Good afternoon, everyone. This is Andy Karuza with NachoNacho, and today I have Rish with Content Beta. Today, we're going to talk about the art of brand storytelling. So, without further ado, Rish, this is our second time meeting, but I'd love if you would give an elevator pitch to our audience because it might be the first time they've heard of Content Beta. We'd love to hear an elevator pitch about what your brand does. Rish: Lovely. So, let's say you are running a next video ad campaign and you want something really quick, but your team is busy and your freelancers are not able to, or you're not able to vet freelancers. How do you do it quickly? So, we have an extension. We are a creative service for marketing teams where you could basically get a team of designers, figurators, and producers on a flat-rate monthly plan. That's what we are. We have somebody who does super fast turnaround, super fast and transparent pricing. That's a quick one. Andy: That's great. Yeah, we've personally used your service for one of our explainer videos, and you guys did a fantastic job. So, I can definitely recommend your services. Rish: Thank you, definitely. Andy: So, why are videos so important for brand storytelling today? Rish: I think it depends on what your customers are consuming. Twenty years ago, people used to read a lot of text, probably because internet speed was okay, so people used to read a lot of text, ebooks, and blogs. But over time, the way content is being consumed has changed. Nowadays, we watch TikTok, videos, YouTube, and other engaging short-form content. Bandwidth and internet speed have improved, allowing more countries to consume, produce, and distribute videos. So, videos are becoming more relevant today. Another aspect is the art of storytelling. Marketing used to be push marketing, where you would push ads and content towards consumers. While it's not dead today, consumers are looking to hear a story. For example, Nike's first ad campaign in 1995 featured Rick Monias, an HIV-positive athlete who ran five marathons in a week. Nike linked their brand image to humanity, and that's how they told a story. It's crucial to tell a story today rather than rely solely on push marketing, and videos are a fantastic way to do that. Videos humanize your brand and make people fall in love with it beyond just your product or platform. So, I think both the demand for videos and the infrastructure to create and distribute them are becoming game-changers today. Andy: That's a great point. Nike's campaign was more about selling the spirit of competition and connecting with the inner athlete inside you, rather than just selling shoes. Rish: Exactly. Andy: So, what tips would you recommend to marketers on how to create videos that convert? Rish: When creating videos, it's important to think about where your customer is in the sales cycle. Broadly speaking, there are four types: top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, and post-conversion. At the top of the funnel, you're mainly educating your customers, making them aware of you and their problems. You should create high-quality, animated, shorter videos to capture their interest and move them into the middle of the funnel. In the middle and bottom of the funnel, you explain how you solve their problems as they consider and evaluate options. You can have slightly longer, catchy, and persuasive content, such as demo videos, use case videos, or testimonials. After conversion, it's essential to train your customers on how to use your product. That's a great point. Yeah, we definitely do that every time after our webinars as well too. We chop it up into a bunch of great social media pieces of content just because we learn so much from people like you. So, you know, we'd rather bring that information to people in bite-sized forms. So it becomes really valuable for our audience of founders and business decision-makers. I guess what's a good if a business is looking to roll out a marketing strategy that involves video, what are some steps that they can take before they start spending money on their first video? So, I think I briefly touched upon about first figure out where this video will sit, right? I mean, I mean, I mean, who are you targeting? The second part, once you've figured out who you're targeting, it's different kinds of content for different stages of the funnel. Then you try to put down what are the success metrics? I mean, when do you say this piece of content is successful, right? If it's the top of the funnel, you could say these are the number of likes, so these are the number of views or the number of shares. If it's after conversion, you could say person's product production increase, attendance improving, things like that. So first is with the stage, the second is what submetric. The third part is start writing a script. The script doesn't have to be literally like the what to what kind of script, but at least start writing. Pick up a storytelling framework. There are tons of it, and now with Chat GPT, I think it's becoming easier. Put your problems in one place and pick up a storytelling framework and try shaping your story around that framework. And while you do that, also think about how the visual will look like. When you're talking about this, when the voiceover is going to say about this. I think animation, I personally think it's more executional, more tactical kind of stuff. The real work is done between the script and the storyboard where you actually visualize how the video will look like. And probably the last 20 percent of the mileage, how do you make your content stand out? It's basically execution of what how the storyboard is in the real world. Great! What do you see video marketing evolving over the