How to Attract Prospects with Short-Form Videos

Nate Hoskin: At the end of the day, we are all business owners, or we have practices of our own. So yes, we absolutely need that upfront presence, but we need a way that people can interact further. These links pages are going to be the landing pages that allow people to interact and figure out exactly what you're up to and how they can interact with you.

If we take a quick look at my links page, you can see that I have a big call to action. I have more credibility, I have my newsletter, and then I start to dig into what it actually looks like to work with me, and what Hoskin Capital is and what we do. And Nick, on his side, because he doesn't run his own advisory firm, instead shares all of the brands that he works with, as well as the projects that he's working on. That's a nice little nod to content marketing on his links page.

I know that these were just little previews, so if you would all like to take a quick second and scan these QR codes on your phone, you can pull up our full links pages. I would recommend viewing this as if you were a client, as if this was something that you were going to implement in your business, and taking away from it: maybe I need these profile links in here. This call to action really grabbed me. Or, this is where they're putting their buttons to make sure that people know exactly what they're supposed to click and how they're supposed to interact.

Nick Meyer: Yeah, and one thing I'll mention here is that there are many different ways to make these links pages. It's not very difficult in today's day and age, because there are a lot of companies that have spun up specializing in just providing you these links pages basically ready made, and then you can add your little layer of customization on top of it. But also, most website builders — Nate uses Squarespace and he's built this all in his own website builder. So there are a lot of different ways you can approach it. There are the pre-packaged ones and there are more custom ones. If you're just getting into it and you just want something to be able to hit the ground running, you can use a pre-packaged one while you build your own custom one. But there are a lot of different ways you can attack it.

Nate Hoskin: Yeah, and Nick, I believe you're using Stan Store as your...

Nick Meyer: I'm using Stan, yeah. Stan is good, at least for now, but there are a lot of other free options out there if you just want something that works immediately.

And three things real quick, if you guys are making a links page, you want to include, especially as advisors: One is a way to contact you, so either a way to submit a form or a way to schedule a call. Two is lead magnets, so you're giving a free piece of value in exchange for a potential client's name and email address. This could be a PDF download of different tax strategies, or whatever your potential client would be interested in. Make it a free download, or an email newsletter — something valuable enough for them to give over their name and email in exchange for it. And three is a spotlight on maybe one of your services, one of your products, anything that you're selling.

And make sure it's not too cluttered. If you look at my links page, honestly, it's probably a little bit too cluttered. But also, I'm not trying to sell individual clients. Definitely use Nate's as a good example — his is crushing it.

Nick Meyer: Here is the format, the spiral script formula, if you want to call it that. This is the formula we use to write out all of our scripts.

You want to start off with what's called a hook, which is basically telling the viewer immediately why they should watch your video. People say you should devote maybe two to five seconds to a hook. I would say condense it as short as possible, maybe try to fit it in within three seconds. An example would be something that gets you intrigued, like, five ways to save on taxes before the end of the year. And then maybe you could add another little piece of intrigue, like, that your accountant hasn't told you about. That would get someone's interest piqued, at least if they're interested in that topic, and get them to move further into the video.

But again, you're fighting for literally every single second of attention. So you need to make sure you deliver a solid piece of value, where a light bulb goes off in someone's head and they're like, oh, I learned something, every five to 10 seconds in a video. You have to be delivering that sort of value. And if you have a longer video, you may need to incorporate hooks throughout the entire video. So maybe foreshadow what you're going to talk about and why it's important, dive into the value right away, then foreshadow something else that you're about to talk about that's really important, and dive into that value right away.

And then, the second you're done with the value, go into a CTA, a call to action — like we were saying before in your bio, except this one's going to be verbal and on the screen. You're going to want to end with a call to action. This could be, if you like learning about money, hit follow. Or, if you want to talk more about this with a professional, schedule a call through my link in bio.

