In this episode we speak with James Wedmore of JamesWedmore.com. This episode will take us to how James has used YouTube and Online Video to become a successful internet marketer. So, join us and sit back, relax and enjoy this weeks episode.
James Wedmore is an elite YouTube Marketing Guru and founder of VideoTrafficAcademy, he is on a mission right now to teach small business owners on how to use YouTube Marketing and Online Video to get more leads and customers.
EPISODE SUMMARY:
- Becoming a YouTube Yoda – How James started and became a YouTube Marketing Guru.
- Using YouTube to Build Your Brand – How to use YouTube and Online Video to build trust and a true brand.
- Directing Traffic– How to move people into your sales funnels without being a jerk.
THE FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Welcome, to the brave new world of cost effective communications, tips, trips and tricks, how-to’s, why-to’s and what-not-to-do’s, and using the power of web based content marketing to easily promote whatever you’d like. Welcome to The Multimedia Marketing Show with, Jake Hower.
Jake: Welcome back, listeners. I’m Jake Hower, your host. You’re listening to The Multimedia Marketing Show. In this episode we’re speaking with Terry Lin from buildmyonlinestore.com, which is a podcast for e-commerce storeowners and aspiring storeowners.
I hope you enjoy this interview. Let’s go off and get straight into it right now.
Jake: Welcome back, listeners. As we’ve said in the top of the rundown there, we’ve got James Wedmore on the line. James, how are you?
James: I’m fantastic. How are you?
Jake: Doing very well and I’m so glad to get you on the show today. The premise of the show, of course, is that we bring on experts in the different forms of multimedia and really drill down in how they become successful using their form of media. You’re certainly doing that with video and I’d really love to speak to you today a little bit about how you’ve monetized traffic of YouTube.
James: Yes, and it feels a little funny, to be honest with do, doing an audio when I’m used to doing so many videos, so it’s nice. I can take a break. I don’t have to dress all nice or have my hair looking good because you guys wouldn’t know if I were in my pajamas or whatnot, so I like it like this.
Jake: Yes, absolutely. That’s a pretty good point, and I guess from my perspective the different forms of media work in different instances. Video, in my opinion, works amazingly well for shorter, but audio, I seem to think, that anything longer than 10 to 15 minutes in audio’s potentially a better medium.
James: It’s so true and that’s actually one of the reasons why I’ve gotten very intrigued and interested in the whole podcast medium because it’s not just about different touch points with your audience, but different ways in which you engage with them. YouTube itself is for people with ADD because anyone with over a three-minute to five-minute video is going to lose their audience really, really fast because the way a video works on YouTube is … I don’t like to throw around the word “viral” and I definitely don’t teach that in any way, but it’s something that can be shared very easily.
A lot of the traffic I have we can check the stats on my analytics from my YouTube videos is because I ask my most loyal, dedicated fans and followers to share it with their friends, post it on Facebook, et cetera, and I get additional views. When you share something like a YouTube video or your audience shares something with their friends and followers it’s something where they’re in the middle of the day, they’re busy, they’re doing something else, they’re trying to escape for five seconds and they don’t even watch all your video half the time because it’s, okay, got something, good, got to go back to work.
That’s actually how I watch YouTube video. Then there’s that bit of fascination where we can sit here and we can an hour-long podcast and people listen to it front and back. It’s not one or the other; it’s not one is better than the other. I would love to continue that conversation because I see a lot of benefits with both. Even when I only have three minutes to get people’s attention on video, I still would never say good-bye to using video as a part of my marketing strategy.
Jake: Yes, definitely. I think it resonates, who said, Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner said it really well in an interview I think which was on Rise to the Top and he said audio is really, when you think about it, probably the only type of media that can be consumed while you’re doing something else. With video, you’ve got to be 100 percent focused with it. Reading, you’ve got to be 100 percent focused on the words. Audio allows you to do something else but still maintain a relatively high level of focus on what you’re listening to.
James: Yes, because we all know the people listening to this right now are checking Facebook or even just like cleaning up their office or moving around and doing something, multi-tasking. You’re right; when you do a video, it asks for 100 percent of your focus and energy. To be honest with you, most people can’t do that for very long so we get to go in and out with a video.
Give them something … I like to say it’s each video is this stand-alone, one encapsulating tip or nugget of information versus here are the seven steps or the 28 steps or the seven secrets. It’s like, here’s one thing to do right now because people can swallow that, they can grasp that versus a podcast where we could spend an hour talking about the seven steps to X, Y, Z, et cetera.
Anyways, I don’t want to get you off tangent there, Jake, but it’s a fascinating topic how people definitely with different mediums digest it differently; it’s a different experience.
Jake: Yes, absolutely. It is, as you said, a very fascinating topic. All right, well, I think we’re going to have a lot to discuss here and even just off the tangent we went on there, there’s so many questions I’d love to speak to you about. Before we do that, for those listeners potentially out there who don’t much about you, and I’m sure that’s not too many of our listeners, why don’t you give us a brief background?
James: Sure, I’d love to, and really the theme when I share this background, I won’t take too much of you guys’ time so we can get in some great content, the theme and the biggest thing to take away from my background, and I really just observed this recently in my life, was that everything in my life that I’ve experienced or done has been a launch pad or stepping stone for that next thing. What I learned, I was then able to leverage that and teach that and then what I created there I was able to teach that.
