How to Boost Conversions and Build Trust with Landing Page Videos [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 54]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Lindsey Auten
0:00:00
Everyone who has a website has forms on their websites and they want to get more form submissions. They wanna be talking to more people. Well, we have found that this is a great way to engage with more people and build trust to actually get people to fill out that form

Lindsey Auten
0:00:16
on their website.

Alex Winter
0:00:17
Join us for Impact Live 2024 in Hartford, Connecticut this October 14th through the

Alex Winter
0:00:27
16th. Over three days, business owners, CEOs, and marketing and sales leaders will learn proven strategies to drive business growth. Attend expert-led sessions on marketing, sales, leadership, and AI, and get a chance to network with industry pros just like yourself. Discover how companies like yours are dominating their markets. Secure your spot at impactplus.com backslash impact-5. And for all of our endless customers

Alex Winter
0:01:01
listeners, we have an exclusive discount code that'll save you a hundred bucks. So when you're on the checkout page, just enter the code ECPOD100 in all caps for a hundred dollars off. We'll see you there at Impact Live 2024 up in Hartford October 14th through the 16th. Welcome back to Endless Customers. My name is Alex Winter and today we are joined by Lindsay Otten who is a content and video co-chair at Impact. Lindsay, welcome back to the show. Hi, it's been a while. Thanks for having me again.

Lindsey Auten
0:01:28
It's our pleasure. It has been a while. It's been too long and we're really happy to have you back.

Alex Winter
0:01:32
Today we're talking about a really good topic and it's something that may seem simple but it's really not simple because you can get it wrong and it's something that people need to get right because it's so critical it's so important we're talking about landing page videos so I think a good place to start is what is a landing page video for people who don't know and then we can get into the specifics of what's good what's not good do's don'ts all that types of stuff so let's kick things

Lindsey Auten
0:01:58
off Lindsay with what is a landing page video. Absolutely so a landing page video, let's be very clear with like when we say a landing page, what that means. So anytime someone refers to a landing page video specifically, they're referring to a video that lives on a page that has a form associated with it. So any opportunity someone has to pass along their information to you in the form of a form, in the medium of a form on their website.

Lindsey Auten
0:02:33
That is what we're referring to when I say landing page. So the video that lives on that page is exactly that. It's a video that goes next to your form, preferably above the fold, so meaning when the page loads, you see the video and you see the form.

Lindsey Auten
0:02:51
They should be together. And they should go together, and it should be very clear of, like, this is, these two things are made for each other, kind of thing. So, landing page video is basically just a video

Lindsey Auten
0:03:03
that lives on a form, where if someone were to land on that page, they can give you their information.

Alex Winter
0:03:10
So, it definitely sounds like it's critical to have a video with a form fill. So whenever someone's on your site or whenever you're trying to gather information from a potential client, it sounds like it makes it easier or more welcoming for somebody on the user end

Alex Winter
0:03:25
of the spectrum to see a video and to start to build trust. Can you talk through a little bit of what that looks like and how it does that?

Lindsey Auten
0:03:31
Yeah, so Alice, if you think about a time where you've been asked to fill out a form or you're on a website and you get to the landing page and you want to fill out the form, or you don't want to fill out the form, I would venture to guess that most of the pages that you land on where it's give us your email

Lindsey Auten
0:03:49
or give us your phone number, you probably don't end up going through with that unless you absolutely have to, or if they're just asking for an email, like if you're trying to download something and you don't want to give them your real email, you have like a fake email or a catch all email

Lindsey Auten
0:04:05
that you give, like your junk email sort of. So what has happened since email has become a thing is that people use it as a primary form of contact. And we've now started seeing with the customer I talked to today, they mentioned they would like to receive texts as well. So if I, let's say, I'm on a form and I kind of want this information,

Lindsey Auten
0:04:35
but I don't really want to give them my real email or my real phone number, then I could use that spam email address, and then your marketing communications just get lost. Well, what people really do or what people mean when they take that action to not put in the real email they want to use or the real phone number they want to use.

Lindsey Auten
0:04:58
They don't want to be spammed.

