Adrian Sandmeier: Episode 392

Transcript

[0:00:24] NVN: Adrian Sandmeier spent seven years working in television production for the biggest station in Switzerland. He happened to be there upfront and center, during the period in which video shifted from broadcasting to online streaming. Adrian took what he learned from this experience and applied it to the business and marketing sectors. As the founder of youstream, an award winning video and marketing company that serves companies across Europe, Adrian helps businesses create video content that actually works, resulting in more sales and qualified leads. In his new book, Video Marketing for Marketers, Adrian shares his insights. Catch a glimpse in this episode of Author Hour. Adrian, thank you for joining us today.

[0:01:07] Adrian Sandmeier: Welcome.

[0:01:08] NVN: I want to start out by having you explain to me and to listeners, how you made the jump from studying business administration to getting into video production?

[0:01:20] Adrian Sandmeier: Basically, I was involved in many hours in front of the computer and something just was missing And let’s say, just not enough engaging with the creativity. And I got in touch with the man that became a friend that was Andreas, he’s called. He’s an actor. He started acting in Germany in Berlin and basically, with the many conversations with him and also just explaining how acting, how filming works and behind the scene situations, he explained it just made me curious and I just wanted to deep dive into that topic. Because somehow, I was, I want to say sick but it didn’t excite me anymore like the surface, I just wanted to go a bit deeper in certain topics and explore and that pulled me in the whole topic.

[0:02:20] NVN: So, basically, it sounds like you were just following your passion?

[0:02:23] Adrian Sandmeier: Yeah, that could be. I mean, it became a passion and it just also just threw me into a new area just because it’s so versatile if you can call it like that. You have the acting part, you have the story part, you have the technical part, everything comes together. And at the end, you can bring our – your message to the audience and the whole thing is a huge experience and every time you grow and learn from it

[0:02:56] NVN: It’s a world that’s so fascinating to me. You went beyond just being interested in studying video production. You actually worked for seven years in TV production for the biggest station in Switzerland, correct?

[0:03:10] Adrian Sandmeier: Yeah, that’s correct.

[0:03:11] NVN: Wow. My understanding is, also, that you were there during an interesting point when things were shifting from traditional broadcasting to online streaming, is that right?

[0:03:24] Adrian Sandmeier: Yeah, that’s correct. Basically, the media landscape nowadays is changing. It has been changing since a couple of years in the speed we never been seeing before. I was in middle of that, you know? Every couple of months, we were thrown into a new technologies, a new way of the whole TV experience. So you could see that the TV station was under pressure, fighting for audience, you know? Fighting against the online consumer because the whole thing is shifting and everybody has to reinvent themselves and not just monthly, almost daily. We don’t know where it’s heading but it’s really changing in a fast pace and it makes it exciting. And yeah, that’s why I also like this because it’s quite, I would say, an environment, where you have to focus what it is about – what this video about, what is content about? So yeah, that makes exciting for me. But also exciting to give my experience to our customers, to the consumers, to the enterprises that we are working with.

[0:04:46] NVN: So, speaking of that, you went on to become the founder of youstream. For us Americans, this is an award winning video marketing company with clients all across Europe. Why did you decide to make that jump from television to this marketing focus?

[0:05:05] Adrian Sandmeier: It wasn’t a jump from one side to the other, it was just developing within a couple of years so I really could have the chance to gain experience over time. And that the end of course, I also on the other side now with content marketing online marketing, video marketing and for me. Basically, for me it never felt like a jump though, it’s very hard to actually describe it but it just went – it was like a flow, you know? The media landscape was changing, I was like – it’s about 11 years ago, I founded that youstream and step by step, I just grew up with youstream. We started with small project and then small enterprises, bigger companies that worked with us. We got bigger projects. We got more people involved. It was a steady growth of our company of the project, of the experience, as of the excitement because every time we were thrown into more difficult tasks – let’s say, also higher expectations as more budget you have, as more people involved also at the expectations rise. What happens also is that you start realizing you only can actually create this project with a team. And so somehow that makes it even more fulfilling because as a team, you get all the different expertise together. Of course me, as the CEO of this company, I’m able to guide those people to also try to get focus, tell them what it is about. It’s not just about doing a video, especially in video marketing. It’s about focusing on a goal, understanding how we can reach it with video. And the whole thing that just was a steady process and so, I got into this quite naturally.

[0:07:13] NVN: I love how you describe that as the flow. And I feel like that is one of the things that’s so cool about being in the media or in most creative fields, especially over the course of the last decade, things have been changing so rapidly that you can kind of start in one area that it might seem, at first, like you’re pretty locked into. And as things evolved, you sort of find yourself making this transitions and doing these new things that you would have never even thought about when you first started out because they weren’t possible in the first place.

