Transcript
Hi guys and welcome to another episode on Amazonia YouTube channel. In today's episode we have Justin from Comquest and Justin's going to talk about how videos and social networks can help you increase your revenue and and generally your brand share. So Justin, welcome. Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here and talk about this. Awesome. Well, at at the beginning let's talk a little bit about you or more about you. Just tell us what you do about about your life some of background and whatever is important about you. I know that you have so many things to share. Yeah, no. So you can actually kind of see a little bit about it right in the back. So I currently work at Twitch. That's my full-time job. It's my full-time career. I'm the senior influencer marketing manager globally for Twitch. So I do all their influencer marketing events and campaigns and creator placement and stuff like that. I've been there for almost 9 years. So that's that's my full-time job. But what we're primarily here to talk about today is my I guess my side hustle which
is my my video production company which is Comquest that like Igor said. Basically that started out of the fact that I was a YouTuber and I'm still a YouTuber which is there you go. So there's my YouTube. So I've been a YouTuber for close to 10 years now. Started out doing Yeah. Yeah. Started out doing product reviews for tech companies so phones, watches, earbuds, you know, all that stuff. And I've got that still still still putting out content on that channel today. But that kind of laid down a path of started doing a lot of reviews, working with a lot of big brands. Started doing affiliate links on Amazon. It's the first natural step as you do affiliate links. I started making you know, some great money on affiliate linking. Amazon took notice when they launched their influencer program and they were like, hey, you know, you're really good at this. Why don't you post your videos not just post your videos on on you know, other platforms and then link to
it but you know, post them on Amazon directly under the listing. So, I started doing that. That exploded, started doing really well. Um about 4 years ago, I figured I could productize my ability to make high-quality influencer-style video and then sell it as a service to brands. So, I started doing that and that was basically the birth of the studio. So, we have a 900 sq ft studio now. We've got multiple people on our team and we create a ton of content all the time. Um and so, that kind of birthed that. And so, now what we're primarily focused on as of November of last year is doing um social media content for brands, but for their owned and operated channels. So, not operating as an influencer or a UGC creator for our own channels, but for uh brand channels. And so, anyway, we have a lot of experience on Amazon, e-commerce, PPC, um branded content, social content. We make basically just tons of video. Tons and tons of >> So far, so far it sounds like we're going to have a few few episodes. I I think we probably can. Yeah, there's a
lot to it. Yeah. So many things I would like to ask you, but let's let's keep it now um to to the subject subject of creating videos as as you know better and I keep seeing that by the stats from PPC uh campaigns that people are now so hard to attract and and hold their attention on a video because roughly I I see that there like video impressions through the campaigns that I see, but when you when I pull the report, I see that majority of people haven't watched like 70% of our video. Most of them drop after 5, 6, 7 seconds and that's it. Nobody does the unmute on Amazon because on Amazon by default it's muted and all the ads and and everything. So, it's kind of really I think it's becoming a science to produce uh good-looking video, but not just good-looking like using good and high-quality gear, but know what to put in the first several seconds and throughout the video, what kind of overlay text to use in order to grab their attention. Uh then yeah, it's it's it's becoming more and more difficult. And I see it. So,
yeah. I I know that you guys are doing an amazing job with that. 10 years of experience. So, what would you say that are most important things for the video right now? And how to increase the number of people who actually watch through whole video or at least I don't know, 50%? If I could get 50%, that would be a amazing thing. Well, yeah. So, I think it depends on where you're looking at. So, if you're looking at it from a you know, PPC type of uh of of an arena, the hard part with that is obviously PPC is just a fancy name for an ad, right? I mean, like and so, that's what the consumer thinks is and that's that's the word that they know. They You ask anybody on the street, they have no idea what PPC is. And you say, "Well, have you seen an ad on Amazon?" They're like, "Oh, yeah, yeah." You know what I mean? Like But, we know what they are. We know where they are. We know what they're designed to do. And I think we're getting to a place in the world where we we won't I mean, no one's liked commercials forever, right? Like everybody hates has hated commercials.
And it So, it's what it's getting to becoming is a it's I think it's becoming a more of a a conversation about how not to be necessarily an ad, like just very directly, but being an actual vehicle for a benefit, right? So, if nothing else, if I don't even like buy that product, that even that ad still gave me something that I like can take away, right? Does that make sense? Like that's really I feel like that's a that's a hard thing because like ultimately like if we're if you know I'm searching for a a men's you know multivitamin on Amazon, right? Like obviously there's a bajillion options out there but like if I just see an ad like what I mean I'm I'm out here looking for a men's thing I'm probably looking for price I'm probably looking for like a specific you know mixture like I'm over 40 like you know right right. And so like you know trying maybe to find a way to to begin that scene like you know especially because it's on mute right? Like how do you how do we get the message across like is there something
of value or something that we can give them like immediately which is really really hard to do it's hard to figure out what that is but that could just be like what the visual is right? Obviously as you know you you got to test multiple visuals. Does the video start with a product picture of the product? Does the video start with a picture of a guy that is the target right? Does the you know like what does it begin with because that's kind of your hook especially on Amazon PPC the hook is a visual that's the hard part right? So I look at it as like what's that first image and what's that first line of text? Right? Like and so like what does that say? Is it is it like you know best in the industry? Well then you lost me right? Like like number one you know I've already you've already lost me like that's not what I want you know what I mean like you know maybe think of okay if men are searching for a specific I I don't know why we're going down this route with with men's >> know let's say it so so we're both around 40 so let's say hair loss okay?
