Welcome to episode 38 of the Profitable Speaking Podcast, where we provide practical tips and insights to help you succeed as a public speaker. In today's episode, we're going to look at producing the perfect video sales letter to sell your products and services. Have you ever thought about using a video sales letter to boost your sales as a speaker? Imagine taking all of your energy, expertise, and stage presence and packing it into a very short, punchy video. By adding a VSL to your website, you're not just throwing words on the page, you're giving visitors a taste of your talks, sharing cool insights, and personally introducing what you've got to offer. It's like having a mini U selling your products, courses, or even tickets 24-7 a day. Trust me, with a VSL, you'll be able to connect better, engage more, and sell like never before. And look, anyone can make a VSL. And I use that, you know, video sales letter, VSL, before we go any further. You just need to do some planning. And so here is a simple script that you might typically use. And I'm just going to speak through it. Okay. Opening scene, presenters in a modern office or co-working space with a diverse group of professional networking people in the background. Hey there, ever felt like you're swimming in a sea of business cards, LinkedIn connections, and networking events, yet still not making the right business connections? It's not just about quantity, it's about quality. Imagine having a network where every contact is eager to do business with you. Show snippets of your course, engaging visuals, animations, or quick lessons on effective networking strategies. Welcome to Network Mastery, building a business circle that works for you. This course isn't just about expanding your contact list, it's about cultivating meaningful, profitable relationships. Insert your testimonials here, clips and quotes from students sharing success stories, of landing big deals, partnerships, or collaborations after taking your course. With Network Mastery, you'll learn the secret of identifying key players in your industry, approaching and connecting with them authentically, and most importantly, turning those connections into lucrative collaborations. Show a visual of the course dashboard or platform highlighting its interactive features, modules, and resources. And guess what? Enroll today and you'll get a bonus module on digital networking the age of remote work. Because in today's work, networking isn't just face-to-face. Cut back to you as the presenter, looking enthusiastic and confident. I get it. Networking can be daunting, but with the right strategies, it can be your biggest asset. So, are you ready to transform your business network and skyrocket your opportunities? End with a clear call to action button that says join now, start networking effectively, etc. Don't let opportunities slip through the cracks. Dive into network mastery and build a business circle that truly works for you. See you on the inside. See, that's not too difficult to do, is it? As a speaker, doing video these days is easy. And better, still, I suppose, if you don't want to be on camera, you can use AI to produce the video from your voice. So all you need to do is use stop video and talk over the top. What do you need to include to get the best results? To craft the perfect VSL, you'll need, number one, attention-grabbing headlines. You need to start with a compelling headline that grabs the viewer's attention immediately. And it should address a pain point or a major desire of your target audience. Remember, you want people to take notice and keep listening. So it cannot be something boring and maintained like very blasé. You really have to hit hard as soon as possible. The second thing you need is empathy and understanding. You need to show that you understand the viewer's problem or desire. Okay? You need to relate it to their feelings and emotions. If you just relate it to their bottom line or something like that, yes, it will sell, but it will not sell as well as the fact that they will feel better about themselves when they get better results. Because that's what we really all want. We want to feel good in ourselves and feel good about how others see us. Number three, you need to introduce your solution. Okay, it's great to talk about your product, but you need to introduce it as a solution. Okay? Present your product or service as the solution to the product you identified in your headline and that you've talked about earlier in the video. Explain why it's unique or better than other solutions on the market. It's not necessarily something you want to be doing is comparing it to other products, but you need to be saying this is better than what you've tried before because of these reasons. Okay, now it might be that it's specifically designed for accountants and you've worked with accountants for 20 years, so you know how they think and things like that. But again, make sure it attacks this problem that you've identified. Next, we've got benefits over features. Okay, features of any course are important. Let's face it, it's just a course. Okay. There's nothing really fancy about watching a course or learning through a course. We've been brought up through the education system. So you need to focus on the benefits they'll receive for sitting through the course, for doing the activities. Okay. How will it improve their life or