[0:07:51] Adrian Sandmeier: Yes, that’s true. Also here, it’s a step by step process. Video is so complex. You have so different aspects. And in every aspect, you actually are able to improve with every project. There’s never been ever in my past project where I never learned something, whether it’s in a pre-production, you know, preparing the project are actually within the production or also in the distribution, there’s always so much potential to always do better and learn. So, as a marketer, also as – in the technical aspect and in the story aspect. In the effectiveness of the whole video marketing journey so that makes it exciting and rewarding.

[0:08:49] NVN: So, even though you’re the CEO, I’m getting the gist from what you’re saying that you’re still very hands on and interested in all the different elements of putting these videos together, you’re not sort of up there floating above, just letting everybody else do the work.

[0:09:06] Adrian Sandmeier: Yeah, through the time – of course, you know, I was only talking about the team work so it’s not anymore possible to get in or deep dive in every aspect. For example, let’s say, the early days I was editing the videos. And nowadays, it’s not anymore possible to do that by my own because I have my colleagues here actually who support me. And they do a really marvelous job, they have all the tricks in editing and all the things I cannot just keep up – How do you say? Keep up and yes, I cannot keep up with that because it’s so wide, the video marketing, that area. I mostly focus on pre-pre production and just make sure that all is set up for the production and also for editing and for the distribution, just to make sure everything is prepared then to run smooth through the process.

[0:10:10] NVN: That’s a lot though, you’re still engaged in the big picture of it very much. It sounds like you’ve got your hands in the pot with everything.

[0:10:19] Adrian Sandmeier: Yes, for sure. I wouldn’t say with everything. I just try to let go of certain things because I just cannot just simply not do everything. That’s the art of entrepreneurship. When you grow, just to find those spots where you can give away responsibility and trust the people with whom you are working with. And it’s also a great feeling when you feel that giving away trust actually pays back.

[0:10:51] NVN: Right. Okay, let’s turn our attention toward the business aspect of this. Talk to me about why video is so important in business marketing strategies today?

[0:11:07] Adrian Sandmeier: Basically, video – let’s say, if you look at video, it belongs to content marketing family. Basically with content you are able nowadays to actually reach your business goals, let’s say. Because you communicate over the internet by text, by pictures. But last but not least by video and with video, you are able to actually transmit not just information but also emotion,.You are able to actually spread the empathy. You’re able to tell your story. You’re able to connect with your audience, to build trust with your audience and yeah, with many other aspects like entertain them. It’s out of this different aspects of content, it’s the most powerful power that’s why video is so effective and it’s going to be in the future becoming more important, you see that in the numbers that we see every day or every year. The rise of the consumption of videos and also the engagement of videos. It’s a topic also that many companies haven’t even started to jump into and many companies that started haven’t really began to explore all the potential of it and I think there’s a lot of exciting – yeah, possibilities to come in the future.

[0:12:53] NVN: You know, it’s really interesting to me. A lot of these more technical conversations that I have on this podcast. As you were talking about the power of video, you were discussing things like story, empathy and trust. All of these very high touch human ideas. And I feel like when we think about technology, just in general as an umbrella term, we think about it as being a colder way of communicating. Marketing, selling, whatever the case may be. But actually, there are these areas of technology and this sounds like one of them that allow us to be more human and to connect in more human ways than maybe we could at earlier points.

[0:13:41] Adrian Sandmeier: Yeah, suddenly, actually with video, we have really that possibility to show our face as a company. So, there are still nowadays, many companies on their websites, they put up a stock footage and you don’t know who is behind the company, the enterprise. Who are the people? And that is exactly the potential that you have as a marketer, as a CEO for companies that actually show your face and not just that, you actually – Connect with the audience. It’s like the audience is attracted to the face, since we are a baby, we are always looking for faces. In our brain, we has this fusiform gyrus. It’s just actually made to recognize faces to actually recognize emotions. And that as you see that for example in thumbnails of videos – thumbnails that video thumbnails with faces have a higher conversion rate, click rate than without. You see that the videos, there’s a character, a emotion, people involved, they convert better than when you just show a product. It’s all about the people, the faces that make a story at the end exciting and also the depths of character. We are not talking here about movie. We’re talking here about your company because if you for example explain the why of your company. You explain the story, you explain in an authentic way, why you can help with your solution, your customers then that’s much more powerful if you’re just comparison to text or a simple picture.

[0:15:36] NVN: Interesting. So, in addition to this idea of businesses, perhaps not yet understanding how important this element of connection and literal human faces is to effective marketing. Are there any other big keys that you feel like a lot of companies still haven’t quite cracked the code on yet?

