, really engaging, um, and kind of made sense. We were spending 30 to 40,000 a day on Facebook ads. So a hundred grand video in the grand scheme of things, not that big of a deal. We're trying to push a lot of volume of product sales in this standpoint. Um, but believe it or not, one of, one of the employees took the product into the parking lot and they held it in their hand and they did a boomerang like video with their phone, right? Showing the product. And that outperformed our $100,000 video.
Oh, wow.
By a large margin. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Made a huge difference. And that's, that was my lesson. More money, more well-scripted, better production quality, all those things don't really matter. Because what this other thing did, if you looked at it, it looked like the rest of things on Facebook. It followed the current trends that were going on at the time too, which was boomerangs. Yes. It's, well, I guess native is a word that a lot of marketers would describe it. It's, it was native to the platform. And and that made it really effective. Believe it or not. And I worked for a company too, that we, we created this big long commercial. We didn't spend a ton of money. We spent some money on it. But our highest performing one was somebody just using the field. Um, it was an outdoor company. They were using one of our products. They filmed it and sent it in. And that got the most engagement we'd had on on Facebook at the time too. So definitely can relate to that and agree with that.
Yeah, and that doesn't mean we want like absolutely horrible quality videos. Like you can take a phone and you can film a video and have horrible audio, right? And you can film a video and have it be like super shaky and make people feel motion sick just watching it. You know, you want to have like some level of of normalness here. But I would say I'd pay more money to have a video filmed with the phone, right, under normal conditions than I would with, uh, to have a professionally filmed video. And over and over and over again, um, people keep on thinking that professional video is going to be better. We keep on getting these from our clients. They hire these these companies to make these videos and they just don't work better.
Yeah, for the most part. I, I don't think I, we have had some that like completely failed. And we had others that failed a little bit. I can't think of any that have been like our top performing videos is for those professionally produced.
Right. The video production guy is going to tell you something different, of course.
Yeah, yeah. But, um, in terms of special results, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Greater videos just fine.
So, okay, so we wanted to be native, something filmed with the phone or something like that. Um, what kind of post-production work is generally done on these videos? You talked about before that the video actually goes out or after, sorry, but before, like post-production, but before posting, like or like heavy edits being made or anything like that?
Yeah, I think it should flow very naturally. Um, I think that you should definitely go over your script, have your elevator pitch down. Don't rehearse it too much. And then also beware of filler words. If you listen to, if you start paying attention to a filler word like that you say when you're speaking to somebody, you're definitely going to hear a lot in this podcast too because I wasn't paying attention. Um, like those words, and we just do it naturally. And it's just something that you need to be aware of because not because it matters with what you're saying, but that it eats up time. And time is really the next thing I want to make sure that we bring up to is the timing of these videos and how long they should be. Um, the message should get out in five seconds or less. Because when you've got your finger, when someone has their finger on that skip button, you have five seconds and then you're done. So if I'm saying it to you as if I were saying that the actual video, I would say, hi, I'm Jeff with Baven Real Estate. I like to buy your house. We buy these houses every day. And you're done. That's it. That's your five seconds. That's all you get. So if you don't have that five seconds down pat, down really quickly, you're gonna miss it. You're gonna miss a lot of these people converting. Uh, the best part, I wanted to give a shout out to Jake with Dynasty Real Estate. He's the one I kind of modeled after because he did a really great job on that. I saw his videos. Probably one of the best I've seen. He's very friendly, he gets his message out fast, and he makes sure that he's smiling, he's ready, and they were great videos. And they weren't anything expensive. They weren't anything like you're saying production. He was standing in front of a house that he just bought, filmed it, five seconds, and he had his message done within about 20 seconds total. So it was a really great, really great video.
Yeah, so we're talking about the hook being five seconds, correct?
Correct.
And that is, uh, yeah, I like to to say the the five-second rule. I know a lot of people apply this to food. This, this applies to Facebook ads too. And basically, the theory here is, you should be able to give your video to somebody else who's never seen it before. You should be able to show them the first five seconds only, and they should tell you why they would be interested in seeing the rest of it, right? The here's the key, the reason why needs to be something that only applies to your ideal person that you would work with. So back to my previous experience with this product company, this super awesome video this company made, it was incredibly entertaining. The the level of organic reach it got on Facebook was awesome. Everybody loved it. That was the problem. Everybody loved it. So if you watch the first five seconds and you said, why do I want to watch this still? It's not because I feel like this is relevant to me because I'm their target customer. It's because it looks pretty funny, right?
