What Makes a Sales Video Thumbnail Great?

Get Coached - What Makes a Sales Video Thumbnail Great? (Episode 69)

video marketing podcast Aug 09, 2021

Video sales emails are an effective way to grab people's attention. But if you don't make that first impression right, your audience may never get a chance to see it.

A video thumbnail is your viewers very first look at what they will get once they watch your video.

Welcome to 'Get Coached', the Video Marketing Legend podcast segment where you submit your video marketing questions and Chris will help coach you through them.

In this episode, Chris Schwager, Video Marketer from Ridge Films, will coach you through the ins and outs of an effective sales video thumbnail. Find out how you can make a dynamic and engaging video thumbnail to grab the eye of your prospective client and get your message heard.

 

 

Creating a sales video and its thumbnail shouldn't be difficult, you should be able to produce these with ease, speed and scale with Ridge Films DIY Video Program. Click HERE AND LEARN ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEED.

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Video Transcription:

 

Welcome to Get Coached the video marketing legend podcast segment where you submit your video marketing questions at ridgefilms.com.au/question and I'll help coach you through them. By listening in each week you'll learn how each video marketing problem is solved, giving you the knowledge that will make your videos more valuable. And so you come across as a true business professional on the open market.

I'm your host, Chris Schwager.

And today's Get Coached question was submitted at ridgefilms.com.au/question and is from Samantha. And what Samantha from an insurance company wants to know is what makes a sales video thumbnail great.

This is a good question because sales videos are a powerful tool to build rapport and human connection, and potentially convert more sales, but your audience must be enticed to watch your videos.

So first, Samantha, let me first explain what we're talking about here to the audience. What is a video thumbnail? It is a static image within the player that represents your video and gives the audience an idea of what the viewer will see, at a glance. Video sales emails have been very effective to grab people's attention, and you may never get a second chance to make a first impression. So a video thumbnail is your viewers very first impression of what they will get once they watch your video.

So if you don't consider this thumbnail as a priority within your sales emails, I think it could be problematic for you. And there's really four reasons why video thumbnails may be off putting to somebody or really not effective in terms of getting conversions that you'd like.

So first one is the random generated thumbnail that is created by the video itself. Now that might be weird ass expression of yourself that might have picked a frame within the video where you got your eyes shot. It's not adding the context of what the video is going to be about the you know, obviously there's no emotion or empathy or anything that's really enticing people to click to it's not enticing. It's not compelling. So it's kind of a boring thumbnail really saying nothing about what people are going to get by watching three doesn't convey the message of the video. So by somebody clicking, they're not really sure what they're going to be getting as a result of clicking, and four it's overly engineered where it's trying to be clickbait, you know, but it sends the wrong message and the wrong information to the viewers. And they leave the video because I think it's kind of spammy. They're kind of cautionary about clicking on it. And maybe there's a lack of personalization.

So there are auto generated thumbnails that you can get that personalised. But if that's not done sincerely, and authentically, it can have a adverse effect where it's tricking the audience cheating the audience, if you're like, where they kind of repel against it. And we don't want that either, right, we want to real, so you'd be better off to play it down a little bit. But play it with sincerity so that you get the outcome that you're looking for.

When you embed video in your sales emails. This is a really great step in personalising the connections. And using a thumbnail that would be ultimately the gateway and would compel your audience to hit play. So Ridge Films has been coaching DIY clients in particular, over the years in ways that they can practice this and do this properly, to take the time to create a thumbnail, which can virtually be very minimal effort, but could be so enticing, compelling, and a real reason that people will click because they see you as professional because if you can't be bothered to look like you look and to put a personalised video thumbnail together with a personal message in there, I think there's a lot of care gone into that. And I think that really reflects in the way that you put your video together and the sales email in general.

And people really do then want to click play because they want to see what will happen next, as a result, and I think that's really important. The best practice for sales video emails, though, is to show a friendly human face. So what we do is we use a whiteboard, just a tiny little whiteboard you can get from Kmart, a whiteboard marker and an eraser and we just I just pie Hi, Samantha with a smiley face on it and hold that up to camera with my big smiley face on the other side of frame. Allow space for that play button so that doesn't cover the message or doesn't cover my face, and then we're all in the one shot together. So it's very hard to fake that. And I think that's really important.

I also think that it's not just about being creative in the thumbnail, it's also about adding context within the copy of the email as well within the subject line of the email, you know, being simple about your messaging, because you're already giving them an action to take, which is click to play, right. So you want to make sure that you simplify the content of the email, and be really clear about the way that you word it. Because ultimately, if you're just wanting them to take a single action to book, let's assume it's to book a meeting, to buy to sign a document to whatever the action is, right, you just want to make that simple and singular. You know, so don't put too many hyperlinks around your video for us, we've got the video player, and within the video itself, we tell the audience to book in for the appointment.

I think that's really that's it, you know, there's really not much else I need to do. But the success rate of these sales video emails is just through the roof. It's really changed the way that we do business, customising video thumbnails in the way that we do it, which again, is very simple, but really authentic, is so powerful in conversion, getting people to book in for their first free video consultation when they're clicking through to the video, it means that we can also see when they've watched the video, and then we can also ascertain whether they book in, and there's just a whole bunch of data we're collecting in amongst all of that immediately when someone clicks the video, I get an alert to indicate that they have watched the video and it's usually pretty quick, so I can send the video at 5pm on a Friday afternoon, I get an alert by 6pm saying they've watched the video and what percentage of the video that they've watched. That's really powerful too. And that's something I can get through in another podcast. high rates of conversion in these videos.

It's really a video for a single person, you know, it's not going to get 1000s of views by any means. But the rate in which people book in I think is a great indicator that the video is working that the thumbnail is active, it's doing a good job at creating a positive first impression by putting a face into that real estate and making it very easy and simple for people to understand what to do next.

A good video thumbnail makes you want to watch your video. A bad video thumbnail or no video thumbnail doesn't make a good impression role. By having a dynamic and engaging video thumbnail, you can do something really special to grab the eye of your prospective client and get your message heard.

Creating a sales video and its thumbnail shouldn't be difficult, you should be able to produce these with ease, speed and scale. And this is where the DIY program is going to be really great for you. If you're interested in understanding how we can coach you through this thing go to ridgefilms.com.au/diy and get all the information that you need to produce videos yourself with the support of a video marketing company who will be able to guide you with video thumbnails with how to script your sales video emails and how to really maximise the opportunity, particularly in this day and age where access to salespeople is often denied.

And Samantha thank you so much for asking your question. We know that video marketing can seem overwhelming. Knowing what makes a sales video thumbnail great, but if you use this method I've coached you through you'll be able to create a sales video thumbnail that would compel your audience to watch a video and build human connections in the process.

And I'm sure this is going to give you peace of mind and really help you with what you're looking for in the first place. Something to help you create a thumbnail for your sales video emails and for everybody else out there trying to solve the mystery of video marketing your business what has you feeling overwhelmed? On Get Coached we're here to help coach you through it. Just submit your video marketing question to ridgefilms.com.au/question for your chance to get coached by me just go to ridgefilms.com.au/question and see you next week.

 

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