00:00 Introduction.

Martin Henley : [00:00:13] Hello there. My name is Martin Henley. This is the effective marketing content extravaganza and if you’re new here, you won’t yet know that I am on a mission to give you everything you need to be successful in your business. Providing of course, what you need to be successful in your business is to know more about and have more motivation and enthusiasm to apply sales and marketing more effectively in your business. So what goes on here is I’m giving you everything I know about sales and marketing in the What The series. We look at the marketing news every other week. I review the very best and the very worst of marketing content on the Internet. And whenever I can, whenever I find someone with experience that will be useful to you if you’re looking to be more successful in your business we have a Talk Marketing and that’s what today is about. We have a guest for you. If that sounds interesting and useful, I hope it does because that’s the whole point of this, then you should take a second to like, share, subscribe and comment because that will support us emotionally, mentally, it will give us the energy to carry on with this mammoth mission of hopefully giving you stuff that will help you to be more successful in your business.

Martin Henley : [00:01:25] Today is Talk Marketing. And so we have a guest.

Martin Henley : [00:01:28] Today’s guest has marketing experience going all the way back to 1995 when she was an Internet Marketing Manager. Now, if she was an Internet marketing manager in 1995, that might make her one of the first-ever Internet Marketing Managers. Since then, she’s had a host of roles, she’s been a Marketing Director, New Business Director, National Sales Manager and Board Member. She has been running her business, Ken Kay Marketing for almost 12 years, which is an innovative video marketing agency supporting growth stage business-to-business businesses. She is the host of the Connect the Dots podcast and she was introduced to us by the quite wonderful Gillian Whitney. What you won’t know is that she didn’t study for her degree until she was married and had two kids. Today’s guest is Vicki O’Neill. Good morning, Vicki.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:02:25] Hello, Martin and thank you so much for having me. That was quite the introduction.

Martin Henley : [00:02:30] It was quite the introduction and the thing is, let’s just pull back the curtain a little bit and let everyone know that you just sat and watched me write their introduction because I don’t know what happened to the last half an hour of my life when I was supposed to be writing it. But it didn’t get done, but it got done in the end and we are speaking now.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:02:48] What’s impressive is that you were writing that and it sounded so much better coming from you than what I was actually telling you.

Martin Henley : [00:02:57] Good, that’s good and we were having a full-blown conversation. I can multitask.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:03:01] Exactly. That was impressive.

Martin Henley : [00:03:03] I can absolutely multitask. There are two things about you that strike me as quite interesting. The first thing is this Internet Marketing Manager in 1995. That’s interesting. And then the degree thing, like, why did you wait so long to decide to study for your degree? So let’s start with the degree thing, because the Internet Marketing thing is more on-topic, which will bring us to our topic beautifully.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:03:30] OK. Sounds good.

Martin Henley : [00:03:31] Why did you wait so long to study your degree?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:03:36] Well, it’s a multi-prong decision. When I first got out of high school, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I had to go to college. I made the mistake of going to a private college that cost me an arm and a leg, and I was paying for college. So I blew my entire life savings on that first year. When you blow your entire life savings, you can no longer continue college. So I had to stop going to school and go to work. I worked two jobs and eventually landed in a company working in the sales or the marketing department, and that’s where I fell in love with marketing. It actually took me a few years after that as well to decide that I needed to go back to school. I started to see everybody else getting promotions above me, and this is back when degrees were more important than, probably, they are now. Not that they don’t hold value now, but back then, if you wanted to be promoted within a company, it was important that you had a degree. At the time I decided to go back and I was working full time, married, had two girls and decided to go ahead and add something else to my schedule. So I went back to school and online is when they were first introducing the online programs. So that’s why I was able to go back and do online and get my bachelor’s degree in marketing and sales.

Martin Henley : [00:05:03] Okay. So that’s interesting to me. The piece of paper is good for getting promoted. Other than that, how useful was the academic study of sales and marketing? Sorry. Wait a second.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:05:19] Okay. We’ll cut.

Martin Henley : [00:05:26] That bit.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:05:26] Out.

Martin Henley : [00:05:29] So the question is what practical use was a sales and marketing and sales degree?

05:38 What practical use is a sales and marketing degree if you already have experience?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:05:38] Honestly, at that stage in my life, in that stage of my career and what I already knew, it was literally a piece of paper. The reason why I say that is if you compare me in school, I was a B, C student and you put me into college at that age when I’ve already got the experience of marketing and some exposure to sales business life, and you put me in a college role where I’m actually textbook studying and I was able to apply real-world experiences to college. And I graduated with honours and also with summa cum laude status that’s not me as a student. So that kind of proves that when you have the experience already and then apply college, it makes it super easy.

Martin Henley : [00:06:27] Excellent. Because the thing is marketing. I studied, they called it Government because of when I studied, but it was politics. Then I went on to study a little bit of political philosophy because it was more interesting than politics. So I kind of feel like that was useful because what I was studying then was motivation. You know, like the history of political philosophy is the history of motivation. Marketing, I can sort of understand like we’ve got models and things like that, but sales. Sales is for me 100% intuition. Do you know what I mean? I don’t know quite what I’m saying. That’s kind of what I’m saying. Can you really study sale?

07:15 Can you study sales academically?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:07:15] You really can’t, because sales and marketing for me go hand in hand. Can you have one without the other? Sure, but you’re making life a lot more difficult. So sales, from my recollection, wasn’t a big part of the studying and I think that places the emphasis of emphasis on marketing and how important that really is. When you can get the marketing piece right and you understand your customers in the process and you understand all the different options and levers that you can pull and try, then that makes driving people down that journey to buy from you a lot easier. That’s really what marketing is. It’s really helping people understand, giving them the education that they need on your product or your service to really help give them what they need in order to make that decision to buy from you.

Martin Henley : [00:08:07] 100%. So this is what I think goes on in the world that people don’t really realise, is that there’s marketing and then there is sales. So for me, it’s chronological. You do your marketing, your marketing gives you the opportunity to sell and depending on what you’re selling, then you might need a salesperson to get involved to actually clinch the deal. If you do marketing, well, then there’s no need to sell. Like McDonald’s, they don’t train their counter staff in negotiation or objection handling or any of those things. The marketing has done the work, they’re there to buy. So what do I think about that? I just think. I just think it’s weird. You can study for a degree in marketing and then businesses are going out of business because they don’t understand marketing. I think it’s weird that you can study for a degree in marketing and nobody knows what marketing is or nobody in business knows what it is.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:09:01] They may know what it is but they may not know either how to do it or how to do it right.

09:05 Why do people struggle with marketing?

Martin Henley : [00:09:05] Yeah.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:09:05] I think anybody who’s on social media, which is pretty much everybody, if you’re on social media, whether you’re there for personal or you’re there for professional you’re marketing yourself, you’re using words to actually represent who you are, your character. If you’re in business, you’re probably doing it from both perspectives, like showing your personality, your character, but then also talking about your product, your services and your customers. So we’re all marketing ourselves. It’s a personal thing piece. I think we all know it and we’re all doing it but when you’re in a business and you’re trying to, you have a goal, you’re not just on social media to be on social media, you’re trying to achieve a particular goal, then you really need to understand what it is that you’re doing, where you’re doing it, and then helping connect those dots between each of those points to help people get to buying your service or even knowing who you are.