For example, to make money and pay the bills in college I became a bartender. Quickly got over that job and decided doing what I learned being a bartender and started my own business as a mobile bartender working private events, parties, weddings, birthdays, et cetera, et cetera. Made more money and didn’t have to work as much. Then what I learned from that I created a course, my very first course, on the internet teaching people how they could start their own mobile business and market to private events, and I’ve done products for caterers, DJs, et cetera, et cetera.
Then when I started selling those products and that started getting results, people came to me and said, “How are you selling these products? How are you selling this information, this content?” I said, “Well, the real secret is video,” and I started creating courses teaching everything I learned from video.
It’s always been you learn one thing, you master one thing, you find out that everyone wants to know how it is that you did that. You give them the shortcut, you show them all the mistakes you made and the simple proven formula for replicating those results and people will pay you for that.
Today, I’ve spent the last five years playing around on YouTube and I have a film background so I teach people how to use YouTube, but more importantly, just how to use this medium of video to create a platform to create a brand behind it, because it’s just like if you were to see a celebrity walking down the street right now, I don’t care how old you are, you’re going to get a little giddy if this is someone that you’ve seen that’s one of your top 10 celebrities, you’re going to get a little excited. Oh, my gosh. You’re going to hide behind a wall and try to get your iPhone out and take a picture of them.
Why is that? This is a just a normal person, but because we’ve seen them in a movie, what really makes them better? That same effect on obviously a little bit of a smaller scale happens when we start incorporating video into our brand. Does this make sense? When we’re on the camera and people give us what Jake and I were just talking about, their full attention, even if it’s only for three minutes, then this celebrity effect does begin to take place.
I was just at an event over the weekend, a marketing event, so it was in our industry; people that we know, people have seen me. On a normal day, no one knows who I am, but in our industry people know who I am. It was so amazing, rewarding, and fulfilling to just have people coming up to me, people I’d never met before, like “I’ve seen all your videos and you’re so amazing,” and blah, blah, blah.
I don’t say that to brag or boast, but that whole concept puts you into a position of power. It transforms you into that authority. To me it transcends conversion rates and how many sales we can increase by adding a video. I can trump all of that stuff when I sit here and say I use video to create a brand that is more powerful than the next guy because he’s got X, Y, Z conversion tweaks and opt-ins and split tests and stuff like that.
That’s what I do, so longwinded description, but hopefully, that answers your question, Jake.
Jake: Yes, it does, and it touched on a number of points there, but the main one that really resonates with me is the ability to essentially … you’re pre-educating your viewers and you’re putting, as you said, putting yourself in a position of power so that when you do get this chance to meet with people, you’re not having to sell them anything. You’re moving straight through the next stage, and it’s amazing. I think personally, the video is the best medium to be able to do that with.
James: Absolutely. Absolutely, and it’s funny you say that. It is the best medium to do that, but there’s a right way and there’s a wrong way, and I’m more than happy to answer any questions on do you have the right strategies, but it’s been a game for me of testing and tweaking and how do you better engage your audience? How can you draw them into your videos? How do you take them on a journey and how do you really get them to just really connect with you on a deeper level so that when they do see you in person, it’s like man, I feel like I’ve known you forever.
That’s when you know you’ve done it right, when someone sends you that email, that Facebook message, or sees you in person and says, “I feel like I already know you.” That means you’re like their friend. You’re a household name to them and that’s a powerful thing for me at least. I love to share to other people how to do that.
Jake: Yes, and that sounds really good and that is really fantastic, I think, we do move down that funnel. Okay, so if I look at YouTube, in terms of engaging with our viewers and moving them, we’ll call it a funnel, or moving them across to your owned property, you’re almost fighting with the platform that is YouTube because YouTube is essentially designed to keep people on YouTube. You’ve got all these other associated videos you can click off to.
There is just so much information on YouTube that it’s, from my own experience, it’s hard to move people from the platform to your own platform. How do you go about doing that?
James: That’s a great question, and the first thing I’ll say is I’m not necessarily going to agree or disagree with you saying it’s difficult to move people off of YouTube. I will say this, is that when you do move them off of YouTube, they are much, much more qualified and targeted than any other traffic that you can have. We’ve done the split tests on this. I’ve had a good friend of mine do a whole split test where he sent traffic from every social site you could think of imaginable, his Twitter follows from his Google plots, from Facebook ads, all this stuff and then from a video on YouTube. He sent them all to the same page and this was a squeeze page in order to collect names and email addresses.
Hands down, the highest conversion rate what came from YouTube. What that means is that the most amount of traffic … well, let’s see. What’s the simplest way I can say this? Just the highest quality traffic came from YouTube and it’s really simple if you think about it, it’s because the video itself built this rapport and this understanding of who this person is. Do I know, like, and trust them?
If they watch the video and they do like them and trust them and they say, “Hey, click on this link below, take this next step with me,” and they do that, it’s a no-brainer that they’re going to take action, opt in, or subscribe, or push the next link, et cetera, et cetera. Whether or not it’s … I like to say it’s easy for me because I’ve been doing it for so long and I think there’s certain tips and tricks to making it more effective, but what gets me so excited about YouTube specifically is the targeted traffic that we can get.
That was a little tangent, but what I like to think of it as, to actually drill down and see if I can answer Jake’s question the way he wants me to, is I call this the customer lens and actually have a drawing of it in my notes. Basically this is kind of like the circle of trust in that if you were to go find my stuff and you’re just this passive observer, the only type of content you really see is blog posts and videos. I see a big mistake people make is they go to the website and every product or everything they offer is right there in front.
