Mastering Brand Impact Video Strategies for B2B Success with Didier Le Miere

Mastering Brand Impact Video Strategies for B2B Success. In this episode of Biz Bites, we look under the hood at the influence of video in marketing and the important role it can play in connecting with your audience and ultimately driving more people to your business. I’m joined by a thought leader in this brand story film space, Didier from Fixon Media Group, and you’re going to get some vital insights into how to influence your brand impact.

Through subtle engaging video content, you’ll discover the importance of aligning visuals with brand messaging and get actionable tips for small businesses to harness video marketing effectively. We’re going to discuss everything from what you can learn from the big brands to how you can implement on a budget.

Stay tuned for this episode of Biz Bites.

Hello everyone. Welcome to Biz Bites again, and we have a very special guest. I’m really excited about this because it’s an area that I’ve been endlessly fascinated in because it goes alongside of what we do in terms of audio production. We’re going to talk a little bit about video and the influence of video generally in marketing terms with Didier.

Welcome to the program. Anthony, thank you for having me. How’s things? Yeah. Very good. Look, I think what we should do first of all, is get you to introduce yourself to the audience and tell a little bit about what it is that you do. Certainly. So I run Fixon Media Group, which is a small little video production company down in Melbourne.

And we specialise in the production of brand story films. So what a brand story film is. Some people call it a modern day commercial. So you think back to the past decades, what a commercial looks like. It’s fast, it’s in your face, there’s graphics bouncing around everywhere. It’s very intrusive to your watching and to your viewing in your everyday life in general.

So what we’ve found is that A lot of brands and in particular the customers of these brands, they don’t want to be intruded anymore. They want to go about their life as an everyday without being bombarded with advertisements because we see 50 to 400 advertisements every single day on average. How does a brand then communicate what they need to communicate to their customers?

If customers are held back and they don’t want to be intruded by advertisements. So this is where the brand story film comes in. You communicate your message to your customers, but you do it in a way that is subconscious and unobtrusive. Yeah. I think it’s really important for people to understand who maybe listening in who get the idea of marketing and maybe you’ve heard about brand and brand story, but I think that the.

What people don’t fully under appreciate is that you have to break it up in. There’s the written message. If you like, there’s that core thing that many people focus most of their attention on, what are we going to do to summarize who our brand is and what it’s about, then there’s the way that you talk about it, which most people think in terms of a pitch, particularly because they’re the opportunities you get, particularly at a networking style function.

But of course there are opportunities around here around podcasting is another good example. But then the visual is quite a different element again, it’s a different layer. So I look at it and go that the text version is the non personality one, the audio one brings in the personality.

The visual just takes it to a different level, doesn’t it? Because visuals it’s not even people aren’t even listening as intently to the words as much as they are absorbing what they’re seeing on screen. 100 percent correct. And you’ve described perfectly the three types of learning styles, right?

The three types of learning behaviors, the written form, reading, the audio form in listening, and then the video, which is watching and learning and seeing it happen in front of you. And then you’ve got the fourth side of things as well, which is the hands on, and that’s even better for learning. So when 65 percent of the population more inclined to be video based learners, visual learners, or hands on learners, then there’s a huge opportunity for businesses to be using video and workshops even to another degree to improve the knowledge of their, the user base and engage their customers as opposed to the written form and the audio form, which of course do both have incredibly influential parts of marketing too these days.

I have a background of having worked in television for a little while and television news. And one of the things that really fascinated me about the transition from working in radio to working in television was that in radio you could report things immediately and you could definitely talk about anything.

Yeah, obviously legally speaking, but you could talk about it. You could talk about anything. Whereas the problem with television is that you can only do stuff. That you can see. So if you can’t see it, you can’t really report on it because people need to see that visual, which I always found fascinating because it’s really talking to the pictures rather than, as I said, in the audio based medium where you’re creating pictures with your voice.

So it’s really quite an interesting flip on how that goes and how. In a sense, you’re almost restricted by it. Yeah, definitely. And it’s an interesting perspective there. You think of what we’re seeing on social media these days. I don’t go two seconds on Facebook without seeing a news.

com. au article pop up, and it’s just absolute rubbish journalism, but they can report on it because it’s in the written form and it’s easily consumable. And then you take that to the next level. You go on the radio and they’re talking about Davo’s called in from Perth and he’s got a story about the Huntsman in his.