Martin Henley : [00:10:01] 100%. So here’s the thing, is that if you can study for a degree in marketing, let’s put the sales thing aside. That’s ridiculous. You can’t make an academic subject out of sales, I’m sorry, that’s preposterous. But marketing. If you study a degree in marketing, is it a three-year degree, maybe, it might be a three year degree, You can study for a three year degree in marketing. You can study for an MBA in marketing, which would suggest to me that this is a pretty objective thing. You know, you can write questions, and complete exams, and have right or wrong answers. So the thing that frazzles my mind is that this is clearly an objective thing, or can be an objective thing, but people do it so subjectively. They’re just like, I’ll do that. Or there’s this new shiny thing, I’ll do that. The worst of it for me is people going into business and they don’t realize that being in business is a process of having customers profitably. That’s the whole gig. As long as you’ve got customers profitably, you’ll have a successful business but people go into businessb and it might be different in your part of the world, but in my part of the world, people don’t want to do marketing. For me, that’s how you get to be successful, because if you don’t do marketing, you don’t have sales, you don’t do sales, you don’t have a business.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:11:31] Yeah, 100% agree with that. You have to do marketing in order to have sales and if you don’t have sales, it’s a hobby and you don’t have a business.

Martin Henley : [00:11:39] Yes. So here’s what I really think, though, actually, is that they must put so much fluff to make a three-year course out of marketing. They must put so much fluff in that to make it three years long. I used to run a half-day marketing strategy workshop and this guy with an MBA in marketing came up to me afterwards and said, I’ve learned more this morning than I did in the entire time I was studying for my MBA. So there you go. We should do that maybe M.B.A in a morning, something like that. That would be a good course to put out.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:12:13] Oh, that would be good. Yeah.

Martin Henley : [00:12:15] Yeah.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:12:15] I think what I did with this study, from what I can remember, was the basics, the things that you really don’t use or need. It’s more like the practical understanding of what marketing is. So it would be, you know, your four P’s, your product, your price, your promotion, your placemenmt, nobody talks like that anymore.

Martin Henley : [00:12:38] No.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:12:38] We understand those things. You’re talking about your market and understanding how to find your clients. There’s so much information available now. Your podcast alone is one of them where you can learn so much about marketing from different people, from different areas of marketing, from different parts of the world, that you can probably get more from listening to your podcast episodes than you could in a two-year degree.

Martin Henley : [00:13:04] 100%. I agree with that. I agree with that. But he’s like, so, so let’s take the four P’s. Like the four P’s is the most basic description of what marketing is price, product, placement and, something else.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:13:19] Promotion.

Martin Henley : [00:13:20] Promotion.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:13:21] Good. Promotion.

Martin Henley : [00:13:22] Right. So that’s the most basic definition of marketing but then product is taken completely out of the hands of marketeers. They employ geeks who sit in backrooms and code stuff. So the geeks are in charge of what the product looks like. So that’s taken away from marketing. The price is taken completely away from the marketing price. So promotion. So what was the fourth one?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:13:49] Place.

Martin Henley : [00:13:50] Placement. Okay. Yeah. So then actually what marketing looks like in most instances, because they’re not doing it right, is it looks like promotion and placement, which is a great place to start. But really, it should be about understanding the market and then developing a product that suits it and then coming up with a price that delivers the value you need and the value your customers need. So even the most basic definition is 50% misapplied in most instances.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:14:18] So yeah, I think so too. Yeah. And I think that goes to show how outdated the textbooks are that people use in college now to teach marketing.

Martin Henley : [00:14:28] Yes. I almost wonder if it should even be, I mean, half these subjects now shouldn’t be subjects for degrees, but I wonder if it should even be that. My recommendation is people should just go out and find the most driven business they can find who are seriously marketing themselves effectively and get involved with them even if they have to do it for free. That’s my recommendation. All right. So let’s get more on track although not entirely on track. We will bring some order to this. Once you once you’ve answered the questions that are in my mind, how could you possibly have been an Internet Marketing Manager in 1995?

15:08 How could you possibly have been an Internet Marketing Manager in 1995?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:15:08] I am totally dating myself, I worked at a company that actually started the Yellow Pages industry. Remember the Yellow Pages?

Martin Henley : [00:15:19] I do remember the Yellow Pages. Yes.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:15:22] I worked for the company that started the Yellow Pages industry back in 1910. The company was actually in Dayton, Ohio. I first started working there in 1994 and in 1995 that’s when they first introduced the internet. On your computers, not everybody had access, you were special if you had Internet access on your computer. People would always come over and be like, can I get on, they wanted to experience what this whole Internet thing was. Of course, we weren’t allowed to do that because of the passwords and everything else. People were just so intrigued by this whole Internet thing and I felt special because I had access and I was one of three people that had access in the marketing department. We had 40 people in the marketing department, and I was one of those people who had access to it. So it was just super basic obviously at that time, anybody who’s old enough realizes, before the Internet and after the Internet, what that was like. I was the starter, not the starter, I was the third person that was actually in that role.

Martin Henley : [00:16:39] Wow. Okay. Were they in the process of moving their listings online? Was that what they were doing?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:16:49] Yeah, the first thing that we were actually doing was research, so we didn’t even do listings at that point. We were actually getting on there and there were news sources that were sharing news stories or trying to think of what some of the early resources were, but we’d get on there just to get like updates on what was going on in the world. So it was our responsibility to get on there and do daily searches, find information, and then pass that along to our executive team. Once we actually started moving in that direction of putting the Yellow Pages online, then yeah, it was the online listings, that was called the Internet Yellow Pages. So we we transitioned online for that. Very basic.

Martin Henley : [00:17:35] Very basic and very early, I think in 1995 you were waiting like five, 10 minutes for an image to appear on your screen. It almost appeared line by line, that’s kind of where the Internet was in 1995.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:17:51] Yeah.

Martin Henley : [00:17:52] Cool.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:17:53] Yeah. There weren’t even that many images back then either. It was just mostly text and it took forever to actually access the information. Yeah, but at the time, you know, you didn’t know any different. It was the whole cool factor and interesting factor of we could actually access this information outside of physical books, or newspapers, or other physical resources.

Martin Henley : [00:18:21] Okay. Now, that sounds really, really interesting. I mean, the second person I spoke to on the podcast says he was working on the Internet before there was Internet, he started around 91, 92. So I don’t know what there was at that stage. It’s kind of freaky to realize how far we’ve come in those 27 years. It’s insane. At that time, in 1995, I was selling advertising and there was no email, so if we didn’t have a copy of their logo, they would fax it to us really big and someone in the production department would colour it in and then they reduce it down and that was what became their ad. Then when we had all of the copy ready for print, we’d have to take it to the train station and the guy wouldn’t even get off the train. He’d like reach out and grab the bag and carry on going into like central London from where we were. It’s astounding to think where we’ve got to in those 27 years. I mean, it really is astounding if you start looking back.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:19:23] Yeah, it’s crazy. Then we think of like when we can’t get something to come through instantaneously, then we’re just like, What’s taking so long?