If you’re in e-commerce or you have physical products or you have software, that’s a different story. For me, I’m selling coaching and membership sites and training programs and stuff like that. On that outside level, all you’ve got is those three videos and I just look like, wow, what a great guy. All he does is create all this free content, but if you start watching the content, what I’m doing at that first level with those YouTube videos is giving you as much value as I possibly can.
Giving you what I like to call a mini transformation, something that you can have a light bulb go off in your head, you can have an ah-ha moment, you can sit there and smack yourself in the head and go, “Oh, my gosh, that’s brilliant. I’m going to go do that right now.” That’s what I strive for in every single one of my videos and I want everyone else to set the bar that high as well. People will come back and say, “No, no. I can’t give my best content away for free; no one will buy my stuff.” That’s total BS, that’s crap. Don’t ever listen to anyone who ever told you that.
You give them your greatest stuff up front, a mini ah-ha, and then every single video I have, has a call to action at the end of the video. If I didn’t give that ah-ha, no one takes the call to action, it’s that simple. If all it is, is a two-minute sales pitch for why I’m the greatest and why I’m so amazing, no one cares and they don’t take the next step.
Every video ends with something like, “Thanks for watching this video, I hope you found value in that great little tip. If you want to learn my simple three-step process for generating more traffic, leads, and sales from YouTube, head on over to JamesWedmore.com, or just click the link below this video.” I’m literally like pointing below the video. “You can download my free report called the YouTube Traffic Report. It will show you how to do this, this, and that. Go ahead, click that link right now so you can get your hands on that free 40-page report right now. Thanks. I’ll see you on the next page.”
I spend the last 30 seconds of each of my videos just telling people you need to do this next. Get off of YouTube, get to my site, because really the goal is to get them off of YouTube. From there, we still split test a ton of different squeezed pages or opt-in pages or lead generation pages, whatever name you’d like to call it is fine. The next step is sending them to any type of page to just capture their information. We go from YouTube to a lead capture page and I love that the best.
Remember, this whole customer lens, if you’re on the outside, all you see is videos, but now you get inside my circle of trust once you subscribe. Once you subscribe, you’ll start getting emails with additional content, but that is the only time in which we start to make offers. One of the things I’m actually playing around with and trying out right now … I wish I had the actual numbers and results to share with you, is selling people on low-end products first, like a seven dollar report, and then up-sells into other offers, et cetera.
Jake, at least for now, does that kind of clarify the direction we’re going? Go from the free YouTube video, take them immediately to a squeeze page or a lead capture page where you can give them a free report or a free video or whatever freebie you’ve got, so that we can capture that information?
Jake: Yes, that really does, and I think a couple of things out of that which really, again, resonates very well with me is the fact you’re not using any sort of tricks or anything to get them off YouTube. Essentially you’re delivering amazing content and then you’re just asking them in their moment of inspiration to invest in a click. At the time that they’re invested in that click, all you’re then doing is capitalizing on that by getting their email address.
James: Yes. Yes, so there’s … I’d like to continue with that and just kind of see if we can go down that path a little bit more about what those steps look like, if you don’t mind?
Jake: That’s sounds fantastic.
James: They click on this link … and let me give you an actually specific example. This was a really fun, unique one and bear with me. I kind of remember the numbers off the top of my head, but I’ll be ball-parking them a little bit. I created a video that I knew would get a lot of views because it’s a high topic thing.
Every webinar I did, every training that I did, everything, all my customers asked me, and this is a side trick, always be listening with the “right filter” to your customers and subscribers as to what their questions are, what it is that they really want to learn. Sometimes we think we know what they need, but we can miss what they really need. One example is they kept asking me for royalty-free music resources, and I was like, come on, there’s a hundred of them, just Google it, right? That’s me being stupid and arrogant and what I should’ve just said is pick two and just give them those two resources.
I created an entire video all on the topic of royalty-free music. What I did what was unique here is at the end of the video I said I’ve put together … I bought a master rights to royalty-free music and actual good songs and I put together an offer to say I’ve put together five free royalty-free songs for you that you can download and use in your videos immediately. You don’t even need to go out and buy any. You can save fifty to a hundred bucks. I’m going to give you five right now. I use these myself; these aren’t crappy songs, these are real songs. I said, “Go click the link below and download those free songs.”
That video today has 28,000, 29,000 views and I think I’ve had close to 2,000 opt-ins from that video. What was really cool is … so I took them to the squeeze page, it said free music, opt in here. This next page is the download page or the thank you page. This is one of my favorite pages to play with and I think so many people just glance over this in the whole sales process. This is the next immediate touch point you have with someone after they just gave you this most sacred information; their name and email address.
What are you going to do next here? Well, they’re in an action-taking mode, so there’s so many options to go with and I’d love to play a bunch of them here, but here’s what I did for this specific one. I created a little video on the next page, and it said, “Hey, thank you so much for opting in. I have your five songs below and you can play them and download them immediately.” It’s right below this video, pretty self-explanatory, there you go.
“However, before I let you go, I want to let you know that I’ve actually put a special bonus and I want to give you five additional songs absolutely free. All you have to do is click that Tweet button below this video and it will unlock five additional songs.” Sure enough, there’s this big Tweet button on that page and I use a little software called Tweet to Unlock, and as soon as they click the Tweet button, it sends out a tweet that sends out the link to my royalty-free music video.