The important thing with CTAs is, obviously you want to include them because you want people to follow you, engage with you, and schedule appointments with you. But they are terrible for viewer retention on your videos. And the way these algorithms work, the higher the viewer retention — the more of your video that somebody watches — the better your video performs and the more it gets pushed out to more and more people. But CTAs are terrible for your retention, because people are like, oh, okay, now they're selling me something, I'm going to scroll and watch something else. The value's already all gone. So you want to make sure these CTAs are as concise as possible.

And one little hack that we've learned is, if you're able to say the action word of the CTA — for example, if that's follow — say that as the very last word of your video. So end with, if you like learning about money, hit follow. And then the video immediately cuts off.

There's a lot that goes on with scripting. It's a process you definitely won't get right right away. But one practice that we really do encourage people to do is just look at other people in your niche. Look at Nate and my videos and write out literally what we say in some of our most popular videos, word for word. After you do that enough times, you kind of get the hang of how we actually script our videos. And then you can use that framework to apply to your own topics that you want to write videos about.

Nate Hoskin: This equipment that I'm showing right here, these are the things that Nick and I already use. I'm willing to bet — Nick, I don't want to call you out, but do you have your Fovitec light boxes on right now?

Nick Meyer: I do. They're right here, right off the screen. Yep.

Nate Hoskin: These are things that we use every single day. I have my little Rode mic. I'm currently traveling, up in the mountains to do a little bit of skiing and enjoy the holidays. So of course I brought my little plug-in microphone so that I could continue to make content in my little bits of free time. The startup cost is unbelievably low. The challenging part is actually using that equipment effectively and figuring out, now that I have the equipment, what in the world do I put into my phone and make public to people on social media?

Nick, talk to us about lighting a little bit, since you're clearly better at it than I am.

Nick Meyer: I won't say that, but since we have a limited time, we're not going to go over every single aspect of recording. But what we think is the most important thing that translates over to video quality is actually lighting. It's not what you're recording with, it's your video lighting. Because lighting is something that you don't think about at all until you actually start making content. But then you realize, if you record a video with poor lighting, there's this huge shadow over my face, why can't I see me, what's going on? We'll show you exactly what we mean in the next slide, but there are a couple of quick rules about lighting.

Yeah, we will look at that, but I just wanted to preview it.

There are three quick rules of thumb that we're going to go over that are important to understand when you're doing lighting. First of all, like we alluded to at the beginning of this presentation, you should have two light sources in front of you at 45 degree angles. Those two soft box lights, as they're called — kind of diffuse lights — that we talked about earlier. One is right here in front of me and another one is right here in front of me. That gives you a nice even fill over your face and ensures there aren't any weird shadows.

Two, natural light is awesome and you should definitely use it whenever you can, but ensure it is coming from directly in front of you. I have windows off to my left right now. If I open those up, it would absolutely ruin the lighting. And especially if you have windows behind you, it would turn you into a dark shadow that's talking in front of a big bright light. So you definitely don't want to do that.

And three, definitely do not have any overhead lights on when you film. It's something I forget to do sometimes, and I notice it immediately. If I just have my normal office light on up here, it looks terrible, because there's a light coming down from directly above you and your hair is going to cast shadows over your face. Your nose is going to have shadows, your eyes are going to look like little shadows. So you definitely want to avoid that.

And now I can go over to the next slide and show you exactly how much lighting impacts your video quality. This picture was taken on the exact same phone, in the exact same spot, 10 seconds apart from each other. I want you to guess which one has my professional lighting turned on, and which one has just my overhead office light on with my windows open. It's pretty clear. The left one is the one where I didn't do any prep work at all. I basically just walked in my office with my normal lights on and my windows open, took a picture, and then I shut the windows, turned my light off, and turned my soft boxes on. That's what the picture on the right has.

And again, when you're making your profiles, you want to give people as many reasons as possible to think that you're credible and to watch your video. If both of these people on screen right now came up in your feed, which one would you be more likely to listen to? I would definitely listen to the one that has better lighting, instead of the one that looks like they have a shadow over their face. That's just me. But lighting is super simple once you get the hang of it, and it's something you should definitely invest in. The soft boxes are like 75 bucks for two of them. It's a crazy deal. It's 100% worth it to just make your video quality skyrocket.