And it’s we don’t need to hear about this, but you can report on it. And then you look at the TV news, and it’s gotta be the latest thing in the courtroom, or the latest murder, or whatever it is, because it’s got the visuals there. And it’s such a contrast between each of them. And is one or the other better?

Maybe not. But they each offer their own individual positives and their own individual negatives as well. I think the big thing about the visuals is that it’s what people are becoming more and more used to, obviously with social media, particularly as you raise their, people pick whichever platform you prefer, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, whatever it is, we’re driven by the visuals and it’s what makes you turn on to want to, Whether it’s read, listen or watch something, the visuals play an important part, but particularly particularly video based, platforms like TikTok and even Facebook and Instagram these days are driven largely by video feeds.

They are. And. I think a lot of brands when they look at social media, they think about, Oh, we need to jump on the different trends and what forth. We hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Bites podcast. Have you ever thought about having your own podcast, one for your business, where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world?

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So come talk to us, podcastdoneforyou. com. au details in the show notes below. Now back to Biz Bites. I think a lot of brands, when they look at social media, they think about We need to jump on the different trends and what forth and I always go back to what’s the message that you’re wanting to share To your customers and are the customers actually on this platform because there’s no use trying to put out Different forms of video across each of these platforms if your customers aren’t actually there and the real opportunity lies Where your customers are so there’s no use jumping on as many platforms as you possibly can There’s this platforms coming out every second week at the moment.

You don’t have to jump on them You can just stay where you are. If that’s where your customers aren’t, you don’t have to jump on TikTok and YouTube if they’re not there. Yeah. And I think also the challenge with whether they’re there or not is also about whether they’re there for that purpose, because I think you could argue that there are, for example, we’re targeting.

Professional services, business leaders and thought leaders. Are they on TikTok? I’d be crazy to think that they’re not on TikTok at all. There’s definitely going to be a percentage of them on TikTok, but are they on TikTok to think about business? I would argue not. We don’t position ourselves on TikTok for that reason.

It’s a reason why, you know, as a business, I put more energy into LinkedIn than any of the other platforms because it is fundamentally a business based platform. And I think that’s part of it as well, isn’t it? That. It’s that some of these feeds in these videos are really about trying to escape as opposed to doing business.

So you’re right. You have to choose the right place for the right audience. Yeah. And there’s probably validity in going on the likes of TikTok and Instagram. If your customers aren’t. 100 percent there for the purpose of being in that frame of mind where they’re wanting to learn or be educated in the professional services space, definitely.

But of course, there is going to be that percentage, as you touched on, that are on these platforms. So maybe the occasional post, which is a bit more informative, educational, like you would post with WhatLeadership on LinkedIn, maybe there is an opportunity there. But then you can also look at the other side of things is if they’re 95%, they’re predominantly going to be looking to consume entertaining content to, as you said, escape the world that they’re in currently.

And then can you as a brand position yourselves without going too crazy, jumping on trends and what for still maintain your brand essence. Can you position yourself in a way that. Can create this entertaining and engaging content that could be the outlier for your customer. But they go on there, they see your brand, they’re escaping from their world, but they’re also building a bit more of a connection with your brand in doing so.

That’s probably the ideal situation to be in. Yeah, it’s absolutely, it’s different for every business, right? It depends what business you’re in and who the audience is that you’re trying to attract and for what purpose. That’s something that every. Everyone has to consider.

And it all goes back down to the brand story, right? When you’re trying to write that it’s about understanding the audience in the first place and where they hang out, because whatever you build, whether it is text, audio, video is going to be. dependent on who they are and where they are. Correct.

And brand story, it’s definitely a term that has popped up more so in the past five to 10 years or so, as opposed to previously, and there would definitely be terminologies that would relate to what a brand story of today is. But I think the key message there is you really need to understand what it is about your business that connects you to.

The ideal customer that you have as your avatar there, because it’s those core values and those core beliefs that you hold that a competitor may not hold that really make you different. And we talk about in business all the time. You’ve got to be different. You’ve got to have your key points of difference.

And that can be, that’s fantastic. But the real connection then comes from what you believe in and what you value. I like to use the example of all of our friends that we have around us. The reason that we’re friends with them is because. At a core level at base level. There’s something that we connect with them on whether that be through sport or Literature or whatever it is.