Then as soon as they Tweet it, sure enough, it unlocks five more songs and they go, “Sweet, thank you so much.” That has added 3,000 or 4,000 additional, which is why I have close to 30,000 views, 3,000 to 4,000 additional views on that YouTube video because people have been sharing it on social media as soon as they take action and it just creates this continual rinse and repeat process. That’s one thing I love to do right there. Does that make sense, Jake?
Jake: Yes, it does. I’ve seen others just play around with this particular page as well. One that comes to mind is Clay Collins with his LeadPages software that he’s just released. Essentially your video above it and right under it; it’s two steps. First step is to click like on Facebook and the second step is to register for a webinar. You’re right, in that action-taking modality you’ve got your viewer or your listener engaged in it, it’s fantastic to be able to get them to take even more action.
James: Absolutely, absolutely. I love LeadPages and LeadPlayer; they’re fantastic pieces of software. I personally met … now Clay’s a good friend of mine because I saw the software first and I said, “Holy crap, this stuff’s incredible.” Definitely, I highly recommend and endorse Clay and everything he puts out because he’s a genius.
Yes, that’s a simple step for getting them onto … that’s the goal for me. I have this thing, I’d love people to write this down, they’re five letters, and I always have to write this down myself so I don’t forget it. Let’s see it is back here, sorry, guys. It’s five letters and this is how I run my business because I love to keep everything as simple as possible, it’s from left to right, it’s PC … P as in Paul, C as in cat, L, T, T as in Tom, and F, and this is … PCLTF, and basically in the middle is this L and I’ll tell you what each of these letters mean.
L is for leads and that’s really just a huge goal for me is to build the list and grow my community, grow my reach, grow my audience. The way I do that is if we move to the left one letter we have our C, and that’s content. One of the greatest ways to get free traffic, if not the best way to get free traffic, is through content and creating a platform. There are only a few ways to really create a platform. People talk about social media … for the last couple years people have gotten so excited about it, but very few people actually created a platform on social media. They just started talking on Facebook, and that’s not creating a platform at all.
Something like creating a podcast is a platform. Creating a blog that produces content is a platform. Creating YouTube videos is a platform. Having that content that you’re continually putting out gives you that platform and gives you the opportunity to get traffic. Then the P, which is all the way to the left, is the promotion of that content.
You’re rarely, rarely, probably never, see me ever send people to a sales page. You’ll never see me promote a new product if you’re following me on Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus or anything like that, you’ll never see it. It looks like I don’t … if you’re just an outside bystander on the outer rim of this what I call the customer lens, you’d be like, “What is this guy doing? How does he make money because he doesn’t sell anything?”
That’s the whole point. I only sell to people that have gone through enough hoops that are qualified enough and that want to learn more. They’re asking for more versus me pushing it on them. When I promote stuff, I’m promoting content. I’m promoting my latest blog post. I’m promoting value; hey, you got to read this because this is going to help you. That’s not like, oh, what a spammer, right? That’s how I look at things.
Now if you go to the right of the L, we have two more letters, T and F. The T is just transactions. Once I have the lead, that’s when we start making offers. I usually even take them to webinars or a couple of free contact videos before I just go, “Here, give me your credit card info.” There’s still value by being a lead; much more actually once they are a lead. I like to say, “You know what? If you subscribe to my list, if you give me your name and email, I’m going to give you more content and value than anybody else. Until you become a customer, then you get even more value.
Then the final one is F and that’s the followup. I love to put this here because I think it’s the most important thing because a lot of times when we do make a sale, yay, we got a customer. We’ll just let them go their own merry way and we don’t ever talk ever again. When you realize that your customers are going to be your biggest fans and that you can sell them additional products, services, et cetera, it’s one of the easiest ways, obviously, to increase your income.
That’s exactly what I do. I promote content to get the leads then I make the sale or the transaction and then I follow up with my customers. A five-step process that I use and it’s super, super simple. I don’t like … if I complicate things, I get stressed and burnt out and I get stuck in this sea of overwhelm and analysis by paralysis and you know what? I know a lot of you guys out there do as well. If you can just always find something that’s simple and works and stick to it, avoid the shiny red objects and opportunities, you can see results rather quickly.
Jake: That’s brilliant, that’s really brilliant, and also I’m a massive fan of simplification. Business shouldn’t be that complicated.
James: I know. I know, and that’s kind of the whole thing is a lot of people want to … they complicate things in order to sell you the simplification. That’s why it gets so complicated because you’re listening to a marketing message from someone who’s saying without this your business is dead, or you need to be doing it like this or else. You’ve got to start putting the filters up and the blinders and say, “No, I can decide right now to make it simple.”
I can give you so many examples. One of my very good friends who I’ve known for about five years has a six-figure business and he doesn’t even own a Facebook account, a Twitter account, or Google Plus. He’s got one website and one YouTube channel and that’s all he does.
I know another gal who has pretty much the same thing. She had a Done 4 You service where she was doing home organizing and office organizing. She’d come into your local office and clean up all your crap and make your place look presentable, and she said I’m going to go try this YouTube stuff, and this was about a year and a half ago, and her channel blew up. She was featured on HGTV and in print magazines and all this stuff. She shut down the local business and now she just sells digital products to people all over the world showing them how to organize their home and life. She told me personally, she’s like, “I don’t use anything else but YouTube.”
I’ve got another guy who does all his content, his platform is webinars. He didn’t even have a website for the first year and a half and he was doing $20,000 to $40,000 a month without a website, but he had a go-to webinar account and he was able to build a list. These are the people that when they keep it simple … a lot of people think I’ve got to have this, I’ve got to have the Google Plus, Twitter, I’ve got to be doing this all day. Then they realize that’s not sustainable, especially if it’s just like you and a virtual assistant. It’s not sustainable, so simple will help.
