When was the last time you watched some kind of video (whether online, TV, iPod, etc.)? It was probably today, right?

It seems we humans can’t go a day without watching something. It’s like we can’t live without it. Top news stories, celebrity gossip, major product releases, etc. can glue you to the TV or computer. But that’s great news for business owners and marketers. Why? Because video can sell more of any product, regardless of the product.

It would be fair to say that video is the most powerful mass marketing medium you can use today. If you think about it, video (regardless of the format) is used to influence others, to win elections, to spread an idea or a cause and to sell more stuff!

I love video! It’s fast, it’s effective and it’s easy to do (if you know a few tricks). So when I was asked to help put together the marketing campaign for a new novel (Tree of Life), my first thought was of course – video! A novel, especially for a self published author, or small publishing companies, can be very challenging to sell and market. However, using video delivers a whole new medium to the mix. It’s something that can be passed around by social media networks.

I’ll get to the video for the book in a minute, but first…

The single MOST important technique for making videos sell product

If I could only tell you one thing about making videos, videos that will sell your product or service,  it wouldn’t be about how to improve your lighting, or what kind of camera you should use, etc. It would be this…

… tell a great story!

Side note: I do have to point out that lighting, sound, etc… in other words “Production Value”, when added to a great story, will have even greater influence and impact. For now we’ll just focus on telling a great story.

If you build a story, or even stories, around a product using video – the product will sell even more. People want the story, they want the behind the scenes, they want to be on the inside.

To give an example; A new company recently released a series of videos showing how they made covers for iPads. Doesn’t sound that exciting right? So what videos did the owners make that helped them generate over half a million dollars in sales, within 6 months of starting the company? They took the customer behind the scenes of their manufacturing process. They showed the guy who makes it, the equipment he uses, the time they put into building them. They shared stories on how they came up with the idea for the product and the uniqueness behind it. Stories sell. It’s as simple as that.

The end result – they sold over 10,000 of their covers at around $60 a pop. And not only that, they now have a large following on YouTube, with tens of thousands of people watching their videos and many people asking for more. Not bad for a tiny start-up company. Even if they didn’t make any more videos, the ones they’ve created will go a long way, for many years to come, in selling more of their product.

How do you tell a great story?

It’s not as hard as you think. Usually all that’s required is to give the back story behind something, or show how something works. This kind of story telling falls into the “special interest” area. Once again, if you let people in on your own story, or your products story – that’s all you need. Simply share experiences, good and bad and you’ll have a great story.

If you want the easiest formula it’s….

• Story + Demonstration = interesting video that sells more product.

Just shoot a video explaining how or why you created something or how the product came about and then demonstrate how the product works. Simple.

How do we tell a great story when it comes to a novel? We have 2 choices…

1. Build the story around the author

2. Use the story or character from the book itself.

Both options should and will be used for the marketing campaign. But for this article, we’ll focus on using the story/character from the book itself. Just like Hollywood does, we created a video trailer for the book.

The making of a book trailer

Thanks to today’s resources it doesn’t cost a lot to make a high quality video. It does require a little bit of “know how” to get that professional edge, but it’s not as hard as you think.

I worked with my brother Orvon Gough, who’s a film school graduate and also lectures at a film school, when he’s not helping me create videos and video courses. Orvon worked with me on creating the book trailer. Despite his experience, we used basic tools that anyone can easily access. Here’s the break down.

- Sony camcorder – just the standard consumer end, that most people have in their home (or can borrow).

- Sony Vegas software (for editing).

- iStockVideo.com for purchased video footage used in the trailer

- A voice actor, to play the voice of the character in the book

- Sound scores, for adding sound effects and music

All up it only cost a few hundred dollars (not including the cost of the software and camera) to produce a “near Hollywood” style trailer. And that’s why I love video!

Running the book trailer ad on National TV

In my last blog post I spoke about creating an ad that would be tested on Google’s new TV ad service. I had a number of requests from customers and readers that I show one of the video ads we created. This will be one of the ads we test on Google. Naturally the video will also be distributed online through various distribution and social media networks.

As always I’ll keep you updated on the results.

With a little bit of practice and some great story telling, you can create video products and messages that make you famous, sell more products, or launch a business.

Ok, so here’s the trailer we created. Also there are some secret marketing techniques we use to create emotion in the video. It’s kinda like NLP for video. These techniques can be applied to any video you make. There are 4 specific techniques to create this emotional effect (which generates more sales, excitement, etc.). Feel free to take a guess at them and post on the forum.

I’ll be discussing these NLP style techniques for video making in an upcoming blog post. It’s pretty cool stuff -  Hollywood movie makers have mastered it. It’s so good you probably won’t even be able to resist buying a copy of the book after you see the trailer. Don’t say I didn’t warn you

By the way, the vision of the moon, storm clouds and lightning on the trailer were shot by my brother just outside of his house – which is about 13 minutes up the road from my house. He of course messed with the colors a bit to make the moon/clouds look red. Check it out.

Here’s the trailer…

If you’d like to check out the book site click the link below

> CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SITE
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