Alex Winter
0:05:00
That's what I was going to say. Most of the fear for me, I won't speak for everybody, but it's about spam. I don't want to have my inbox full of just junk and stuff that I don't need, want, or care about. It's trying to keep those guardrails up

Alex Winter
0:05:13
to not have that happen, basically.

Lindsey Auten
0:05:15
Or if you're a salesperson and you would like someone to call you or you would like to call someone, but you get this form fill and they don't give you a phone number because they don't want you calling them, that has to be frustrating on both ends. So, what else?

Alex Winter
0:05:32
No, there's been multiple times where I got to the form fill and it was a product or a service that I liked, wanted, or I needed, whatever the case was, but then the form was like basically signing away your firstborn child to the point where I'm like,

Alex Winter
0:05:43
I'm not giving you all this info, and I ended up falling off and I went somewhere else to try to find something that was a better solution for me. So, and I'm sure that happens a lot, to your point.

Lindsey Auten
0:05:52
Yeah. Oh yeah, but if you had a video on that form where it explains, okay, what is going to happen once you hit submit. That helps create trust that, okay, this company understands that I don't want to be spammed

Lindsey Auten
0:06:11
or I don't want to give them my phone number because I don't want to be called a million times by a phone number that I don't know, like it's a random area code. The thing is, creating that video can help break that barrier of this is a company that's just,

Lindsey Auten
0:06:31
I'm about to give them my information and I'm just going to get a bunch of stuff that I don't care about. But the video can help bridge that gap between here's what's going to happen versus what you think is going to happen.

Lindsey Auten
0:06:45
So that's why it's a critical video in our selling seven. Yeah, absolutely.

Alex Winter
0:06:50
And I think we've established why it's so important, but now let's talk, this is a perfect segue, now let's talk about what are the best practices, or what do you want to include in this video to get exactly the results you're talking about where you build trust, people aren't afraid

Alex Winter
0:07:04
that they're gonna get spammed, like, what does this video look like, or what are some of the top videos that look like that you've seen in the past?

Lindsey Auten
0:07:09
Yeah, so this is often a video that if someone is starting with me and they're like, Lindsey, we want to do video. My suggestion is always, great, let's make a landing page video for a few reasons. It's very simple and it's short. It should not, your landing page videos, if they're more than two minutes long,

Lindsey Auten
0:07:29
you're doing it wrong. So a landing page video should have these three elements. It should say what's going to happen once the form is filled out, what's not going to happen once the form is filled out, and then when you're filling out the form, what information do you have to include for the interaction that happens

Lindsey Auten
0:07:49
after you fill out the form for it to be successful? So if you have fields in your form that you've starred as required, but you know, oh, I'm getting a high bounce rate on this form fill, maybe it's because people don't want to fill out a field for whatever reason. So you include in that video

Lindsey Auten
0:08:09
like why the information is important. Again, but that should all be delivered under two minutes. So top three things just to reiterate, what's going to happen when you fill out the form, what's not going to happen when you fill out the form, and then what information do you need to provide for the interaction that happens

Lindsey Auten
0:08:27
after you fill out the form for it to be successful on both sides.

Alex Winter
0:08:31
Yeah, clear, direct, makes sense. Builds trust really fast. I like too that you start off, as you coach companies on this, you start off with this video. And I've never really heard that before, but it makes total sense when you say it

Alex Winter
0:08:43
because it isn't a super long video, it isn't a super complicated video. So if you're new to video or this is one of your first videos that you're creating or a piece of content like that, it's a great jumping off point. It really is. Compared to like trying to do a customer journey video or something that's way more involved with time and production and editing and all those things. So this is on, it almost feels so quick and easy that

Alex Winter
0:09:05
it could be like kind of like, oh, just mail it in, just get it done, check the box. So what do you recommend for people to, yes, it is easy, but like how do you also make it effective or like engaging and fun to watch? And do you maybe have some examples you could share of people that have done this well? Just to inspire our listeners and our viewers out there.

