Welcome to the six figure business mastery podcast, where every week

Kirsten and Jeannie dive into the essential topics to fuel your business

growth from copywriting to course creation, mindset to video marketing.

They've got you covered tune in for expert guest interviews on all things,

marketing and business, and learn how to work on your business, not just in it.

So get ready to unlock your business potential and take it to the next level.

Welcome to today's podcast.

We are excited to have a.

Celebrity here with us.

His name is Mike Perlow.

He's the president and founder of Perlow Productions, which is

a corporate video production, animation, and live stream company.

But he spent 17 years as a TV sports caster at network affiliates and regional

sports station in Vermont, Florida, Boston, and New Jersey, and Philadelphia.

He was also an anchor.

Reporter for New England Sports Network.

Mike, it's lovely to have you.

Thank you for joining us today.

Great to be here.

Great to uh, join you both.

We're really excited about this conversation because I think you're like

us, you're crazy passionate about video marketing and it's always nice to get

other people's perspectives and You're very lucky because you're confident

on camera because you had a career.

And so a lot of people don't have that background.

So they're more nervous about videos.

I'm looking forward to hearing what your thoughts are about video and businesses.

Absolutely.

And it's actually something when we work with clients to your point

where are speaking on camera or even being interviewed, just speaking

to them about You know, relax.

If we're interviewing you, the analogy I always use is pretend you're talking

to me about your last vacation.

You don't need to prepare every comment or remark.

Just speak like you would if we were having a conversation, whether it was

a great vacation or an awful vacation.

Just, hey, tell me about your vacation.

You wouldn't have to really think and prepare remarks.

And that usually helps.

But put them a little bit more at ease about the type of video

content you help your clients with.

Sure.

I mean, we work with a wide range of clients here at Prolo Productions from

small businesses to larger regional, national, international companies.

We really believe in helping businesses, small and large, create

video content that helps with largely their sales and marketing strategy.

Also, more and more for employee recruiting, because every

business is struggling to hire great employees these days.

So more and more companies are coming to Prolo Productions,

asking us to help them create.

Employee recruiting videos that speak about, you know, not just why it's great

to work in their industry, but why it's more specifically great to work for

that company and what they bring to the table in terms of employee experience,

employee benefits, onboarding, all of those things, but in general, you

know, we're creating videos, both live action with interviews and footage.

Also, a lot of animated videos that are helping businesses tell their story

of what they offer their products, their services, their expertise.

We're very good with businesses that are somewhat technical or hard to understand

what they offer and somewhat sometimes not even that visually exciting.

So it might be.

Manufacturing or some kind of technical device or product, you

know, real estate or finance or legal where there's complex information.

They don't want to overwhelm their customers, potential customers with.

So we create animated explainer videos that help tell that in a more

fun, engaging way and more visually appealing way and also kind of simplify.

that information into a way that anybody could understand without having

to watch the video four times or ask the person, Hey, explain to me again,

what you do, what is that exactly?

Why, why do I need that?

Because if your customer is already asking you questions about, I don't understand

what you do or why they need what you do when you've already given them that

initial pitch, there's a problem there.

So that's where, you know, animated explainer videos, both

technical and fun and cartoony.

to play.

So at the end of creating, you know, power businesses are using to g after

all, I think that's Do you start off with a s you start working with yo you have

the strategy for gonna help them create.

A say that that is one of t say, like, there's a plac and do it yourself

video A lot of our clients do it.

The difference between doing videos yourself and coming to a professional

production company like ours is, is that strategy piece on top of

obviously the higher production value, but even forgetting about the

production value for a minute, you know, focusing on the strategy of,

of how is that video put together?

Really digging deep into who your target audience is, not just men,

women, older, younger, but really narrowing that target audience.

Of who you want to go after and what makes that audience unique and how

we speak to that audience without saying you want, you know, men age

25 to 40 or, you know, whatever.

Right?

Or we want teenagers who are looking to college, you know, really narrowing

on that audience and making sure that video is speaking directly

or indirectly to that audience.

It's not just what it says, but the way it said, and the way it's

portrayed visually within a video.

So the strategy around the target audience around the message

you want to get out there.

My favorite question to a potential client is what does

this video need to show and tell?

Yeah.

You know, playing the old game show and tell, right?

What do you want to show the customer in the video?

And what do you want to tell them?

What do they need to know?

It's a simple, but a complex question and answer, right?

And sometimes people kind of know what they want to tell, but they don't

really know what they want to show.

And then the biggest question is that I find most people, businesses,

marketers fail at when they're creating content is they try to

answer why you need what they do.