next few years? You mentioned short-form content can become more and more popular, of course. Where do you see potentially AI and maybe some other trends playing into that? So, I think AI today is more towards, I would say, the voiceover and the visual, which is more slightly robotic than, I mean, it's still robotic. I mean, they're 80% there, but there's still 20% to catch up. And I think they're great for creating training content where you want to lower the cost of production. That's where they're used. With AI, one thing which is becoming very popular is creating scripts, creating scripts or generating ideas. Hey, if I want to do like a two-minute video or a 20-minute video or a 20-second video, probably if you put right prompts and chat, it can brief you through even the scripts and even how the visual should look like in a very... You could probably develop that we'll start from there. So, I think they are making the systems better. It becomes clear that the inspiration for starting our company and the way it was initiated is an important topic to discuss. Prior to the pandemic, we ran educational YouTube channels focused on teaching analytic tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Excel. These channels had grown to 300,000 subscribers. We realized that creating video content that captured people's attention was key, as YouTube's algorithm ranked videos based on viewer retention rates. When we crossed 300,000 subscribers, we decided to help other software companies using the skills we had developed. This idea became prominent during the pandemic when our classroom training business was disrupted. We chose to apply our YouTube channel creation skills to assist SAS companies and B2B tech companies. Initially, we focused on creating enablement content for smaller software companies, similar to what we did on YouTube. However, as we gained more clients, we expanded our services to include product marketing and use case videos. We deliberately limited our market by specializing in SAS and B2B tech, which allowed us to streamline our process and become better in that industry. While this niche approach resulted in some lost revenue, it ultimately helped us grow. As we reached certain benchmarks, we expanded our industry focus to include design services and the broader tech world. Moving on to failures, one significant experience taught us a valuable lesson. While building customer enablement content for software companies, we decided to create a product that would help our customers achieve their goals of faster onboarding and improved product adoption. However, despite launching the product on platforms like Product Hunt and gaining some beta customers, none of them actually installed it. We realized that we hadn't done enough research or sought early feedback. Instead, we had built a product that went beyond the minimum viable product (MVP) stage, making it challenging to pivot from one use case to another. This failure taught us the importance of conducting thorough research, seeking early feedback, and shipping products or services faster. In terms of book recommendations, I'm personally a fan of behavioral psychology, and one of my favorite books is "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. This book delves into the two systems of thinking and reasoning, system one and system two. It combines psychology, reasoning, and extensive research, making it a compelling read. Additionally, I enjoy crime fiction novels, particularly Agatha Christie's works. As for Content Beta, there are a few key points I'd like potential customers to know. First, our solution offers a superior alternative to hiring someone internally for non-core tasks in your business, such as creative production or design. We specialize in the SAS and software industry, with a finely tuned internal process focused on becoming the best in that field. Second, we prioritize speed, delivering results much faster than freelancers or agencies. Our turnaround time ranges from same-day to two or three days, ensuring swift delivery. Lastly, transparency is a fundamental aspect of our service. We provide clear pricing and eliminate any guesswork regarding hours required for a project. You'll have full awareness of the scope and cost before initiating any project with us. Great, yeah, and I could attest to that too. You guys are really quick with turnarounds on all the feedback that we're providing, and you guys felt like a true video marketing partner with us. So, it's been great working with you guys there. Thank you. What's next for Content Beta over the next few years? So, I think we are trying to productize what we did in the past. We're trying to make this a standard offering, which we are today calling 'Creative as a Service.' Someone could easily pick a team and start working. We are trying to build better processes internally so that it's flexible for someone to start and stop. We are a replacement to a marketing or creative team, more like an extension. I'd probably want to go to more number of industries beyond B2B Tech. That's great, Rish. I really appreciate you coming in today, and anybody looking for video marketing, these guys are fantastic. We've worked with them. You can check out the explainer video that they've done for us actually on our website if you want to see the quality of the work that these guys do. So, you know, I'm a customer of theirs, and I can definitely recommend them. If you're interested in their services, feel free to check it out today on the Nacho Marketplace. You can grab their services there, and Rish and his team will take care of you guys. So, I highly recommend you guys check it out. Once again, Rish, I really appreciate the time today, and thank you for coming on.