Lindsey Auten
0:09:23
Yeah, so quick, let's talk about what you shouldn't do in a landing page video or what drives me nuts if someone sends me a landing page video and it has this in it.

Alex Winter
0:09:30
I like it.

Lindsey Auten
0:09:31
First of all, do not. Do not tell me all about your product and why it's great and the reasons to buy and not to buy, that's a different video. That is, that's a different, different video. The reason the landing page video is so short and succinct

Lindsey Auten
0:09:46
is because it is the bottom of the funnel of your website. If someone's on that landing page, they have a high intent to buy. So you don't want to scare them off by creating this big, extensive video that explains everything.

Lindsey Auten
0:10:01
We're gonna get to that. We'll get to that later on. But we're building from the bottom and working our way up the funnel. So you don't want to create any additional friction points for someone to not buy from you. So how do you make a landing page video that was for a newsletter, a company newsletter.

Lindsey Auten
0:10:31
If you look at our website, our case study thorough care, they had a landing page video where their content manager was fake publishing an article, and he's like, just let me hit publish. And it was just like, it was funny. Like they made it funny, but then he said, so if you saw me hit publish, you know that this is a form for our newsletter, where you'll receive content

Lindsey Auten
0:10:55
that I've personally created and published, and this is what won't happen. It's just our newsletter, basically. So sign up for the newsletter. That was a fun take on the landing page.

Alex Winter
0:11:04
It did have a comedic aspect to it, and the guys at FederalCare are amazing, and they always think outside the box. And it's a fun video to check out. We'll have to drop a link in the description for people to see, but yeah, that's a great example.

Lindsey Auten
0:11:15
And I would say the classic example that I've referred to like the entire time that I've worked at Impact is the River Pools example. And what I love about that example is it's not, it's not a highly produced video. It's Christian literally walking around like selfie style

Lindsey Auten
0:11:32
with his camera. I don't know which camera he's using, but it could be, like the way it's shot, it looks like it could be a cell phone camera. He's walking, it's casual, it's laid back. It's an example I've used since I started here.

Lindsey Auten
0:11:46
And I will continue to use it because it shows that it doesn't have to be the highly produced video. It can be very approachable. It should be something that's quick and easy to publish, something that we can change easily. So I think that is the,

Lindsey Auten
0:12:05
and that also made it interesting. He's walking and talking at the same time. It doesn't have to be like, we come up with a big funny skit for our landing page video. It can be a simple walk and talk approach.

Lindsey Auten
0:12:17
It also has to be true to you as a company. If you're not the casual walk and talk company, for whatever reason, don't do that. Figure out what is your vibe, what is your, what's true to your brand, what do people love about working with your company

Lindsey Auten
0:12:36
and portray that in a landing page video. And like I said, this will likely be one of the first videos you make, so you're probably gonna make several versions of this specific landing page video and several other landing page videos

Lindsey Auten
0:12:49
for different forms on your website.

Alex Winter
0:12:52
So true.

Lindsey Auten
0:12:53
It doesn't have to be the one that stays there forever and ever, it should change.

Alex Winter
0:12:56
Oh, that's a really good point too, and it doesn't necessarily play in just the landing page videos, but for video psychology in general. The first one's always the toughest, and people, including myself,

Alex Winter
0:13:06
we always tend to overthink these things. We want it to be like Steven Spielberg level, and it doesn't have to be. In fact, it's better to just rip the bandaid off, get it done, and iterate on it and get better with it as time goes on and make new versions.

Alex Winter
0:13:19
Like anything, the more you practice, the more you do it, the better you get at it, the more comfortable you are, the better it translates. So it's just part of the game of learning and growing as a videographer and as implementing video content in your company. So with that, for companies that are starting off, we've talked about this is the beginning of their video journey, this is maybe a good place to start.

Alex Winter
0:13:38
What should companies that already have videos like this do if they're thinking about refreshing them or trying to optimize them and make them perhaps better than what they currently have?