We’ve got some form of connection there So we can bring that into business as well as a business if you value Let’s take a brand Qantas, for example I don’t know if they’ve had some negative pr in the past 12 18 months, of course, but at the core they value Connection and they value families and bringing them all together so if I as a customer look at Qantas and I see that in their marketing and in particular their video marketing where that emotion can be so easily conveyed as opposed to audio or the text if I see that I’m going to be a lot more convinced that I need to go with there as opposed to a brand like Virgin which Through the advertisements it’s a little bit more funky, it’s a bit more pop, they’ve got the pinks and the purples coming in everywhere, and it’s a bit more of a funny environment.

If I lean that way then 100 percent I’ll go version, but if I’m looking for more of that connection and that, that family orientated approach, then I’m going to lean towards conscious a bit more. I want to explore this a bit more, but I just want to point out to people that are listening in. What we’re going to do is bring it back to what you can do, particularly as a smaller brand, because it’s all very well to talk about your Qantas’s and these people who have, multi million dollar advertising budgets that they can do lots of different things.

If you’re a small business, that’s a little bit harder, you’re not operating on the same scale, but there is stuff that we can learn from that and bring back to those small business and make it You know, do things like what you’re doing in a more affordable fashion. But I think what’s really interesting about what you’re talking about is that, that these big brands spend a lot of time trying to create a story.

And I think the great example is probably two great examples for me is this. The banks often like to tell a story about family or business, depending on who they’re trying to target. And so you see these wonderful ads where they try to have everyday people and tell a bit of a story in a 32nd bit. The other ones that I think are really obvious to me.

Car ads. It’s the minute they choose who is going to be in the car is the story that they start to tell. Because if you see a, let’s say, a 20, 30 something year old female driving a car, the likelihood that the 50 year old male is going to want that same car is going to be lessened because the visual relationship is with someone who’s younger and female.

And so those choices are very deliberate. And why you see at times that they’ll marry the two that probably won’t put a 20 year old. Don’t tend to put a 20 year old male with a, sorry, 10 year old female with a 50 year old man. Although interestingly enough, I do recall, and I can’t remember which brand it was, but there is certainly a, an ad out there at the moment, which shows a family growing with a car to the point where the, I think the P plates are going on or that they’re taking to a, clearly taking to something where there’s a band and they’re putting a whole lot of equipment in there so that the child has.

Grown older and it’s potentially then driving the car and there are variations of people, male and female sharing utes and I always find those things are endlessly fascinating about the story that they’re trying to tell in a very short space of time and very conscious of who they’re putting in the vehicle.

I 100 percent agree, Anthony, and car advertisements for me, when I look at them. They’ve got some parts of it which is amazing and then other parts I look at and I think they probably should be doing things a little bit differently there and the connection side of things and the relatability side of things that you touched on just there is what they do incredibly well and even to the degree of A situation that is by no means relatable at all, you think of the old Toyota Hilux commercial back in the day where the car falls off the cliff and then it ends up in the water and he’s on the beach and he finds it again.

Obviously that’s not going to happen to anyone and if it did it would be one out of a trillion chances of that happening. But the message there is the connection to the car, the connection to the brand, the love of the Hilux and all the benefits that it brings with that. That, that, that purchase of a car.

That’s what they do incredibly well, not just Toyota, but across the board at all the car brands. But then the side of things that they don’t do so well is they still lean towards that older day method of, this is a commercial. Because they’re all the same at the end of the day. A person jumps in the car.

They turn on the ignition, they start driving through water, or forest land, or bumpy roads, or whatever the situation is, and then they have a shot at the end of the film where it’s just six cars in a row, and the brand’s logo on there. So from the start, you still kinda know that it’s a commercial, and you know it’s a car commercial, but they do an incredibly good job.

Of bringing that tone down a little bit by introducing the female 30 year old driver or the retired grandparents taking on IKEA or something like that. And they bring that brand essence in, in that way. They do that incredibly well, but the commercial side of things, making it not so much of a commercial, they still got room for improvement there, I think.

Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because essentially what they’re doing is he’s making. The vehicle that they’re promoting aspirational and aspirational in the sense of people wanting to relate to the circumstance, whether it’s it used to be driving fast, which they can’t legally do anymore unless they’re putting it on an actual racetrack, but it’s.

That whole scenery, that idea of, having a road to yourself and driving along, or whether it’s, four wheel driving or taking the kids down to the beach or whatever the relatability section of it is. And of course they then, as you say, often tie it back in the end going if you think that this is, Too aspirational.