So.

You know, a video production company.

We do videos about the power of video and sales and marketing.

Why you need video.

That's wonderful.

That's great.

That's helpful.

But I'm also indirectly doing sales for all of our competition.

Every other video production company and freelance video producer out there.

Because I'm just saying, hey, you need video.

You need high quality video.

The key to the really successful videos is videos that answer.

So in our case, Why, when you need high quality video, you should

work with Perlow Productions.

Or why, when you need medical care in this area, you should go to Dr.

X.

Or why, when you are approaching a divorce, you should work with this

family law attorney instead of just a family law attorney in general.

Whatever the subject is, really speaking in the video to why you

should work with this company or person when you need what they do.

And speaking to customer service, We're responsive.

We price fairly.

Anybody can say, and that's actually the test question I use with our clients

is when they say a reason, I say, well, can your competition say that?

But they don't.

Well, that's fine, but they can say it.

So coming up with things that you can say about your business or

yourself that your competition can't legitimately say, or maybe they can,

but positioning it in a different way.

Well, it's interesting that you say that, because, you know, with Jeannie

and I, we're not a marketing agency, we're not an outsourcing agency.

We're starting to explain that a lot more, that we coach our clients

on their marketing strategy, and then we train virtual assistants

to do a lot of that work for them.

So it's been interesting, like, just like you're talking

about, like, why work with us?

Well, one, because we're not marking up the labor.

So you're paying your virtual assistant directly.

They're part of your team.

When you go to an agency, that virtual assistant works for that agency.

And if you go to a marketing agency, which a lot of people, you know,

we do refer people to marketing agencies because they may not be right

for the strategies that we teach.

But if you go to a marketing agency, it's a little bit different because

they're doing everything for you.

It can be a little bit more expensive.

Where we give you a strategy you can implement.

So it is interesting, like finding words.

I love it.

Finding words that your competitors cannot use or say that differentiate you.

And another thing I suggest to clients, and some do, some don't, I

tell them literally hit the phone.

And call your clients and say, Hey, Kirsten, I know, you know,

you hired pro low productions six months ago, a year ago, whatever.

I'm sure you looked at other companies.

What was it that made you choose us and give me please like

brutally honest answers, not, Oh, you had a nice portfolio, you

know, like, was it our pricing?

Was it that we worked with another business you knew or another business?

It was your competition.

What, what, what was it that made you choose us?

Even, even if it is, we were the cheapest around.

I don't care what it is.

Hey, those answers are so valuable.

If you can get them for your clients and unfortunately you're not going

to get them by sending an email.

Because nobody's going to put that in an email.

A few people will, I think people don't realize that doing market research is

something that's always ongoing because the comedy things and the reason why

people might've hired you two years ago, it may not be the same reason they're

hiring you now, shift around on what they see as value is sometimes different

than what it was two or three years ago.

So I think I love that reaching out to your customers and

finding out why they use it.

It's, it's interesting because I feel like as business owners, sometimes

we're so close to what we do that we, we can't get out of our own heads.

And it's funny because I've on a lot of podcasts and reviews and it was a

couple of times I started explaining that we weren't an agency and we had never

explained that in our marketing before.

Until I, like, until I said it two or three times in an interview, you know,

sometimes we forget how to put things in perspective of our client and to get,

you know, and to differentiate ourselves.

And it's funny because I still, to this day, and we've been, Perlo Productions

has been in business 17 years now.

I still will talk with people that know we're a video production company

and they know we do videography and they will ask me, Mike, do

you guys do video editing as well?

And that to me is like asking a restaurant, okay, we know you make food,

but you actually serve it to customers.

Right.

Yeah, of course we do video editing, but it's obvious to me and maybe

obvious to the two of you, but it's not obvious to everybody because

they don't work in our world.

And so to me, sometimes really simplifying, whether it's when you're

speaking or in a video, what you do in a very basic way, even though you feel like

it's so silly, sometimes be the clearest way to explain what you do, because I'm

working with a lot of tech clients and some of them are technological geniuses.

But they can't put a sentence together to explain what they do to the common person.

I had a conversation with somebody recently in the cyber security space.

He had developed this software.

We went back and forth six times when I just kept saying to him, Can you explain

to me on a really basic level what this is, what it does, and why I need it?

And I kind of understood after about 20 minutes, but that's way too long, right?

So we're actually working with him on trying to create a video,

an animated explainer video, that will, in a simple way, because his

brain doesn't think there, right?

He's this developing genius.

I mean, to him, The terminology he uses is basic, but it's not to most people.

