The UnNoticed Entrepreneur

How you can make a 3 minute call to action video for pre-orders for your book.

August 17, 2021 Jim James
The UnNoticed Entrepreneur
How you can make a 3 minute call to action video for pre-orders for your book.
Support The UnNoticed Entrepreneur
Become a supporter of the show!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript

If you are asking people to do something for you and all you can muster is an email, then it's going to be pretty lame in my view. Especially when you are asking a group of PR experts and entrepreneurs to pre-order a book, even though they are in it. This podcast explains how I spent the day making a 3 minutes video - so that it doesn't have to take that long for you. I explain how I used Descript for recording the Amazon store pages with my book on it, and edited that video (unbelievably easy as it converts the audio to text which one edits). I used QRcode-Monkey to make a link to the Amazon page and added that to the end of the video so that people can scan and go. The hosting of the video is on Vimeo with a call to action end frame (there is a little bit of detail to follow there), and then I explain how ZOHO campaigns enable me to send the emails to my 50 contacts based on when they are most likely to open the email! 

IF we are going to ask people to help, buy, support us...then how we do it makes a big difference to whether they are going to do so. This podcast explains how to use the picture superiority effect to your advantage using tools which are available on subscription at all in less than US$50 per month.
Finally here is the video (note -  also use the branding in the file name)

https://vimeo.com/eastwestpr/unnoticedbook

Descript is what I use to edit the show.
All-in-one audio & video editing, as easy as a doc.

Generate unique marketing texts with AI.
AI copywriting tool to generate unique copy, predict performance and increase conversions.

Prowly - the media relations platform
Prowly has everything you need to get your PR work done.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Am I adding value to you?

If so - I'd like to ask you to support the show.

In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.

Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.

Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.

If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.

Go ahead, make my day :)

Support the show here.

Jim James:

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the unnoticed show in today. I'm going to share with you. How I've made a video. To invite the guests from my unnoticed book. To make a pre-order. On Amazon and Barnes and noble. Now the pre-order may not be what you're doing. But you might be reaching out to customers or partners or members of staff with messages, and the reason I want to make this.