We’ve actually got a range. You, this might be the top of the range, one that you’re looking at here, but there is a range. So trying to bring people in nevertheless regardless of whether they think it’s looking too expensive, because I find that’s the really interesting challenge when you look at some of what traditionally have been lower end brands.

And I think key is a great example and something that I’d encourage people who are listening in right now to have a think about, because Kia’s undergone a huge transition because when Kia came into the market, I don’t know how many years ago, it really was the base brand, it was if you’re just think, I just need a car to get me from A to B, and I hope that it’s going to work for a few years, then, That was Kia.

But Kia is not in that category anymore. It’s helped by the fact that there have been multiple other brands that have entered the market since then. But if you look at the way Kia has positioned itself now, it’s trying to up The impression of the brand that it is much more, it’s much more of an accepted quality brand and that they can be inventive and leading in certain areas so that way they can charge for that as well.

But it’s a nice balance, isn’t it? Because no key is not going to say they’re Mercedes Benz. And I don’t believe that they’re trying to get to that level off what you would expect to pay for a vehicle. But it’s interesting how that transition has happened, and that even with their branding, if you were to, Google it and look back at their logo at what it started up and where it is now, you look at the where they enter the market in the ads and where their ads are now.

They’re vastly different in the shape of the cars and the things that they’re doing with it are incredibly different. So I love that what the visual does. As well as anything else is it really helps that transition of brands because often that happens in business, whatever size you’re at, that there are, you don’t necessarily always stay aimed at the same segment or that segment may grow and alter.

So there are other opportunities. And I think it’s a great example to see how that. Transitions and happens. I agree. And if we compare those three formats, written audio, visual, and the, their ability to convey a transformation of a brand, I’ll use the example. There’s a guy that I follow on LinkedIn and every week I see his posts pop up.

And I feel like every three or four weeks, he’s got a different headline and he’s got a different message. I think it’s my stuff that he just pivot again, every four weeks. And it’s in that written form, so that’s all I’m seeing, and I’m getting very confused every time I see this different message pop up.

That’s a very small example, but if there was a video that conveyed a transformation, as a watcher of that, as a viewer of that, I’d probably be a bit more understanding of why the transformation has occurred, and why the pivot has occurred. And maybe he’s not pivoting every four weeks, and maybe there’s a reason behind changing that message every couple of weeks.

But if there is a major transformation, having that video there to convey that message of what’s the reason behind this, why is this happening, how does this change my relationship with you as a customer or a potential customer, how does that change that relationship, it’d be a lot more easier to understand and a lot more easy to communicate.

As opposed to doing it in that written form where there’s lots of room for interpretation and lots of room for misunderstanding. Yeah. And it’s interesting that you say that as well, because I think there’d be plenty of people who are out there listening at the moment who have either been involved or are involved or about to be involved in a transformation of a brand.

And that happens on many levels. So often it’s a change in ownership of a business. Or there’s an opportunity to move as I, I’ve worked with a brand a couple of years ago now, and they’ve just undergone the final part of the transition. So we’d mapped it out where initially that they had started with, okay.

That had a brand that was a sub brand for them. That was really a product more than a brand that mother rather than a master brand they’ve. They wanted to transition that to that being the master brand. But what they did was the tagline for that became the old brand name. So it was still that people could see the relationship between the two.

And there was a degree of. Being comfortable in being able to transition completely to removing that link to the old brand almost completely in the footer of their letterhead. It still has a reference to it because it’s a the registered entity. But other than that. They’ve transitioned completely out of it now.

And it does. And sometimes that does take time. And sometimes people walk in and can just change overnight because that’s necessary. Completely changing. Restaurants are a classic case for that because, one restaurant shuts down, a new one opens. They don’t want anything to do with the old ones.

New name, new logo, new menu. It’s a new restaurant, but sometimes there’s a change in management and it undergoes a slow change in doing that. And that happens in all types of businesses as well. And I think that visual those little things and explainers as you talk about are really important for people to understand.

What is happening because initially in the particular case I talked about was to reassure people that, Hey, we’re still the same people we’re just think that this better represents who we are and what we’re about. Get used to it for a little while. And then there’s a point where, Hey, you’ve become really used to it.

We’re just going full on now this, and we think that our new tagline is this. And by the time you’ve introduced the new tagline, you don’t even have to remember the original brand anymore because people have got so used to the master brand. Yeah, definitely. And I think one of the recent examples of a transformation or a brand that we can look at, and this is again, a very big brand, but let’s bring it down to the more small business level Jaguar, what a mishap of a brand transformation that they’ve had over the past couple of weeks, they’ve gone from this somewhat premium brand car brand, and they’ve introduced this completely off putting forefront of a brands that people were just like, Hey, this is a car brand anymore.

