Video Shouldn't Be This Complicated with Bryan Fittin

Break through dated attitudes and misconceptions about video, and learn how to get started and make the most out of your video content assets.

Bryan Fittin, Founder of Go Rogue X, believes B2B marketers are missing a BIG opportunity. Video is a powerful tool to create a human connection between your brand and your customers. By showcasing company leadership and staff on video versus in written form, many additional aspects of your brand can be communicated, such as company culture, personality, and dare I say, endearing human imperfection. 

So it is ironic then, that perfection is the biggest reason B2B marketers are intimidated by video, thinking video equates to one perfectly polished corporate showcase. Today, video content is more accessible to create, and widely embraced by technical buyers. The 2021 State of Marketing to Engineers research report shows that 96% of engineers and technical buyers watch video for work weekly.

In this episode, Bryan and I dive deeper into the benefits of video, different popular form factors of video, expectations of length by platform, and how to measure the impact of adding video to your content marketing mix. 

To continue learning more about about video, explore our Video Marketing Getting-Started Guide.

Resources

• Go Rogue X
• Podcast Episode: In the Know
• Podcast Episode: Why You Should Integrate Video Into Your Marketing Strategy
• Bryan on LinkedIn
  
  

Transcript

I got a lot out of this episode. I know you will, too. Let's do this.

Welcome to Content Marketing. Engineered your source for building trust and generating demand with technical content. Here is your host, Wendy Covey. Hi and welcome to Content Marketing Engineering. On each episode, I'll break down an industry trend challenge or best practice in reaching technical audiences. You'll meet colleagues, friends and clients of mine who will stop by to share their stories. And I hope they leave each episode feeling inspired and ready to take action. Before we jump in, I'd like to give a brief shout out to my agency.

TREW Marketing Crew is a full service agency located in beautiful Austin, Texas, serving highly technical companies. For more information, visit true marketing dot com. And now on with our podcast.

Hey, everyone. Well, today I'm here with Brian Fittin. He's the founder of Go Rogue Ex. And we're going to be talking all things video marketing. So thank you for being here today, Brian. I'm looking forward to our talk.

Absolutely. So we're excited to be here. Thanks. Who will? Just to give our listeners a little context, tell us a little bit about yourself and your agency.

Yeah, so we are a video marketing video podcast agency that focuses on mainly repurposing content and making sure that kind of stand out from the crowd in your marketing efforts, specifically in the B2B space.

And how did you get into this line of business? Oh, well, that's a long story. I will make it as short as possible. But so actually I started out doing photography back in mid 2000s. I had moved for my corporate job.

And so I was moving around the country and doing some photos and different things like that, and then eventually got into some video work and moved back home to northwest Arkansas and kind of got plugged into a very, very creative community up here and just learned all of the video marketing side project type of stuff that I eventually was able to take full time into into this agency, which is kind of combines all my all my passions of marketing and content marketing, creation, graphic design, photography into doing it specifically for small businesses who don't necessarily have that ability.

Or they may have a marketing person. Right. But they don't necessarily have the know how of all the creative side. And so we try to fulfill a lot of those needs in that. But, yeah, it's it's been it's been a long journey and a lot of trial and error. I mean, I've had multiple businesses and I kind of serial entrepreneur trying to figure out what sticks, you know, and trying a bunch of things. And so it's been a lot of fun.

But now now we're here and really, really enjoying this. It almost kind of came at the right time as well, especially with our world going very virtual and businesses really having to pivot into that that virtual space. So kidding.

Well, I'm a little envious of your studio. And we we were talking a little bit before this episode started. You have someone there helping you with your sound levels and your lights and hearing him in my home office and they bring light just a little jealous right now. So it's it's it's been a work in progress for a long time.

It's been a big dream of mine to always have when I started photography to have a studio. But we've we've moved from a couple of different locations, but ended up actually here in downtown Bentonville, Arkansas, which is home of Wal-Mart. So the Wal-Mart Home Office, I can literally see it from outside of our our office space. And so it's set up down here. It's it's been a lot of fun. We I'll tell you, it's it's a lot of work to get everything right.

And the more tech you get involved, the more complicated it gets. And so it is one of those things that bring lights and a USB microphone or an excellent microphone, that that's just it's easy. You know, it's going to work. You turn it on and it goes and you don't have to worry about it. Once you start doing all of this, that's when all the problems start, start popping up.