Podcast today. Is to share with you the learning journey that I've had today making a two and a half minute invitation video. With links and a QRC to get people to go onto Amazon, to pre-order. Something, the methodology stays the same. I want to share with you how you can make a video. Doesn't that take as long as I did, but how you can make a video. At low cost using readily available technologies. So, first of all, When we reach out to people, we often are doing that with writing, and yet we know that video. Is many, many times more impactful than writing. Audio is more impactful than writing. It's more intimate. But video has all the benefits of the picture. Or authority effect. Basically. Our brains process pictures. In a way that attaches them to meaning. And it does that in a way that's much more powerful than it does when it takes text. Because texts needs to be interpreted in a different way by the brain. It's a long story and some research that I was doing into this whole picture superiority effect for the speak PR program. To cut a long story short, we all know a picture is worth a thousand words and a video. You can multiply that because as we know there are 28 frames per second. In standard moving images. So you can just imagine if one frame is a thousand words, what 24 or 28 frames per second is. So I want to have people that took part in my book, which has just come out on Amazon this week. Two. Pre-order so. A fellow author sent me the. Email that they sent to their friends and family and connections in order to get them to pre-order. And I looked at it and went well. That's great. But how does that come off the page? How do I really engage people? With this whole project. And a big issue that I have is that the work. For them, it must be minimal. They must be engaged in what I need them to do. I need to get them to come to me. And be involved in what I'm doing. So that there's benefit for them and benefit for me. Now even the best copywriter. Finds that challenging. Not least of which, because most people only read the headline. David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy in may that the ad agency used to say that 80% of your work is done by the headline and 20%. By the body copy. Imagine if you're trying to get someone to do something. Beyond the simple task. To understand and engage and take action through writing. Most of us are not that gifted. I include myself in that. We're not able to craft the narrative and send that. To people and get them to take action. So we ask our email to do a great deal of work, but actually it's not necessary anymore. There are many tools available that we can use you and I, as entrepreneurs. Two. Share our message and our call to action with those people that want to be involved. And I'm going to share with you how I've done that today. The final result is a three minute call to action video, which includes me speaking with a camera recording, uh, and also a recording of me with the screen capture. There is embedded images that I've taken from the internet. And there is also a quick response code at the end, which people can scan and take them directly to the Amazon page. Where the book is there to be. Pre-ordered. So let's first of all, look at the base tool I've been using descript. If that is what I'm using now. And descript.com has several different packages. But all very affordable. I'm on, uh, uh, Pro version. But it's like$30 a month. And with this, I can. Both screen record. And camera record simultaneously. You can also use a product like loom, which is also great loom.com. Is fantastic and loom.com is now also enabling you to share the videos, edit the videos, and also to have a transcript in real time. Very very good. But Lou is all online browser based. You can also use Camtasia. The, for example, for recording your screen. And then you can download that into something like Adobe, premier or Adobe premier rush, which is the base version. Which you can get on subscription. I've tried loom. For video editing. But it's not quite sophisticated enough. When you want to do editing. Which is more than trimming the front and the end. The Adobe premiere is great. But it takes a bit of work or what it really lacks. And what descript has got is the ability to get the transcript. Over your video. In real time. And you edit the text. That's right. You edit the text. And it automatically edits the video. I've got to tell you. You have to see it. To believe it. So I use descript now where I fill myself and the screen simultaneously using descript. I'm then getting a real time transcript, which I can edit. Having done the edit. What I did was to film. Myself going on to the Amazon store. And then showing the audience, the people that I'd like to pre-order. The tab on the amazon.com, which has got the look inside the book. So I'm able to show them what it looks like inside the book. By recording it. So then I've got this as the base video. What I've then done is to. Add some audio. I bought a. Little piece of music for$50. So I have the rights to it. And with that music, I can upload that and introduce, for example, I can introduce. The same theme that I have for the podcast. So this podcast has the same theme music. As my video. I was then able to take a screenshot of my podcast. Download that and put that as a project item. Within the descript project folder. So then I've got the music. And I'm able to add the picture of my podcast. Alongside the picture of me speaking. And the film. Runs along with me introducing the podcast and saying, thank you. And then I've got the screen recording. Of the Amazon and I'm explaining what people can do. And then towards the end, I'm able to put a call to action. So then I included the, uh, the voiceover and the text, which includes the details that, of what I want them to do, which is to. Pre-order. To review and to share. And then I tell people too, Get the phone ready. And then in the final. 10 seconds. I have a QRC quick response code. Which they can scan. And then I end. So I generated the quick response code by going to a standard website. There are quite a few of these. One of them that I use today is called QR code-monkey.com. I use that because I can change the color. I can also upload my logo within the QRC, and I can download that as a. PNG file. Or as a vector file. Or as a JPEG file. For free. It's crazy. Right? It's crazy. So if you take the URL from the website that you want. People to go to rather than typing out a long. URL, which especially for an Amazon book is a long one. Cut and paste that into the QR code. Dash monkey. There's another one called QR code-generator.com. And then all you do is you download the picture and you have people scan that with their phones. And that will then take them. To the right page. And if they're using an apple, then of course, what will happen is they can see that on their phone, but also they can mirror that on their desktop browser too. So now I've got myself a three minute video. It sounds quite easy. It took me a little bit longer than three minutes to make. Because I was adjusting. The duration of the audio. Affecting where the picture's like changing the size. Of the images and so on, but. Altogether, very easy for someone with remedial skills like me. To edit a video. I then. Published the video on descript. I shared that. Uh, onto my YouTube account, but I've also then exported that as a regular 15 megabyte file. And I've uploaded that to my Vimeo. So that is now on my Vimeo account. And with Vimeo. I can trim the front and the back. But I've already done that fairly closely. So what I have though done. Is to add some thumbnails. And then I added that to a Vimeo showcase. And I've added an end screen with a call to action. It was