Like what’s going on here. And I think the lesson for small businesses that Jaguar have gone away from what built their brand and as important as it is to occasionally have to transform and change yourself and pivot, I think you still need to bring the core of the brand previously and keep bringing that.

As you move forward, even if it’s only a small little piece of that, bring that in there. And I don’t think Jaguar have done that with their new transformation. They’ve gone completely to the opposite side of the spectrum in terms of potential branding opportunities. And they’ve gone from this brand that people respect and recognize and think, this is quite quality.

And they’ve gone from premium and they’ve gone right down the bottom of people’s minds to thinking, are you premium anymore? Or are you entry level? Cause that’s what the branding looks like now. So the message there is, sorry, yeah, the message there is, where’s the 5 percent from previous, where, what have you taken from previous and brought it into the current day?

I can’t see it. And maybe you’ve got another opinion on that, Anthony, but where’s the continuity of the brand? Yeah, I think that it’s a case of sometimes people get too close to brands and you can see that what’s happened in a lot of cases. And there are some classic cases over the years where brands have transformed and it might just be a logo rather than the full brand story.

And someone internally has thought that it was a good idea and it’s suddenly it’s. gone wrong or they’ve not enabled enough of their audience to give an interpretation of it to understand whether this is the right thing or the wrong thing. And they release it and suddenly they have to backtrack a couple of weeks later because they realize they’ve made a big mistake.

And I think it’s one of the lessons that I would give to people in business. And I’m sure you’d echo this is that the P once you decide on some changes to your brand story, Don’t go and ask your family and friends whether it’s a good idea or not. And yes, ask your team about it, but you really need to get some research from your core audience.

Let them decide for you. If your audience is a particular group of people, grab some of those people that you trust, have conversations with them. Yes, you can. If you can afford it, do proper market research. But if you can’t afford to do that, you can have some very structured closed door conversations with a few people you trust, let them, don’t give them all of your biases presented to them and say, Hey, whether it’s a, whether it’s a video, whether it’s or whether it’s a logo say, Hey, we’re thinking of making some changes.

I’m not going to say anything, give us your reaction because the minute you say anything, you bias them and you don’t want to say, Oh, this is our choice or anything else. Just let them go because so many mistakes can be avoided by doing that. And there’ve been some classics over the years where people have got their logos completely wrong, where there are amusing cases where they’ve got them so wrong that people have seen things in the logo that for some unknown reason people internally didn’t see.

And they definitely can’t go forward with those brands because there’s a, serious mistake in what people are visually seeing. But there are also ones where people just look at it and they go, why? I don’t like it. Why would you change what’s been iconic? And so you do see a lot of brands that.

If they want to make some changes or become a little bit more modern, the refinements are minimal. If you go back and you look at Woolies is a good example you know how that brand has changed over the years is subtle. It’s, if you were to go back and look at Woolies, 40 years ago to today, yes, there’s a significant difference, but if you track it over the last sort of 10 years, year by year, there are.

Subtle little changes that they’ve brought in, which is just modernize the brand without it being dramatically different from where it began. Just a nice modern approach to it. But then there are ones that trans transition and you just go, Oh my goodness, what have you done? And so it’s an interesting exercise and as marketers, we get too close to brands as well.

So sometimes we also have to take a step back, 100 percent taking that step back and be so positive just having a different perspective on things And I love that example that you just provided there. Don’t show your family and your friends your thoughts on changes It’s no different to when you’re starting off a business.

Why go and ask your friends and your family Hey, what do you think of this new venture that i’m going on? Of course, they’re gonna say it’s good because they’re there to support they don’t want to let you down, right? Go and find 10 50 100 if you can thousands of people and test out That’s that theory get them to do a pre sign up get them to give them your their debit card as a a prepayment to say, yes I’m actually interested in this and I would purchase this because that’s going to be your true market research to say, okay, this is a viable option going forward or it’s not, and bringing it back to the brand transformation, the same thing, find a small little minute audience, test it out there.

Is it going to be viable? Yes. Let’s move forward. If it’s not, let’s take a step back, rethink, see if we can bring some other perspectives in and then make the change going forward. I think color is one of the biggest things that sees people unravel. Often I’ve seen it and been part of it where people internally, and it could be the CEO, it could be the business owner, it could just be senior management have said, Oh, but I really like this color and.