Martin Henley : [00:19:30] Yes. Or if someone doesn’t get.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:19:31] Appreciate it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Martin Henley : [00:19:34] I remember when I was a kid, we used to phone our family on New Year’s Day, or they’d phone us on Christmas Day and it would be like the worst conversation broken up, blah, blah. Just awful, awful, awful. And now you can have a face-to-face video call with anyone who’s walking around in the street, or on a bus, or on a train, or wherever they might be. It is insane to think like that. I’ll tell you how insane it is. It’s so insane that now anybody who wants to can produce almost professional quality video. That’s how insane it is. With our phones, if you’ve got your phone and a microphone, and a tripod, you are producing effectively what would have been passed as professional quality video six or seven years ago? It’s insane.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:20:27] That’s what I train people on. I always focus on getting started with video. Everybody has what they need.

Martin Henley : [00:20:34] Yes.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:20:34] Their phone, like you said, the camera quality to create videos is so high on phones today that you can create really good videos with just your phone. You don’t need to hire a camera crew. You can do it with your phone.

Martin Henley : [00:20:51] 100%.You can. Now, I think that might be the best Segway I have ever mustered into what you actually do.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:20:58] I am applauding you. That was an amazing transition.

Martin Henley : [00:21:02] Wasn’t it? We went all the way from 1995 to video marketing in a second. So, as you know, there is some order to this. There are only five questions. So question number one is how are you qualified to talk to us about your specialist subject, which is video marketing? Question number two Who do you work with, how do you add value to their lives? Question number three What is your recommendation for anyone who wants to either get started with video marketing or get better at video marketing? Question number four What should people read? Question number five Who can you throw under the bus who might endure, or maybe even enjoy to have a conversation like this with me? Okay. So question number one, how are you qualified to talk to us about video marketing?

21:46 How are you qualified to talk to us about video marketing?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:21:46] So multiple ways. Education, of course, but we kind of talked about that and how basic and outdated that is. So actually it’s just a lot of constantly learning, I’m always watching videos, I’m listening to podcasts, I’m interacting with people on LinkedIn and just learning as much as I can. Every day there’s something new that you can learn, especially with video and marketing. So I am learning and applying, and that’s my best way of doing it. With video, I always talk about this when I’m doing workshops or challenges or anything like that. The reason why I started doing video marketing is I created my very first video on YouTube back in 2011 and I still have it on there, but it’s unlisted. It was a video that I can still remember to this day, the amount of time that I put into what I was going to say and perfecting my delivery and I wanted to deliver it without sounding perfect and I wanted to deliver it without looking at a script like I wanted to be looking at the camera. If you look at the video now, it’s like you can tell that the delivery was totally rehearsed, it was memorised, and I’m not even looking at the camera. The background is terrible. There are so many things about this video that was just so wrong with today’s standards that and just thinking through the emotion of what it took to actually get to that point of like creating that.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:23:29] It was hours upon hours of creating and redoing and memorizing and trying to get it perfect. My intention was back then to continue to create videos for YouTube and start building my channel back then. Going through that experience, it was just awful. I’m like, I don’t have this kind of time to create videos for YouTube because back then you didn’t have the tools that you have available on your phone or your computer to actually do the editing. So for me, it was just like, I don’t want to learn editing, so I need to make this as perfect as possible. It was just the anxiety and the stress and the uncertainty of what I was doing in the delivery. It was just not the best approach for learning how to do videos. So you fast forward over time and I finally was like, Hey, this video thing is not going away. You know, it’s here to stay and it’s really growing. I started seeing all these people on YouTube have these channels that were just blowing up. I was like, You know what? This is something that I need to get into because more people are going to want to learn how to do video. And it’s something that I know I need to be comfortable in.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:24:46] I need to be confident in doing this because it’s a piece of marketing. If you’re creating videos, it’s part of the whole marketing strategy and what you’re doing with your business. So three years ago I decided to just make the plan and go 100% all in with video. So I went live on YouTube every week for most of the year, and then I was also uploading videos that were prerecorded to YouTube as well. That was part of my process of getting comfortable with talking on camera and getting past that whole thing of I’m talking to no one, I’m talking to my computer, or I’m talking to my phone and just really feeling stupid throughout the whole process. I had somebody tell me that recently. They’re like, I feel so stupid, I’m talking to my phone. I’m like, I know, But it’s part of the process. That’s what you have to do in order to start to get comfortable with creating videos. So it’s something that’s evolved over time, but I’m completely comfortable and confident on camera now. I can look at the camera and, you know, I do bullet points instead of writing scripts so I can stay focused and that’s the same approach that I take when I work with other people too. I really enjoy it.

Martin Henley : [00:26:02] Fantastic. I think that’s the key to everything, isn’t it? If you can enjoy it, then it doesn’t become a chore. If you can enjoy it, then you don’t even have to be… what’s the word, you know, motivated or what’s the word they use consistent? I don’t know. Yeah, I do know. I’m struggling for words today.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:26:22] It’s late there for you. It’s the end of your day.

Martin Henley : [00:26:24] It’s almost 8 p.m.. You should really be asleep by now. What did I want to say? So you started posting weekly in 2011?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:26:36] No, in 2019 I started.

Martin Henley : [00:26:38] My first.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:26:39] It was in 2011.

Martin Henley : [00:26:40] Yeah. Okay. Because 2011, I’m trying to think when I posted my first video on YouTube, it might have been around 2008. It really was hard. I’ll tell you how hard it was. I had a PC and so it was Sony. Is it called Sony Vegas?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:26:59] I’ve heard it. I’m not sure.

Martin Henley : [00:27:01] Yeah, I think it might have been called Sony Vegas, the editing thing that I used. For some reason my videos all came out like a quarter of the size, it was black all the way around and only a quarter of it had video in the middle. So even getting it to be the right shape was ridiculous. It was the right shape, but it was the wrong size. It was fantastically, fantastically difficult. I think I really screwed up. You know, I made a video in 2014 about LinkedIn profiles, that has now had 650,000 views or something. It was ranking first for just LinkedIn for years. Then, like, you know, I kind of went on the missing list and I didn’t really bother doing anything else. So I feel about that the way I feel about a lot of things is that I should have persisted with that. What did I want to say? Two 2015 I was touring around New Zealand, I was posting two or three videos a week. I feel like it should have sustained that, I got distracted by something else. Answer me this question, why is video so important slash useful?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:28:11] You mean like with business or like, why people should be doing this?

Martin Henley : [00:28:14] Yeah. Yeah. For business. Let’s say For business.

28:17 Why is video so important/useful?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:28:17] Yeah. Like we’re doing right now, we can see each other and we can hear each other, of course and then also any type of hand gestures like I’m doing now on purpose. It just helps people get to know, like, and trust you faster because you can actually deliver a message and you can do it with eye contact because you’re looking at your camera, which the person who’s viewing it gets the feeling that you’re actually making eye contact with them. So it’s a quicker way to establish, not a relationship, but a connection with somebody. You can do that easier through video than you could audio or text then you’re going to help that process of helping them get to know, like and trust you faster so that they can buy from you, which is the ultimate goal. Video is just an easier way of doing that. Even people who watch it with captions, they’re still getting the full experience and you can actually get somebody’s attention longer because they’re watching, they’re listening. They’re using more senses to be involved in the message that you’re delivering. So it’s just a more comprehensive and a richer experience for people than reading a blog post, for example.

