TAC Report: Video Salesletter Formula
Okay, you are all probably very familiar with the long-form
salesletter that has become so common in internet marketing today. The
reason for its popularity is the fact that it has worked so well and
has been pulling great numbers for about the last century.
But I have discovered something incredible.
By moving away from the tried and true long-form salesletters
of the past and moving towards the use of video salesletters (and
sometimes very ugly video salesletters at that) I have been able to
DOUBLE my sales and conversions.
In this training I am going to show you why this process works and
what you need to do to make sure that you get the most out of your
sales video. I have developed a 5 part training just waiting for you to
tear into.
This powerful training is packed with strategies that you can put
into practice immediately. Begin your training right now so you can
start converting like never before.
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This stuff is great,
So lets say your in the dating niche following your continuity blueprint and your advertising using Media buys or using Gmail advertising.
Would you send them to a squeeze page first then the video sales letter after then opt in? Or just directly to the video sales latter?
And this is a bit off the subject but do you happen to know of any good squeeze page templates that you know has worked in the dating niche? Particularly Dating/seducing women? Id love something to model off of.
I’m using your tips from Gmail advertising and I’m trying to figure out how to blend it into the marketing of my continuity site and its front ends.
I’d appreciate any help!
REPLY: Ivan, to answer your question about where to send people from your various advertising campaigns, I would test sending people to a squeeze page THEN to the video sales letter versus sending people straight to the video sales letter WITH an exit pop squeeze page. Either way getting prospects on your mailing list is the name of the game. Other wise you only get one change to sell them. Check out an example of the exit pop strategy I was telling you about at http://www.newtraffichoneyhole.com.
Two answer your next question, I do not know of any squeeze pages that have worked specifically for the dating industry off the top of my head. You can probably quickly take a look at the competition and see a general theme and build something similar to the industry standard.
Lastly, the Gmail training is just a strategy outlining an ADDITIONAL traffic source. I still recommend using Self Liquidating offers and then selling your continuity program. Trying to front end continuity can be a tough sale. Hope that helps you blend the two trainings and strategies.
Amazing stuff Ryan!
Video sales letters really are painless to create..
Hey,
The link to the hidden buy button goes to the video sales letter pdf!
S
REPLY: Hey Scott, I can’t seem to duplicate this issue. But just in case here is the correct link to the Hidden Buy Button java script http://www.totalaccessclub.com/access/wp-content/videos/videosalesletter/Hidden_Buy_Button.zip
Man………… we were waiting for this training for months!!! Thanks a lot. We love being TAC members!
I am confused about the video players. You recommend using Camtasia, but Camtasia will give you the player files you need along with embed code for your web site. Is there some reason why I would want to use some other player instead?
REPLY: Hey Randal, sorry for any confusion. Let me try to clarify. I recommend recording your screen using Camtasia or Screenflow but then uploading that recording to an Amazon S3 server so that it is not being hosted on your site (Amazon S3 has amazing bandwith) and then using a service like EZS3 or Easy Video Player to create the player. While you can create a player via Camtasia you will lose some key functionality like start/stop images, removing player controls, and redirecting to a different page after the video is over not to mention some really security options. Hope that clears things up a little for you!
not being able to pause the videos for US to take notes sucks. can you make an exception here? not a good idea for a membership video.
REPLY: Hey Jeff, Sorry about that! This was our first attempt in displaying Camtasia training by streaming it from EZS3. When we streamed the Camtasia file from our server kept freezing and was incredibly choppy. The good news is we figured out how to add a player so its all fixed now.
Ryan, Awesome work!
Your ability to communicate these new tactics continues to impress me. Thank you for breaking this down, I created an entire mind-map around your presentation for notes. If it could help the community let me know and I can share it!.
AJ (Nathan’s buddy from Long Beach)
REPLY: He AJ, thanks for the kind words. If you would be willing to share your mind map of the Video Salesletter Formula with TAC members that would be awesome and we would all be extremely grateful! If you want to send it over to Nathan I’ll get it posted and give you a shout out. Nathan has told me how systematic you are in your business so I can’t wait to see the mind map. Thanks again!