important to add the video into one of the showcases within Vimeo. Because what I found was that the call to action button, which is a link to the Amazon shop, where you click here. Go to the shop. Is only active. If that link is private. Or if it's in a showcase. Don't ask me why. Uh, we learned that through the correspondence with the Vimeo of tech support. But what it means is that. By uploading it to my Vimeo account. I now have this video. Which is within my own branded platform. I have their quick response code within the video. I've got my music front and back, which is within what I call my Sonic branding guidelines. And then now I have this video. We're ready to share. Now I could just. Share it. As a link. But what I've done is found that very few platforms will create, uh, an embed link for the video. We know that video does that. But only a couple of the email providers, including Gmail and Microsoft. Outlook. Enable if you like a native video. So in other words, you can embed the video frames into your email. They don't play within email, but they look as though they're going to, and you click them and they go back to video card or they go back. For example to the, um, video ask website. Video ask is the other. Platform that I tried using. And it's very good. You upload your video as well there, and you can ask questions of people. Of how they want to respond. I didn't go down that path for this, because this is not a survey. And I already have within my Zoho platform. The campaigns that I'm using for the email. So I elected instead to. Take the Vimeo embed. Uh, code. And within Zoho, the Zoho campaign is very easy to either add a link or embed code into the email newsletter. And because I already have my database of 50 people. That were my guests inside my Zoho campaigns platform. I've created a one off. Newsletter. For this particular subset of my overall mailing list. What have then done is to have my unnoticed branding. A small introduction. And then a link to the video. And what I've also got from Sam who who's come and work with me from swap books. As a consultant on the launch at the book. She provided me with a wonderful rendering of the book in 3d as a stack of books, because I don't have the final book yet. They're going to come next week, but I do want to get out with the pre-ordering because you can pre-order online. So by creating. An artificial version. If you like a rendering of the, of the book looking as though it's already fully formed. I can put that into my newsletter. So then I've got at the top of my youth letter, I've got my branding, which is the same as the mastered on the book. And reflects also from the podcast. But I've also got that now as an embedded video. The video that I made in descript, which has got my Sonic branding and my visual branding. And I've also then got below that. The image of the books. Made up, if you like as a stack for those people that don't want to spend two and a half minutes watching a video. In my text, I've been quite clear to say that this is only two and a half minutes because people don't want to watch a long video. I've also used the Zoho. Personalization of the header. So I can put in the name of the person. Automatically as a mail merge field. Into the Zoho. Dear certain say, dear John. You're in this book, I'd like you to share it with your community. That's in the headline, that's in the subject head. Are they going to get, so that's pretty special because that'll make it stand out. And then there's a subhead as well. Which talks about we're in this together. Want to share with you? We're ready for pre-launch. Please check out this video. So the email newsletter is specific. To each individual person. Then the final piece that I really like about Zoho and many platforms also do this as well. Many of the distribution, like campaign manager and so on. What. You can do is you can choose either. Depress send all at once. You can send us a batch. So they all go together on a particular time zone. But what I've done with the Zoho. Campaigns this time. Is to choose the distribution at the time when the recipient is most likely to open it. Let me repeat that. So in other words, the system is waiting to send the email until the person is most likely. To open it. Now in our speak pie methodology, I talk about personalization. And I talk about. The avatar and about the daily schedule of your avatar and the weekly and the monthly. Because people are not always ready to receive the information that we want to send when we're ready to send it. So what we need to do is to send people the information when they are most likely. To be open and willing to receive it. So, what I love about this. Feature within Zoho campaigns is I can set that campaign for 50 people who are based variously in Asia. Africa India, Europe. And America and Latin America. I got the full time zone set up here for these guests. And Zoho will enable me to deliver email to them when they're most likely to open it. Not when I'm most likely to want to send it. So I wanted to share this because I spent the day creating a piece of content that yes has taken me much longer. Than just drafting an email and sending the 50 people. But I've also got a goal, which is to engage these 50 people to help me too. Help entrepreneurs to find out what they already know. So often we hear people say I've sent the email. My job is done. Those of us that are old school, say it's not about sending the email. It's about the result that we want to get. So if we're sending out content because it's convenient to us to send it in the way and the time we're doing it. We're really wasting our time, as well as wasting the time of those that we're sending it to when they don't want it. And it's not a format. That they like, or a willing to engage with. I've also created this content in a format. That might be the way that the people that receive it might want to create it themselves. In other words, they might share it then. With their community. And ultimately that's what I want. I want more people to pre-order the book. So if I make it easy for them to want to pre-order the book and then to share about the book. Then I'm going to get the multiplier effect. I'm going to get the cascade theory that we talk about in our amplify section of the speak PR program. I was wonder what to share about today. And then I thought, why don't I share about how I've created a three minute invitation video, because this is a process and these are the tools that. Any entrepreneur can use. The combined cost is no more than$50 per month between the Vimeo account and the descript account. It's not a function of money. It's a function of time and interest. And yes, sitting down, today's taken me a bit longer because I've been learning some new techniques. But I'll get it quicker just as I've got quicker on the podcasting. But I encourage you to embrace some of the new technologies that are out there. And also think about if you're creating content, who you're creating it for. Don't create it because it's easy for you to create, create it with the end consumer in mind. And then ultimately. We will get much greater purchase.

Jim James (2):

Because that content will be engaging and compelling. And ultimately that's what we want. We are creating content, not for the sake of creating content. But to build a better business. So I hope this has been a useful episode for you, and I hope that you come and look at the unnoticed show. I'll also put a link in the show notes to the video that I've created.

If you've got any questions about this or anything else? Please do just give me a call, reach out to me on email jim@eastwestpr.com. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the unnoticed show.

Podcasts we love