I’m like, yeah, but you are not the target audience. So what you like, even if you are the business owner may not be relevant at all, because if your audience is X and your Y, your opinion matters very little in that sense. And that’s a difficult thing to do as a business owner sometimes, because you have to, throw out your own opinions.

because you’re not the target audience. And I think, and that same can be said for family and friends more often than not, they’re not the target audience for your business. So if they’re not the target audience for your business, then unfortunately their opinion counts for nothing. And that is a difficult thing to get across with people because how many times have we all heard it in marketing going?

Yeah, but my wife says, Oh, but my, and it’s. Yes, but in a polite as possible way, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter one bit and colors are really interesting area. When I was first getting my business organized and probably still to today, I got so engrossed in color theory and the psychology behind colors.

And even when we’re doing. Video production stay for different brands. Color is still such a big part of that. You can see in the background here I’ve got my little blue light hanging there. You’ve got your purples behind you there And you’ve got the blue coming through the window up to your left side there Every color’s got a different meaning to it and That needs to be considered when undergoing a brand transformation, or producing a video, putting a text copy out, or a photograph, whatever it is.

It’s all got a subtle meaning behind it, and it’s all going to be interpreted by your customers in a specific way. And look, ultimately there’s going to be, if you’ve got a thousand people in your audience, there’s going to be a thousand different opinions on what that color means to them. But you can group them under certain specific areas and say, okay, this is going to be in the 90 percent dominant thought and message behind it.

That’s what we need to lean into and do we like that? Do we want that to be attributed to our brands? Maybe not. So let’s go for different color. Blues have got a big trust factor behind it. Green’s got a really renewing and, and growing meaning behind it. You think about, trees and bushes.

They’re all green and plants, right? So it’s got this growth element behind it. Do we want to lean into that? And again, this goes back to, who’s your customer, what do they think, what are they going to be interpreting your business of, and your brand of. Based on the colors here and it comes out in all the media that you put forward and you can own a color as well.

As we’ve seen with some brands where and no matter how outrageous that color can be sometimes on them, if you own it and you get associated with it, it triggers your memory to to going back to that. And certainly I see certain colors and it immediately triggers a brand. I wanted to bring this back to smaller businesses and perhaps a little bit more about what you’re.

How your business operates because you’re doing a lot of videos from what I’ve seen that are much more for Local brands and and doing ads and things for them. So tell me a little bit, firstly, how important do you think it is for smaller brands to still have a video presence and for that video presence to actually be Managed in a particular way that it’s not just someone editing something using their phone and doing something decent because there is a, there is an inclination for people to do that because they’ve got this tool in their pocket that they think that there’s suddenly they’re a videographer.

So how do you combat that spending money on video production and how affordable is it for smaller businesses to do? I think if we look at the small business side of things, there’s very much a. Demand out there and we see it across social media and linkedin etc. Etc. You have to be doing a video and Even though I’m from the video background.

I don’t think that is the case I don’t think you have to do it if you’re a small business and you’ve only got one two Maybe you know three people involved in the business. You probably don’t have the time to actually go out and produce videos yourself and that’s okay. And maybe you don’t have that skill and that ability to do that either.

So look at where you’re best placed to be doing your marketing. Do you have a really good copy ability? If that’s the case then focus on your blog posts and writing articles and what forth. If you’ve got more of a And audio background and podcast is probably the best way to go about it. And if you’ve got the time and you’ve got the ability to do video, then go for video.

So I don’t think it’s a case of you have to do it as a small business. If you’ve got the time and you’ve got the resources to do it, then by all means do it. Going back to what you first asked the question there. How they go about doing that. I think your phone is definitely more than capable. And for small business where marketing resources are incredibly limited, there’s probably not much of a reason to go to someone like myself, who’s a professional and pay for those services when you can achieve 80 percent of the results.

On your own and it’s that last 20 percent where you do need to get a professional in to get that final little result that you’re after. So what that 80 percent would look like is if you’re producing videos for Instagram as an example, then you’re going to want to know the platform inside out. You’re going to want to know what are the best practices for posting reels.

You need to know what time your audience is going to be on there, or around about what time they’re going to be on there. You need to understand the message that your brain is putting forward, what you value, what you believe in, how you can connect with people. You’ve got to understand that you’ve got to get a hook in the first three seconds of the video to get people engaged.

