Dan MoyleNothing beats face-to-face, real life meetings to make things happen.
Humans desire real connection. Shaking hands, making eye contact and seeing body language builds trust better than email and social media.
That’s why personalized 1:1 videos are so powerful. They bridge the gap with technology so it feels like you’re face-to-face. 😊😀
Video can connect two people thousands of miles apart. It can showcase a genuine empathy for your prospects. It can even bridge language barriers.
If you believe 1-to-1 personalized videos can build trust and drive revenue, you’re in the right place.
George B. Thomas taught a room full of people how to create these kinds of personalized videos to grow business in Boston at one of the biggest marketing conferences in the world.
His presentation was so popular, HubSpot had to add an encore. 🤯
Now, you can look through how to create one-to-one personalized videos that actually create revenue and don’t break your budget.
Personalized Videos Start with… an Introduction
Sure, this seems elementary.
Creating a 1-to-1 personalized video introduction may appear trivial. But it’s critical. First impressions usually are.
Introductions matter. Especially 1-to-1 personalized video introductions.
A well-crafted introduction really has four superpowers that can be leveraged for your 1-to-1 personalized videos.
The best introductions:
- Set the tone
- Establish trust
- Signal power or the absence of power
- Signal approachability
Ready to follow a process to create amazing introductions?
First, make sure you pay attention to how you start. There is a huge difference between hello, hi, hey, hi there, howdy, or many other variations of a greeting.
Do you want your message to come across as business-focused or position you as a leader? Then most definitely use hello.
But, if you’re interested in casual and coming across as more relatable, consider using hi or howdy.
Of course, make sure you follow that up with your name. You may already be thinking ahead about how to introduce your name. Using your full name versus just your first name makes a world of difference.
Hello, I’m John Wayne Legend is way different than Hi, I’m Johnny.
Now, if you want to follow the more thought-leader business type of introduction, you would follow your introduction with your title and place of employment or ownership.
How you introduce yourself sets the tone of the video and begins to build that trust.
Personalized Videos Need Story
Next in your journey, think about what story your personalized video will tell to the viewer. Business storytelling can be a powerful tool for you to leverage.
But you can't just tell any old story and expect that it's going to help you or your potential consumer.
Your story has to have purpose and context to the conversation you're trying to have with the person on the other side of the screen.
How do you know if it's purposeful?
For the story to be purposeful, don’t focus on what you want to get out of telling the story. Instead, shift your focus to how you will serve that person with the story you are about to tell.
Serve them up a journey that they actually want to take. Give them a starting line they can eagerly line up on.
You don't want to come out of the gate with something like:
Hi prospect. Here’s a bunch of numbers and general ideas. These are your facts, the data, the percentages, the math. Ready to sign the contract?
Most of us yawn at data. But if you drill down into why it's important or the changes you've seen because of it, you’ll connect to their emotions. You need to find the hero of the story.
The hero can easily be a product, service, person or even process. The best hero, is the viewer. Help them see themselves as the hero of this story and you’ll create engagement for sure.
But do it in an authentic way. Today's digitally-native consumers have a sensitive radar when it comes to those trying to manipulate or take advantage of them. Our BS meters are fine-tuned.
Connect with the Heart and Mind for Great Personalized Videos
As consumers, we often use logic to justify the buying decision we made emotionally. Emotions drive us.
How do we as businesses elicit that emotion? We tap into the fact that we all crave meaningful human contact. We connect the heart and the mind.
Logistical Side of Selling
First, let’s dig into 1-to-1 personalized videos and the mind.
To embrace the mind portion of the human you’re connecting with, be prepared to share things like facts, data and even some statistics. Make sure it’s all relevant and of course are real.
You really have to lean into the mathematical side of the conversation to get the logical brain working.
You may also want two add two important things: Verbally state the source and visually show the stat.
Doing both of these will keep your viewers BS meter at bay.
Emotional Side of Selling
To kick off the emotional side of the equation, lead with empathy. That’s the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Put yourself in their headspace, their position. Understand the fears they have, the questions they need to answer and any obstacles they may have in their way.
If you’ve ever been in their position, share your story.
Then, start guiding them to safety with the words, articles, and videos, you share with them moving forward.
If you have helped others navigate from where they are, share their stories. But as you tell your stories or the stories of others, make sure they are rooted in emotion.
Answer Questions in Your Personalized 1:1 Videos
Videos are great for answering questions. It feels personal and builds trust.
Make sure you take the time to answer your customer's questions first.
Yes, even those hard ones that no one else likes to address. Like pricing, what happens when something goes wrong or difficult news from your industry.
Don’t try to set the question to the side and dive into some script you usually follow.
Once their questions are answered, there will be plenty of time to dive back into that script.