Jake: Yes, it’s very interesting. It’s almost like you’re looking at your five letter breakdown. Having so many things, it’s almost like you’re focusing on the P and the C in terms of … that’s essentially for me social media is a great way to engage with people, but it’s also like a publishing platform and if you’re focusing too much on those things means that somebody is going to miss out and that’s your leads and your customers.
James: Yes, and that’s a big question that a lot of students that I see. Once they’re my student they don’t have that problem, but how do I monetize. I did all this stuff people told me to do, but how do I monetize it? If you’re going to start a business you need to know the answer to that question before you get into business, because that’s what a business is. It’s something that’s designed to generate a profit, so you can’t start a business without really knowing how to monetize it.
I have all my thoughts on that, but simply put, I like to say the easiest way to monetize it is to sell something. Build a list and sell something to them. Sell what they want and need, something of value. People hear the word “sell” and they cringe and shy away from that. At the end of the day, I look at all the successful people in this industry I’ve been able to meet and the number one skill that they have in common, which I attribute to their success, is their ability to influence, and influence includes selling.
We’re all selling every single day either consciously or unconsciously and when you put some intention behind it and sell something of value to people you’re monetizing your business. Yes, simply put.
Jake: Absolutely. Okay, let’s keep moving down here. We’ve gone through … really you’ve gone through the promotion, content, leads. Let’s focus a little bit on the transactions and the followup then. You’ve got people essentially you’ve gone through and you’ve put people through a squeeze page. You’ve got their email address. Where do you go now?
James: Well, I’m pulling the whole curtain back for you, Jake. People pay me a lot of money for me to show them the whole business model that I’ve put together so you guys are in for a treat.
I think this is obviously the most important part once you have the leads, it’s like what do you do with them? For me personally what works and what I’ve done the most effectively for the past … I’ve been doing this specifically, this strategy, for just over two years, are webinars. For those of you guys who don’t know what a webinar is, I think most people do at this point, it’s simply a live PowerPoint presentation where the audience experiences text and bullet points on a screen and they can hear your audio. It’s like a podcast, but if you had notes and PowerPoint to go off of it, it’s the same thing.
What I do is I have an auto responder campaign that I do once my leads come in. In that auto responder campaign, these are preset emails that they get, it’s their value build, okay? They’re value build emails which means … I sit there and say, if they’re just getting on my list, what is something I can hit them with right now that just like, additional content, like, oh my gosh, wow. It prepares them for knowing what they really need to grow their business. It’s as simple as just educating your audience to become a good customer or training your audience to become a good customer.
One of the things I do off the bat, just to give you an example, is one of my specialties that no one really knows until they get into my funnel, is that I have this obscene obsession with personality types; most specifically Myers-Briggs, and we won’t go into it in this call. It’s an entire hour on its own, but I show people how using this system that was originally developed by Karl Yune, you can start to do a lot of incredible things.
First of all, when you uncover what your personality type is, you can see what your real core strengths in business are. I show people how to find their strengths in business. Then I show them how you can start to create a customer avatar around this personality-type system so that you can communicate more effectively to your target audience. People are, okay, great; just giving them content, content, content.
I’ll send them an email and say, “Here’s a great video for you,” or “Here’s one of my most popular blog posts,” or whatever and I just continue to give them content for about a week. I’m really light selling them. I throw in a customer testimonial, but I will not use the word “testimonial.” If you’ve heard the word “testimonial” cross it out and get rid of it out of your vocabulary. I use “customer case study.” Here’s another successful video marketing case study.
When you share someone’s case study, you do two things. One, you give value to your new subscriber by showing them a real life example of how this is possible, here’s how it was done, so they’re learning, but number two, you create social proof that you can create the results.
I value build for them, but then what I do is live in real time I like to host at least one webinar a month to my audience, and this is where it gets really exciting. Sometimes I’ve done a lot more, but at least one a month where I’m teaching something to them. Basically, we could spend a whole hour talking about webinars, but in a nutshell, I email my list and say, “Hey, we’re doing a webinar this Wednesday, register here,” they get on the webinar, I teach for an hour, and then I make a pitch for one of my products, whichever one I decide to pick for that month.
People have just … now let’s stop here because I can get 20 to 30 percent conversion rate, 30 percent of the people on the call will purchase immediately at the end of that call and boom. If you know your numbers, you know that a sales page like people talk about 1 to 2 percent, and here we are getting 30 percent, and not as many people see it, which is a good … that actually is a good thing. Let’s stop here and then actually go back and see the whole experience.
Someone is on Facebook, they’re goofing off, whatever, and they see that their friend shares one of my YouTube videos. They start watching it, they go, “Who is this goof ball, this guy’s weird, what is he doing here? Let me keep watching. Okay, I’ll click his link.” They opt in, they start getting emails with great … oh wow, this actually is great, oh, this is legit, okay, cool. This is great, I liked it. Then it’s, hey, free webinar. Oh my gosh, this is awesome. I want to learn more about this. Whoa, this is a great webinar, look at all this content and blah, blah, blah. He just answered my question, this is great. Oh, 97 bucks? Yes, that’s a no-brainer. I’ll go buy it right now.