solve the problem? So every time I write something in a video sales letter, I talk about the benefits. So rather than saying it will get you in front of a hundred people, it is by getting you in front of more people, you'll develop more opportunities to show your expertise or to make sales or something like that. Get the benefit in there. Next is social proof. You need to make sure you include testimonials, reviews, or case studies from satisfied customers. This builds trust and your credibility. Now, obviously, for the video sales letter, the absolute best you can have is someone else's face speaking. So an actual video of someone doing a testimonial. And you might have to organize those with the people who have bought your course before or something like that. You can just put a picture and the written testimonial if they've given you permission to do that and then read it out. It's up to you. But in the end, having real video of someone talking about how great it is by far the most effective way to add to your video sales letter. You also need a clear call to action, okay, commonly known as a CTA. Tell the viewer exactly what you want them to do next, whether it's to buy, sign up, or call, and make it clear and compelling. Don't leave people guessing what they need to do. Okay? Click the button below or click the button to the right. Pick up the phone and call 1-800 or whatever it is, make sure you're saying to them what they should need to do. You need to add scarcity or urgency. If applicable, create a sense of urgency. Could be time-limited stock, special bonus if people buy today. So you'll see this on television ads all the time. The first 100 callers get this free steak knife or whatever. It works. Sounds stupid. You look at the ads and you think, why would I want steak knives? But I'm telling you right now, if they offered you the deal by itself or the deal with the steak knives, every day of the week the deal with the steak knives outsells the deal by itself. That's just the facts of sales. Everybody in the industry knows this. So make sure it's urgent. You're only opening up to 100 people, or it's only open for the next 48 hours or something like that. Again, scarcity makes people make decisions. And if you're going to use scarcity, please make sure that you follow through. If you're only selling for the next 48 hours, then you shut it down after 48 hours and you don't take any more clients until, say, 30 days' time or something. That way, when those people see the ad in 30 days' time and they didn't buy the first time, they're going to jump on. Okay? Make sure you address objections. Think about the common objections and concern your audience might have and address them in your video sales letter. This removes barriers that they're going through in their head to stopping them taking action and buying right now. High quality production. This is important, but not the most important thing. You just need good sound and a clear picture. Okay? Sound and video quality are important, but sound is more important because you can use stock video or anything like that. Just make sure you don't compress your video down to the point where it's terrible and you can't watch it. These days that shouldn't be a problem because you can upload 4K video straight to YouTube or to Vimeo or another hosting platform and then embed that video and it will stream based on the person's connection at the best quality possible. Again, shoot as high as you can with the equipment you've got. But if you don't have a 4K camera or really good mics, that shouldn't stop you. I've seen some absolutely terrible video sales letters that sold millions of dollars worth of products. Just do it and get it out there. Okay, the sooner it gets out there, the sooner you learn whether it's going to work or not, or whether you need to update it or change it. Engaging script. The script is the backbone of your VSL. It should be well written, engaging, and persuasive. Maybe consider hiring a professional copywriter if necessary. Or alternatively, why not use a bit of AI? You can find plenty of scripts for video sales that is out there. You could feed it into Chat GPT or somewhere and get it to spit out or ask you questions and then spit out the resulting sales letter for you to speak. Okay, that's a very simple thing to do. Alternatively, there is some people who sell VSL formulas that are already laid out and written. Or, of course, you can just do a Google search, and I've no doubt that there is many sites offering free templates that you can use. Start with a template, work off that for the first one. That makes life so much easier. Even the little one that I used at the start, very simple. Okay. Incorporate stories that resonate with your audience. You can use a story just like we would use on stage, but the key thing I think that's most important is that you've got to look at how long your video sales letter is going to be. Are you going to go the long form? I was watching one yesterday for a workout program for men over 50. And it actually went on for 45 minutes. Now, I did not sit there for 45 minutes. I let it run and then I clicked to see what the deal was out of interest. But I love watching these things. So once I start watching, I'm like, okay, let's see what he's doing, or oh yeah, what have they added there? But it was a story after I know how you feel and all that sort of stuff. And