[0:16:01] Adrian Sandmeier: Yeah, your most important channel as a marketer is your website. So, what happens is whether you use other channel such as social media, at the end, the goal is to drive your target audience to your website to get to know the company. To get to know the product, your services. And that’s where people gain trust and also learn about whatever you offer. And that’s where you actually have to work on to make sure that your strongest channel or let’s say your most important channel is actually a strong channel that you have done your SEO homework, your search engine optimization homework, that actually when people look for your product. Let’s say you sell chairs and you’re looking in Google for chairs that you actually are visible and that people find your webpage and that is very actually can show your services, your company. You can do an explainer video, you can do tutorials. You can also do a testimonials of customers that are happy with your services and tell the story about how they actually experienced the whole experience video as a company and I think that’s yeah – I lost it a bit.

[0:17:32] NVN: No, you didn’t lose it at all. And I think you were making a really interesting point there, which is it sounds like this is very much a fusion of creativity but also that is firmly rooted in this sort of statistical analysis and really doing the work to understand your customers in a real way. So you are working those two things together.

[0:17:57] Adrian Sandmeier: Yes that’s right. So how I explained it to our customers or potential customers is they have to imagine that actually video marketing is like a sailing boat. So the base of the boat is actually your online marketing effort that makes sure that you are visible that includes also the SEO, that includes your website the design of your website. Also that the technical aspect of your website is right that it is fast that is loading properly. You can imagine all the people that jump off your website if it is not loading fast enough. You just need this space and if you are imagining the sailing ship that says actually are the videos and together like the sail and the base of the boat that make you actually go forward and reach your goals. So you need both in order to a strong video marketing.

[0:19:01] NVN: And then another thing that you talk about in your book, which is interesting to me is that as you are creating these videos, you want to think about the customer’s journey. And you will use specific types of videos based on what phase of the journey the customer’s at. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

[0:19:22] Adrian Sandmeier: Yes, so basically you have to understand that not every customer is in the same point of the journey. We basically separated everything cold traffic, warm traffic and hot traffic. That means that people that have never heard of you, you actually have to grab some differently than people that are already on the website or people that are just about to hit the bay bottom. So if you imagine the journey that your customer goes through. You also have the possibility to address them with different videos. It means that in the beginning of the journey, for example you could address them with social media videos, social media ads like on YouTube you can put pre-roll video ads and then drive them this way to your website. That means you also have to be much more, you have to build up much more attention. You have to create shorter videos. You have to put stronger call of actions in order to actually get their attention in the beginning of the journey. Because people at this stage are not explicitly looking for you. But once a customer is on your website, they already have a certain interest otherwise they wouldn’t be there. So it means that you are now able to save it, the image, movie, brand video. You can introduce your company, you introduce your unique value proposition. You can actually position your company with a exciting story, actually to make sure that they connect with you that they understand you. You do build up to transmit that empathy . And in the later stage, let’s say you can introduce them to a product videos later when they are about to decide whether they should buy from you or from a competitor. You can jump in with a testimonial. Of course, we recommend to produce several testimonials just to give them all of that throughout the customer journey the possibility to experience you to build and gain the trust in every point of that customer journey there are just perfect videos that hits the need of the customers.

[0:21:57] NVN: So, as we begin to wrap up here, thinking about listeners who may own a business or make marketing decisions for a business and have some sort of video program already going but perhaps have not put so much thought and strategy into it, what is the first thing they should do as they start to think about how they can revamp their video and make them more effective?

[0:22:24] Adrian Sandmeier: So every company is a bit different situation but really the first part is to actually evaluate your channel. Like think about do you have a channel that let’s say in this case the website where you actually can build up an audience where actually the people actually have an audience that is going to see your videos. So as I said earlier that you can invest in video marketing and nobody is going to see your videos. So really the foundation of the whole video marketing is a strong channel, your website. So that is the first thing you should check. And once you have built that up, your audience or your website, your channel, you can think about yeah, where you actually have the most potential video. For example, you have to see in your customer journey where your weaknesses are. Let’s say you want to use video marketing and you have a weak website. Let’s say you don’t have many visitors, you can actually say, “Okay. I am going to do some social media ads and drive people to my website.” That is effective. But it is not sustainable because the point is once you’re media effort is over, there are not going to be any more visitors on your website. Otherwise, our customers who invest in their website, in their SEO effort, in order to get a sustainable marketing for the future. So let us say you invest in SEO, if you invest in blocks on your website with videos that still will be effective or could still be effective in 10 years. But when you invest in some social media ads on YouTube, it is very effective now but once the media spending is over they’re not going to be any more people coming to your website. So you really have to think about, “How do I drive traffic to my website? How do I maintain it? Where are my weaknesses?” For example, we have customers, they might have a lot of traffic on their website but a low conversion rate. That means they just jump off without buying and there is a huge chance to build up trust or you can also see them in many products that need explanations that people don’t understand the product or they don’t understand the advantages of a product or service. So you need to be able to communicate fast, what your product is about and it is even better if you can put in some emotions, some authority if you can engage with the customers. If you find your spot where you have the most potential then you really can make a difference with video marketing.