That’s the experience that my audience has, versus what I see still a lot of people doing is you’re on Facebook and you see a Facebook message that says, hey, my new course for 97 bucks just came out. No thank you, please. Stop spamming me on Facebook.
It’s a huge value build on the front end, but it creates way better rapport and long-term customers that actually fall in love with you and purchase repeatedly, which is that last step, which is F, the followup. Selling higher end products and stuff like that. How was that? Did that make sense, Jake?
Jake: Yes, that was really awesome. I’m really fascinated with webinars. We’ve had Louis Howes on the show in Episode 10, where we discussed … he put together a webinar. I think in the context of what you’re just talking about there and why webinars convert so well, I was just thinking about why this is potentially the case, and it probably ties in to what we were going back and talking about earlier about the celebrity.
It’s almost like the fact that you’re live and you’re present and as you say, you’re interacting with people and with customers, there’s a certain amount of celebrity associated with that. I can get on a webinar and have this celebrity or this person of influence actually personally answer questions of me and I think maybe that’s got something to do with it. It’s just really fascinating.
James: It’s that and it’s even just the fact that it’s an event. People want to be a part of something, and then when they are a part of something, they’re listening. The fact of the matter is, if you have a great product, especially like a digital training course or program or membership site, more people than you realize need that content and just sending them to a sales page, what’s happening here is they’re saying, “Oh, I’m being sold, so let me put my blinders up, let me put my guard up and I can read this and see the price.” They scroll down to the bottom, they see the price, then they go up and see, does what he’s offering justify the price yes or no.
Versus going on a webinar and saying I’m here, I’m present, I’m focused. This is another … it goes back to our original conversation about where a webinar you can have people stay on and be 100 percent focused for an hour, which is why to me it’s the ultimate best form of content, and they’re not going, “Oh, my gosh, I saw the price he’s selling me, he’s selling me.” It’s really this is a training program. You’re getting a free training class. Then, oh, by the way, if you want to learn more, here’s how to get to the next step, purchase this product.
It’s like a no-brainer, but they hear the message first. They hear the reasons why, oh, I do need to be using YouTube. Oh, my gosh. I had no idea it gets 4 billion views each and every day and that it’s the number one most underutilized social platform by marketers, which is a fact, by the way. They don’t know that stuff until they actually take the moment to turn into a student again and consume that content. When you inform your audience, you train them to be a better customer.
I don’t mean better customer by brainwashing them, I mean better customer that they purchase your stuff and then they take action and actually use it. The last thing you want to do is try and pull the wool over their eyes with a bunch of flashy headlines and false benefits just so they buy, never use it, and walk away.
One of the reasons I’ve been able to be so successful is because I have literally hundreds and hundreds of testimonials because I just take people through some process and they get the results and then they share those results with me. If all my customers purchased and didn’t take any action, I wouldn’t have any testimonials and I wouldn’t have any results and no one else would purchase from me. That’s why I love webinars.
Then obviously that final step is getting them to follow up and take more action. Like thinking, okay, what else do they want from me? Do they want coaching? Do they want a Done 4 You service? Can I offer software, additional products? We even do a lot of affiliate products which we can talk … that’s one of my favorite things is that you cannot provide everything, all the solutions, that your customer needs and to try and do that is stupid because it’s better to just focus on and be a master at one thing and let everyone else be a master at their individual things and recommend and promote those other people if your customer needs them.
Hopefully, that clarifies things. Oh, and by the way, Jake, before I forget, because you mentioned Louis, sorry I just keep talking here. You mentioned Louis. Louis is a great friend of mine and we actually held an event together at a company called Creative Live back in, I think, it was right at the beginning of December, where we taught over three days how to do a webinar.
We used a live case study, well, she became a good friend of ours, named Elisha Dunhams and she held her first webinar during the three-day event and sold a $297 product that she hadn’t even created yet. It was a live boot camp that she was putting on and she did over $22,000 in sales in 48 hours. This is the power of webinars.
If we just look at what you guys have all written down PCLTF, promote free content to get the lead. We create a transaction by getting them on a webinar, that’s one of the most effective ways to sell, and then we follow up with them. It’s like rinse and repeat. That’s what I do. Questions on that?
Jake: Yes, I do. It’s just, I guess, more out of my personal interest. What of those five steps do you put the most emphasis on?
James: Okay, so for me … okay, this is a great question. I can go either way with this. What I put the most efforts into, not necessarily emphasis, is the C, because all the other steps, or at least the L, T, and F, are on autopilot. I set them up once like I have the squeeze pages ready. When they’re opted in, they go through a sequence; that’s all been done. The webinar slides are sitting here. If you said, “Hey, James, let’s do a webinar in an hour,” I’d be good to go. I’d be like, “Okay, hold on. Let me make the registration page, cool, let’s start it right now.” That’s all been done, which is beautiful; I love all that stuff.
The product is done. When people buy it, they’re in and then they’re on a new sequence, a followup sequence. For me, it’s always about how can I raise the bar and create more content, better content, and more valuable content that creates these main transformations? At this point, and to have the film background I have this huge passion for video, it’s my favorite thing to do. I really set up my business personally.
Now this isn’t everybody. Most people are going to be the exact opposite of me, but since I love making videos myself so much, I’ve really set up my business where all it is, is like what cool new crazy video can I come up with this week and then it just the machine continues to feed itself because people continue to share my content and support me that way. For me, the C is the answer there.
Jake: Yes, that’s really interesting. I think what comes out of that is, for you, that’s important because that’s where you enjoy spending your time.
James: Right.