Nate Hoskin: I have two main recording styles that I do. The first one: if you have a Roth IRA, you need to understand the five year rule. In fact, there are three five year rules, so I'm going to break down all of them.

The first one is honestly kind of lazy, and that's what I love about it — the fact that I am just sitting in my big beanbag chair. I'm very relaxed. I'm just providing value. So no one really feels like they owe me anything. They don't feel like this is going to be a challenging video to watch. This has been extremely successful for me because it lowers those barriers to entry. It feels like we're just sitting in a room together. I'm lounging on the couch, it very much looks like I'm having a FaceTime call.

But sometimes it's nice, especially when you're covering something that's a little bit more complicated, to get a little bit more professional. If I was 25 with no kids making a hundred thousand dollars a year, this is exactly how I would save and invest my money.

So I will also take a little bit more of a structured approach. As you can see, same room, but instead I'm sitting at my desk, I'm using my better microphone, and it's a little bit more structured to say, this is important. And I'm speaking from a point of expertise, rather than just someone — you don't necessarily want to take financial advice from your best friend who's lounging on your couch. So it's interesting to mix those in and see who resonates with which.

So then we've got — Nick, do you want to preface this video at all?

Nick Meyer: Just hit play. I'll explain it after.

"Good morning, I'd like to cancel my hotel reservation." "Will do, but we'll have to charge you a $300 cancellation fee because it's less than 24 hours before your booking." "Can you cut me some slack here?"

Alright. Yeah, this is what I call a skit style format. This is what the majority of my personal videos are, because I did a lot of split testing, especially right away when I started my channel. I tried basically every single different recording format out there. And because my main currency is attention — I sell attention to the financial brands that I work with — I want to optimize my videos for the maximum engagement, the maximum view count, different things like that. So I found that skit formats are the best way to do that. And like I mentioned at the beginning, what I do is I make personal finance content approachable and fun, and skits are the best way I have found to do that.

If I was looking to build trust with an audience like you guys probably are, which is the most valuable for financial advisors and other professionals that are on social media, I would definitely lean more towards Nate's content. But if you want to mix in skit style content every once in a while, it definitely takes a unique personality type. Most people aren't comfortable talking to themselves in front of the camera at different takes. It's more like acting than it is like a FaceTime call, like Nate was saying. But it's really good for viewer attention, so it has the biggest potential to send your videos to the hundred thousand or million view mark.

Nate Hoskin: Yeah, and I do both. I will do a skit, which gets far more engagement, far more viewership, and most importantly, far more comments. People will ask specific comments, and then I can make the more professional, more camera-facing videos in response to those comments. So the people who see the viral video will then trickle into those more professional ones.

Frankly, this next one is one of the coolest videos that I think Nick has done, simply because both of us are ski addicts. So it was nice to see that he was using his ski day as a way of actually contributing to his business.

Nick Meyer: "Four quirky habits shared by most millionaires. If you make your bed every morning, you're 206.8% more likely to be a millionaire. If you don't smoke, you're 268% more likely to be a millionaire."

Yeah, this is more of a simple script. This was the very first skit video I made, so I didn't want to do anything super crazy. I just threw the stats out there — viral stats that are easily shareable. But this was my attempt to go into that more speaking directly to the camera. Even though I'm not facing the camera, I'm still speaking directly to the camera and building up that more personal connection with my audience.

And I wanted to incorporate this because I had a couple videos that went crazy on Instagram about a year and a half ago, where I just recorded this regular holding photo in my hand, front facing camera, while I was hiking. I posted three videos, and they got about 2 million views total and got me like 80,000 followers on Instagram, just because people really enjoyed the different element I was bringing. I can guarantee you there are absolutely zero other people out there posting content who are skiing while talking about money, or hiking while talking about money. So it's just a reminder that you can have fun while creating your content and showcase your personality a little bit more, and it can still perform really well and still get you new clients for your business.