[0:25:39] NVN: Excellent. I think one of my big takeaways here has been – there’s so much focus on social media and sources like YouTube now, I can see how it is almost like we don’t think about websites as much as we used to. So that is a really valuable message. I think people in some ways perhaps need to be reminded that that is still important. We have all of these other channels but we want things to live on our website.

[0:26:10] Adrian Sandmeier: Yes. That’s right. So let’s say there are some out there, they of course they invest a lot in social media and you have customers that invest a lot in social media. And many of them they underestimate the work that you have to put in, in order to reach results. Let’s say – of course you have a different strategy with social media. You can for example just feed your existing followers. Let’s say your company has 200 followers. There are some out there and that is to put effort for this 200 followers. They don’t put any ad spendings they just feed those 200 followers with their video, with their content and the things that can make a difference with that. But the point is, many of those are not ready to buy. Many of those don’t have the attention to look at your ads. And so social media, in order to be effective, you have to have a lot of followers. You have to post frequently and you have to post value. You know, not just you don’t talk about you, you talk about the value that you can give. You have to transmit messages. A reader always get smarter with your message and in order to do that, you have to build quality content and that is a lot of effort in the high work and many of the social media posts that you actually publish they are gone within a couple of days. So if you once put a block on your website that is of quality that is relevant that transmits value. You put it today and there are many of those that are still can be found in 10 years. So yeah, what is better than for the sustainable content on your website, I don’t have any answers in social media is not the solution.

[0:28:21] NVN: It makes so much sense. Great, Adrian. And is there anything we haven’t touched on yet that you want to make sure listeners are in the loop with?

[0:28:31] Adrian Sandmeier: Yes, just to give you some idea. I think that many marketers, nowadays, they go to a video production company in order to produce a video because they think, “Yeah, it is effective. It is because maybe competitors are also doing video.”But they just jump in a little bit too fast. They don’t allow themselves to actually step back just one or two steps and look at the big picture to actually understand yeah, how actually video is going to get to the audience and how it is going to convert. Because that is what you actually want at the end of the day as a marketer you want to have more conversion and if you think about Hollywood movies they cost in average, the production, $65 million and they put on top of that another 5200, 50% of the budget for marketing. So yeah, the movies are actually be seen. And you as a marketer as a CEO of a company you can start with video and you are just going to start about the video production spending. And you think that is going to work, it is not going to work. You have to also invest in your distribution that means that you have to invest in your website to be visible, to be found on Google or any other search engine, you have to make sure that once they actually are on your website that it also converts. So, if you put your image video on social media maybe that is not the right place because people don’t have time for two or three minutes of video on social media because social media there is so much noise on social media. So you have to communicate fast with a lot of intention and just bring value and call of action fast and just make sure that you actually have the right type of video at the right point in your customer journey. So that is important. What is also important is to actually know your target audience, know their challenges, know their problem and knows their language too. Because the point is that with video marketing you are going to talk to them. You are going to connect with your challenges, you want to make sure that you use their words. You are going to make sure that you have a story that they understand that they actually as you are able to connect with. And being able to evaluate this aspect of the audience just makes it much easier and not just for you but also a video production company that works for your video efforts to build a story and to build a video that converts. And I think yeah that they are suddenly aspects that many companies on there evaluate a bit their channel and their target audience.

[0:32:09] NVN: Perfect. All right Adrian, so your book is called Video Marketing for Marketers. Readers can find that on Amazon and is there anywhere else that they should go to find you or your company, youstream?

[0:32:24] Adrian Sandmeier: Yes, they can find this on our website of course that is youstream.ch, ch for Switzerland. Yeah they can find us there and that is our channel that we are most alert with and yeah that is where we also have success. Some people ask me, “Yeah, why don’t you put more effort in social media?” And I put some effort. But you know we work together with big corporations, also we have the privilege and somehow we all got them through our website and not through social media. So I am such a fan of the website. That is where you can find us.

[0:33:06] NVN: Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing all of this information, Adrian.

[0:33:11] Adrian Sandmeier: Yeah, it was a pleasure, thank you, Nikki.

[0:33:14] NVN: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find Video Marketing for Marketers, on Amazon. For more Author Hour, hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast service. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.