Randal, you want to record using Camtasia then export to FLV and use the player for it’s benefits (EG: Easily disable controls at the bottom and have a redirect at end of video for instance).
REPLY: Frank you’re absolutely correct. Thanks for your comment!
Been studying the videos for a couple hours, there’s a ton of information jam packed into that 12 step formula when you break it down.
Only thing that’s killing me is you don’t have any controls on the video player!
I understand it might be good for sales but I’m trying to study and I have to keep going back and starting it from the beginning if I miss something while taking notes.
REPLY: Hey Frank, sorry about that! We were trying something new, there are player controls on the training now.
Hey Ryan,
thanks for that great video! :-)) Awesome contont as always!!
Just wondering - all the controls are gone. I know this is good for sales-videos, but as I watch this training I sometimes want to rewind - or when I come back fast forward.
It would be great to get the controls back!! Thanks!
André
REPLY: Hey André, sorry about that! We were trying something new, there are player controls on the training now.
When EasyVideoPlayer is installed successfully on one website (and hooked up to S3), can I play a video on another website hosted by another server, or do I need multiple installs?
REPLY: Hey Neill, once you install Easy Video Player on your server and link it to your Amazon S3 account you can upload videos and embed those videos on any site you wish. The only reason you would need to have multiple installs of EVP is if you were using more than one Amazon S3 account.
Awesome. There has been so much buzz about Video after Andy Jenkins Video Boss product. But your info has just done that with amazing value for all the TAC members.
eeehm.. the controls come back… somehow… ;-)) Sorry, seems to me that is was my fault.. so just ignore my previous comment! ;-))
Many greetings and keep up the awesome work!! :-))
André
REPLY: Nope, this one is on us. We were trying something new and ran into a little glitch that a few of you guys pointed out for us (thanks for that by the way). Anyway, Everything should be fixed. Thanks again for your comments and please don’t hesitate to contact us about any questions or concerns you may have.
Ryan,
Have you tested the video sales letter with sound yet? Or do you plan to in the future? I will be doing a few new products all with video sales letters soon and was wondering if background music helps sales at all
Wes
REPLY: Hey Wes, we have not tested that yet but I would love to hear your results. Thanks!
Everyone in our office uses Mac and Screenflow. Ryan said he created the training with Mac… How do you create the training with subsections in the left, with Screenflow? Or you need to export it and then edit it with Camtasia?
Thanks a lot for your help on this.
REPLY: Hey Mike, Ryan creates most of the video sales letters with Keynote on his mac but for the actual video trainings (like this one) he uses Camtasia which is now available for Mac. Hope that helps.
What type of tools do you use to see how long people stay in your video sales letter? do you bother about that metric?
REPLY: Hey Mike, there are tools in both ezs3 and easy video player that we use to track average view time of the videos. In ezs3 you click the “View Stats” button by the file time on your main admin panel page then select the video (by player name). Easy Video Player has an advanced analytics package that I believe costs an additional $47.00 that we purchased that gives us a ton of stats on our videos. Knowing when people “jumping ship” on your video allows you to go back and see what you said or did that made people leave and adjust accordingly. This data will basically allow you to test your message until you get the perfect pitch.
Hey Ryan,
Great training, I was always wondering how you made them sales pages! Just a quick one, I am using a mac, and recording via screen flow, everytime I export my videos they upload into .mov. So then when I go onto ezs3 there is actually no option for me to choose my own player? (which means I have the navigation bar at the bottom) Would I have to convert the .mov file into another file? and if so what.
Thanks again
REPLY: Hey Ashley, You are absolutely right, Screenflow will only export to a .mov file and ezs3 will not allow you to remove controls from that file format. I suggest you go download “Convert Vid” (you get 20 free conversions then its $24.95 for the software after that) http://nuclear-coffee.com/. Convert your videos to .flv and then upload them to ezs3, you will be able to choose your player as well as remove the player controls.