So so that's the key word today. Complicated or rather, does it have to be complicated? So I think you keyed in on the theme that I'd like to focus on. So so let's start with a very basic question. Is video really all that important, Brian? Should should is that is it worth it?

Well, I mean, if you don't you're not concerned about converting sales or anything like that.

No, it's not at all. So when sales once that you know, so our main tagline is put a face with your brand.

Right. And so that is one of the things that we really focus on is that connection, that human connection. And we don't just we don't just necessarily do it through the marketing routine. But I'm a big fan of the app, Marco Polo. I don't know if you if you've heard of it or if you guys use or anything, but I connect with our clients through that because I want them to see our face, see my face, see what I'm working on, that that just provides a human level of connection that you can't necessarily get through, just photos and even, you know, it's very important, obviously, with copy.

But, you know, audio is important as well. But I think video is kind of at least the starting pillar to kind of work down from there.

OK, you know, and I'll add to that, we recently did a research report on how engineers and technical buyers seek and consume information. And I am just stunned that we're at a place now where 96 percent of engineers watch videos for work, 96 percent. And and we we asked how long? And over half of them watch at least one hour or more. And again for work, not not for pleasure.

So if if people think that the behavior is, yeah, this is more of a B2C thing, it's absolutely not.

So, yeah, I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. So people that want this conversion should keep on listening so they hear.

Exactly. Exactly.

So, so a video is is important and valued. Then why are so many B2B marketers intimidated by adding video to their content mix.

So just from my experience, I mean I've worked in the corporate world for about 14 years and just understanding the monstrosity of those types of businesses that you don't want to you know, there's a lot of privacy stuff that they have to, you know, and you have to go through media training.

I've gone through multiple media training, you know, different courses and stuff like that. And they're always very leery of doing video because you can mess that up if it's not high in production, they feel like it has to be this big to do when it really doesn't. And we've learned that through just even the last several years of marketing in general, as people want that authentic connection, they want to see it, you know, Facebook live or LinkedIn live.

That's not a fully produced thing.

They want to see you mess up and stumble over your words and ramble as I like to do a lot and because that that makes you very real. And so a lot of times it helps them to see what doing business is going to be like with you. And I think a lot of companies just they are still kind of in that old management of like we don't really understand it. So we're kind of just we're scared to kind of jump out there because we don't want to mess up right now.

And so we just stick with what we've known for a long time.

And I think that that a lot of times it's going to it really it really, you know, put you behind your competition, because that's one thing we talk about is like the company, your competition's already looking at doing this.

They may already be doing it. And so a lot of times it takes one person to step out and then everybody else follows suit. So trying to be that one person. Yeah. So, yeah.

And I the quality question comes up a lot. And I think there's just fear that if it's not a top level production, then it'll be harmful for your brand. And so. So what do you think's happened to change that? I mean, did that used to be the case? And then with social media, things have changed and made video more approachable, or what was that turning point?

Yeah, absolutely. So I I've worked on multiple just kind of higher in production shoots and different things like that and assisted. And we it was that opinion especially, you know, 2010, 2014, 15, it really was that you needed to have the sit down. Let's make this look as beautiful as possible. We're going to pay a crew, you know, twenty five thousand dollars to come out and we're going to do a talking head video and be rolling all this stuff.

And that that was the case back then. It kind of showed, hey, we're on another level. But, you know, just like, you know, buyers become aware and marketers kind of ruin everything.

Honestly, if it happens, it just happens. I love marketing, but it is one of the things that we kind of ruin that to where people become savvy to what you're doing. Right. And so they look at it like, oh, I see, this is high end and producer probably trying to sell me something. They're trying to whatever it is. And so a lot of times going into that level of.

Hey, we're just going to make this very, very unique and simple and a lot of that time at least what we've done and what we've seen is that converts a lot more because, again, it makes you real. And so there was kind of a turning point, especially with with social media. I think everybody, you know, went after the big Super Bowl ads. And that was kind of your your big deal, right? You wanted to hire and produce funny commercial, whatever it was.

But that's kind of a shot in the dark. And once it's done, it's done.

And so if you're trying to generate a lot of content, there's no way that you can keep up the budgets of 20, 30, 50 thousand dollars to keep creating content. And then you're not you're not doing anything with it on the back end. Right. I remember lots of those years that people would hire us to come out and I'm like, hey, what did you guys do with the video that we shot? You know, that you paid us a lot of money to do.

And they're like, well, we put it on YouTube and I only got a few views and we didn't anything else.