Lindsey Auten
0:13:47
Yeah, so first thing I would do is look at have the forms on your website changed? Have you updated the forms? Have you created new forms that don't have landing page videos? Because if someone is, let's say, six months

Lindsey Auten
0:14:00
into doing the Ask U Answer, it's likely they've created some kind of downloadable guide that someone can download along their journey if they are not ready to actually talk to someone. Well, that form needs a landing page. So often what I see is we make this landing page video once, and then we forget that all the other landing pages

Lindsey Auten
0:14:20
need videos as well. So my first suggestion would be, all right, if you've been doing this for a while, look at your landing pages. Do all of them have a video? If they don't, well, then you know you need to add those landing page videos to your production calendar. If they do have landing page videos, watch them. Is the form that you're using in the B-roll of your landing page video still

Lindsey Auten
0:14:46
the form that's showing next to the video? I've seen companies where I've watched a landing page video that they've made and I've seen a shot of someone filling out the form and it's not the same form that's literally next to the video on the page. So if your form changes, your video has to change. So I would recommend that.

Lindsey Auten
0:15:09
If you notice that you're not getting a great click through rate on your videos, so if someone's going to your landing page and they're not clicking on the video to actually watch it, the questions I would be asking myself would be, does the, do the elements around the page lend themselves

Lindsey Auten
0:15:25
to people clicking on that video? Is the thumbnail engaging? Does it say, like, watch this first? Do you have copy that points to the video that says before you fill out this form, watch the video. So there are elements that need to happen for the video.

Lindsey Auten
0:15:42
The elements that need to happen on the landing page for the video to be successful. You can't just put the video up on the page and be like, it's great, we've made a landing page video. The thumbnail has to be optimized. The copy around the video has to direct people to watch the video.

Lindsey Auten
0:15:59
So I would say before you remake it, if there's nothing, if it still is the same form, but you're not getting the traction you want to see from the video, I would ask myself, are all the elements around the video setting it up for success?

Lindsey Auten
0:16:13
And we could say the same thing about like a YouTube video, for example. If you're not getting the traction you want on a YouTube video, some of the things that you might do to change it would be to optimize the description, change the thumbnail.

Lindsey Auten
0:16:23
Like you wouldn't just automatically go to revert to, oh, I need to remake the whole video. You would say, what should I change around the video first before I remake this video?

Alex Winter
0:16:35
Right, it's a process of elimination, and that makes total sense, because reshooting the video is the most time intensive, so you start with some of the smaller elements, some of the design elements, positioning, exactly what you're saying,

Alex Winter
0:16:45
to see if your click-through rate changes at all, and if it doesn't, then you know that it's the video that needs to change versus whatever those pieces are, but hopefully, it's a mix of both and you get some good results out of it, yeah. Wow, very cool.

Alex Winter
0:16:57
So what is the best way to measure how effective these landing pages are? Like when you talk to clients, it's one thing to post it up, maybe you've optimized it, you've done some A-B testing, but what data do you look at to really go, this is working, this is driving new leads

Alex Winter
0:17:13
through this form, Phil, like how do you measure that basically?

Lindsey Auten
0:17:16
Yeah, so from a video perspective, the first thing I would look at is what percentage of people are watching the video all the way through. So what's the attention span of the video? I'm using a Vidyard term there.

Lindsey Auten
0:17:29
For anyone who doesn't use Vidyard, the attention span is basically like out of the majority of people on the website, who's like, what percentage of the video are they watching? If they're watching 100% of the video, great.

Alex Winter
0:17:42
It's similar to retention rate on YouTube or something like that.

Lindsey Auten
0:17:46
Exactly. Exactly. So you want to look at the audience retention. Where are they falling off? If you notice that the majority of viewers are falling off in the first 10 seconds of your video, then- Yeah.... obviously you're retaining the video. But if you notice that, let's say, 80% of people, or people are making it through 80% of the video,

Lindsey Auten
0:18:06
they've likely watched most of it. I would say that's a healthy percentage for any video. Landing page video, 80% out of 90 seconds, is they've probably watched most of it at that point.

Alex Winter
0:18:19
Or at least enough to go fill out the form and be like, all right, I got it, cool.