And I was like, I feel like I'm a fairly educated person.

If I don't quickly get what you do, most people probably aren't going to.

And that's kind of my, my litmus test.

Yeah.

And we love the idea of, you know, talking to people versus texting

or emailing, you know, it's, it's a totally different thing.

And to your point in person's point is that sometimes they'll say things.

And they'll give you the terminology that they understand that the challenges

that they're having in their words, which then, you know, Oh, okay, we

need to, you know, add this into our marketing and how we're talking to them

because that's what they understand.

And that's what they're.

They need help with.

Absolutely.

And I will say, you know, knowing that so many of your, your podcast viewers

are, are small business owners, you know, there's always that fine line

when it comes to creating sales and marketing content, when it comes

to video of what you can afford as a small business, you know, doing

something just for the sake of video.

I would just, my advice to small business owners as one myself is don't do

something just for the sake of doing it.

If you can't afford to do it, right.

And that doesn't mean you need to put tens of thousands of dollars into every video.

Okay.

I'm just saying that like I see a lot of video out there with small and larger

businesses where they do it just for the sake of doing video and there's a

million cheap options out there, right?

So just make sure that what you're creating represents your business

in a way you'd be proud of, right?

You know, using the restaurant analogy.

Would you be okay with dirty tablecloths and linens on the

table and cracked glasses?

They're cheaper.

You could afford them that way, right?

But why would you ever put those on the table at your restaurant, right?

You know, thinking the same way as whatever we're using

to represent our company.

Like the two of you have that lovely sign behind both behind you, right?

I'm sure that's intentional, right?

Cause it makes people smile.

It makes, it tells us a little about the two of you.

And if it said, you know, something obnoxious and rude, we'd be

like, what were you thinking when you put that sign behind you?

So to me, like it's important that small businesses think about how can we do this?

Well, and if, frankly, if you can't afford to do it well, Even if

you're putting up a new sign, right?

You're putting up a new sign in front of your business.

If you can only afford to do it through some cheap option that

you know isn't going to look good, that doesn't reflect well on you.

So, you know, think about that and maybe wait.

I mean, I make the same decisions in my business.

There are things we often want to do.

And we just, I.

I would say if we can't afford to do it well and do it right,

we'd rather wait till we can.

And so, so that's my biggest advice.

It's not that small business owners have to spend.

We're not an inexpensive video production company and we're

not a fit every small business.

And we're not the only solution.

I see lots of people go find very inexpensive options for

their main Marketing collateral and it doesn't reflect well on

their company or their business.

And that, you know, to me, that doesn't help, you know, if you make that same

kind of decision in any way, making sure that who you're working with

is delivering quality assets for you to use that represent your business.

Well, I think it's also important, not just to know who your ideal client is,

but also to understand the platform that you're posting content on.

Absolutely.

Varying scales of what they want, really overproduced content doesn't

always perform well on YouTube, right?

So they want kind of a more of a, they want to feel like they

get to know, like, and trust you.

That's what kind of plays so well on YouTube, Instagram.

They want more beautiful.

They want it to be gorgeous, very awesome.

So I think if you're running ads or you or your website, you should definitely

have a higher, higher quality of video.

Funny you use the words overproduced.

Because I, I actually hear that a lot and it's an interesting, it's an interesting

subject to discuss because overproduced can mean a lot of things, right?

So for me, when we produce videos for a business, small or large, that involves

interviews with usually the head, the head of the company or the employees,

the team members, we don't script all.

So some people will produce videos and script everything.

So to me, that's a big example, a great example of overproduced

when you're literally scripting everything the person says.

We do what we call conversational interviews with

my TV reporting background.

I'm very good at sitting down and just having it.

Like I was mentioning before the example of asking about your vacation, right?

So I will say to an owner, whoever we're interviewing, give me three or four

topics you want to discuss potentially using this video in bullet points.

I don't need paragraphs.

Just give me some bullet points.

And I will just sit them down and ask very conversational questions, you

know, so tell me about this and I'll ask some thought questions and it

gets very organic answers from them.

So that to me is an area where it's, it's produced well, it's shot well, it's

lit well, we're using a professional microphone, we're not using the

shotgun microphone on the camera, okay, so it's produced at a high level.

But it is, it has a much more real organic feeling.

And I, I would agree.

I mean, listen, if you're a local restaurant and your video looks like,

you know, your, um, Michelin level restaurant in Napa Valley, California,

that probably isn't a good fit.

Part of it too, is who you're appealing to.

McDonald's commercials are extremely highly produced.

Okay.

They're selling a lower cost item.

