Marami Marketing Group

If you want quick and efficient growth, you know the importance of getting traffic. The best widget in the world will not create a profitable business if no one knows about it. The rapid growth of online video is our cue to use it as a marketing channel for your business. Rather than pull people away from where they’re going so that they can view your message, simply bring your message to where the people are already going.

With the Internet’s wide reach and the reduction of technology costs, even small businesses are now able to leverage video in their marketing efforts. While the “big boys” can continue to spend millions of dollars producing Super Bowl commercials, many small businesses and people are claiming their piece of the opportunity. The proverbial pie has indeed gotten bigger. In addition, tests have shown that traditional online sales pages convert at 2-3% while those using video convert at 8-11%.

In both offline and online marketing efforts, most businesses focus on persuading their customers by using logic and unique product features. While that can play a role, as you know already, people buy based on emotion and back it up with logic. You probably experience this every day when you watch television commercials. The ones that are most popular and move you to actually buy the product are those that evoked a strong emotion within you.

So how do you begin to leverage emotion through your online videos? The key lies not in WHAT you tell your viewers, it rests in HOW you communicate with them. While some would consider themselves “naturals” in moving people emotionally, it is absolutely a skill that can be acquired by discovering the fundamentals of how the mind works, and applying the proper system.

While Hollywood has distorted the phenomenon of hypnosis to a resemble a form of mind control as a way to create compelling plotlines, the concepts upon which hypnosis is based are very real and useful to the savvy marketer.  Simply put, hypnosis is an altered mental state in which one does not use their critical, logical mind to evaluate information before accepting that information and acting on it.  By understanding the science behind hypnosis, will allow you to transform your videos from ordinary to powerful tools that will compel your customers to take specific actions like signing up to your email list or even purchasing your product!

Foundations of Hypnotic Communication

There are two parts of your mind: the conscious and the subconscious.  The conscious mind is your mind’s “gatekeeper”. It is responsible for logical thinking and reasoning, and the voluntary actions you take such as moving your hand to pick up an object. Your subconscious mind is like a computer, with no reasoning or making value judgments. It’s that part of your mind that controls involuntary actions such as your breathing, blinking, heartbeat, and emotions. It also stores all your memories and experiences.

Dr. Ray Birdwhistell of the University of Pennsylvania studied human non-verbal communication, or kinesics. He understood that a person’s words contributed only a portion of the overall message they were communicating. By filming people in social situations and analyzing their interactions, he discovered that there was much more being conveyed in a conversation that what was being said.  His research showed that a person’s words only accounted for 7% of the message being conveyed.  Body language accounted for 58% and voice tonality accounted for 35%.  Video allows you to use the entire spectrum of communication to deliver your marketing message and more effectively influence your audience.

Everything we as individuals have experienced in our lives is based on the filtered translations of the outside world. The filters and translators we use are our 5 senses: sight, sound, feel, smell, and taste. The more senses we engage in our communication with others, the more likely they will receive our message. We want to engage our audience’s senses directly. The key for more successful delivery is to relate those abstract concepts to tangible, sensory-based experiences. Great communicators (e.g., salespeople, orators, authors, teachers, etc.) throughout history have shared this rare talent.

Hypnotic Techniques for Video

To create more effective and influential marketing videos you must use these psychological foundations as part of your video creation process (i.e., concepts, scripting, post-production, distribution).  Here are a few ideas you can begin using immediately.

• Build rapport by identifying with their current point of view and where they want to go.  This will significantly reduce resistance from the conscious mind.
• Tell lots of stories to get people engaged in following your train of thought.  In order for them to comprehend and identify with your story their conscious mind must accept what you’re saying as true.
• Music is one of the most powerful ways to engage people’s emotions and other subconscious triggers.  Using appropriate intro or background music to your message is a key hypnotic influence strategy.
• Make sure you (or your spokesperson) use body language and voice tonality to reflect the way you want the customer to feel.  For example, if you want them to feel calm and comforted by your message, you may want your voice to be quiter and slower, and your gestures to be slower and more reserved.
• Engage your audience’s senses even more by using appropriate visuals (movie clips, photos, props) and audio (sound effects).  While these elements can be incorporated directly into the video, eliciting a strong sensory memory can be just as effective (e.g. tell them to remember the smell/taste/touch of their favorite meal).

As more people and businesses use video as a means of online marketing, you’ll want to use these techniques and many more to differentiate your message and ensure your audience gets the greatest impact.

Keywords:

No, this isn’t the start of a new joke.

But for a moment, just imagine you see the following image splashed across the front page of your local paper…

In the middle of a chaotic meeting room, a frightened mass of people with fear and surprise in their eyes.

On the fringe of the crowd, near the outer wall is a burly man, forearms covered in tattoos, his face strained and red. He has just thrown one of the office chairs through a window, spraying glass across the lawn outside.

If you had to form an opinion of this man, what would it be – positive or negative?

Now imagine the same scene, but the image shows a wider perspective, this time revealing the entire room.

You still see the man throwing a chair through the window, but on the other side of the room there’s smoke and fire coming in through an open door.