Martin Henley : [00:29:37] 100%. I think that, I think you’re communicating more of yourself and providing you’re not trying to present something that you’re not, then you are communicating more than the words you’re saying. Does that make sense? Like you communicate something of your personality?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:29:57] Mm hmm. People get to see you. They hear your voice inflexion. They can see your facial expressions. I think you can gain a lot from people when you can see more of what the message is, not just hear it or not just read it, but actually see it. Yeah.

Martin Henley : [00:30:15] I don’t know the percentage, but they say a percentage of communication is body language, don’t they?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:30:22] Yeah. It’s more than what people are saying, it’s actually like 90/10 split. It’s 10% of what you’re saying, but 90% of your body language and how you say it.

Martin Henley : [00:30:36] Yeah. So I think there are actually three I think it’s the actual words, the tone and then the body language. What I like to do here is makeup statistics. So let’s just say it’s like 64% body language, 24% tone, and the rest is the actual words. Shall we say that?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:30:57] Yeah, we can say that.

Martin Henley : [00:30:58] And anyone who’s studying for a degree in marketing, you can write that on your exam papers. I’m sure you’ll be fine.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:31:03] Exactly. Just make it up.

Martin Henley : [00:31:06] Good. So it is interesting like that, because I think what you’re doing is you’re actually marketing yourself, you are marketing your personality. Which I think is really important, but maybe much more important in sales than it is in marketing. If you’ve got somebody in your business with personality, then 100% you need to be standing them in front of a camera as often as you possibly can. I think this is the easiest way to produce content, with video, because you can stand up a tripod with a camera on it, a phone camera, a microphone, and just start talking and you are producing content. If you’ve got someone in your business who is knowledgeable enough to answer like interesting questions, we know where the interesting questions are, you put a question into Google, it will give you all of the variations of that question that people are asking, then 100% think this is the easiest way to produce content. Once you’ve got it like that, then you can make it into audio, you can make it into text, you can make it into clips, you can do whatever you like. The thing is Vicki O’Neil is we’re going to struggle to disagree, I think, on this subject, because it seems to me so eminently sensible that businesses should be producing video for their marketing.

Martin Henley : [00:32:23] So what are we going to talk about?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:32:27] We could talk about why they’re not doing it. Why aren’t more businesses doing it?

Martin Henley : [00:32:32] Let’s do that. Before we do that, can I give you a, for instance, of just how valuable video can be?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:32:47] Of course, yes.

32:48 An example of how valuable can video be in marketing.

Martin Henley : [00:32:48] Okay. When I started my business 2005, I don’t know why, but I decided I was going to get video testimonials from my customers. So if they ever even gave me half a suggestion we were doing a good job, then my video phone, you can imagine what that looked like in 2005, 2006 came out and I had a little tripod that I could stand it on and I would make them say nice things to my camera. It got to the point where I had dozens and dozens and dozens of these things. It got to the point where my wife said, I’ve got so many of these testimonials on my website, it made me look desperate, which might be part of the reason that I’m no longer married.

Martin Henley : [00:33:32] Here’s what I think about that, is if you don’t get your customers to tell you that you’re doing a good job, it may never occur to them that you’re doing a good job. There’s power in having your customers think about why did I get Martin involved? You know, what is he doing for us? You know, what is the best thing about that? What could be better about it? Would I recommend his services? I literally had these four or five questions and I would ask people and I think the testimonials were fantastic. The production value was appalling because it was 2006, I was videoing them on cameras, went on for like five years. Where this got really cool is one day a friend of mine was running an exhibition and he phoned me up and he’s like, I’ve got a spare stamped, You want it? It was the next day and it’s like, I know this might come as a surprise to you, but I’ve actually got plans for tomorrow.

Martin Henley : [00:34:28] Weirdly, on a business day, I’ve got plans for tomorrow.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:34:31] Of course.

Martin Henley : [00:34:31] But he said, it’s free take it like do something with it or don’t, he said, it will just be there. What we did is we rolled up and we put a screen, a computer screen on the table, and we just played these videos on loop all day, we weren’t there. We put a vase there and we just said how many times, my business is the Effective Marketing Company, how many times do people use the word effective when they’re talking about the services we provide? We just left that little sign there, computer screen, it might have been a laptop, computer screen, vase. I came back. It’s like 7:00 the next day, the table is overflowing with business cards. It’s insane. People were saying, they were packing up, they’re like, you probably had the busiest stand here. It’s insane. Like people standing there, like these clips were probably two, 3 minutes long each, but there were dozens of them. So it might be like an hour and 45 minutes of actual video that was playing on loop. So we had all these business cards and then what happened is we thought, well, how were we going to present this? So someone went through all these videos and they took out every phrase that had the customers using the words effective when they’re talking about us. So someone said effective marketing companies certainly been effective for us.

Martin Henley : [00:35:45] Someone else said, if you want to get effective with your marketing, you need to speak to Martin. Then we had like a minute and a half long video basically of our customers going effective marketing, effective marketing or their effective, the most effective, like this, it was really cool. There’s value in just collecting this stuff. You end up with something worthwhile and I think that’s the beauty of video. Sorry, I’m speaking too much, but this is the other thing I want to say. In each of those videos they communicated our value proposition in a way that we couldn’t even possibly imagine, You know, because they were actually on the receiving end of our value proposition. They were also communicating who they were, what their business challenges were and how we overcame those challenges. It’s not like the washing powder thing where they pay someone to open the door and go, Oh, really? Like this washing powder. This is people actually saying, this is why, this is the point I got to in my business where I realised they had to bring in someone in to help me, this is what they’ve done and this is why it’s useful. I’m talking too much. Video is amazing if you’re not using video in your business you must be on drugs.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:37:02] We need to change that.

Martin Henley : [00:37:04] We need to change that 100%. Okay, so that brings us. That brings us to the really useful question that you suggested, which is why don’t people use video in their business?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:37:15] Yeah. Well, first, I want to applaud you on doing video testimonials so long ago and having a camera that you could actually capture those because there’s probably not too many people, myself included, that we’re doing that back then. So that’s amazing.

Martin Henley : [00:37:30] Thank you.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:37:31] You’re welcome.

37:33 Why don’t people use video in their business?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:37:33] So why aren’t people doing it? There are obviously various reasons, but it comes down to one thing as to why people are not doing it is fear of being on camera or fear of what people are going to think of them. Those are the two biggest reasons why they don’t get started and that’s why they’re not doing it. Have you heard that at all from people?

Martin Henley : [00:37:58] I have heard that from people. What do I think about that? I think culturally there’s a difference between where I’m from and where you are, because it seems from my perspective, I don’t know if this is true, that British people are very reserved. In the UK, it’s really not cool to be seen to be trying and it’s really not that cool to be successful. People think you’re a bit of a dick if you’re successful.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:38:30] Really?

Martin Henley : [00:38:32] I think so, yeah.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:38:34] No, but.