So I think it's less about level of production and more about producing

content that speaks to your audience.

And even on social media.

I mean, I think.

There is a place for truly organic content, just, you know, captured on

your own and produced on your own.

I think the question to ask, though, is when you do that, is it good

content just because you happen to capture it, or is it good content

because it's actually good content?

And I think sometimes people are like, Oh, I got that.

Oh, we got to use that.

Well, if you step back and watch it, did anything really happen in that video?

And that clip that you captured, that means anything to your customers?

And I think more often than not, the answer is no.

So, you know, finding content that actually will matter to your client,

to your customers, that they'll want to see, that will tell them something

about your business or your offering.

I don't think anybody needs to see footage of the cashier ringing

up somebody's service order.

But if you get a neat moment where a customer comes back to his car after it's

been repaired and says, Oh, my goodness.

I can't believe my baby looks this good.

She hasn't looked this good in 10 years.

That's wonderful, right?

Because that tells us, A, indirectly, our service department is awesome.

And B, we had a really happy customer whose car hasn't

looked that good in years.

So again, thinking about what is that content you're capturing versus

just, you know, Recording video for the sake of video and then

throwing it up on social media and, you know, it's going to go viral.

If it's going to go viral, if it's not talking to your audio clients, who cares?

I mean, but you'd rather have less eyes on it than have the right eyes on it.

Well, yeah, I mean, listen, viral video is fantastic, but sometimes people call

us and say, we're looking to create a viral video and I will tell them, you

could name the greatest performers in the history of the industry of music.

None of them thought their greatest hits were going to be hits, right?

They don't know until it goes out to the world and you see what happens.

If you work with somebody out there to produce content of any kind.

That says we will create content that was going to go viral for you.

Run.

I mean quickly.

Because they are lying.

If somebody had that spell, they'd be making insane amounts of

money and we'd all know about it.

You can be creative and create something you hope will go viral.

The video we created several years ago that I would say is

the closest to going viral.

An anime, an original animated character for a credit union

that was looking to appeal that younger like 18 to 25 demographic.

And they wanted something a little edgy.

Originally, it was going to be more of a standard promotional video.

And we pitched them on creating an original animated

character, which was a squirrel.

And the tagline in the video, which was said several times was.

Protect your nuts.

It was just the right amount of edgy and it was hilarious.

And I will tell you to this day, I still have people that want to show them

that they're saying, Oh my goodness, Perlo Productions created that.

And we did several other videos after that, where Cash spoke more in the video.

But the point is I'd say that is as close as thing viral, because I hear from people

all over the place that they've seen it.

Love it.

Right.

Our goal as a video production company isn't.

To create viral content, to your point, it's to create content that I guess

you could say viral in in potential customers minds of connecting with them

and resonating with them and making them feel once they've watched the video.

Wow, this is a something I need and be this is a company I want to work

with, but I will tell you, we look at the metrics of the videos we

produce for clients over the years.

I'm amazed at how many videos that are anywhere from.

Two to five to seven, eight minutes long.

In some cases, we have 20 to 25 percent of the audience still

watching at the end of the video.

The length is less relevant if the video is well produced.

Because if you create a 30 second video, if you lose them at the

beginning, they're not getting to the 10 second or 20 second mark.

Nevermind the two minute mark.

So to me, if you don't produce videos that are engaging and keep the viewer viewers

attention, the length is irrelevant.

And if you do, they'll watch for two, three, four, five minutes

if it's really that engaging.

And maybe they won't always watch the whole four or five minutes, but if

it's engaging, if it's well produced, if it speaks to them, they will

absolutely watch most, if not all of the video, regardless of length.

That's that's been my experience because I get a lot of pushback.

People say, no, we just need really short videos.

Nobody's going to watch a one minute video.

And I mean, that's insane.

People watch videos that are much longer than 1 minute when they care about it

always goes back to if you're talking to someone that has that problem.

Right?

Because I know if I'm searching for something and I have a problem, I

might watch multiple videos on it.

Right?

Absolutely.

And people do research all the time.

So, yeah.

As a business owner, if you're creating content that's specifically speaking to

them about why, how you can solve their problem and why they should work with you,

and they have that problem at that time, they'll watch 10, 15, 20 minute videos.

I love Aaron Venerchuk says, short term content is where people often find you

or long form content is what converts.

So what other, um, so we've got strategy, leads of videos, making sure that you're

talking about why they should use you and be different than your competitor.

Okay.

Any last wise words of wisdom?

Well, this goes more to your overall like web presence, right?

