MA Business Success 67: Raz Laver Interview - Part 2 of 2

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Transcription

Phil: Well, welcome back to another "Martial Arts Business Success" podcast. And we're here once again with Raz and Graham and myself, Phil Britten, giving you guys great tools, tips, and strategies on how you can build, grow, and monetize your martial arts business. Now, last recording we talked a little bit about the importance in video and the difference between sort of every day, sort of selfie style videos and professional videos. Now we're going to talk about, sort of collaborate about what we do, what Raz has seen, on what you should do, when you should do it, and how we should do it. Now we're definitely no professionals but we're just in there doing it.

So social media is an ever-changing landscape and the one real time when you think you've got it, guess what? It changes on you. So you know, it's good to see Raz. He gets around and does all this stuff for all these different businesses, martial arts businesses, all sorts of stuff. And he sees all the stuff and you know, he's got his own business where he does all the social media work as well. So, Graham, you've a question?

Graham: Yeah, no, look, I thought what we'd do is, Raz, let's just start with talking generically as a business and trying to build your brand awareness. Now I know that, look you touched on, Raz, you deal with some small companies, sometimes you deal with some really quite large companies, all about brand awareness and building that brand. So is there any sort of tips for the viewers or listeners about where do they start?

Raz: Okay. So yes, if we're talking specifically about social media, well where do you start? So obviously you'd start with your branding, you know, your website, you're setting up your social media pages. Now when we're talking specifically about doing videos, okay, the very first place that I like to tell all of my clients and potential clients what they actually need in regards to video is generally a corporate overview or what I would call a corporate overview. Same thing as I did for you guys for the very first time, which is basically a summary of everything that your company offers, your visions, your features, your benefits, all in a high-impact one to two-minute video. Something that you can put on your website, something that you can pin to the top of your Facebook page, something you could upload to YouTube and send out in e-mails. The link, you can even text the link to people. You know, something that'll tell everybody about your company, your whole story in a high-impact short video.

Graham: So Raz, look, I know that we know that you've got multiple businesses, you're a serial entrepreneur. But you've been able to develop an off-shore sort of business, an international sort of business, that runs sort of holiday villas in Bali and whatnot. Now you've started this and basically built that business a lot from just social media.

Raz: Yeah.

Graham: So what have you done there? Because I know the listeners are gonna go out watch it and they're gonna be like, "Look, social media, I want to use it." How do I use it effectively to build their business?

Raz: Yeah. Okay, so that business is, you know, we have a villa business in Bali that we have private rental villas, we own and manage private rental villas. Now as you said, almost 100% of my marketing strategy is purely through Facebook. And in doing that, we've figured out the right strategy that we use for that particular business but we're getting a 90-100% occupancy, which is crazy when you're talking about Bali rentals. Now the strategy that we use now, this can work for all sorts of businesses but this is the one that we've found. Like when I started it, I learned along the way. So I was basically just like doing it.

But I started with, as I said, a corporate overview, like a walk through on the video, right? And then the key thing with Facebook that I found to get the highest amount of engagement, the highest amount of response, was to stay relevant, right? So a big part there, we're talking Bali, we're talking thousands and thousands of villas. Yet we somehow have got the number one spot on Trip Adviser, [inaudible 00:04:09], all the different places. And it's mainly because we utilized, I mean, luckily enough for me I've got a video production company as well. We utilize a lot of our marketing with using video. Now that was some professional video and some selfie sort of amateur video. And I've got, using them at the right times, I've got almost the same amount of response and the same amount of ROI and the same amount of engagement.

But basically, the idea if you've got your business, whether it's a martial arts business or whatever, if we talk about frequency of posting, all right, number one, you need good content. So video with good content but if you're going in-between videos and stuff like that, you need to find some relevant content to what's actually happening at the time in your business and also outside of your business. You can also cross-market with things like if you've got a, I don't know, like a martial arts store and now it's coming towards summer. It's starting to get hot, all right, you bridge on that. You know, or if the Grand Final's coming up and you've got a pub or something like that, you know you can talk about [inaudible 00:05:07] special.

So your social media has to also be relative to what's happening at the time. And I would say I see a lot of businesses doing 150 posts a week sort of thing or yeah, they're smothering [inaudible 00:05:20]. But yeah, that doesn't always work for you. So what you want to do is you want to find key times that people will be looking at their feeds. Now most people are working, most people going to school or doing what they're doing. So that's usually between the hours of 9 to 5. When are they looking at social media? Sometimes when they wake up in the morning, so in the morning hours. Lunch time, they have their lunch break, they're checking their feeds. And also a high-traffic time is in the afternoons when everyone is finishing commuting on the way back home or, you know, once they've gotten home.