The training is great even a newbie like I am can follow most of it easily. I do have one question however; after reading through the comment threads I’m still not sure about something. Remember I’m a newbie so: when you say in the video to export a video to flash, is that the same as saying to upload it to AmazonS3 or is there a step in between? I haven’t a clue about doing either, really. Would appreciate help. Thanks, Pat
REPLY: Hey Pat, if you are using Camtasia to record your Power Point or screen then you will need to “produce” the file and choose a format before you can upload it to your AmazonS3 via EZS3 or Easy Video Player. When you are exporting make sure you select the file format of .flv.
Thanks for the controls!!
Thanks for the controls, and (I should add) the phenomenal video training!
Two questions, Ryan… what would you recommend doing with slide #3 if you aren’t planning on taking it down? I want to test this as my sales letter and it isn’t a product I’ll take down.
Second, on slide #2 you say to ‘promise to solve it’. Are we solving it in this video or can the promise by my product? I can’t solve my audience’s problem in a short video
Barry
Everything has been very beneficial. We’ve been redoing our entire marketing strategy to incorporate this type of sales letter (mainly because it’s what sold me on being a member, so it obviously works, lol).
However, I really wanted to model my video after your “Say no to google and yes to facebook” video, but now it’s down!
Is there a way I can get a link to it so I can follow the structure of your presentation?
Convertvid only works for Windows, any option for mac users?
REPLY: Hey Ashley, Sorry I use VMware Fusion to run a virtual windows machine on my mac (its really cool, you should check it out). I have not used it but I hear that ffmpegx is a great free video converter for mac. If you use it let us know what you think about the program.
OK… I followed the template and would love to have some community feedback on how it turned out. Anyone up for that?
It’s a 6-minute video.
http://www.GetMoreCorporateGigs.com/Video
Thanks.
Barry
I’m testing with and without controls… Right now controls are winning. Just goes to prove what Ryan always says about each market being different.
I’m keeping the test going for another week as I don’t get a ton of traffic… pretty small niche but it’s one I have an excellent name in.
Thanks!
REPLY: Hey Barry, well played! Glad to see that you are testing variations to figure out exactly what works in your market to your audience. Thanks for sharing, I would love to continue hearing your results from this test.
I guess what I am really asking about Hosting is what do you guys do? Do you have a server on site that you maintain or do you outsource that?
Thanks!
Reply: Hey Derick, We actually use a company called Media Temple http://www.mediatemple.net to host our sites. We have a large number of sites and they do a really good job.
Is there any way to actually download the vids so i can watch them offsite on my iPod?
Rainer
Man, I think this stuff is great.
We really invested a lot of money into our new video and SOMETHING is just not working, and I don’t know what it is.
Here’s the site: http://parentingondemand.com/
We’ve sent about 500 people to it so far, and at first I thought maybe it’s something he says, so I started looking for an avg time people are leaving, then just redo that snipit.
Anyways when I got the actual statistics, I saw a ton of people were not leaving around say :45sec, instead they were tapering off evenly….
Maybe the voice is bad and I should have someone speak it for him? Any ideas would help, invested a lot into this!
Ryan,
I just gotta tell you I *loved* your video sales letter training.
I was looking for a clear step by step on sales videos and you delivered.
Interestingly, my clients and I made around half a million on a launch recently for a real estate investment program using less sophisticated approach (you-tube) etc. however it worked well because of the genuiness of my client explaining the deal and the offer.
Here is a link to it for folks to check out if they want to see how we did it:
http://www.realwealthaustralia.com.au /coaching_&_mentoring_program
You can really only use this approach though if you have a client that is charismatic, or a good speaker, because otherwise it’s like pulling teeth out to get some good footage of them, and they need to be able to speak without notes etc.
Also we had a good long sales letter to go with it to explain the course in more detail so it was a killer combination.
Anyway, I am going to roll out your sales letter video system to all my clients, and will have a whole bunch of testing results to send back to you.
I want the $1000 cashprize so will definitely let you know what we learn!
Thanks Ryan.
John
P.S To be honest, I was pissed off on you selling me on the upsell into this membership when i bought your 13 sneaky email tricks.