Martin Henley : [00:38:34] The very worst is if you are successful and you are seen to be trying. It’s all supposed to happen magically with no effort has gone in. Whereas my perception of what goes on where you are in the States is that people will be on the rooftop shouting about how amazing they are, even if they’re not and they can’t all be that amazing. That seems to be the cultural difference. So the first thing, fear of being on camera, I really find it hard to empathise with that because aren’t we on camera all day, every day? Is it someone pointing a video camera at you and you not like now in 2022? It’s not like it’s 1987 and if you’re on camera, it’s going to be broadcast to the nation. That’s not the situation anymore. So I don’t get it, but I suppose it tallies into this public speaking thing where people would rather die then than stand up in front of people and speak, although I don’t think that’s been challenged seriously enough. I’d like to find someone who says that and say, look, if you don’t stand up and speak to this group of people, I am going to murder you, see what they do.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:39:38] See what people do. Like, go ahead. I can’t do it.

Martin Henley : [00:39:42] I think they’ll get up and talk to people. I think that’s what they’ll do. So I think it ties into that. Does it tie into that?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:39:49] Yeah, I think so. People are just…It’s either the fear and again, I don’t know why people don’t with so many people being on Zoom and, you know on camera all the time, I think after that it’s probably just not having a plan, not knowing what to say.

Martin Henley : [00:40:08] Yeah.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:40:08] But if people stop to think about it and actually created a plan, then it would make it a little bit easier to be like, All right, I got to do this.

[00:40:16] Yes.

[00:40:17] But it takes time and we live in an environment today of we always got to be doing something right? And if you have to stop and make a plan, that means that you’re going to have to focus and you’re going to have to take a bigger chunk of time to actually create something of value. I think that’s what kind of takes people off track where they’re like, Yeah, I don’t want to invest time like that, so I’m not going to do it.

Martin Henley : [00:40:40] Yeah.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:40:44] Do you think that that might be part of it, too, like what you’ve been in seeing or experiencing versus the fear on camera?

[00:40:50] Well. I’ll tell you what occurs to me is that if people are really saying they don’t have the time, I’m with you 100%. You should formulate a plan. There’s a plan here, there’s only five questions, we’re going to have a conversation, but there’s five questions. You know? There’s a plan to my What The series where I am, although it is, it does take quite a lot of work, I’ve got to make it less work so they don’t get produced as often as I’d like. I’d like to produce one once a week. I don’t buy it. I tell you what I think, I don’t think that, I don’t like being on camera is not a good response to I don’t have the time to do this properly. I just think people are busy fools. They’re too busy failing to do the things that will make them successful a lot of the time. So that lends itself more to that situation than a I’m scared to be on camera situation because I don’t buy it, I don’t buy it.

Martin Henley : [00:42:01] Give me another reason why people don’t do it. Let’s see if you can convince me if there’s a good reason for people not to do it.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:42:07] I think it’s when they see videos, especially if you get on Tik Tok and people are being entertaining and they’re not just educating or just sharing information, then I think people are comparing themselves to others and they’re saying, Oh, you know, Martin’s doing such great things with his video and he got 650,000 views on it, I can’t possibly compare to that, so I’m not going to do it. So I think the comparison of it is not good enough, and that keeps them from doing it, too. Yeah.

Martin Henley : [00:42:41] Not a good.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:42:41] I agree with.

Martin Henley : [00:42:42] That. Produce videos now.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:42:45] They don’t know how to edit. That’s another one.

Martin Henley : [00:42:48] Nope, not good enough. You can get an editor on five Who’ll do it for you for.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:42:52] It on your phone.

Martin Henley : [00:42:54] You know, you can. You can edit on your phone. Yeah.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:42:56] Phone.

Martin Henley : [00:42:57] In all seriousness. So you could learn to edit in about half an hour.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:43:02] You could.

Martin Henley : [00:43:02] You could. Okay, good. Have you got another reason I’m enjoying this game?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:43:09] No, I think those covers all of the hardest parts of why people don’t do it. And again, if you look at all those pieces, it requires time. It all comes down to the fact they just don’t want to invest the time and actually do it.

Martin Henley : [00:43:21] Yes, 100% and I think this ties into this marketing thing. They don’t want to be marketing for some weird reason, for me, marketing and then sales is how you get to be successful. I think it’s it’s tied into that. I’m not saying I don’t believe you, that people aren’t coming up with these reasons for not doing it, but none of them are good enough reasons. There’s a guy in the UK I he’s called Mr. Who’s the Boss, he’s a tech reviewer and he’s a whale. He’s enormous. His videos are getting, every video is getting, millions of views. He might have 5 million subscribers and he’s been on it for the seven or eight years that you need to to have gotten to that position. Famously or not famously, he didn’t appear in a video for the first year. So the truth is, you don’t need to appear in a video. You could either put slides up on the screen or there’s animation services that cost $5 a month that you can use. So you can be producing video content really, really simply that doesn’t involve you being on the screen.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:44:33] Yeah, exactly. I one hundred per cent agree.

44:36 Why should people be marketing themselves on YouTube?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:44:36] We can come up with all kinds of reasons why people should be doing it even if you don’t, like you said, even if you don’t want to be on camera.

Martin Henley : [00:44:45] Okay. Well, we don’t even have to come up with lots of reasons. Let’s just imagine that YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the planet. Let’s just imagine that YouTube is where people go when they’re considering buying things. If I’m going to buy something, I will 100% watch 150 videos to make sure that the thing I’m buying does the thing I want it to do, the thing I need it to do that is better, whatever the trade-off is, all of that stuff. This is people who are already on a buying journey. They’ve decided, they know they’ve got a problem and now they’re deciding how they’re going to fix it. If they’re not going to find you there, they’ll find your competition there. So let’s imagine that, like I say, video is the most effective way to produce content because all you have to do, literally all you have to do is stand up a camera with a microphone, on a tripod, and you are producing content. So there’s three really good reasons for doing it.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:45:44] Yeah.

45:45 Why should you make video the basis of your marketing?

Martin Henley : [00:45:45] Three really good reasons.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:45:45] You can take that, like you said earlier in the conversation, you can then take that video and you can create all kinds of content. Not just strip out the audio for a podcast episode, or get the script for a blog post, now you’ve got video clips that you can post on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube shorts, and you can create images with quotes and you can create all different types of content with one video, which is why I’m saying, and that’s what I’m focusing on, start with video first.

Martin Henley : [00:46:17] Yes.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:46:19] Invest your time in creating a video and then your content, your marketing can be taken care of by somebody else so that you’re not spending your time on your marketing. All you have to do is create your video and then let somebody on my team actually do all this other stuff for you. We give it back to you and say, Here’s what you can post is your messaging, and then all you have to do is post it. Yes, we make it easy. Yeah, why not?

46:44 The only FOUR reasons for NOT producing video in your business.

Martin Henley : [00:46:44] Right. Okay. So now I’m coming up with reasons why you shouldn’t do it. The only valid reasons I can think of for not doing it. if there is absolutely no audience whatsoever for the products or service you are selling; so if nobody ever asked a question about the product or service that you are selling, then 100% you don’t need to produce videos. I can’t imagine there’s an industry or a business in the world where nobody’s had a question to ask. So but that would be valid if there’s no search, if no one is looking for the products or service, you need to question why you’re in business in the first place, because that’s not sustainable. Second reason is if you are literally not interested in having any more customers. So if you are six months away from retirement and you don’t want to entertain another customer ever again, then that’s fine. Or maybe your marketing is working well enough, without it, that might be a good reason. The third reason is if you are so unpresentable, if you are so devoid of personality that it would be a detriment to your business that you produce a video about it, that would be a good reason for not producing video. Honestly, people should do it.