Right.
And I want to see what happens next. Because a lot of people like when we're talking about a hook, a hook is your first, like, you could even say one or two or three seconds. We're just saying five because you literally can't communicate a message in less than five seconds, right? So, so but it's got to be like pretty much like forget five, just say as quickly as humanly possible, right?
Um, but that's, that's the hook. And there's two objectives of a hook. The first one is to capture attention, which I think a lot of people focus on that. But the second one is to qualify. If you don't qualify in addition to capturing attention, then the issue you run into is that you could be capturing the wrong attention. And that can be detrimental.
Yeah, and and there's been times where I watch videos where they were very, you didn't really get the message of what was going on. They would say like, hi, good morning, everyone. It's me. I'm here in my truck, just headed out to an appointment. And they were headlights an appointment. But everyone's already skipped because they, they didn't get that that message out that was relevant. I, I didn't know if this was an ad for a truck, maybe it was, and I wanted to watch it. Like you're saying, it's the wrong audience. Oh, I like his truck. Let me keep watching this. Always going at an appointment. I don't care about that. So making sure you have that right message out in the first five seconds, definitely.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, where there's a horrible case of this, actually, one, one really good performing video type is seller testimonial videos. Oh, yeah. And but they are so bad at this. So many times where the testimonial is like, I loved working with this company. They were nice and responsive. They were easy to work with. They got my house sold in this time. And you're like, okay, it just took me 10 seconds to get to the fact that like, they were even talking about a house. You know, they're just, they're just a testimonial for like a company, right? So it doesn't, uh, you know, it doesn't get to the point quickly. So with those ones, it's really good to say like, you know, I'm here with Jeff. I just, we're here with Jeff and we just bought Jeff's house for cash. Tell us about the experience, Jeff. Or something like that. Or you like, you cut the testimonial and you start with a section where they say, like, they bought my house and we closed about 10 days after. You know, you start with like the, the meat of it because motivated sellers can can talk for a long time.
Well, and I think what you're talking about too, is also what we use in the, uh, advertising as well as the journalism world, which is called the inverse pyramid. You make sure you have your most important information out first. And the longer you go, the less relevant or less important information is. If you read a news article, they say, so and so jumped off a bridge at this place. Like, oh, wow, I want to read that. But then down at the bottom, it says the location, the time. Like, as it goes further, further down, at the very end, it says, this was written by this person. Like, that's the last thing I actually really care about. So getting your most important information out first through that inverse pyramid model is the, the best, best model for sure.
Yeah, I haven't heard that before. That's really interesting. Um, the other thing that is really important is, and I think this is what makes this even more important for Facebook than for other channels is how the algorithm works. So we have to realize we're using optimization algorithm. And that optimization algorithm uses signals to determine if your advertising works or not. So, and it also uses it to kind of find the right, uh, the right people in in your audience. So you can tell Facebook, please target the United States. And what Facebook's going to do is it's going to target a subsection of the United States based on who it thinks is relevant. One of those things is it looks at who watches more of your video and who watches less of your video. Those who watch more of your video, it assumes that they are more qualified for your audience. So it's going to start finding the commonalities between, you know, these five people that watched 20 seconds and these 100 people that watched three seconds. What's different between them? And if you're not qualifying at the beginning, then you could be sending poor signals to Facebook, right? And ultimately, you, I'm not saying that we optimize for this. I'm saying like, Facebook's algorithm, we're going to train it to optimize for leads. But it looks at things in between the beginning and the lead. When it's early on, because it it assumes like, if more people watch the video, then they're probably more likely to become a lead. And if they hate watch the video, they're more likely to click. And if they click, they're more likely to convert, et cetera, right? So it kind of like optimizes down the funnel as as data becomes more available. But the, yeah, that's, that's what people don't realize is if you have, it's not, you're going to reach the same people and maybe you're going to capture attention, but you could actually capture the attention of the wrong people. And through that, you could train Facebook to show your ad to all their own people.
Yeah, right. It could completely target the wrong people just based on your information that you present too.
Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's like, it's, it's kind of a dual purpose here, right? Everybody knows about the capture attention, but it's like, you want to actually the people who aren't your person, they should be so uninterested, this should be such so boring of an ad that they don't even want to watch, right, any more of it. Right? It should be topically relevant. So that's, uh, yeah, I think that's a really, a really interesting thing about how it works. It's kind of, in my opinion, why some of our really boring Facebook ads with like just laying pictures of houses work really well. It's like, so, so boring. Only a true motivated seller would click on it. Yeah. They see that pain, they see their pain point. They go, oh, wait, I have this problem. Not, this looks so interesting. It's, wow, this is my problem. This is why it interests me because it's relevant to me.