“That agressive marketing hound Ryan Deiss” (Zero personal responsibility on my part there!:)
But, I am not p’eed of anymore. Man your content rocks, and it’s going to make me an extra million over the next couple of years.
Hi Ryan,
Great Training ! I’m just wandering what you use to create the player with chapters on the left for that training ?
It’s not useful for a video salesletter I guess, but it’s great for a video
course like this one !
Thanks a lot,
Dushan, from Switzerland
Reply- Hey Dusjan, thanks for your comments! We use a program called Camtasia. It is a really good program that allows for a very professional look.
hey guys,
Im using firefox S3 and Flow player to host my vids right now. Anyone know the solution or have a script to getting rid of the borders on my player?
THanks!
Hey Barry - I would test new copy in your video squeeze page by being ultra specific about who your membership is program is for - really call people out
What about Google’s Quality score with the use of video! How do embed keywords and satisfy google on my landing page for my PPC campaign? No guidance is given here.
Reply- Hello Gary, the Video Tags are not what you need to worry about instead make sure you use a page title, keyword load the headlines H1, H2, and H3 and make sure your pictures are all appropriately taged. If your quality score is still an issue link to other articles at the bottom of the page and that should do it.
With this is really seems important to track “median time on site” to monitor when most people stop watching your video.
How do I monitor this?
@JohnAnderson - thanks for the tip and I am going to do that with the next wave of traffic I send there. Very much appreciated.
@Frank - I made it about 3:00 into the video and was pretty bored. I have a kid and would love to know your tips but the delivery and message got too repetitive for me. Kept wondering how much longer it would go on and I finally gave up. My $.02.
Got something great for you Ryan.
I realized with video you have an INCREDIBLE opportunity, you can actually track WHEN you’re users fall off, then go re-edit that portion of the video and keep improving.
What I mean by this is since your video is one long sales letter that ticks by second by second, if you monitor when people are leaving your site you find what I call “median clusters.”
In other words it’s a cluster of people leaving your site at around the same time, which means your message failed to hit the spot.
I’ve built the software that tracks all of this and gives you a nice graph showing you at what times your bounce rate is highest, and it’s working great for me!
I would like to get with you about releasing it to the rest of the access club, please call me at 504-298-8099 or Email me at fzondlo@gmail.com so we can discuss further.
Thanks,
- Frank Zondlo
Great course.
Off subject, but do you think you could do a guide on how you use iContact? I mean how you move people off your “lead” list to a “customer” list and that soft of thing. Do you just manually move people who buy something, or do you have some sort of trigger in place? How you manage your lists, ect. That would be great!
Reply- Hey Brian, unfortunately we are not planing on doing a tutorial on iContact but I can give you a brief walk through of what we do. We export email address of purchasers… go into iContact under “settings” where we have created a custom field that has one list broken into segments… when we export someone in a .csv file we add a column with our customer identified with the title “buyer”. Import the entire .csv and select check box that says update existing subscribers. This will change the “subscriber” to a “buyer”. There is a little bit of involvement with the initial setup but after that is done it is just importing and exporting .csv files. Hope this helps.
Thanks Ryan!
Since the IPad does not allow for Flash, I’m wondering if it would be useful to have a landing page asking this question:
For IPAD users, click here.
For all others, click here.
I know I need to test it, but what is your initial reaction to this type of landing page before the video sales letter?
thanks,
T
Hi Ryan,
Just wondering the best ways to do ‘video skinning’ and drop cookies on this videsales letter page,
whilst directing the add to cart button to the checkout (with single item in cart)
a la keith wellman
without ie troubles….??
many thanks
R
Reply- Hey Rob, the best way to do “video skinning” would be the same way you create your own video. Use the 12 points that we outline in the Video Salesletter training and apply them appropriately. The same concepts still apply when “video skinning”
the Creating Videos in Easy Video Player Demo is linked to Creating Videos in Easy Video Player Demo….How do I watch the Creating Videos in Easy Video Player Demo?
Reply- Hello Dylan, sorry about that, we got our links mixed up. It is back in working order now. Thanks for your comments.
