They help us to see how someone else was able to achieve things we want to and learn how to do it successfully too.
Personally…
I love reading stories of how others have gained thousands of views for their business using video marketing. They always inspire and motivate me in some way.
In my opinion, video marketing is the most powerful tool we have to grow our business in 2018.
That’s why…
I’m going to share a few of my own video marketing case studies, which I hope will inspire you in some way with your own business.
Let’s start:
THE MINIVAN CLOCK
About 3 or 4 years ago, I posted a video about my minivan’s clock.
I clearly remember the day I recorded it.
I was frustrated.
I had just arrived an hour early to an appointment. Daylight savings time had ticked over, but the clock in my minivan hadn’t, causing me to be turned up an hour early.
With time to kill (and boy did I want to), I decided to change the time on my minivan clock.
But, do you know how much of a pain in the butt it is to change the time in your car?
….Like, press this pedal three times slowly while turning the steering wheel 37.5 degrees to the left while holding your breath and reciting the Elemental chart, backward….kind of pain.
So…
After trying all of that, I became so frustrated that I actually pulled out the manual (something most guys like me would only use as a last resort).
Finally, I was able to change the time.
Thinking ahead, I made a simple little how-to video of myself as a reminder on how to change it back 6 months later when daylight savings ended.
Thinking little of it, I uploaded the clip to my YouTube channel for safekeeping.
Fast-forward six months:
I got the shock of my life when looking for the video I made to see how to reset my clock again. Upon opening my YouTube channel, I realized that the video had over 30,000 views!
I had also received dozens of comments, all of them saying thanks for you for making the simple little how-to video.
It was amazing how a little 30-second video about how to change the clock on your minivan could get over 30k views (now nearly 40k) without any promotion or even a thought given to it.
Moral of the story?
You can get views without active promotion or expensive cameras (I made the video on my phone at the time).
Focus on creating content provides value and as they say “scratches an itch” for the viewer.
FACEBOOK FAMOUS FRAMEWORKS
This next story comes from a client of mine;
Frameworks, a Picture Frame shop based in Miami who is now the go-to industrial framing shop for South Florida businesses.
Basically:
If you’ve been to a South Beach hotel or on a Caribbean cruise, chances are you’ve seen their work framing a stunning piece of art. Even though they are just 30 staff, they do frames by the thousands and have pieces all over South Florida.
Anyway…
I had been telling them for ages that they needed to do a how-to video. My idea was to create a how-to video with step-by-step guidelines on how to face mount acrylic images.
This is when you take a large picture and put it through all kinds of processes to end up with the image on the acrylic surface.
Actually, you see the image through the acrylic, rather than on it.
To be able to do this you need two costly machines. This meant that even if we made a how-to video, chances are viewers wouldn’t even be able to do it themselves.
(That was my client’s initial concern about making a how-to video)
With a little encouragement, they tried it. It took nearly a full day to shoot the video as the printing alone took almost an hour to do.
But, once we had the footage, we narrowed the content down and simply put it up on their Facebook page.
Boom! 36 hundred views. Organic, all without a penny in paid advertising.
And…
A lot of the comments from people saying things like:
“wow”
“I didn’t realize how complex this was”
“no wonder acrylics cost a few thousand to buy”
What do you think that did for her sales?
Moral of the story:
Even when you give away your advice and processes, most people still won’t be able to replicate you.
In fact, they will have a better understanding of the effort you put into your work, making it more likely for them to buy from you.
GOOGLE LIKES LAWYERS
This last case study is about a Law firm in Fort Lauderdale that helps large corporations collect money from people that don’t pay their bills.
The two laws a lot of their work revolved around in Florida are the FDCPA and the FCC.
So, I told them that they needed a video explaining what the FDCPA (which is the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act) actually was.
We made that video into a “how-to” style clip and here’s what happened:
As you can see, the first result is the Federal Trade Commission’s, which is a government agency.
The next…
It’s their video. In other words, by creating useful information, they were able to reach the first page on Google, outranked only by the lawmakers themselves.
Moral of the story:
Video content doesn’t just get you seen on YouTube. It helps you rank on Google too! This is especially useful when creating explainer videos around tough to understand topics.
Those are my three stories. Do you have one of your own? Let me know in the comment section.