Martin Henley : [00:47:57] You can. You can hire an actor to come and say the stuff. It’s not my recommendation, but you can if you had to. You can now get A.I. models. Have you seen this? Who will perform your script on a video?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:48:09] It’s scary.

Martin Henley : [00:48:10] Yeah, it is a little bit scary. Yeah. Yeah.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:48:16] You could, like you said, you can always get those animated videos, too. So if you don’t want to be on camera and it’s not even your voice, you just tell them. You give them the script and pick out. You can do it yourself. Yeah, you can create those yourself.

Martin Henley : [00:48:31] Yeah. The thing is, video is where you go when you’re looking to buy, when you’ve decided you want to buy something. I think it’s where the consideration part of the buyer journey goes on. I’ve decided I’ve got this problem and now I’m researching, and I’ve decided I’m going to spend money on fixing this problem. Now I’m researching what the best option might be for me. That’s what I think.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:48:51] Yeah. And actually, people it’s 88% of people who watch a video of a product or service end up buying it. So they’re like, we’re in that buying journey and then they’re doing their research and trying to figure out if they want to do it. Watching the video has been the tipping point.

Martin Henley : [00:49:07] Yes, 100%.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:49:08] So just think if you don’t have a video that your competitor does, then you just lost a customer because you didn’t have a video.

Martin Henley : [00:49:15] Yeah. Because you’re not serving your customer on that advanced stage of their buying journey, If you’re not interested to do that, then I think that’s insane.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:49:26] Yeah, exactly. There are different points throughout the customer journey where you can create videos. My podcast episode that I published this week ut was five different videos that kind of walk you through the no, like trust, buy and then retain. Actually, it wasn’t retained handling objections because that’s more common. If you do all the other things right, then your chances of retaining a customer a lot higher. So put handling objections in there. So videos for each one of those stages and it’s something to help out, create the message, the CTA, help connect the dots between each of those videos and the messaging and help them go through the path to buy from you.

Martin Henley : [00:50:08] Yeah.100%. So what did I want to say about that? What’s also valid, I think, is that people if people say, I don’t know what I would talk about. If they don’t know actually how to present their business, then maybe that’s valid. Maybe at that point they shouldn’t be producing videos, but it’s not insurmountable. I think this is interesting because I think this justifies my existence and people like your existence because I think businesses need agency to help them with that. I think they need people to come from outside and look at their business and say, this is what makes it valuable. This is what’s interesting about your business. The thing is now with digital marketing tools we can see what questions people are asking, so they should be answering them.

[00:51:01] Okay. I think we’re getting to question number two. Do you want some good news?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:51:05] Yes, I’m always up for good news.

Martin Henley : [00:51:07] Okay, So the good news is, I think you are perfectly well qualified to talk to us about video marketing. So you’ve passed hurdle number one.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:51:16] Yes.

Martin Henley : [00:51:19] Let’s go to her. Hurdle. Hurdle number two. Oh. Hurdle number two. Who do you work with? How do you add value to their lives?

51:29 Who do you work with and how do you add value to their lives?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:51:29] I work with entrepreneurs and small businesses, and I add value to their lives with helping them with a video strategy and help them be more confident and comfortable on camera, creating a plan and helping incorporate it into their existing. She’s always got to make her appearance and helping them incorporate video into their existing marketing strategy so it’s not something that needs to be like completely separate. But helping them understand that video can actually be a part of what you’re already doing. And it fits in with any type of business. So it’s like you had mentioned earlier, it’s that outside perspective coming in and helping them see the value that video can bring to their business and then obviously how it’s going to help them with their marketing and their content as well. Save them time and save them money.

Martin Henley : [00:52:21] 100%, yes. So what is a video marketing strategy looks look like what are what are the what does that involve coming up with a video marketing strategy?

52:31 How do you make a video marketing strategy?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:52:31] Yeah. So it involves actually understanding. They have to know who their ideal customers are. You know, that’s like number one in anything we do, whether it’s video or which platform you’re going to be on. Then understanding what their goals are, what company goals are they trying to reach, and then also marketing goals. Then creating different types of videos, the different videos in the customer journey and understanding what their customer journey is and identifying different touchpoints in that journey that we need to create a video for. What does that video look like? Is it a brand awareness video? Is it a webinar or some type of product demo? Is it a testimonial? What are the different types of videos that we need to create? Then most importantly, where are your customers spending time? Because if you’re going to create a video for LinkedIn it’s going to be a completely different type of video than if you’re going to create it for TikTok. You can use them on each of the platforms, but knowing where you’re actually going to place the video on multiple platforms is going to be really important as to the type of content and how you deliver it. So we walk through that process.

Martin Henley : [00:53:45] Excellent. And in your experience, what style of business or what type of business or what industries do better from video marketing?

53:58 Which businesses do the best from video marketing?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:53:58] Do better? I don’t know that that there’s any that actually do better. At least with me and B2B, if you look at B2C type companies, I think those are the ones that actually do better with video because they’re going directly to consumers. We’re always consumers, even if we’re business owners, we’re always consuming something. So I think those types of videos are typically easier and more accepted on all the platforms.

54:25 What should you be talking about in your B2B marketing videos?

Vicki O’Neill: [00:54:25] From a B2B perspective, I think if you can incorporate, I want to say edutainment, so it’s education and entertainment. Even taking a quirky perspective on marketing. It might be something antiquated like the Internet Marketing Manager job, is there a way I can bring that into a script that might get somebody’s attention, get them to chuckle. Or laugh. Or get their attention. That way you can actually incorporate humour and different perspectives into it that can get people’s interest and then keep it longer as well in the videos.

Martin Henley : [00:55:05] Yes, I think that’s the key, isn’t it? It’s this edutainment thing, which is where we’ve got to We want to produce videos that educate, entertain and motivate, that’s what we want to do. I think you know where you are and that will inform your tone.

55:31 Where should businesses be putting their video marketing content?

Martin Henley : [00:55:31] If you are producing medical equipment then clearly you don’t need to be producing videos for TikTok jumping up and down and dancing and things like that. Maybe the more technical and serious it gets, the more technical and serious the tone of your videos needs to be. But I don’t think people quite understand that people are searching for everything, they’re searching for everything.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:56:03] I think it’s important for people to know this is why it’s so important to know who your ideal customers are. So if you’re targeting Gen Z’s, then you can’t rule out TikTok because that’s where most of them are spending time. You don’t have to dance and sing while you’re on the platform, but if that’s where they’re at, they’re actually using TikTok as a search engine. Now, is the accuracy of the information they’re getting in their search results just like what you would see in Google? No. The key point there is to see that they’re actually using the platform as their number one, go-to search engine. So if that’s your target audience, even if you’re a medical salesperson, if you’re wanting to recruit employees for your company, then your videos are going to be completely different than if you’re doing product demos or trying to sell them to different hospitals or doctors. But you might want to have some of those videos be on TikTok because that’s where maybe your Gen Z employees are spending time. They don’t have to be funny.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:57:05] They don’t have to be entertaining because that type of environment may not be. It’s just understanding them and you don’t have to. You can put serious type videos on TikTok, They don’t have to always get people to laugh or want to pick up on a dance trend. Getting their attention is obviously key right now I know a lot of people still rule out TikTok because they’re just dancing and singing. But we’re in the heart of TikTok right now and according to Gary Vaynerchuk, these are not my words, according to him, if anyone likes him as a visionary, we’re within a 24-month window of TikTok blowing up. So if you’re not on TikTok and you just keep rolling it out and you’re like, I’ll wait and see what happens. If you wait too long, then you might miss out on the opportunities. So growth is happening there now, but if your audience isn’t there and they’re only on YouTube, then spend all your time on YouTube.

