Use Video Demos to Help Your Clients

Several years ago, I began offering potential clients a free, 30-minute call phone call with me to talk about their business. No sales pitch, no pressure, just a 30-minute conversation about anything they wanted to talk about. I make it easy for people to sign up for these sessions. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll share with you how 30-minute free consultations can get you good clients.

TRANSCRIPT 

My name is Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl and today we're going to talk about how to use video to help your clients. 

Thank goodness for video. There are so many times when a video is such a good way to describe something to a client or to talk with them when an email is just not gonna cut it.

So, let's talk about, first, when to send a video. When seeing it is much better so here's an example: I had a client a few years ago and he said “I want he wanted to understand how to get page numbers in the  bottom of his Word document.” So pagination, now I could have explained that to him in a million word email. I could have done screenshots but it was much simpler for me to make literally a two minute video. I opened the Word document. I started the video software. I stepped through it talked him through it and the thing that's great about this is that in this particular case for whatever reason he'd asked me more than once how to do this over time but he kept losing the instructions so now he just has this video on his desktop and he's able to reference it anytime he wants to add pagination to his Word document. So that's, win-win. 

So that's when sometimes I send an email to a client and I realize it is just not cutting it they're sending back answers that don't make sense. I'm trying to be really clear and then after that happens you know once I think okay, I just need to stop this because I'm probably really frustrating client even though I'm trying to be super clear.

So, there was a case just last week with the client where we were adding a product to their website and there were you know four things going on. There was the sales page, the description page, the email newsletter, you know, announcement. So, there are all these different things and and it was getting confusing even though I was sending URLs and all that so I just sat down and made a quick 2-3 minute video and explained all of the different pieces and what I needed and she was able to respond right away, understanding what I was looking for. 

The other thing is sometimes clients are just not familiar with all the different steps and all the different pieces. But they want to be kept in the know. So I have one client who I totally love and she's a coach and I frequently set up sales pages for her with a buy button and a thank you screen and an email that goes out afterward and all of all these different pieces. So what I do when I finish setting  that up for her is I make her a video giving her a tour so she doesn't have to try to click around in the back end and think well did Belinda do this or did she do that or did she miss this. All she has to do is watch the video.

So, I'll start the video and I'll say, “Here's the sales page”, and then I click the buy button and I show her. This is the page they get to, when they want to put in their credit card and then I'll have you know queued up on another tab the thank you page. 

So then I'll say and then once they buy they get this page and then I'll show her the email that's going out.  This is the email that's going on. So again instead of her feeling like I hope this is set up. Right. I hope this is going to be okay. She's actually seeing the subject line and knowing that it's exactly what she wants and honestly by reviewing it that way. Sometimes I find mistakes and so what I'll do is I'll just say oops and I'll pause the video. Fix the mistake come back and then show her how it is now. If you have a lot of those, you probably want to start the video over but if it's just one that's probably okay.

All right so let's talk about best practices for making videos for clients. You really want to skip the small talk you don't want to get into a lot of "Hi, Sally, I just thought I'd make you this video because I thought blah blah blah blah blah blah for two reasons one, it just makes them have to sit there and listen to it and two, they might listen to it over and over and over and have to keep listening to you talk about something that's not related.

I suggest you start the video with the words “In this video I'm going to show you step-by-step how to do x y z.” Very simple to the point.

You want to start at the top. Now, sometimes this requires some thought because as a Virtual Assistant and someone who has lots of experience you might start in the middle and then go over to the side and you do have all these different pieces.  So, you really want to think about what are the first steps the client needs to take when performing whatever it is in this video or watching this video. So really think about that for a few minutes. And there have been times when especially when I started making videos, I realized as soon as I started talking that I was starting at the wrong place. That's okay. Click stop and then start again with the fresh video.

You want to be as detailed as possible. So instead of saying click the submit button. It's much better and more helpful for your client if you say “click the blue submit button in the lower right hand side of your screen”, much clearer and then they have all these you know clues of where to go so they're not wasting time or feeling foolish.

When you name the video,  give it a descriptive name so that when they see it on their desktop or when you see it in your account you'll know exactly what it is. So if you need to send that video again to the same client about how to put the pagination in the bottom of this word document, you don't need to make another video you can just send in the link.  

I also organize my videos. I use loom and there's a folder feature so I have all my client videos in one folder with their name and what it is I'm describing so that's an important piece as well. You want to choose a video software solution that's not only easy for you but easy for your clients because the last thing you want to do is frustrate them because the reason you're doing this is just to make it easier for them.

Other ways videos can be really great is to document a process so let's say your client hired you to figure a process out but didn't necessarily want you to do the process over and over. Maybe they wanted to or maybe they had someone else on their team that they wanted to have run the process. You can do videos showing them specifically how to perform the task.  Clients are very grateful when that happens. Okay.

So, I think we have a question let me look over in the comments and see who that is. Oh great thank you for that comment I think that's awesome. Thank you very much.

So, before I go I just want to invite you to my free online classroom it's The Virtual Assistant Connection and it's in Facebook. So just type “The Virtual Assistant Connection” in the search bar at the top of Facebook and click join. We have 6 500 members. It's growing every day. It's so exciting and in there is community learning. We're completely committed to educating and connecting Virtual Assistants all over the world and at last count we represent 47 countries which is very exciting. So, come on over there's lots of information over there like this video. We've got about 60 videos just like this one and they're useful whether you're just starting out thinking about being a Virtual Assistant or you've been one for a long time like me.

So, come on over and join us. I'm Belinda Wasser, RocketGirl until next time bye.