Graham: Wow, so mate, you sort of touched on blending a professional video with also some of the amateur sort of video which we touched on last time. You'd agree that having both has really worked well for you? And then staying relevant. So that is not just set and forget, in other words, do one and kind of leave it and then sit down?

Raz: Yeah, no, no, you definitely need to be consistent. Consistency is the key. Also, you can't...another thing that's gonna really, really help is if you've got a business and you're making these posts to get a response for your business or to get engagement, you can't just put the post up there when people are going to be liking, people are going to be commenting, people are going to be inquiring. You need to be really quick on the response of that. So that'll drive engagement, it works wonders for the Facebook algorithms. But on a social landscape, people really want to engage with people, so being really quick on your response.

Graham: Well let's throw this to Phil a little bit because I know that you've been doing a lot of different sort of videos lately on different forums and whatnot. When you get a comment or a like, I know that you have a pretty quick response time or at least make sure that you try your very best to respond. What have you learned on the way with that?

Phil: Yeah, especially probably in the past four months maybe, probably three months, I've been really changing how I've been doing social media. Meaning that even changing from holding from landscape to portrait because everything is on their phones. And as confusing or as stupid it might sound, people don't want to, it's tiring and boring for them to turn their phone this way. They want to see it this way, it's a larger image. So sometimes you want to be able to have your images and visual. If you're really looking at mobile coverage, it's the way that you hold your phone and the way that you have your videos edited. Which then comes to can you do it cheaply and budgetly or do you get a professional to do these things?

Well, captioned videos also works really well. So it's all about re-purposing your stuff. So if you could do shoot a, say for example, this podcast for 12 minutes, and then maybe get one minute grabs of some really good content, like I wonder what are three really good takeaways that we could grab out of that, so now we got a 12-minute feature show and we got three one-minutes with captions. And then you boost posts and you do all this sort of stuff to get it out there. But one thing I know that what you've got to do in business is you can't just be consistently offering deals and join here and buy this and that because people, it becomes white noise. And the most famous person out there, some people know him, some people don't, Gary Vanderchuck, who we were lucky enough to meet and share the stage with wrote a book called, "Jab Jab Jab, Right Hook".

And it's saying, it's the same thing is...the relevance of that is, and how it's good with martial arts, is your jab sets up the knock-out. So you can't be keep trying to just knock people out. It just doesn't work, you know? So the jab sets up the knock-out and the same thing goes with content online is give, give, give, give, give, give, then ask. Don't offer, don't give 'em a deal but ask the question. And then you can do that with your every now and then offer videos or whatever it may be. But as far as like reactions and getting back to people, it's important that people see...social media is exactly what it is. Social. It needs to be social. And the problem is I've thought I've found, and what I was doing and I was doing it wrong. I was just posting stuff up there and not commenting and not liking anything and all that. It's the disengagement and then people don't like that. People want to do business with people who they know, like, and trust.

And videos, whether they're selfies, amateur or professional is a way to get people who you don't know to know, like, and trust you so when they click they like you or talk to you on a comment or come to your business, they've built a relationship with you, even if you haven't been face-to-face.

Phil: Exactly.

Graham: Phil, I know that Raz taught you, I know that you do this as well, Phil. I guess less is more. In other words, having good content within reason, I'm not saying that you don't stay consistent with it. But don't just videotape for the sake of videotaping or grab something for the sake of grabbing it and just put that up there.

Phil: You know, there's people...yeah, I don't know. Like if you've ever had the dad or the mom or whatever with the old school cameras, right? And it's like they don't turn off and there's a video of them breathing and they're fainting and all that, that's too amateur. You can't have that on there, like...

Graham: So it sort of leads me into probably a question that I'm sure that some of the listeners or viewers may understand but to be honest with you, the people we coach and we've helped with, and I still see it regularly done, is confusing their social media from a personal to a business level. In other words, they've got the same thing operating in the same space. Raz, what's your opinion on that, mate?

Raz: All right, the headline is social media. And as you said, social is a big part of it. So what you'll actually find in your business and even on your personal pages is when you post direct things that are selling your business, you'll get a response from people that are looking for it but what you really need to do is integrate it with lifestyle stuff. And you'll find that your lifestyle posts or your social posts are the ones that are going to get most traction because people are going to go, "Ah, yeah Phil was down at the," you know, whether he does one of his [inaudible 00:10:54] and he's sitting at the docks in the bell tower. And everybody will be like, "Oh, I was down there." They're gonna engage with him and create conversation. And that's basically all part of the process of building trust, you know, credibility inside your company. But yeah, so there is definitely a time and a place for professional and social and amateur sort of videos in the social space.

And I guess just to wrap that up, you know, personal page, business page. A personal page is personal. And in actual fact, if you don't know, there's a limit to the amount of friends you can have.

Phil: Yeah, 5,000.