Yeah, yeah. Same, same reason bandit signs say "We Buy Houses" on a big yellow sign, right?
Right.
It's, you don't want to overcomplicate things. You want to qualify based on certain things. It could be something more enticing, but you want to look for a certain type of person, right? And, yeah, if you make your video too Open Door-esque, so to speak, then you get a lot of retail sellers, right, through it. Versus if you qualify really heavily, you can get the right kind of people.
Yeah, definitely agree with that. How long do you think the ideal video should be? I mean, you can go, you can go for up to what, two hours total?
I think four hours. Like you can, I honestly don't. Super long. I don't know. I think the newest, uh, model is 120 minutes. You can go. I would not do that. I would do it in about 30 seconds if you could. And make sure your call to actions before that 30 seconds is up. Uh, it's, the longer it goes, the more qualified it might be for the person watching it. During the first 15 seconds, you can really get your message out and get someone interested. The next 15, you've got that, here's where to contact me. If you want to keep watching, here's a testimonial. But really, it should be done, I think, within the first 30 seconds of that video.
Yeah, I, I agree with you. A lot of our clients have the best performing videos have been in the 20 to 30 second range. So I definitely think that's a good range. Although, one thing to get off my chest because we have this confession time.
What is it?
Yeah, maybe that was the wrong expression. I'm going to tell you all the secrets. But, but we've had clients do two-minute long videos that work well. It's just the problem is when you have 30 seconds of content that's spread over a two-minute video. The, I think the key point is you should accomplish a large communication goal in as little time as it could possibly be done. Right? And oftentimes it ends up being 20 or 30 seconds. But I think there's a lot of pushing these days for people that have short content because there's this rhetoric going around that people have shortened attention spans now. Which I personally don't, don't believe. Like, if you look at the statistics, you look at like books, they're longer than ever before. Long-form television is more popular than ever before. Movies are longer on average than they ever ever were before. It seems like people have not a, uh, not a short attention span, but a low level of tolerance for things that they don't care about. Right? But if they do care about those things, they're willing to give it the time.
Yeah, and that's where my point is, if you can capture someone's attention and continually add value, and that takes you four minutes, then it's great in my opinion.
Yeah, and that can be good for someone who's extremely motivated. Someone who may not necessarily know what your message is. Maybe that first 30 seconds is all they need to understand it. But if they're really motivated, that four minutes can be, can be great too. I think I use the technique called the "so what?" If you have to ask yourself, "so what?" and you don't know what is going on yet. If you could ask yourself that again and again and again, you haven't simplified your message quite enough. Like, my name is Jeff. So what? Well, I have money. So what? Well, I want to buy your house. So what? Like, I'm in this area buying houses. Oh, okay. That makes more sense. Like, why you're talking to me right now. If you can condense it down that way, or if you're looking to condense it down because you feel like you're rambling on too much, you can use the "so what" model to try to condense that information to as little as possible.
Yeah, I love that. The other thing to keep in mind is that you do want to call to action relatively quickly, like you said, maybe around that 20 or 30 second mark. So if you're going to have a two-minute video, it's really great to have that call to action in there right in that 20 to 30 second range and then kind of dive into additional details, right? So it stands alone. If people want to just watch the beginning, they can watch the beginning, they get everything they need. And then, you know, it's your pyramid, right?
Right. Or what do you call it?
Or inverse pyramid.
Inverse pyramid, right? Upside down, right?
Yeah. So the most important information, the best layer first, then you filter it down.
I feel like it doesn't need to be inverse to accomplish that, right?
Well, it's the most meaty, the heaviest, like, oh, so like the big part of the pyramid's at the top, right? I was taking like the most pointed information at the top. Like, that, that, that's the way to look at it too. That's, yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay, I understood.
Um, all right, that's, that's awesome. So 20, 30 seconds is standard. I mean, I've seen some that are 10 seconds that are great. Yeah. I've seen two minutes that's great. I don't know that I've seen longer than that that's great. It's, yeah, I mean, not that it can't be done. If you're hungry, you could watch the sandwich one and maybe it does make sense to watch it for longer. You don't know. That video is so funny. I'm telling you, it's, it didn't work, but it's so funny.
Um, so is there, is there anything else that you think, uh, people are messing up when it comes to videos? I mean, you've looked at so many of these across our clients. What are they, what are they doing wrong generally?