it went on for ages, but I guarantee the thing was converting. Okay. It was really engaging. Bonuses offer additional value to incentivize action. This can be in the form of bonus products, additional content, and discounts, etc. So easy to do. As I said, products with steak knives sell more than products without steak knives. It can be a checklist, it can be a series of PDFs that they download. It doesn't have to be expensive. It just has to be something that's easy for them to use. And it looks like it will make their life easier. And well, hopefully it will make their life easier, of course, because we're not in the business of and trapping people to buy. We're in the business of helping people to succeed. That's what we do as speakers. And lastly, and this one everybody hates, to be honest. Oh no, not lastly, sorry, I'm wrong. Scrolling down my list here. A guarantee. If possible, offer a money-back guarantee. This reduces the risk for the person buying and can increase conversions. Now, I know from selling ebooks to teachers, I would just give them 100% money back and tell them to keep the PDF file. Like every time you walk over giving money back, you lose a potential future customer and everybody they know. So just give them their money back. Oh my God, it's like $29, it's $100, it's $1,000, whatever. If you're only selling to one person, you've only made one sale, then the problem is your sales letter and your course. Your VSL is not converting, and your course isn't very good because the person wants their money back. So maybe you need to look at both of them and make sure if the course is actually good, that your video sales letter is actually selling what you have in the course. There's lots of other things we can look at. So keeping things concise in your video sales letter, making sure your branding's there. So you've got your colour, your visuals, your logos, anything else that needs to be there that gives you brand recognition. So if you use certain colours like I do, I'd expect to see those colours in that video because you want to build on that. Okay. Engaging visuals, so your B-roll footage and shots of not specifically core sort of people looking happy networking. Make sure you've got the legal rights to use all that sort of stuff. You can buy it for very cheap through iStock Photo. Or quite frankly, you can get it through Canva these days if you use Canva to edit your video up. Make sure you've optimized your video for mobile. As I said previously, uploading to YouTube and places like that will take care of that for you. Test it. Before you send it out to a million people, maybe just buy a hundred visitors, go to Google and pay for AdWords to get 100 clicks through and see what your conversion ratio is. Realistically, if you can get a 1% conversion ratio, you're doing really well. Okay. Normally cold sales is less than 1% conversion ratio. So if you can get one or higher, then you're doing well. You can always improve, but I would certainly open that up to a lot more people. And so make sure you test and optimize things. Now remember, the perfect VSL will be very based on your audience, your product, and your market. And it's essential that you understand your target audience and tailor your message to their specific desires and needs. Okay? It always comes back to who you're talking to. If you're going to sell something to accountants, talk to accountants. If you're going to sell something to sports people, talk to sports people. Try and keep that video sales letter as close as possible to your target audience. So if you're going to sell it to multiple audience, so just say you have a recovery product that sports people can use. Do an ad for swimmers. Do an ad for runners. Do an ad for gymnasts. Whatever. Use the same script, but reword it to talk specifically to them. Again, target your audience properly. In this digital age, where attention spans are fleeting, quite frankly, competition is fierce. Video sales letters have emerged as a really good tool for selling. The dynamic blend of visuals, audios, and storytelling captures the essence of your product or service, and it engages viewers on a multiple level by using auditory, visual, etc. When executable, VSLs not only convey information, but they also evoke emotions, they build trust and they drive action. They bridge the gap between you as a business owner and your potential customers by offering a personalized touch in an increasingly impersonal online market. You remember, you're a speaker. People want to see you there. They want to see you sweat, as one of my friends would always say. In essence, a compelling VSL is more than just a sales pitch, it's a powerful narrative that can significantly amplify conversion rates and boost your sales. So I hope you found this episode of our podcast on producing the perfect video sales letter to sell your products and services interesting. If you did, I have a challenge for you. Hit that like button and subscribe to the podcast right now, and then share this episode with another speaker who could use the tips and strategies I've shared. Let's help each other grow our businesses and make an impact in the speaking world. Together we can reach even more people and make a bigger difference. So don't wait. Take action now, please, and share that love. Thanks for tuning in and get ready for more exciting business building tips in the next episode.