That hook can be a visual hook, it can be a text hook, it can be the type of captions that you use, a whole different range of things. And if you can understand. All of those metrics and variables first off, then you can achieve 80 percent of the results and you can get the following, you can get the views, you can get the engagement.

And look, I’ll be completely honest, the views and the engagement, the follows, they’re really not that important at the end of the day. They’re vanity metrics. The real results are they coming through your website? They’re contacting you, they’re purchasing from you. That’s what we’re really wanting to track, but you can still achieve 80 percent of those results by doing everything yourself using the best practices.

And I think that’s probably really important to be clear about is you don’t have to go and pay for a professional to come in and do all of it. Once you achieve those 80 percent of those results yourself, and you can’t go any further because you actually do need to go to that next level now, then go to that next level.

Because by the time you get there, you’ve probably got the resources available to invest. Without it being too much of a hit on your profit margins. I think the big lesson for business owners is really that a lot of websites. are devoid of personality. And there’s only so much you can do in written text and often video is a great way to introduce that personality because people do business with people and That is, yes, despite all of the advance of AI coming in and they’re doing all sorts of things these days, including, selling to you and all the rest of it.

But when it comes down to it, in most of the businesses that are probably listening into this show is that you’re very much service driven. And if you’re a service driven business, you’re a people driven business, and therefore people want to see who the people are behind it, because how do you differentiate yourself from one business to the next is really about the people, the experiences and the stories, which gets back down to the brand story and being able to convey that.

And what I would ask is that. If you’ve got some tips for people who are wanting to convey a brand story, because it’s not, it is an art form to be able to do that, and yes, we talked about the multi million dollar budgets of the car companies and the Qantas’s and banks and all the rest of it.

And. They spend a lot of time and money and trying to get a brand story done in a 30 second ad or a series of 30 second ads. If you’re a smaller business, you don’t have that luxury and you may not have the expertise at hand. So are there some tips and tricks that people can have for getting a brand story across in a Small amount of time.

Definitely. So we could go really in depth to this. So I’ll keep it at the service level for now, if you look at what the big brands are doing in terms of their video marketing, they’ve got the longer form pieces, which are maybe 60 to 90 seconds, if not longer. And then they’ve got the really shorter form pieces, which are going on their social media.

And it’s like a top down approach. They have the big videos as I do first, and then the shorter form content comes from that. But amongst that. That funnel down, if you want to call it that, the same four variables are coming up time and time again, and these four variables can be answered by any size of business and made relative to that size of business and what they sell.

So the first question that is always worth asking is, what is it? That you actually sell as a business. What is it you actually sell? I love using a restaurant as an example because it’s a really easy business to understand. A restaurant doesn’t sell food. That’s the surface level. We want to go below the surface.

We want to really dig deep and what is it that you actually sell as a business. The restaurant, what they really sell is a location. A place for people to connect with each other, for families to come and connect, for friends for dates, etc. It’s a place for people to come and connect. And look, this is generalised, every restaurant you can give the same answer for.

But this is a really good starting point, and just Get people thinking about things. So what do you really sell as a business? What’s your true product or service? That’s the first question from there. It’s what is the impact of your business? And this is where it goes a little bit more individualized and unique because you’re going to have a different impact than what.

Your competitor will have a different business in another state, whatever the situation is. So what is the true impact of your business? And that’s going to stem from what is your product or service going generalized again, with the restaurant idea, what’s the potential impact while the impact is. A grandparent, they come from overseas to visit their grandchildren for the first time, they’ve never seen them before, because they’ve been overseas for six years, and they can connect in that restaurant, and they can make them for the first time, and they can have that experience.

That’s an example of an impact there, a very generalized example again, but you can see where that The final is coming. The third question is then what are the associated emotions of that? And it’s the emotions that you’re wanting to aim to convey through your videos. Whether it be a longer form brand story film or in those shorter content pieces.

What are the emotions? Going back to that impact, there’s going to be a lot of joy. There’s going to be a lot of elation. There’s going to be a lot of happiness. That’s the after. That’s after the impact has been experienced. Then there’s also the emotions of beforehand. And the before is probably more important because this is where you’re going to be able to hook people in, really get them engaged in your business.

The before is, there’s going to be a fair bit of guilt in there, it’s, they’re going to feel guilty that they’ve been away from their family for so long, they haven’t been able to welcome their grandkids into the world for six years. That’s pretty guilty, you’re going to be feeling pretty bad about yourself.