I think a lot of times they're trying to make the video, the videos, the video. Take two. The videos more about themselves and less about the message. A lot of times when you, you have these videos, you kind of feel like a celebrity. You're like, wow, I get to be on Facebook. Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say all these cool things about me and how nice I am. But you're forgetting who you're talking to. You're talking to another person. And without some type of connection to that person, they're not going to care what your message is. Um, it's, it's hard to talk to somebody about something if they need something else. If you want to say, hey, I'm hungry, but they're drowning. Like, they don't care what you have to say. Like, you gotta focus on that first. So really making sure you have an emotional connection during that, that pitch. Something like, hey, I just, we just saved this person behind me from their how getting evicted from their house because we bought their house for cash. That's an emotional connection. If you have that pain, or if you say, uh, look how easy it is to get this cash offer. And someone's been thinking about listing their house on the market, but they see how difficult it is to actually sell their house. They can now see, wow, this can take my pain away. And they have that emotional connection. Or if you have, um, some type of way that you connect with them personally, just by a joke, a smile, anything that says that you're human, and that you're a real person, that you're easy to talk to, is going to help move that ad further and make it sure that people are responding to that ad as instead of acting like they're a robot. Pretend they're a real person.
Yeah, isn't it strange that that's like advice? It should be common sense, but that's like some of the best advice is the things that you actually, it's common sense. You should have already known it, but your actions didn't reflect that you understood it.
And, right, right. And, yeah, the reality is, it's common sense, but it's not there. It's like in a lot of videos, "We just bought this house behind me. If you want to buy yours, let me know." Like, that's no feeling. No one can, it's, it's making it feel like, I just recorded this. I'm sending this video to my mom or my brother or someone that really, people respond to better because that's what we see every day. Nobody sees these kinds of things online and goes, "This isn't an ad." If it looks like an ad, it's like, that, that's an ad. If it doesn't feel like it, it feels like something more that you can relate to and that you can latch on to emotionally and then respond to it.
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. Who do you think should be in the video? Should you have multiple people? Is this an acquisitions person? The founder of the company?
I think you can have multiple people in it. Um, but not maybe towards the end, or once you've already gotten your main message out. I think the person that should be in it is either the one that makes the initial phone call that is contacting the client, or the one that's going to show up on the doorstep. It's that, I think what we talked about, uh, was the, uh, celebrity kind of effect, right? To where if you're calling a lawyer for an issue because you saw his billboard on on the freeway and you see his picture and you call him, like, oh, wow, I got this guy. I got him. It's the guy from the billboard. Who cares? He just spent money. That's all he did. He spent money on a billboard. But you're like, I get to talk to him directly. That's so cool. And you immediately have a connection. So it's either the person that's going to be calling them or the one showing up up on their doorstep. Ideally, it should be the same person that you've already been working with. But at least one of those two, it should be.
Yeah, for, for all of you smaller wholesalers, flippers out there that are saying, I don't know how I can deal with the big guys. There's bigger companies, bigger budgets, and stuff like that. Here's the secret. They have 10 acquisitions people. Right? They can't put a person in their ad and say that that's going to be the person that shows up at the house. You can do that. I've had clients tell me, "Wow, I called this guy and he said, 'You're the guy from the ad?'" Huh? And they were so excited to talk to the person from the ad.
Yeah, it, uh, it, it actually does. It does make a difference. And if you're one of those bigger companies, no, like, I mean, it's not 100% necessary. Like, a lot of times when you call someone on the billboard, you don't expect to talk to the guy in the billboard. But if you do, that's a bonus, right? And for that guy on the billboard, that's a competitive advantage because you're going to show up at their house and all they know is they reached out to several companies online and some of them sounded a little bit sketchy. And now we got these people showed up in my house. But they're going to see in that video, but Jeff, I know Jeff. I feel like I'm connected to Jeff. Can I talk to Jeff? Where's Jeff? Let me, let me speak to him.
Yeah, exactly. Because they saw you in the video. And because of that, they, they feel on some level connected to you. Here's the other twisted, maybe twist is their own word, but benefit of of that is, if you're in the video and you're the person who's gonna show up on the appointment, uh, there's everybody has characteristics and everybody has biases towards other people's characteristics. And there are going to be some people who don't like you or don't trust you. Yeah, because of the way you smile, or the way your face looks, or some experience they had with someone before that looked kind of like you, or or your race, or your accent, or whatever. Ex-boyfriend, you look like my ex-boyfriend, I can't deal with you.