That's. Oh, my goodness. I'm like, oh, no, no. You see, that's so crazy.

And so it just makes it easier. Now it's more affordable to create that more authentic content. And again, that obviously the bottom line matters for most businesses. And so it's just getting them to kind of move into that area that, hey, it's OK to be a little more authentic, you know, to not be so perfect.

Yeah. So when a company comes to you and I know you work a lot with small to medium sized businesses with your company today. So when they come to you and they say, I'm interested in adding video to my content mix, or maybe it's probably something more specific, like I want to put a video about my company and my website. So how do you make those decisions of the types of video you should use and, you know, walk me through that process that.

Absolutely.

So, I mean, there are several types of videos that you really do need for your website.

You have to have ones that are going to be, you know, showing who you are, your mission, your why behind what you do. You know, it's maybe highlighting some of your teams and stuff like that.

And that's a lot of times our entry into working with a client is, hey, we just need a sit down, you know, talking head video to talk about what we do. And and so a lot of times, again, moving into that next conversation of, hey, you know, people need to be educated. Right? What are what are the questions that a lot of your your buyers are asking? What is the question you could ask all the time?

And I guarantee you people can come up with, oh, we always ask these five or ten things. I'm like, that's the stuff you need to be doing a weekly video on educating and then putting them on your website as a frequently asked questions, like you said. Ninety six percent of your engineers are watching videos. And so how amazing would it be to have that blog post with that video up top hosted, you know, even just on YouTube and just embedded on your blog to give them that option to be able to watch it or listen to it or read it, however they want to consume that information.

And so usually that's those are the next steps that we go into. And obviously, video podcasting is blowing up right now. And so that is has been our main focus of making sure to even use it as kind of a lead generation tool as well, like interview your potential clients or somebody you would think would be a great fit. And that's also a great way to to honestly see if they would be a good client, because sometimes you think and then all of a sudden you get to talking with that person that, you know, whoever is the gatekeeper or maybe even the decision maker, you realize they might not be.

But it was great content. You got to we got to promote you and your brand as well as, you know, make a great connection. And so there's a lot of useful tools that that video can be a part of.

Mm hmm. I know for our agency, it's my own marketing of true marketing. We used to blog twice a week and and then we had so much blog content. We started repurposing and, you know, doing a mixture of new and repurposed. And so now, you know, the evolution, of course, is exactly what you said. Let's mix in video to this and not have it just be always the written word. And for many on the team, they would rather get in front of the camera and talk than, you know, stare that blank sheet of paper, so to speak, on your computer and with the cursor blinking at you.

And then it's easier to bring in customers and interview them. So it's it's interesting when you get over that hump of equipment and quality and, oh, the strangeness of being in front of the camera and think about how easy this could be to produce. There's there's barriers start falling by the wayside. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And I think even with the pandemic that has really opened up just the humanity of us all, like, you know, somebody said the word for twenty twenty was, you're on mute, you know what I mean?

Like this crazy phrase for twenty twenty. Yeah. And that, that just made it again. We're, we're all trying to figure this out.

I've got three preschoolers at home so taking calls at home and that somebody running in with, you know, something or half naked or so. I don't know, there's all kinds of things. It's a circus around our house. And so but people understand that now. And I think there's some empathy in that to where, you know, again, this pandemic kind of made it real, is hard for all of us, but it's made it very. In the business sense of, hey, we just kind of have to be ourselves rather than this polished version of who we are, you know, how did marketers measure whether or not their investment in video is paying off?

So we we do a couple of different things, so we obviously go through some different campaigns, whether that be, hey, are you focused on a branding aspect? Right. Or you just want to get your name out there, create some content and, you know, promote yourselves as kind of a thought leader in the industry, or are you looking more in the line of, hey, I would love for this to be kind of a lead generation, a connection to that's where we can kind of go.

We have one client that literally is working on a three million dollar deal because they had somebody on their podcast unintentionally. It wasn't an intention to say, hey, this is going to be our client. It's just, hey, you have a great story. Let's talk let's work together. And then what happens is you usually have a potential client through that connection to it's like, hey, they're doing this really cool thing. Oh, I learned about them.

We made this connection. You need to work with them. So really being able to track you got to be able to track those things, because if you're just looking at it as, hey, this is just a video that we were doing or a podcast or something like that, you're not going to see the Y on the back end because it just kind of slips through the cracks. And so you really do have to track all of that and make sure, hey, that connection, that interview that we did, it led to these three sales or led to three three other connections in our industry or something like that.

