Why video-first marketing doesn’t kill differentiation

▶ 0:00Hello, today I'm going to talk about differentiation and it's a question that I've come into a lot on discovery calls recently. So obviously our approach is very much video first. It doesn't take a genius to see that from what I put on LinkedIn and things like that. The natural next question is that if you use video for all of your clients, aren't your clients' ads going to look the same?

▶ 0:23Because each one's using video. Now, a few different ways that I would actually discuss this with a prospect and hence with yourself. So the first thing is actually ensuring that the video ads we produce align with the client's specific USPs or unique selling points and that we present them in that fashion. And we don't just make boilerplate ads that are all the same. Of course, there are some hooks that we would like to use for all clients because we know that it just works so well.

▶ 0:51But we want to make sure that the bulk of the content of the ad is specific to things that are only relevant to that client or that very specific type of client. So let me give you an example. You could have a client that is a local installer and a lot of the ad or ads might focus on the fact that they have a very bespoke approach, that they are very customer first, that they do no obligation surveys, that all of this kind of stuff.

▶ 1:16Their workmanship, their commitment and contribution to the local community. Fantastic. That's going to work really well for a local client. Now, there are different unique selling points for a national business than there are for a local business. So the national business might have a price match guarantee. They might have nationwide coverage.

▶ 1:33They might have thousands of engineers that are fully qualified and vetted. Very different USPs. So the ads, although the format or the mechanism is the same, Facebook and Instagram ads with video, the actual content of the ad is incredibly different. So unless you actually kind of like try to make them look the same by using the same animation style, by the same kind of structure, etc., then the content itself will speak volumes and there is going to be a huge difference between the ads you produce for the local company, for the national company, simply because of the things that you're actually presenting in the ad as reasons why someone should work with that business.

▶ 2:13Likewise, personality comes into it as well. So you might have a right Jack the lad that wants to be a little bit out there, a little bit controversial in the ads, that wants to ride the wave of Elon Musk being a bit controversial and actually make ads that specifically call out Tesla and all that kind of thing. Fine. That's going to work really well and attract a certain type of customer and I'm sure they're going to do fantastic with that.

▶ 2:35And we have clients that do do fantastic with that. You might also have someone that is completely the opposite of Jack the lad, hates Jack the lad, can't stand Jack the lad and can't stand speaking to people that inquired off an ad of Jack the lad, right? So for that person, they're going to be doing very different things.

▶ 2:55They're going to maybe even be calling out Jack the lad for some of Jack the lad's ways that they don't necessarily agree with. They might be focusing more on the fact that they have a really friendly customer service team that isn't going to make obscene jokes, that isn't going to do certain things, that is going to hold strong to certain perspectives and has a really quite a friendly process and things like that.

▶ 3:19It's going to be a different style of ad to Jack the lad, okay? And that's what we always say when we bring people on because for a lot of clients of ours, video and recording video, especially of themselves and being on camera is very new to that. And a lot of people have the misconception that they have to be Jack the lad or they have to do stupid stuff to make social media work for them.

▶ 3:41And it's just not the case. There is a huge demographic that won't engage with that, that will scroll right past it. And they will engage with someone that's actually just sat very professionally, maybe in a suit or maybe just in a smarter attire, explaining the benefits of solar in a very different manner, with different mannerisms and with a different style of editing than the ad.

▶ 4:04Both sides have their use case and will attract leads. If anything, being in the middle is probably your worst case scenario. Oh, no, I take it back. The worst case scenario is if you are Jack the lad and you try and be the opposite. And if you're the opposite and you try and be Jack the lad because it will give people the creeps because it will feel really unnatural, okay?

▶ 4:24So you just need to be yourself. And that in itself, with the different types of businesses, different types of personalities, is enough to create enough differentiation for us to pretty much work with every single company in the UK, from every single renewables installed in the UK, and for the ads to be different enough, okay?

▶ 4:41Now, then I would start to go into some other areas whereby it's a lot easier to be different on video than it is to be different in an image, right? Because with an image, you have basically one frame, one image. With a video, you have 60 frames a second, maybe for a minute. So you might have 3,600 pictures, right, in a sequence.

▶ 5:04Now, there's a lot more opportunity to show differentiation, to be different, to act different, to present in a different way in the video than there is in the image, which is why a lot of people end up looking the same with their meta ads images because they use certain templates. It's very hard to actually look different, especially when you're trying to, like, showcase the same benefits and features and things.

▶ 5:26And then the final thing is, it's a bit of a harsh one, but you, we're probably going to work with maybe three, four people that are in overlapping service areas kind of around you, okay? And that's our goal, growing our business as well as growing yours, okay? We're fully transparent about that, right? It wouldn't work if we gave everyone a huge portion of the country and then said, we're never going to work with anyone in that area.

▶ 5:50We'd be limited to, like, five clients and then we wouldn't actually get very good at what we do, okay? So, we're going to work with some people that have overlapping service areas. Now, on top of all the reasons that I've just spoken about, there are about 5,000 MCS registered contractors in the UK. So, in your service area, there might be 500, maybe a little bit less.

▶ 6:14We're going to work with three or four. So, you can either choose to be on the side of the winning three or four, or you can choose, just because you don't want to be the same or looking similar to two or three, you want to let them take all the business and just crack on with the other 497. It doesn't really make sense.

▶ 6:36Of course, you want originality in your ads and we can help facilitate that. But, at the same time, just purely the format of the ad being video doesn't negate originality and having your own approach. So, hopefully, that's some food for thought. It's something that I've come into quite a bit recently. Unfortunately, it's never stopped someone from going ahead because I think that with that reasoning, it becomes quite clear that it's still worth doing even though, yes, we are going to be rolling out video with every client we sign.

▶ 7:08But, as a result, the videos are just going to get better and better for everyone. But, yeah, hopefully, that was useful and maybe cleared up some doubts around differentiation and things like that. And I will hopefully see you in the next one.