Yeah, yeah. Everybody has those things. But there's some people, they're just more inclined to trust than others. The really cool thing about putting the video out there, um, is you eliminate some of that mismatch between the person who they see in the ad and who that actually shows up in the appointment. So because otherwise, if you don't do that, what happens is you get all kinds of people with all kinds of different preferences. And then someone shows up at their house that some people are going to naturally feel more inclined to like, others are naturally not going to like them, right? Versus if you put that person in the ad, then those people that don't like them, they just don't reach out. They're already disqualified from the very beginning, right? Because they're not going to respond to the ad.
Yeah, those I go through, they've, they're already pre-qualified to have seen your face and decided that they trust you, right, enough to at least take the next step. I think that means something.
Yeah, and like you said, branding with the twins, where if you, Brandon can be just you're standing, descending, they're buying or houses with your, your sons, your twin sons. But if they're not a family person, maybe they won't, won't respond to that. But because they are, they're like, wow, I'm gonna call this guy. A family guy too.
Yeah, yeah. You will find your right people through qualification and through targeting. Qualification improves targeting, right, on Facebook, right? So you'll find those people.
So, so last thing I want to talk about is call to action. Every, I mean, you said "so what?" Right? This is kind of like the subway thing, right? The call to action is the final "so what?" Right?
Right.
It's like, what should you actually do? Like, I feel impacted by this. What should I actually do? What mistakes are you seeing people make with their call to action?
It's not specific enough. Um, it doesn't actually say what to do. It says, "Call now" or "Let us know," instead of "Click below and we can help you." Like, here's the, here's the message, right? Here, click us. Click right now. It takes 10 seconds.
Yeah, I've even seen some people show in the video, like the landing page. Like, look, your computer's gonna see what it looks like, right? Exactly. You're gonna fill this out. Do not be surprised. You will go here.
Yeah, exactly. It's just, it needs to be very specific. And you can even repeat that call to action during the video if you need to, as well. So, like you said, during the first 30 seconds, you should get that message out. If you need to make it two minutes, repeat that call to action at the end of the two minutes, right, when the video cuts off, too.
Okay, yeah. Very good. So specific, specifically and clear.
Yep. Exactly.
Understood. Any other things that you wanted to note that you think that people are generally could be doing better with when it comes to video?
I think that that pretty much sums it up. I mean, people want to make sure they know how easy it is. A lot of times they don't understand what the process is going to be. Sometimes during that extended period, you can say, it takes this long, you're going to have this person call you, we'll reach out within five minutes. So that they set better expectations of what's going to happen during the process during that video. I think that can be a little more clear. Because if you just say, "I want to buy your house right now for cash," it's like, well, you're showing up at my house right now with like money in your hand? Like, how does this actually work? So make sure those expectations are set based on your process and how things are going to work for you.
Yeah, it's a, yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes like you have these companies who are like, I keep on giving these people calling me and they just want to offer on the phone. They don't want to come by their house. He said he asked me if I was showing up with a check.
Like, yeah, I've heard that.
Yeah, but the, the thing is, if you didn't tell him not to do it, you can't get upset at them for not doing it, right?
Right.
So that's a great opportunity to qualify. Explain how it works. And it's a little bit less, I mean, sometimes when you give, tell people how things are going to work and stuff, it kind of sounds like you're like dictating for the scenario or something. If you do it in the video, then they know it's for everybody and they can't judge you. So it's kind of like your opportunity just unapologetically like say how it's going to be.
Yeah, exactly. And then it is what it is.
Yeah, and again, if they don't like that process, maybe they won't give you a call. But it's better than finding out two weeks from now that they're not calling you back because they don't like your process in the first place.
Yeah, that's, that's a waste of time.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so people are going to love the process. Yeah, they're going to be actually inclined to reach out because of that. And that's what I found really with this industry, just in general, that I really appreciate is a lot of the clients, the guys we work with are just so personable, so friendly, so easy to work with. Make sure that shines through. But I feel like it's something in the industry that just like makes these guys happier. I don't know if it's the money. I don't know if it's working with people. I don't know what it is. The only way to succeed is you have to be really good at sales, right? So, so all those people that aren't like that, the nicest salesmen made it through.
Yep. Yep.
Yeah, anyways, I completely agree with you. And I think we've had definitely some amazing videos from clients that have performed really well. So that's it for, for the episode today. I hope you found some value and and learned a few things that'll help you to take your Facebook ads to the next level. I'll see you in the next one.
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