Lindsey Auten
0:18:22
Exactly, so if you notice a lot of views, but not a lot of form submissions, then you might want to check the landing page itself. Maybe it's like we need to adjust something within the landing page or the buyer journey to help get people to be ready to fill out that form. Toxic copy of the page, but if you are noticing just in general,

Lindsey Auten
0:18:47
higher submission rate, like we've posted the video on this date and from there, our submission rate has gone up or our submission rate has stayed the same. That's a metric to look at. I would also look at bounce rates. If you notice that people are bouncing

Lindsey Auten
0:19:00
off of your landing page, and then you add the video and the bounce rate doesn't change, then that's still something that we would need to work on. But if you see like, let's say before the video, you have a bounce rate of 95%

Lindsey Auten
0:19:15
on your landing page, well that's a terrible bounce rate. We want it to be as low as it possibly can go. So I would say paying attention to that bounce rate, making sure it's going from, like it is at 95% and you post the video and you check 90 days later and it's at 75%, well, that's something.

Alex Winter
0:19:34
Yeah, that's something. That's a move in the right direction, totally. You had mentioned Vidyard, which is a great tool. We love Vidyard here at Impact but there's a lot of other tools out there too like HubSpot or Salesforce or different CRMs or ways to track this data. Are there any specifics that people should know about or like ones that you prefer better over

Alex Winter
0:19:51
others or is it just kind of like more important to have at least something to

Lindsey Auten
0:19:54
track it and that's the baseline? I would avoid using YouTube on a landing page video for a number of reasons. The first being that if you're hosting on, if you have a CRM that you're, if you absolutely don't have anything, post it on YouTube, that's fine.

Lindsey Auten
0:20:11
But leave it unlisted. If you are using HubSpot and you're creating HubSpot forms, put it on a HubSpot video because we're gonna get better data for our contact information, or for our contacts than we would using a YouTube video. So, and this goes for all of your selling seven videos.

Lindsey Auten
0:20:34
They should be on a third-party hosting platform that talks to your CRM directly so that we can attribute, so that we can eventually attribute this effort to revenue.

Alex Winter
0:20:45
YouTube is a great tool.

Lindsey Auten
0:20:46
It's a great tool for exposure, driving traffic, and Alex, we could have a whole other conversation on hosting platforms, so I'm not gonna get into the nitty gritty, but long story short is YouTube is great for helping drive traffic, but from a metrics perspective,

Lindsey Auten
0:21:00
you're gonna get better data using a vidyard or HubSpot video on the website page, on your website pages. I'm being specific about website pages. Blog pages are different. But landing page is one of those examples where you want to use a HubSpot or a Vidyard

Lindsey Auten
0:21:18
Video or whatever third party video platform you're using to collect data versus a YouTube.

Alex Winter
0:21:25
That makes total sense. And that applies for all the Selling7 videos. And for everyone out there that doesn't know or have heard about the Selling7, we have a lot of content around it. You should check it out. But real quick, they're the seven most effective or at least the seven most pieces of video content that we found effective when it comes

Alex Winter
0:21:40
to driving sales and they all live on your website or different pages of your website. So this applies to all of the selling seven videos and the landing page video is one of those seven. Just so we're clear. Cool. So you had mentioned Thoroughcare and I thought that was a great example.

Alex Winter
0:21:56
Do you have any other examples of how this has helped businesses? It's one of those things that I feel like if you're on a call talking to a CEO or talking to a CMO and you're like, you need to make a landing page video to help your form fill, at least from my perspective, I'd be like, really? That's what we have to do? Are you sure that's really going to be that effective?

Alex Winter
0:22:14
I feel like there'd be some doubt around it. So how do you get people to buy in and then do you have some examples where people maybe weren't bought in and then it just sent it for their business and they had all sorts of new leads and engagement and things that just really changed the way that they were getting new leads into their business?

Lindsey Auten
0:22:29
Yeah, well, one thing that automatically comes to mind is if I'm a local business and I want to use a landing page video to specify my service area, another example on our website, Fire and Ice, they specifically have, they're specifically servicing the Columbus, Ohio area for their HVAC services.

