SALES VIDEO EXPERIMENT - Lessons learned

Six months ago I had a MAJOR problem.

Even if you would have put a gun to my head I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to increase conversions on my website. I had heard that video would increase conversions but, because of the massive hype, did not want to buy into it at the time.

When you just are just starting your website, or even if you have a seasoned and high converting website it is very easy to fall into the trap of running after every next thing a guru says.

So I decided to do the experiment for myself. I developed some theories of my own and completely ignored what the so called experts had to say. Long story short, sales videos completely changed my business (and life for that matter!).

I started the experiment by testing three different versions of a video my team and I produced on a website selling and e-book.

We tested every video over a time period of 1 week and kept the rest of the page exactly the same. In other words, the lay-out and copywriting of the sales page did not change for these 3 weeks.

Without using video we were selling around 2 e-books per week.

• Video 1 made me LESS sales over this 7 day period (only 1 sale!)
• Video 2 made me NO sales over this 7 day period (0 sales)
• Video 3 made me exactly 9 sales over this 7 day period!

Wow! We were definitely on to something. This was a very significant increase. Although I do not own the site anymore, the site is still averaging the same amount of conversions without any changes or modifications.

So what was so special about video 3? The funny thing is: Absolutely Nothing!

To be honest, I was actually thinking that video 3 would perform the worst as it went agains all the wisdom and knowledge that every so called expert suggested at the time.

Here are the 4 things that I discovered after doing a lot more of similar tests.

1. Heavy animations and flashy stuff DOES NOT work.

Video 1 and 2 were stuffed with flashy 3D graphics, sound effects, loud background music and moving elements to ‘wow’ the visitor.

Video 3 had sound simple, bold text illustrating and supporting and illustrating the main point. It was not flashy and did not look overly produced. But it rather kept the viewer engaged by really emphasizing the added value of the product.

Lesson for me: Do not fall into the trap of stuffing your sales video with awesome effects because you think it looks cool. You are here to sell the product and NOT to win a fancy Hollywood special effects price.


2. Address the visitors problem FIRST

The person landing on your page is not necessarily looking for what you have to offer, but he does have a problem.

“Client X is overweight, so he has a problem and is looking for a solution. This does not necessarily mean he needs YOUR solution Y”

What this means is that you have to address the problem first. You can do it very bluntly by saying:

“Hey, do you have X problem?”

Once you capture this problem we found that the visitor will stay for at least 10 seconds.

Also, for the same reason, ALWAYS use autoplay. If you take one lesson this should be it. Autoplay + Problem = Attention.

Lesson for me: Autoplay + Problem = Attention


3. Would you say that in person?

This one should be pretty obvious but I still see so many sales videos on the internet doing the complete opposite. Heck, I did the same when starting the experiment. In video 1 & 2 I did minimal talking and let the graphics do their work. Thats the whole point in doing a video I was thinking. WRONG.

In video 3 I pretty much spoke the whole time and envisioned my visitor sitting in front of me. My mindset switched from: ‘BOOM, Awesome graphics IN YOUR FACE’ look at how cool we are. To a personal chat I would have with this visitor in person.

Lesson for me: If I would not say or do this in person I would never do it on a sales video.

4. The visitor does not care about you, AT ALL!

This has actually been a very harsh lesson. I was really thinking that if a created a very cool video the visitor would be impressed. He would look at my website and product differently.

WRONG, DEAD WRONG.

This person does not care one bit who you are, how much money you’ve made and how famous you are online. The only thing he cares about is himself and his problem. You need to show him how the product is going to benefit him immensely or otherwise he is GONE, of to one of the other 10k pages that offer the same.

Lesson for me: Always focus your video on the customer and never on you, your business or your product.

5. Never never never make a video without a VERY strong call to action at the end.

O man, you would be amazed how many videos I see that are just providing information. “This is our product, it works like this, these are the benefits, end”.

This is really one of the best things you can do to kill your conversions. If you take on thing from this text, please let it be that you should ALWAYS end with a super strong call to action “Click the BUY NOW button”, “Fill out this form”, etc.

That is pretty much it. I hope that I was able to help some of you who are struggling with building a proper sales video! I’ve build a lot of these videos over time and I can tell you that it comes with a decent amount of trail and error.

Seb