The only difference is with their questions answered, their minds will be more willing to listen to what you have to say.
Help Your Viewers Feel Special with Personalized Videos
When it comes to creating 1-to-1 personalized videos, one thing you should keep in mind is the idea that the video is not for you. It’s all about the viewer.
Work on making the human watching your video feel great about their situation or themselves.
In the real world, there are tons of ways you can make others feel great about themselves.
To make others feel special, you can do things like:
- Stop what you’re doing and look directly into their eyes when they’re talking.
- Recognize when they’re feeling down on themselves and say, “I think you’re awesome, and I hope you know it!”
- Praise them for a job well done—especially if it’s a tiny victory that others might not think to acknowledge.
- Tell them you believe they can achieve their dream or goal and why.
Set Goals for Personalized Videos That Drive Revenue
Setting goals is one of the most important things you can do to help you achieve success in your personal or business life. Seems obvious. So why do we throw that out the window when we create personalized 1-to-1 videos?
If you want the viewer to achieve something (which you do), you have to lead the way. And if you’re leading the way, you need to know where you’re going in the first place.
You need a goal or a goal destination for your video. In other words, keep the end in mind before you take your prospect, lead, or customer on their video journey.
There are several ways that this will optimize your videos.
Goal Destination
First, having a goal destination for the viewer will help keep your message concise. Nothing worse than a rambling video with no end in sight.
It also keeps you from rambling on and on at the end of your video. Once you reach the destination you planned for, you know it’s time to hit the stop recording button and send your video on its way.
Track your Progress
Just like a runner knows when to fall into a comfortable stride or start to sprint to the finish line, having a goal destination allows you to have a great cadence as your video progresses. You know where you need to be and when, so your video has a great pace.
When you deliver a well-made, concise and measured video to someone looking for education or help of any kind of value, you deliver a power-packed piece of conversational content they will appreciate and enjoy.
Personalized Videos Use Reverse Personalization
In addition to personalizing with tactics like using someone's name in your script, writing their names on a whiteboard or chalkboard or creating a custom thumbnail for the video specific to them or their problem, there’s another personalization “trick” you should use.
It’s called reversed personalization.
What Is Reversed Personalization?
Reversed personalization is using your one-to-one videos to not only set yourself up for success but your entire team or important portions of your team.
A great real world example of reversed personalization is the Domino's pizza app.
With the app, you get to see that Chandra or Charlie just created your pizza with love.
Then you probably saw that Kim or Carmen just put your pizza in the oven.
Why does Dominoes give names to the process your pizza is going through?
Because, it humanizes the brand! It is no longer a set of hidden steps, but a group of people working on something you want as a team for you.
What a huge difference in perception!
In your one-to-one videos you want to leverage reverse personalization to humanize your brand as well. Makes sure the steps of your process are given a name.
No matter how you do it, break down the processes and the job titles involved and use human names for them. Leverage reverse personalization in your one-to-one personalized videos to humanize your brand and set your entire team up for success.
Build A 1:1 Personalized Video Process
To truly use 1-to-1 personalized videos you need to remove all barriers that might get in your way.
If the process to create, edit, or send them to your prospects, leads, and customers is difficult, it just won't get done.
Here’s how you build a 1-to-1 video process that streamlines every action you need to take.
The first thing you should focus on is to keep it, your video creation process simple.
Many 1-to-1 video software solutions have kept that in mind as they built their software.
Most are a simple click from your browser, selecting to share the screen or not, and you are on your way.
After recording, most are uploaded to a hosting solution where you can then copy the thumbnail and URL into your email.
However other software or ways of creating one-to-one videos can be a bit more complex.
You need to figure out what you are comfortable with as well as what functionality you need to make the right choice.
Don’t let yourself get bogged down in complex solutions!
Make Your 1:1 Personalized Videos Repeatable
At the end of the day, you want to spend more time hitting the send button than editing and tweaking your video.
Another great way to keep it simple is have your camera, mic, backdrop always stay the same.
A dedicated personal 1-to-1 recording area or booth if available really helps simplify as there is no tear down or setup of equipment.
That’s why it’s vital to make the experience easily repeatable for you or your team.
Make sure you can change out your visual customization quickly. Make sure you are comfortable. Make sure you are in a noise free space that allows you to do 1-to-1 personalized videos in bulk.
Focus on being able to hit those record and send buttons as often as possible.
If your gear, software, and space is setup correctly, you can churn out personal videos like a candy factory churns out their tasty morsels.
When you’re able to make 1:1 personalized videos that build trust, you’ll drive revenue and build a fan base of happy, delighted customers. You’ll grow better.
You can always reach out with questions or if you need more help creating amazing personalized videos for marketing, sales or service.
Video photo by Alexander Dummer on Unsplash