There’s probably a little bit of anger, there’s probably a little bit of sadness, sorrow. These are the emotions that you can use. In your shorter form pieces to create a story that hooks people in and gets them engaged in what they’re watching and then finally the fourth question and this is for me probably the most important aspect of all four is what are the core values and beliefs that your business holds because as we touch on at the start of the episode.

It’s this, it’s these connections and these, sorry, it’s these values and these beliefs that connect you to your customers and vice versa. And if you can identify those and find someone that holds those beliefs to a similar degree to you, then they’re going to be the perfect customer for your brand. So that’s probably the four questions I would ask for any size of business to start on this journey of video marketing.

What Is it a true product or service? What are the impacts of it? What are the associated emotions both before and after experiencing that impact? And then finally, what are your core values and your beliefs as a business? Fantastic. There’s so much value in, in what you’ve talked about just there. I want to point out to people that we’re going to leave some contact information, of course, as we always do in the show notes and also particularly some some show reels for Didi and what he’s done, particularly it’s a, there’s been some community type businesses that you’ve worked with as well as small businesses.

So there’s a lot of examples there of what you can do. And I think whether you end up being able to work with. With Didier or you just get some ideas from that. I think it’s fantastic. And I know there’s a a fact sheet that people can also get access to through that. If you just want to explain what that is we’ll include the link in the show notes.

Definitely. So it’s like a little cheat sheet, if you will, to, to video marketing, the 10 best practices that you can implement straight away. And that can be downloaded from our website fixonmedia. com. au. It just gives you a little rundown of the best practices. So it’s got ideas like use a call to action.

Don’t use your product and service as the main, variable in your marketing. Try and go a little bit deeper. It’s very basic tips, but they’re incredibly important because most businesses don’t do it. They don’t do the simple things. They try and go from level one to level 10 straight away. But as you touched on earlier with Woolworths, Instead of doing that massive transformation, they’ve done bit by bit by bit over the years.

So that’s probably the lesson for a lot of businesses is You can’t get to level 10 straight away when you’re at level 1 You’ve got to go level 1 to 2 to 3 So yeah, have a read through of that And if you want to learn anything further from there, then yeah Please do reach out be more than happy to share any information that you’d like to hear Fantastic.

I’ve got a final question I’m going to ask you in a minute, but just a reminder to everyone as well as all of those links in the show notes the way that Didi and I connected originally was through LinkedIn and and that’s a great place if you want to hang out with either of us and and see some of the things that we’re posting all the time you’ll get lots of great tips and things on there.

Also you’ve got your own podcast as well. So a quick shout out to that, to, to that what’s the name of the podcast? So people can have a listen in as well. Yeah. Thanks, Anthony. Marketing for the modern brand. So we interview a number of guests across marketing and branding across Australia.

And each week we’re diving into their specific individual area of expertise within marketing and branding and really diving into the juices of their expertise. Fantastic. I love it. Obviously I’m a bit biased as far as marketing is concerned, but it’s great to have you part of Biz Bites, which really continues to try and bring thought leaders to to the fore and and give people those little one percenters that can make a difference to their business.

So on that note, the final question that I have for you is just. What is the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they would have in advance? The aha moments?

I think a lot of it is to do with

The messaging side of things and that you don’t have to be flashy in people’s face all the time. You can get the same results by being a little bit more laid back, a little bit more subconscious and just being subtle through your communication to them. I think that’s probably the big aha moment that the days of being flashy and in people’s faces have gone.

People are sick of it. I’m sick of it. You’re sick of it. You’re and your listeners are sick of it. We can get the same result as a business by. Being subtle, being respectful and just engaging with people, connecting with people. And that’s a buzzword going around at the moment, connection and authenticity.

But there’s a reason for it. It’s because people are craving it. And the more we can lean into that as a business, the more success that there’s going to be. Fantastic. Really appreciate that. There’s some great insights. I hope everyone listening in has enjoyed that taking a lot of notes. down because there’s certainly some things that you can do with your brand at a local level that can make a real difference to it by just implementing some of these ideas.

So thank you so much for being so generous with your time and really appreciate you coming on the program on BizBytes. Anthony, thank you so much. It’s been phenomenal. And yeah, really looking forward to hearing more about what you’re coming up with over the coming year. So thank you. Appreciate it.

And thanks everyone for listening in. Of course, stay tuned for the next episode of this. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by Podcasts Done For You, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance.

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