Do you now feel differently about this man?

Same guy, same action, different context.

In NLP this is what we call “reframing”.

Reframing changes the specific context in which you perceive a given piece of information, which changes the resulting meaning of the information.

In this case, it determines whether this man is labeled as a “hostile bully” or a “decisive hero”.

This concept applies just as well to your marketing such as your pricing, offers, and product/service features.

To minimize resistance from your customers and prospects, use reframes your messaging to get more desirable results.

For example, don’t just say, “We only sell chicken wings, that’s it.”

Instead, frame it first with something like, “You can probably agree that being the best at anything comes ONLY from years of tireless dedication and study of a single subject.  That’s why we don’t serve burgers, fries, or turkey clubs.  If we did, we couldn’t serve the best chicken wings in the country… which we do.”

Leaving your customers alone to decide what something should mean is a very dangerous proposition.

Do them (and yourself) a favor by using reframing to make both of you look like heroes.

Cheers to your success!

Philipp

P.S. While I use NLP techniques daily, I’ve never never considered teaching them as a course in the past.  But if there’s enough of a demand I’ll put a special training together.  If you’d be interested in learning more about how to better apply reframing and other NLP skills like anchoring, presuppositions, pattern interrupts, and rapport to your marketing, COMMENT BELOW and let me know.

Now by Titanic I’m not referencing the big ol’ steamer that hit the iceberg on its first outing. Don’t be like this one. That would be bad.

I’m talking about the Oscar-winning MOVIE about the Titanic. This is the one you want to “make like.” Why?

Because it didn’t just win Best Picture… it SWEPT the 1998 Academy Awards, winning 11 out of 14 nominations.

Up to that point the movie had already pulled in over $1 billion. But its massive Oscar success allowed it to stay in the theaters for another 7 months, prompted thousands that had ALREADY seen it to see it again, and ushered thousands more that hadn’t yet seen it to watch for the first time. “It won ALL those awards? Well then it MUST be good!”

In those 7 months it eeked out another $800 million in box office sales. Imagine having THAT kind of response.

I don’t know about you, but that’s what I call DOMINATION!

Make like Titanic? Indeed.

Think about how you could do this kind of sweep in your marketing. Put yourself in that “category of one” where you’re so dominant that your customers have no choice but to come back to you again and again.

Lots of different ways you could approach this, but here’s where it’s gotta start:

THINK BIGGER

Simple, I know. And it works.

I had to do it myself a few weeks back with a test my team had put together. I was VERY skeptical, but it worked out AMAZINGLY well (http://www.maramimarketing.com/thinkbigger). So well, in fact, that as a result I’ll be offering it very shortly as a new service.

Just forget about “realistic” for the moment. Don’t worry about HOW you can make it happen. Simply give yourself permission to accept that there are even bigger possibilities.

You may surprise yourself.

Cheers to your success!

Philipp

P.S. For the record, I too contributed to the Titanic fund, having watched it three times in the theater. I couldn’t help it… that Leo is SO dreamy!

Online video is one of the fastest growing marketing mediums available.  In the US, video viewers racked up nearly 28 billion video views in October 2009 alone.  As more and more of our customers and prospects are getting online, eMarketer projects that in 2010 more than 85% of Internet users will use video as a top content delivery method.

Here are the top 3 types of video content you can produce get your share of viewers to establish yourself as a guru in your niche.

1.  Teach Something

As a guru and expert, you have access to volumes of specialized knowledge.  But that doesn’t mean too much unless people know that you’ve got it.  And while you can tell them that you know all these things, people don’t learn by hearing.  They learn through experience.  By teaching your customers something of value to them, you not only demonstrate your expertise, you also immediately put yourself in a position of authority in that particular area.

Example:  How to Prepare Your Soil for Growing Award Winning Tomatoes

2.  Give Social Proof

There’s a saying in marketing that goes, “You can’t promote yourself.”  While you can try telling other people how amazing you or your services are, it’s not nearly as effective as when other people share their story of how great you are.  Whether you get this from your customers via short testimonials or in-depth case studies, be sure to extract the story and emotion by answering the following questions:

• What was their challenge before you got involved and how was it negatively impacting them?
• What was their experience working with you, your product, and/or your staff?
• What was the end result and how did it positively impact them?

Example:  John Smith Uses My Book To Win Tomato Growing Contest

3.  Guru By Association

Find widely recognized authorities in your industry and record interviews with them.  By doing so, you can immediately inject yourself as a player in your niche and set yourself apart from your competition.  In addition, if the people you are interviewing let their “fans” know about the interview, you get instant exposure and credibility with a previously untapped audience.

Another way you can get credibility is to by attending big industry events such as seminars and tradeshows and providing video updates of your thoughts and experiences during the event.

Example:  My Interview with Top Tomato Grower Jane Smith At The Annual National Convention

By using these types of video content you’ll increase your value in your niche, differentiate yourself from your competition, and rise up as an authority in the market.

For additional information and techniques to leverage video marketing, you can download my Hypnotic Video Marketing Secrets eBook.