Raz: For a business page, you can have unlimited and you have the ability to have ads and boost posts which you can't do on personal. So if you're using a personal page for your business page because it's just easier, well it's the wrong move. You need a business page.

Phil: Yeah, definitely.

Phil: You need to drive your business up there and utilize the features that Facebook have, and even Instagram and all that sort of stuff have now.

Graham: Guys, just to even follow along with that, if you are one of these guys who you just started Facebook or whatever social account that you want to do just simply because it was the coolest thing to do and then realized, "Well hang on, I've got my business," and then your posting stuff about your dog and your kids, again, just be mindful. Because what you're doing is you're confusing the potential client that's looking at you. Now I'm not saying that you can't be social but remember sometimes, and again from personal experience, I've seen people out there that are promoting their business and then they're doing things or they're being a jackass, having a party and having a great time doing some stuff that really probably doesn't align well with the values of your business. So just a reminder, have a look at what you're putting out there because remember, you won't get it back once it's posted.

Phil: What's better is post your business stuff on your business page, then share that to your personal page.

Raz: Yes, exactly.

Phil: It gets more engagement, and again the Facebook algorithms go, "Oh someone's got shared," even though it's yourself, you know?

Raz: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So if you're running a team of say five people in your business, and you've got your business page and you're making posts, whether it's if you're a martial arts school you film something for your grading, for a grading seminar or something like that, you post it on your business page. Make sure everybody in your business shares it off to their personal pages because, as you said, the way the algorithms work is number one, your video is getting shared, number two, when it goes onto somebody's personal page it'll get shown to more of their friends. Whereas on a business page, you actually have to physically pay a small fee to boost the post to get it out to your friends list certainly.

Graham: Guys, this topic with social media is ever-evolving but in a nut-shell, we always go back to getting professional videos done, so that's just one of those things that really allows us to put our best foot forward. Social media stuff will always change, we'll always stay current with that as an add value to what we already do. So I can't specify enough to you if you are a professional business and you want to stand out from the crowd, I would highly recommend that you look at getting a great video that sells a story and tells people exactly what your values are like and what you stand for. Because people are on the outside looking in and they want to know that your values as a business align with their values as well too. So I definitely don't leave it to chance, get somebody there that can really help you out. And look at the end of the day guys, that's something we do on a regular basis. And it works, pays dividends in the ROI and again for building relationships, not just getting new students but definitely retention, definitely further engagement. So I can't highly stress that enough.

Phil: What we'll do for you guys is just to show you some of the couple of videos that Raz has done for us. In the show notes, in the transcription, what I'll do is, you know, onto our website. You'll click the link, it will say Raz's video promo for the [inaudible 00:14:29] or whatever. We'll have a link and it will be to one of our videos or a couple of our videos so you can just sort of see the level of professionalism and what we're able to do with these videos and the difference between...and then what I suggest is go onto our Facebook page and then see, because you'll see some written text posts, you'll see some amateur video ones that we do in-house, and then you'll see the professional ones that Raz does for us as well. And just sort of gauge and eye, we're not perfect but we're out there doing it. And that's my lesson to you. If you're not doing it, it doesn't matter how bad it is, just get out there and do it because something is better than nothing.

Graham: And guys, look I know that I'm going to drop what I'm doing, I know you would have said this anyway. If you guys are interested in finding out more about what Raz does and what his team does, he'd be happy to give you guys like a podcast special if you guys mention that you came from us. Okay, I'll let him cover that with you guys direct right then and there. But look, in the end of the day, you guys look, you gave us your website before which is...?

Raz: [inaudible 00:15:21].

Graham: And what's the e-mail? Do you have an e-mail that you can direct it at?

Raz: You can direct any e-mails or inquiries to Raz@ [inaudible 00:15:28]. Happy to come and sit with you, talk about some ideas, talk about some concepts that we can do to help generate traffic for your business utilizing professional video.

Graham: And guys, if you're on the East Coast, look, we've got social media and we've also got live-streaming sort of stuff that makes it easy just do a face-to-face, whether it's Skype or whatever sort of form. Even Raz is one of these guys that travels with us a lot and will come and sort of visit. So definitely take action, don't sit on the fence. Even just throw some questions about where do you start. So I can't recommend it highly enough to get on board and don't hesitate.

Phil: Well guys, well thank you for joining us on today's show. It's been an absolute killer couple of episodes interviewing Justin before and Raz now with the social media stuff. We're going to be coming back at you with some really good stuff coming up. And to be honest, if you're interested, if you're loving what we're talking about, if you like what we're saying and what you're watching on the video, well get online to some of our content. We're in the process right now of updating a lot of our content. So get in there, check out what's there. It's going to be updated very, very soon. And if you're interested in learning more about what we do and how we can help you, just get in touch with us, [email protected]. And we'll catch you on the flip side.