Hey, Ryan;
Excellent training, natch.
We just used your video sales formula for Brian Horn’s “Be On Page 1 of Google” launch (I was the Product Launch Manager).
The stats for the video sales letter conversions for the house list and the JVs were higher than any launch I’ve run.
THANKS!
A quick question; what file size do you record and or render your sales letters in. It looks like a widescreen format.
I was at your Traffic and Conversion Summit last summer and sure LOVE your stuff. Thanks again.
Alan Davidson
Reply-Hello Allen, we use full screen most of the time the recording is done on a widescreen mac using “VMware Fusion” as a virtual machine using Camtasia for windows.
I used the onClick script from above for a squeeze page…but couldn’t get it to work.
Here’s the code (any idea on what I’m doing wrong?):
[[]]
[a href="#" onClick="alert('Simply enter your email address and contact info below the red arrows and I'll register you for the Free Webinar Training right now.'); return false;"][img src="http://go.webinartrainings.com/images/1.jpg" width="300" height="180" border="0" ][/a]
*note: brackets used instead of just for illustration. It wouldn’t paste in the comments otherwise
Terry Gronenthal : Seems this could be accomplished with a script. I was looking into the same thing. The more action a customer must do = less sales/sign ups.
Important: If you use the onClick script…make sure you don’t have any extra apostrophes in the message.
I had the word “I’ll” and the extra ‘ mark messed up the script for this.
I took it out and the onClick script works perfectly.
Ok…what am I doing wrong? I’ve recorded my camtasia video, but no matter how I record it, I keep on getting this black border that I can’t seem to get rid of.
I want the video to be seamless with the white background of the page…just like many of yours Ryan, but I’m missing something.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for the assist.
Hi Tom
I assume that you are recording your camtasia video from power point using the power-point plug in
Once you’ve recorded your video
click on the edit recording button
once your video has loaded in the editor
if the zoom track select the zoom track from the drop down menu
once that is visible
make sure you are on the first frame
right click on the zoom track and select add key frame
in the edit area use the drag points on the box to resize the frame so that the black area is not visible
if you still have problems reply to this post and i’ll knock a quick video together to show you
Tom - when I did a video sales letter with Camtasia, I removed all of the zoom and pan features before editing (so it doesn’t randomly zoom in during your presentation).
Then, I add a “Zoom/Pan” feature to the entire video. Make it instantly appear from the beginning and zoom in just a little bit so that the zoom frame is slightly smaller than your powerpoint slide.
This does the trick for me…so I have white on all the edges and with a white background, the words just appear like they’re floating on the page.
Hey Ian
Thanks for the response but I’m having a tough time following your instructions. If you could throw something together for me real quick that would totally rock. Thanks so much for the help bro.
Hi Austin -
I tried that Zoom/Pan trick and it did get rid of almost all of the border. Now all that’s left is like a pixel, but still there. Not sure why camtasia is producing it with a border at all because when I’m seeing it in the editor, there is NO border whatsoever to be seen.
Frustrating…..but thanks so much that tip man. I’m wondering if it has something to do with the version I have. Currently using the latest version of Camtasia 7.0.0. What version are you using? That might be the difference.
Never mind guys….I got it. The Zoom/Pan worked just fine. Just realized I had a “margin=1″ set on the friggin player! All is good and thanks so much for the great tips! You guys rock.
Is there something else to use besides Amazon S3…I can’t seem to get it to work. It always tells me “We have encountered an error when loading the Amazon S3 Console. Please see the requirements and known issue list for possible resolutions to this problem.” and I’ve done everything on the page it sends me to, to accommodate.
I can’t get EzS3 to work without Amazon S3 working. Any works arounds?
Has this content been removed? I’m trying to grab the Video Sales Letter Template and it’s coming up 404 Error.
http://totalaccessclub.com/access/wp-content/videos/videosalesletter/VideoSalesLetterPageTemplate.zip
Thanks… my hard drive crashed and I didn’t have this useful tool backed up.
Barry
Also looking for the scripts etc. Thanks for your immediate help.
Anthony