To me, if you go to somebody's website and your first time visit, I will say

there are many times I go to company websites and 30 seconds that I'm still

not quite sure exactly what they do.

Blame it a little on design, but it's less of a design issue

and more of a messaging issue.

So whether it's having a short video or imagery or text content,

if people come to your website and don't quickly know what you do, any

of those means That's a problem.

Just because you know what you do doesn't mean they do.

So even showing your homepage to some people that don't know you as well, just

say, Hey, just look at the homepage.

Can you tell me what we did?

It's an interesting thing.

I mean, I'll tell you, we were guilty of that in our previous website where we

just, I mean, it said Prolo Productions.

We just kind of assumed, you know, we're a video production company, right?

And so we literally have the words, you know, video production

agency, animation agency.

Like, so if you don't know what we do when you're on our homepage,

you go to perloproductions.

com.

You don't know what we do.

You probably just don't know what we do, but there's no way you're

getting to that homepage and not understand at least at a basic level.

So I think just making sure don't make it hard.

For potential customers to understand what you do and by the way, the other

thing is whether it's a video or other key content on your website, make it stupid

easy for people to find it and see it.

Unfortunately, sometimes web developers will take the video.

It's not a high priority necessarily.

Often it's added a development of the website.

And so they just kind of fit it in wherever they can.

I tell businesses, if I have to work hard to find the video on your

website, that's a problem because when I come to your website, that's

the first thing I'm looking for.

And if I can't find it easily, when that's the only thing I'm not even a

customer, I'm just coming to see if you have a video and if I can't find

it easily, your potential customer is.

unlikely to find it easily.

It's happening with a potential client a few years ago.

I went on his home page, went to some internal pages,

couldn't find a video anywhere.

So I emailed him and I said, Hey, you know, I want to see if you could

use our help, Perlo Productions.

I see you don't have any videos on your website.

And he emailed me back and he said, well, you clearly didn't look very hard

because it's right there on our homepage.

I went back to the homepage and I realized it was there, but the play button was

so hidden within the design of the page.

That I didn't even see it until, like, looking three more times.

So I emailed them back and I said, Hey, I actually did look.

That was what I was looking for.

And my advice is have that play button redesigned because as somebody

who is just looking for your video, it went right past them again.

Like you don't want people to have to work that hard to find your video.

I mean, if you've got the time, effort and expense of creating a

video, get it in front of people and your website in general.

So.

That's kind of my long, long winded answer of, of make the most of all of

your sales and marketing assets and make it easy for customers to find

you and to find them when they come to your website or your social media page.

Don't hide, you know, if you have videos on social media, if people

come to your social media page for the first time, those, that

content should be front and center.

They shouldn't have to search through another tab or search video or search.

video about our manufacturing process, like those should be front and center.

You can pin posts, you know, make sure that people are going to be

hitting the face with those when they first come to learn more about you.

Yeah, this is great, Mike.

Thank you so much for being here with us.

Tell people how they can reach out to you.

Sure.

I would love to hear from any of your podcast viewers and listeners.

Our website is perloproductions.

com, P E R L O W, productions, with an S at the end, dot com.

You can email me, mike, at perloproductions.

com.

You can even, uh, always happy to take a phone call, 8 5 6 6 6 9 1 6 6 9.

And if you search Perloproductions on every social media platform

Snapchat, we're there.

Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter X.

So we're all over.

I would say that the platforms were the most active on our Facebook and

LinkedIn, but also Instagram the others.

Reach out to us.

Even if you're not looking to do a video, always happy to give advice, suggestions.

Review what you've done.

If you have a video happy to give a look at it.

I always caution people though I would rip apart a Super Bowl

commercial That's my caveat.

Okay, uh, but no in all seriousness, like always happy to give a perspective

I'm not gonna say oh because you didn't work with Perlow Productions.

Your video isn't good.

I'm gonna look at your video I'm gonna say hey, this is actually

well done or This is well done.

Here are some ways I might have done it differently, or that

you could improve it next time.

Or, you know, if you haven't done videos, here's where I would start.

You can't do everything all at once.

So, you know, always happy to just give advice and suggestions on a good

place to start when you're trying to work video into your overall strategy.

And, and if you're not, you are literally, you know, Missing

out on potential customers.

We'll put all of that information in the show notes.

And again, Kirsten and Jeannie here with Six Figure Business Coaching.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks for listening to the Six Figure Business Mastery Podcast.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode and you are ready to leverage video

marketing on all online platforms, or maybe even start your own video

podcast, then you need to check out the Done For You and Done With You

program at themarketingvaadvantage.

com and take your business to the next level.