Martin Henley : [00:58:04] Can I just say that Gary Vaynerchuk is my enemy? He doesn’t know I exist.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:58:09] I wish I would have known that before I mentioned his name. Why is he your enemy?

Martin Henley : [00:58:14] Oh, just because. I think he benefits from the Kardashian effect, because he’s famous he’s successful. That’s how I feel about it. So much of what he says is just complete junk. I’m not saying everything, but so much of what he says is complete junk. I think he makes it difficult for small businesses to be successful with some of the junk that he says.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:58:38] I agree with that. Yeah.

[00:58:40] So that’s why he’s my enemy. He doesn’t even know I exist. That’s why. I don’t know when he said that, but I would say. I don’t know if it’s peaked already, but people I’m talking to are saying TikTok is the hottest, it really is the place that you have to be and it doesn’t really matter what you are selling because actually the whole world is there already. Every demographic is there already and the algorithm is actually working really effectively. So if you’re interested in these types of content they will keep feeding you those types of content. That’s what I’m hearing and I believe it. I also think, the other thing I think about this is you kind of have to be riding at the top of the curve, you know? So I think you also get good value out of Instagram Reels right now, and YouTube Shorts, and Facebook Stories because they’re all chasing TikTok. They all want the same thing. So if you’re providing the content that they want these social media, search engine type people, then I think that’s where you get the best value.

Vicki O’Neill: [00:59:47] Yeah,

Martin Henley : [00:59:47] And we’re almost there. We’re almost there. We made our first clip today, you know, so it’s a bit of a mission. Every one of these hour and 15-minute conversations has 25 or 30 clips in it. So literally, we haven’t quite, we will have completed our first clip tomorrow and it’s templated so then we just go into into manufacturing. So come back in two months time. I’ll let you know if there are people in TikTok who are interested in.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:00:12] Hearing people talk with your handle, I’ll go follow you.

Martin Henley : [01:00:15] It will be I don’t even know if we have an account on TikTok. Yeah, it will be effective marketing. It will be effective. Mktg, I think, is what it will be. Okay. Yeah. What did I want to say about all of that? I’m sorry.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:00:29] I’ll follow you.

Martin Henley : [01:00:30] Please do. What I’ll do is I’ll send you a link as soon as I know what it actually is because I don’t know if we’ve even got an account yet, but we’ll have a clip tomorrow and then we’ve got 80 odd of these recorded. There’s 23 of the What The series. There’s 16 or 17 of their marketing reaction videos already. There’s going to be a tsunami of content that will go out as clips as soon as we’ve got this templated and formulated. I think that’s the important thing about knowing. Well, I think the thing about knowing what to say is nobody really knows what to say. So if you are in your business and you really don’t know what to say, then I think you should get some help from a marketing type person because then once you do know what to say, and once you get used to talking to a camera, then this is insanely, insanely good.

Martin Henley : [01:01:18] Is there an instance where something you did just had. A massive effect maybe that you weren’t expecting. Or maybe you can just brag. What’s the most effective thing that you’ve done for a client?

Vicki O’Neill: [01:01:33] The most effective thing that I’ve done. Trying to think. Probably help them create like one video outside of any of the platforms and then show them how that they can use that one video across multiple platforms. So a lot of people will focus on just TikTok, or just Instagram, or just YouTube, which could be good to just put all your eggs in one basket at the beginning so that you can figure out how to use the tools, kind of figure out the algorithm on that platform. There are so many people who aren’t on just one platform, as a consumer they’re on different places. Like you mentioned, if you’re getting ready to buy, you’re going to go to YouTube so you can watch some videos. But that may not have been where you started. You may have done a Google search or you may have been on Facebook and you saw somebody talking about something. So those are different platforms right there and understanding that you can create one video outside of a platform and then uploading it to each one separately and using some of the tools within each of the platforms is actually better than creating it on Instagram, downloading it, stripping off the logo, and then uploading it to TikTok and uploading it to YouTube. There are different strategies because the algorithms are changing, changing so frequently, I don’t know what’s going on with the algorithms. There are different people I watch on each of the platforms to just kind of stay on top of what’s going on and then just trying different things. So I think having that insight and simplifying the process as much as possible, but yet getting the biggest reach that they possibly can is is probably what has been the most effective for them in working with me.

Martin Henley : [01:03:21] Fantastic. I’m sorry I asked that question. I’m embarrassed that I asked that question. Because I sound like Gary Vaynerchuk, like what’s the most, what’s the one thing? All this there’s a secret business just actually really frazzles My mind. What works is exactly what you’ve described is consistently, and measurably being more effective. Slowly, slowly catching monkey that’s what works. There is no magic bullet, golden nugget, in any of these things. It’s just do the work consistently and you will get to be more effective I think is the answer. Okay, good. So I’m sorry I asked that question. I’ve never asked that question before and I will never ask that question again.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:04:06] Don’t apologise, I’m perfectly fine with it.

Martin Henley : [01:04:08] I’m not I’m embarrassed to my core.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:04:11] Though. I’m not used to say stuff about myself. I’m just like, Oh, so-and-so did a great job. So-and-so did a great job.

Martin Henley : [01:04:21] Good. Okay, excellent. Right. So can you because this will go on TikTok because we’re so close to putting these clips on Tik Tok so it needs to be like a minute or two long; give us your very best recommendation for anyone who is looking to get started with video marketing or looking to get better at video marketing.

1:04:43 What is your recommendation for anyone looking to get started with video marketing?

Vicki O’Neill: [01:04:43] So yeah, the first thing I always recommend that people do before even reaching out to somebody like myself to get help with video marketing is to just start picking up their phone and just start pressing record. It’s the best thing that they can do because it’ll get them comfortable with being on camera. Now the thing is, they don’t have to post it. You record it, you delete it. Nobody ever has to see it. You just need to be comfortable on camera first before you’ll actually want to start posting anything. So that would be my first recommendation. And then the second recommendation is to make a list of like your top 3 to 5 frequently asked questions that your clients ask of you, and then start identifying how you respond to those questions, because then you can use those pieces of content to actually create your videos. They can be short-form videos that you post on TikTok or Instagram, or they can be longer-form content that you post on YouTube, LinkedIn or Facebook. You can actually do both, right? You can create a short form video that says, here’s the most frequently asked questions, here’s how I answer it, and then you can actually link to, if it’s on YouTube, go to a full YouTube video that actually talks about each one of those in greater detail. So it’s a matter of just understanding that you need to get on camera, start being comfortable with it. The only way that you can make that happen is to practice, practice, practice, have a plan, execute on it, and then just monitor your results to see what’s working and what’s not working.