You know, there's qualitative metrics and I can't get over that.

The idea that a podcast could be a lead generation machine or a sales generated machine by inviting prospects, I I've heard this many times now, and it just it was never something I had at the forefront of my mind when I started this podcast a year ago. And I just think it's brilliant. So keep that in mind for sure. Well, I did. OK, go ahead.

Well, I was going to say and I think you have to we actually own one of our recent episodes. We talked about this.

If you go with that intention of I'm going to land this client because I'm going to have him on Neverwhere, then, yeah, it never works.

Yeah. Go into it with that genuine like, hey, I really want to connect with this person and if something comes out of it, great. What's demo or a product or whatever it is, that's fantastic. But don't go in with that mentality because they can sniff it out. You know that. Your buyers know that.

So absolutely. Well, true marketing. We just redesigned our website late last year, and as part of that effort, we recorded the corporate video like you talk about. I love it. You know, here's our team and and we put it up there. And we also have one for each service area that we are still in, you know, post-production work on it. And so what we're planning on doing is measuring, you know, time on site and how that is changed once we get these videos live.

So we've looked we have some good statistics on how each service page is performing with the redesign in the now, as we add video, we want to see what that inflection does. So I'm hoping will have an interesting case study of just quantitative metrics of how that investment paid off.

And, yeah, you know, already we were seeing a lot of time on site change, I think, just for having that corporate video on the homepage.

So it looks great on your website, too. I mean, obviously, you've been on it several times and I love all of the layout and everything. And so hopefully we'll get our hopefully to your level at some point. So it's beautiful. I love it. Thank you.

Well, hey, that's that's why we're talking. Right. We can help each other. Exactly. Yeah.

Well, how we've talked a little bit about and blog posting and how you can put video into there. What are some other ways in which marketers can squeeze out more investment when they create videos?

I think the biggest thing and one of my favorite topics is the repurposing. Right. So we talk about blog posts and doing the initial pillar piece of content. So chopping that up, especially linked and making sure it's all formatted correctly, making sure that you understand different people on different platforms. So if you are posting on Instagram or even Facebook, understanding the mentality that people are when they're on that platform, how are they consuming that content? How long does it need to be?

What doesn't what does the the actual you know, I guess even the the tagline or headline or something like that, what does that need to be to really grab that attention? There's just, again, so many even podcasters out there. I see them in all kinds of podcast groups. They just they don't they don't necessarily utilize that that piece of content that they really, really could be.

You put a lot of time and investment. You know, you have a guest on and they've they've sacrificed their time to to be on your show, do them justice by promoting them, by by creating some additional pieces of content there that can really benefit your audience, obviously. But there's there are a lot of ways of doing that, of repurposing that when it comes to graphics or, you know, captioned videos or even shorter YouTube videos, we have even moved into.

How do you structure your podcast to where, you know, bullet points that way, you know, when you go back to cut and edit those, you know, those timestamps. And so that way it makes the editing process a lot easier on the back ends. Who's that way? You can create a whole workflow for your content. It's not just great. We did the recording and it's done, you know, and move on and put a bow on it.

We're doing. Oh, I wish. Yeah. Never is, never is are there targets, links that you recommend for Social versus YouTube versus a full episode of whether it's a video podcast or something else?

Yeah. You mean target links specifically? Like how where are you directing people back to?

I guess from you know, I'm in the length of the video. So for instance. Yeah, when when I put this video we're creating, we usually do a video short that we share in LinkedIn and then we'll put the full episode on YouTube. But I'm wondering, you know, is there a certain time frame that's optimized, like I said, at one minute or, you know, something like that? Yeah, yeah.

I apologize. I'm sure that's OK. Yeah. So the links, I mean, it really does depend. First test out everything that you do, right? Because your audience is different than my audience. It's everybody's audiences are different. And so test that out to actually see how many obviously impressions that you're getting and stuff like that. But the ideal is long form on YouTube, right. People go there to sit down and watch a longer video when it comes to LinkedIn, that two to three minute mark we've really seen some success with as well.

But yeah, that 30 second is a good way to kind of hit somebody with with a drive. If you're doing a kind of a one by one video that those need to be probably under 30 seconds. And the same for Instagram just because people are there scrolling. Right. You want to stop the scroll. And so it just it just depends. If you're doing the wide form, you can usually go a little bit longer with that content because people kind of expect that to like, hey, this is in the traditional, you know, nine by sixteen format.