Nate Hoskin: Editing is probably the most time consuming component of actually producing short form content. But I went through and edited a couple of my videos before this webinar to see, okay, what does this actually take? And it still only takes me about 25 to 30 minutes to edit a video completely. And I'm pretty well practiced — I understand the software — so it could be longer for someone who's just getting started, but this should not be a barrier to entry at all.

So let's talk really quickly about a couple of things that we recommend adding to your videos. This one's my video, so I'll talk about it a little bit. This is called an L cut. An L cut is just where the audio from one clip overlaps into the visual of a second clip.

"That's cool. I'd like to learn more about that at some point." "Join my free seminar to learn how to—"

So as you can see, it overlapped a little bit, so it sounded like the person I was talking to, who is me. I'm literally talking to myself in this video, and I'm not quite sure I'm over that, but it sounds like I'm in the room with myself. And it creates this feeling of engagement that doesn't apply if you're just clipping between different clips. So that's super important to have.

Another thing that I really like to include is video overlays, because you can actually use content that other people have produced to fuel your own content and provide your unique perspective.

You've probably seen a video something like this: "Why do only rich people know that?" Or maybe you've seen a video that looks like this: "Becoming your own bank is the greatest asset that you can build."

I'm not going to get started on IULs. It is a personal issue of mine on social media, how they're sold to 18 year olds. So this was me debunking and providing my own input on how IULs might actually fit into an adequate financial plan. I used examples of other people who had dissenting opinions and then provided my own input on those.

Alright, Nick, you are the king of scroll breaks. Would you be willing to talk about a little bit of what they are?

Nick Meyer: Of course. It's basically incorporating some other action along with your hook to get people to stop and watch your video. So in my ski video example, the scroll break there was, there's this guy on skis going down a mountain that you're going to see immediately. Right when you open the video, you see something different, so you're going to give more of your attention to it. But in this video that Nate is about to play, I just use movement in a quick cut. A little pro marketing hack is that movement attracts attention, which is why if you see my hiking videos, like I referenced in the last slide, I was walking and talking, and that movement gets people to pay a little bit more attention. So I'll go ahead and hit play here.

"Credit or debit?" "I'll use debit." "Wait, you don't have a rewards credit card yet?" "No, why would I want to get—"

And then we can go over to text overlays. We're kind of running late, so I'll condense it a little bit.

"What should I study in college to make money. First of all, avoid medical school."

So those are just text boxes you can put in your video to add some more color to it, make it look native to each platform, and make it attention grabbing. Make it short, make it not super wordy, and make it large. Make it be something that people see right when they look at the video, or have it be a large part of each scene.

But honestly, these are all advanced editing techniques. If you were just to do one thing with editing — if you just wanted to sit down, record a video in one take, and you're asking us what you'd put in there editing-wise — just add captions. I forget what the exact number is, but somewhere around half the people that watch videos watch them on mute. So if you can just have captions throughout your entire video, that is really all you need, especially right away. And thankfully, this has come a long way since we started making videos. We used to have to manually add text overlays as captions, but now there are a million different tools, including on each of the social media platforms, where you hit a button and captions are automatically applied. Sometimes you have to correct the spelling, but most of the time they're pretty spot on.

Nate Hoskin: Yes. Captions are probably the most important part, so I 100% agree.

So where do you edit this? Nick and I have been through the ringer with editing apps. I have used pretty much every single one under the sun. And at the end of the day, there are a couple of things that you can do. One, you can edit natively, so you can actually edit within Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or any of these platforms. It works reasonably well, but in most cases you can't download the video out of that app in order to put it on other platforms.

So we recommend using CapCut if you would like a free option, and we recommend using Descript if you would like a paid option. These are by far the most successful ones that we have used. I interact with Descript specifically every single day, and I just absolutely love it. It uses AI and lots of amazing tools to make sure that I'm producing the best video possible with the least amount of time.