Martin Henley : [01:06:17] Great recommendations. Thank you very much.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:06:20] Okay, good. How long that was?

Martin Henley : [01:06:23] I might have. I was thinking about starting a clock, but I didn’t. I think it was less than a minute.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:06:27] Which is perfect. Good.

Martin Henley : [01:06:29] What did I want to say? I wanted to say I like that idea of evolving content. The other thing that I’m really interested in at the moment is the idea of journaling and notetaking where you actually, instead of trying to remember things, you actually just start recording them. So I think that might be a good way to start is like, where do you come across a piece of content or an idea and you just video record it and then have something to refer back to. I think that’s right. I think people should just get over themselves and start, you know, I mean, even if they’ve got no intention of publishing it, they should just start. Because here’s what I used to say to people is if you had 20 seconds during the break of the Super Bowl, would you put up a piece of text, or an image, or would you put up a video? And of course, you would put up a video? Of course you would. So video has to be better than all those things.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:07:22] Yeah.

Martin Henley : [01:07:23] Okay, good. We’ve made it to question number four.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:07:28] Yay.

Martin Henley : [01:07:29] So question number four is what should people read or what content should people consume?

1:07:37 What content should people consume?

Vicki O’Neill: [01:07:37] I’m not a real big book reader, but I am a fan of watching videos to learn or listening to a podcast to learn. Your podcast is a great one to learn about marketing and then if you want to learn about video on the different platforms, there are different people on each one that I always recommend that people follow. So you’re going to have somebody different on YouTube versus on TikTok, versus Instagram, or versus LinkedIn. All of them have different gurus. Gillian is the guru I always recommend for LinkedIn because she makes LinkedIn video easy peaasy. So yeah, that would be my recommendation is to figure out which platform you want to start creating videos for and then you can just either search for different people or like Reels on Instagram. If you just go to the reels button and start watching videos, then you’ll start to see there’s so many different people on Instagram that are Instagram coaches that have phenomenal Reels. They share a lot of tips, they have a lot of like how-to videos as well. You don’t even have to attend like a workshop or anything. You can just go through their feed, see all the different types of videos, how they do it, hacks on how to do it. So everything that you need is actually on each of the platforms. You just have to invest the time to search and find those individuals and watch their videos to learn how to do it. But for me, especially with video, like reading a book about video just seems counterintuitive to me. So watching videos is probably the best thing to do.

Martin Henley : [01:09:20] Fantastic. Okay, good. Excellent. Okay, so I need to check in and just see how you feel about your experience of having appeared on the talk marketing show.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:09:35] It’s been phenomenal. You’re a great host. You ask a great questions and you keep it conversational, which I love. I don’t feel like I’m having questions just being darted at me. It’s been very conversational. So thank you. Okay. You are very.

Martin Henley : [01:09:49] Welcome. Except, of course, that having established that you’ve had a great time, it will be much easier then for you to throw a couple of people under the bus who you think might also take some enjoyment or at least endure having a conversation like this with me. Do you have some people in mind?

1:10:08 Who can you introduce us to who might enjoy to be on the Talk Marketing show?

Vicki O’Neill: [01:10:08] Yeah, actually, I think one person that would be a really good fit for your podcast is Krista Mollione

Vicki O’Neill: [01:10:23] Yeah. So Khrista is with a K and then mullion is m. O. L. L. I. O. N.

Martin Henley : [01:10:31] So it’s like million with an O instead of the first eye. Molly.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:10:36] Chris Exactly.

Martin Henley : [01:10:37] Molly And fantastic. What does Krista talk about that our audience would be interested in?

Vicki O’Neill: [01:10:44] She helps entrepreneurs get started with their business and then help them scale it as well. So she’s a business growth coach and she’s actually started two successful companies that were seven figures and she’s on her third company now. So she does all of that through marketing, of course, and helping entrepreneurs or new business owners create their offers and their pricing that will help set them up for longer term success. She’s really good.

Martin Henley : [01:11:16] Excellent.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:11:18] Cool. And you have a second person that I think you would really enjoy as well as your audience and it’s Chris Walker. Excellent. He’s the guy who will actually dispel myths about marketing and what marketers should really be focused on and it’s not the metrics. He’s just. He’s a demand generation marketer. I think that’s his podcast Demand Gen. I can send you a link to him. He’s just he’s one of the people I always refer people to on LinkedIn if you want to learn about marketing today and not your typical four PS and all that crap marketing he’s the person that you want to be following. He’s very smart, very intuitive, and he does his entire business with three people. It’s crazy. Amazing.

Martin Henley : [01:12:24] Fantastic. Excellent. And are these people that you could introduce me to in the way that Jillian introduced me to you?

Vicki O’Neill: [01:12:31] I could introduce you that way to Christa. I could try with Chris, but it’s been a while since I’ve actually had a conversation with him. But I could. I could try.

Martin Henley : [01:12:41] Okay. Super cool. If you could try, that would be the very best. That would be the very best.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:12:45] Happy to.

Martin Henley : [01:12:46] Fantastic. Is there anything that you said that you feel you shouldn’t have said?

Vicki O’Neill: [01:12:51] Now there’s probably more I could have said about your podcast in just this conversation. Okay.

Martin Henley : [01:12:59] Yeah, that was the next question. Is there anything that you wish you had said that you haven’t said?

Vicki O’Neill: [01:13:04] No. I just think this was a great experience and I want to thank you for that. How long have we been going for, an hour and a half. It went by really fast.

Martin Henley : [01:13:13] Yeah. Good. It really does. I’m going to be devastated one time, somebody says this was torture. It felt like forever.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:13:21] I doubt you’ll have anybody say that.

Martin Henley : [01:13:23] I hope.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:13:24] It fun, too.

Martin Henley : [01:13:26] Okay, I try. Well, I try to have fun. I think it’s fun to have these conversations. This is what I think people should know about marketing. Actually, it’s just a lot of fun. It’s an opportunity to play with your business, you know, and do the thing that you really need to do, which is make your business available to people so they can spend money with you, so you can be richer, have a nicer house, nicer car, nicer holidays, better retirement, all of that stuff.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:13:47] All the above. Good.

Martin Henley : [01:13:49] Excellent. So what we’ll do now then, is we’ll say goodbye for the sake of anyone who’s still listening. And then I’ll stop recording and we can say goodbye like normal human beings.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:13:58] Sounds good.

Martin Henley : [01:14:00] I have had such a wonderful time. Thank you so much. It’s been really interesting. I don’t think people can know enough about how easy and useful video marketing is. I think they just need to get it. They need to get into the habit of doing it and they should probably contact you and get you to support them to do that because that’s bound to save them lots of time and energy. I have had a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for being here today.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:14:29] Thanks so much, Martin. I appreciate that. And thanks for your kind words, too, about people reaching out to me. I would 100% agree with that.

Martin Henley : [01:14:35] I would 100% agree with that still, I’m glad I said that.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:14:39] Thank you.

Martin Henley : [01:14:40] Thank you so much.

Vicki O’Neill: [01:14:42] Thank you.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?