Jake: It’s actually a common theme going through previous interviews. Some of our previous guests; again, probably the ones I’ve had on focused on YouTube in particular, Matthew Pierce and Dave Dugdale. Both of those guys have set up their businesses to essentially allow them the time to focus on doing what they like and in both of those guys it’s producing video as well.
James: Right, and for you it could be just creating better and better podcasts, like finding more people and doing more unique things and et cetera, et cetera, and if you have the whole rest of the model set up and systems in place, the machine just can really run itself. It depends on what you do.
Some of the products I offer, which I’m leaning away from and actually to be honest with you I’d get torn, I do things like laser coaching sessions one-on-one. I do video reviews for people. I do more intimate higher-end coaching every once and a while, but those things still, they’re trading time for dollar actually fulfill and take time from growing the business to do that stuff and that’s not scalable. Those are the things that it’s like … those are always the easy ways to make money.
I tell people right now if you’re looking to be profitable in this wonderful world of the internet where there is just opportunity abound all upon us, the simple, easy solution, because people ask me this all the time, is to say offer service. You can make money before the end of today if you simply are willing to do something for somebody. The trap with that is you can make money instantly. You can say like, “Oh, I’ll set up your fan page.”
You don’t even know how to make a fan page because you can buy someone’s $97 course, like Amy Porterfield fbinfluence, and it says here’s how to set up your Facebook fan page. You can be reading that as you’re doing that for a client that you just paid 500 to 1,000 bucks for and learn it as you go. The problem with that, the trap with that, even though it’s very nice, like man, I made money instantly, this is great and it’s going to be an easy sale, it’s not necessarily scalable unless you’re building out a team and a workforce where creating systems with products, digital products especially, is very scalable.
If I had 100 sales or one sale today, there would be no additional work on my part, which is what I always have worked for from day one is setting up systems to do the work for me. Part of that, what Jake really wanted to talk about today about the followup email, seeing what’s getting the lead and what that experience is, is all about setting up a system for them, or setting up my system so I don’t have to do any work to continue nurturing those leads and customers.
Jake: That’s really interesting. I just got a followup question to that particular aspect here. Okay, so you focus the majority of your effort on content partly because, or mostly because you enjoy it. Do you think it would be possible to set that up or to systemize that step if producing content wasn’t exactly what you enjoyed?
James: I’ve already done it and it’s actually one of my fun experiments. I do a lot of these experiments on YouTube and stuff. I created a channel where I said my goal is, and I already lose passion for the experiments in what I’m doing. I’m going to go to the channel right now. The goal was create a million viewed channel in, I think it was six months, without having to do anything. I just created two videos to test it and it was easy.
I put out two videos and I’ll show you exactly what I did. I’ll break down the steps. Two videos, just two, 18,000 totally non-paid for, I do not buy views and I do not ever recommend that because you will get shut down for that, 18,202 total views for two videos and I put the first video up December 5th, so it’s almost been two months. All I’ve done is basically uploaded the videos. If you see the videos, they’re fantastic content. I’m going to break down exactly what I did.
Here’s the only thing I did other than set up the system. Setting up the system takes work, but the whole point of setting a system up is so that you don’t have to do any work. Most people can’t see that far and see that big picture, but it’s there and it’s possible. Here’s what I did. I chose a topic, and the topic is hilarious, of what I chose for the type of videos that I wanted to do and I created a channel. The topic is aliens and conspiracy theories. It’s hilarious.
All I did was I did some market research and this is something that when I teach in video traffic academy, my YouTube course, is this is what it all comes down to, people. Nothing else matters if you can’t figure this stuff out. I came up with a list, a short list as their called, 50 keys words that get a ton of searches. I said, “Great. Now I’ve got a list of 50 videos.” Here’s what I did. I found a video editor on ODesk.com who would just make slide shows of images and text, kind of like an animoto, but it’s a little bit nicer than animoto, if you guys are familiar with that.
Then I went onto Fiver.com and I found a voice-over guy, and this guy for five bucks of video will make … his videos are amazing, it’s like do aliens exist? I was just wow. Then I found someone on ODesk as well for $25 writes a simple script. Here’s what I suggested; here’s the topic, here’s three other videos on YouTube that have the content that I want, watch those three videos, and make a unique video about that, and I said, “Go.”
When I give them the key words, I give them all the key words, he comes back a couple days later, here’s the text. I give the text to the voice-over guy, and he creates the voice-over. I give the voice-over to the editor and he creates that with the video. I don’t even approve or look at it, it’s good, whatever, it’s good enough because it’s a fun little test. Then he gives that to a virtual assistant of mine that I pay out of the Philippines just $2 an hour. He uploads it to YouTube, knows how to optimize it properly putting the key words in the right description, the transcript, all that stuff, and that’s all we did.
One video has about 6,000 views; the other one 12,000 views. I go, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t have to do any work and it’s very scalable. I can just continue to say, “Here’s 50 more key words, get to work.” I’m a big fan of working that way obviously because I like being in front … I really don’t like being in front of the camera, but I like making videos and I don’t want to hire an actor to be in the videos. I say, okay, I’ll do it myself. I can’t really do that with my personal brand videos, but I get enough views and exposure that it’s totally worth it for me to be in front of the camera and do all my shenanigans.
Jake: Absolutely. I think just to close out that part of it, I think just having a system in place, I guess, really gives you freedom to do what you love doing.