So I'm expecting to watch that a little bit longer. And so it just depends.

But we've been testing out story sets as well, like a longer story, shorter stories as it are, an inch screen with that. And there's again, there's lots of stuff, but I say that's about there kind of see and then track that. Yeah, yeah.

Good, good. How important are captions? I feel like this is a dumb question, but just in case someone is saying I don't want to do the work of captions, it is some work.

It is some work. Again, it is important for the platform. Right. So for YouTube. No, I wouldn't I wouldn't go through a whole episode and put all the captions they kind of auto generate as well for you. LinkedIn, I think it is important, especially with a headline that's really going to grab attention, that's going to solve a problem for them. We always talk about I'm a terrible copywriter. I'm I'm the audio video guy like that.

So we have amazing people on our team that do great ad copy. But it is that of having a headline that's going to evoke the emotion. Right. And so what? Why? Why, you know, why should I watch this? What problem is it going to solve for me? And then being able to you know, the captions are built for them to stop and see whether or not that's going to be valuable for them. And then they'll click into it, then explore more, listen to the whole thing and then see your link.

Hey, go check out the full blog post or the full video about what I was just talking about, if you want more information. So it's really to grab that attention to because most people I think, you know, a twenty nineteen survey was like eighty five percent of people watched videos without the audio on.

So that's eighty five percent. OK, yeah. You could have just said that. Oh wow. That's a long answer to that. Yeah.

No, no it's good. How about transcripts. I mean going along with captions. That's another thing that takes time and someone editing that. Are they worth it.

I think it is. Still is. Oh that's that, that's a long form. And some people still read the transcripts. It goes back to and you obviously know more about this, but just even with SEO purposes. Right, having those transcripts are it's important for that. But then also just giving somebody the format to be able to read it. So we usually do a summary and then we'll do some show notes. So timestamp stuff and then usually a little bit longer blog post and transcript as well.

So again, it's giving the person who's consuming your content all the options for them, because if you're only doing video, you're missing out on everybody else, if you're only doing audio, missing out. So making sure to obviously deliver in the way that they want to consume it.

Yes, exactly. Have have them in mind and and people want to consume content in different ways and to repurpose this way. It's it's incremental work. Right. It's not doubling your efforts. So be be kind to your audience. Yeah. Good.

Well I know you have lots of resources on your website. Maybe point listeners to how to connect with you and with your company and what they might find on your website. Absolutely.

So all the social platforms, we are a regex. You can find us there. We have our podcast, Roeg Creators. That is that's on our website Go Rogue X.com Slash podcast. We have some resources there. So we've kind of combined our podcast and our blog together, so. I would say that there are we had an episode a while back, and I can make sure that you have the link for this, but it was six videos that your website needs.

I think that would be a great one for if you're just getting kind of started in audio or video, that's a great one to be able to check out. And we we discussed that all the time. We want to make it easy for people to get into audio using audio.

I keep saying audio, using video, setting up the, you know, the technical side of it. But it's it's really not it's not too difficult. There's some other some great resource shows out there as well to just get started.

Hey, video is nothing without the audio. And it's very true. I wouldn't put it plug again for your your monthly feature on your podcasts, which is things you need to know. In the know in Israel about three times, yeah, in the know and so so for your listeners, so monthly, Brian and his co-host feature just digital marketing trends and it was very informative. I loved it. So go back and listen to December. It was awesome and and subscribe so you can hear the next one.

So thank you.

Yeah. Those are fun to do because we get to do more research and see what's happening and everything changes every single week. So we have plenty to talk about.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you need to do that anyway for your business, so why not share it with others? So I appreciate your generosity. Yeah. Well, any parting advice before we go?

Just hit record. Do it. Get out there. Don't be afraid. I mean, even with Facebook Live and your Instagram stories or LinkedIn stories, love LinkedIn stories. Now, that's just a great place to kind of test out what you're doing, getting in front of the camera. You're not used to being around the camera. Do a couple of stories. You can delete them. They're gone in 24 hours. So just try it out, you know?

Don't be afraid. Exactly. All right. Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you. Appreciate it.

And thanks for joining me today on Content Marketing, Engineered. for show notes, including Links to Resources, visit True Marghani dotcom slash podcast. Wow. There you can subscribe to our blog, Inari newsletter in order a copy of my book, Content Marketing Engineer. Also, I would love your reviews on this podcast. So please, when you get a chance, subscribe and leave me your review on your favorite podcast subscription platform. Thanks and have a great day.