Lindsey Auten
0:22:53
They would get a lot of outside of the service area traffic. In their landing page videos, they are very specific to say, if you're in Columbus, then you should fill out this form. If you're not, then go to our learning center.

Lindsey Auten
0:23:09
We have other resources, etc, for you to use. But that's an example.

Alex Winter
0:23:16
That's a great one.

Alex Winter
0:23:17
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:23:18
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:23:19
And then. Well and that also, it goes back into the simplicity piece where it sounds almost too simple, but how many sales calls and time are you saving your sales folks from people that are out of your area that wanna work with you but they literally can't

Alex Winter
0:23:31
because you can't service them. So those are those little things that can save a ton of time and time is money and it just all compounds as you move forward as a business.

Alex Winter
0:23:39
All right, thanks for sharing that example.

Alex Winter
0:23:41
And I think we've really covered at least the general idea of what a landing page video is, how important it is, what it can do for your website, for your business, for your leads that are coming through your contact forms or from your form fills. Any other pieces that we're missing

Alex Winter
0:23:54
or is there anything else that you wanna leave us with that we maybe haven't talked about today?

Lindsey Auten
0:23:58
Yeah, what I would say is, we have talked about a lot, but I think that one of the messages that I would want to stress is don't overcomplicate your landing page videos. I see, you can overcomplicate a lot when it comes to video, but at the end of the day, everyone has to start somewhere. A landing page video is a great starting off point, and don't be afraid to post it, check it, and then remake it if it's not doing what you want it to do.

Lindsey Auten
0:24:32
So, final piece of advice is keep it simple and keep it straightforward because at the end of the day, if they want to talk to you, they'll go ahead and fill out the form, they'll watch the video, they'll be excited, and hopefully you hear great feedback. But don't overcomplicate making a landing page video. It's not that complicated.

Alex Winter
0:24:53
It should be very simple.

Lindsey Auten
0:24:54
If anyone out there has a story about a landing page video that they made that has helped them, I would love to continue to collect examples from people out there. So if you're watching this and you're like, yeah, my landing page video is awesome. It's done great things.

Lindsey Auten
0:25:09
Leave a comment on this video about your landing page video. We would love to keep getting more examples and stories of great landing page videos in action.

Alex Winter
0:25:19
That's a great shout, yeah. For everybody out there listening and watching, if you have examples of this that you love or something that's really cool, drop it in the comments, share it. We'd love to see it.

Alex Winter
0:25:27
Who knows, it might end up being in one of the examples of your next presentation in Impact Live.

Alex Winter
0:25:31
You never know.

Lindsey Auten
0:25:33
You never know.

Lindsey Auten
0:25:33
There's always cool things to show off. So if you have something cool, I'd wanna look at it.

Alex Winter
0:25:38
Absolutely, absolutely. And if people have follow up questions or they want to pick your brain about landing page videos or video content in general, how can they get in touch with you?

Lindsey Auten
0:25:46
So feel free to message me on the Impact Plus platform. I'm in that platform. I'm responsive in that platform. So please reach out to me.

Lindsey Auten
0:25:55
You can email me.

Lindsey Auten
0:25:56
You can DM me on LinkedIn. I will obviously do my best to get to anyone and everyone who messages me about anything in the landing page video specifically. So reach out to me there.

Alex Winter
0:26:08
Awesome, we'll drop all of our info in the show notes as well. Lindsay, as always, thanks for being on the show. It was great talking with you.

Lindsey Auten
0:26:14
Thanks, Alex, always a pleasure.

Alex Winter
0:26:16
All right, thanks everybody for watching Endless Customers. And if you have topics or ideas, you have questions, anything that may be top of mind for you don't forget to throw them in the comments because we read those. We wanna know what you have to say.

Alex Winter
0:26:27
We want to create topics that are going to help you do your job better, to help scale your businesses, and to answer any questions or troubleshoot any problems you may have. So don't be afraid to drop your comments below. And until next time, I'm Alex Winter. This is Endless Customers. This is Endless Customers.

Alex Winter
0:26:38
We'll see you on the next episode.




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