James: Yes, and it’s the reason most people don’t do it is because it takes a lot of time and effort up front and people just don’t do that. There have been times I don’t. I call myself out it on times, I’m like, “Why am I still doing this? This should be set up into a system.” There are even times of the day just getting like transparent, getting real with you, Jake. There are times of the day where it’s like, I sit here and I’m like, “Should I be working? I feel like I was working harder six months ago or a year ago. I feel bad. Money’s coming in, should I be working?”
Then you have to stop and tell yourself to shut up. No, you did the work, the machine’s working. It’s like if you built a factory right now. It’s like it would take a while to build a factory, get the team in place, make sure the whole assembly line is working properly, but once it’s working, all you have to do is check the input and check the output. Be at the front of the assembly line and be at the end and make sure the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed and that’s all you need to be doing.
Oh gosh, it seems like too easy right now. Is there something I’m missing? Am I forgetting to do something? No. No, you did the work, and that’s why I love all this stuff. That’s what should get all of us excited about leveraging the internet because the automation, the software, and the systems that allow us to take some time back. People usually don’t get there because they have a hard time doing that. It’s easier said than done, but it’s definitely possible.
Jake: Yes. Yes, it’s simple, but it’s not easy.
James: Right, right. Yes, I recently switched to Infusionsoft, if you’re familiar with the CRM, I mean, it’s everything. I’m blown away by this, and anybody who’s on Infusionsoft will immediately be nodding their head right now, is that this is the most … they call it Confusionsoft because it is just the most cumbersome, intense thing you’ve ever seen. I’m literally going through it right now putting whoever created this software on the same pedestal as Albert Einstein because it’s so intense and genius, it’s unbelievable.
Most people actually purchase … not most, but a lot of people that will purchase Infusionsoft and A, never use it, or B, just cancel because it’s that overwhelming, but it’s the same analogy. Infusionsoft is a system that will allow you to create any type of system you want. You can do things where when a customer comes in, they’re added here, a direct mail letter is sent to them here, a gift is sent there, they get a phone call here, and they’re getting an email.
All these things can happen simultaneously and it takes a lot of work to set it up, but once it’s set up, you don’t have to do anything. I think as business owners we always need to be thinking with that mindset and that’s why they call it the startup mode, and that’s what you’re doing in startup mode, you’re setting up the systems.
Jake: I love that and I am, I’m sitting here nodding like a dog because about two weeks ago I did, I signed up for Infusionsoft and I totally agree with what others say that, I think Confusionsoft, but it actually isn’t. The learning curve initially is relatively steep and it’s very overwhelming, but realistically looking at it now even two weeks in and halfway through my on-boarding process, the learning curve is no steeper than learning how to use WordPress effectively.
James: But the reason it has a steep learning curve is because it is so … what’s the right word? It can do anything, and when you can do anything, or when you have more options for customization that is going to exponentially compound the learning curve. If something can only do this or that, it’s going to be super simple. Because it has so many options, it’s a give or take.
I think if people are interested in Infusionsoft, I think there’s a right level you need to be at your business in order to get on that. I would make that a goal for anybody who has any type of e-commerce or digital-based business where you’re collecting leads first online Infusionsoft needs to be a goal that you get to. It’s a couple hundred dollars a month to be on it, but I’m sitting here looking at it going, “Gee, I should’ve gotten on this years ago.” I’m hitting myself in the head for it, but I love it. I really recommend it.
Jake: Yes. Yes, and it is actually; once you do know what you’re doing it is actually really quick and simple. It’s probably even … previous to Infusionsoft I was on MailChimp and I was just noting how easy it is in Infusionsoft to actually … or the steps involved to send an email, I think MailChimp had five or six steps through the process, and Infusionsoft was three.
James: Got you, yes.
Jake: I’m not going to, but I could speak about Infusionsoft for hours.
James: Yes, so we won’t, we won’t …
Jake: Well, we’ve been going for quite some time. We should wrap this up. I think there’s so much to take in and to take action on from what we’ve discussed in the hour or so. James, where can our listeners find out more about you?
James: Sure, I’m always going to recommend you guys come say hi to me over on my blog, JamesWedmore.com. If you really want to do a search, I highly recommend you … I’m sure it’s a biased recommendation, but go check out some of my YouTube videos. That’s kind of what we’ve been talking about. That’s how a lot of people find me. I don’t have any paid traffic in my business model at all, at least not at the moment. It’s mostly blog posts and YouTube videos, and you can go over there.
I like to say I’m the test dummy guinea pig for my students and I want people to take what I do and use it themselves. I don’t get offended or upset if someone uses the same concept or style or idea that I have in one of my videos and use it in theirs. That’s actually what I’m there for, because I spend hours and hours and I chalk it up to market research watching other great videos on YouTube, watching great movies, and always modeling and using that as a stepping stone for creativity, for raising the bar, for doing something different.
We’re so bombarded with so many messages and noise, we all know this, and it’s always going to be question of how do I stand out from everybody else? How do I separate myself from all the noise out there? That’s something I feel like I have to constantly be doing, but then why do you always have to reinvent the wheel? It’s just like, look at someone who you can steal and swipe stuff from and hopefully I can be a source of inspiration for you guys.
My channel is James Wedmore as well. You can just search my name or head over to my blog at JamesWedmore.com.
Jake: That’s fantastic. James, thank you so, so much for sharing everything you have in this episode. It’s been absolutely brilliant. Listeners, thanks for tuning in for the last hour or so. Again, James, thank you so much for coming on.
James: Thank you, Jake, and thank you everyone for listening.