Okay right so hair loss right? So then you got to think okay what's the main in in my supplement what is like the most impactful like on trend ingredient that people are the reason what's like because you have to imagine at this point in this day and age at this point likely somebody searching for a hair loss thing got the idea to even do a search from some other piece of content somewhere else, right? >> Right. So, trying to key into what are other people talking about? What's the hot thing right now? Is that like Is it testosterone? Like TR, you know, like is you know, and so like lead with like something about that ingredient, and then and then move in, right? And then go on, right? But like >> the hook hook the people to just That's it. What what you're searching for and this is the information that I'll give you really quickly. Like, you know, if the if the If you're doing a hair supplement that's like test I mean, I don't even know testosterone driven. I don't know if that's even a thing, right? But like you should be You should be talking like that should be the first
one, but like how do you do it in a way that's like you know, like you would be like hair loss you know, equals testosterone. Like, and people are like, "Oh, like what?" >> That's it. Yeah. Cool. And you're like, "Oh, what do you mean?" Like the Oh, that's Or they'll be like, "Oh, that's what I was saying." Like hair loss is testosterone level, you know, and that's like You know what I mean? Like that's the kind of thing that I think you have to unlock and that's really can be really hard to do, um but I think a lot of brands lead with like the sell. And that's just, you know, like the the really hot-looking guy walking down the beach. Like you're trying to like I don't you know, like that's not me. I'm a dude with I got a belly. I'm 41. I don't like That's not me. You know what I mean? Like And he's got a full head of hair. What is this? I don't even understand what we're doing here, you know what I mean? You like I don't want to talk to that guy. Yeah, so Yeah, thank you very much. That really
really explained a lot. And what about Okay, once we have them, how to keep them watching? Even if it's a 15-second video, I mean, I I now I I think I see more and more videos just being shorter and shorter. I think we're going to get down to those 5 seconds only. I know. Oh, yeah. I mean So, how how to keep them watching, you know? Well, I I think you have to I think before we analyze like how how long we have to keep them, it's how long do we need to keep them before we get them to do what we want them to do, which is buy. Right? Like So, like sure, you could make a 30-second video, right? And it's like well, if you're trying to measure the the the success by like watch time or length of percentage of watch time of the entire video, I mean like is that relevant? If we're talking about specifically about PPC ad, obviously what we want them to do is see the first second and then just go at it like buy now, right? Like that's that's the ultimate conversion. That's what we're really wanting to get to. So, like how it like it would be great if I could
make a 5-second video and it just converted, right? That should I feel like that's the way to almost think about it is like okay, well, I want to make a 15-second video. Well, why do you want to make a 15-second video? I don't know. I feel like it has to be 15 seconds. Well, could it be two? Could it be five? Like you know what I mean? Like So, I don't Yeah, yeah, good point. >> about length, right? I think it's like can we communicate enough and make it compelling enough to get it done in 5 seconds? If we can, then why ever make why ever make a 15-second or longer video again, right? Like cuz I think that's and that's also you have to think of like what is the average I mean there's probably data on this when someone's doing a search, what's the average amount of time they like actually look at each individual listing, right? Like there's probably some kind of data on that that would be really interesting to know because like I know that if I'm if I'm on Amazon, I'm ready I've already got something in mind. I don't just know I don't I mean and again, I don't know
how many people just go on Amazon and they're like I don't know, let's see what's in here let's see what's in here today. I just want to just drain my bank account. Like nobody's doing that, right? They're there prompted probably by another piece of content that they just saw on either TikTok or Facebook or you know what I mean? Like They were there hard target search for one thing. They're probably price motivated, but they're also like looking for the right like repeat repeating of the information that sent them there. So testosterone and hair loss, right? Like how do we cut that down, you know? Right. Yeah, yeah, and you said one interesting thing that got me thinking. You said they're going to come to Amazon after they saw something on Tik Tok for example. So yeah, I think I'm not think I saw the data that shows like Tik Tok is crazy and not just Tik Tok. I think it's a brand should be available everywhere. You know, very often I see that I'm going to skip the brands who don't even
have a website. Everybody should have a website at least. But a brand doing only Instagram or only Tik Tok and I like for example, what if your target audience is mostly on Instagram and you're pushing for Tik Tok or vice versa? So I think that's that's something one thing that needs to be like a golden standard today just to be everywhere because you know, because if you already created something, why just not post it, right? Well, you exactly. So that's exactly right. So there's two there's a few things here that I think are really important. One, you have to look at each individual like platform as a completely different group of people. Because that's how it's segmented, right? Like you know, what is it? Under 25 people they're not on Facebook scrolling through the Facebook Reels feed, right? They might be on Instagram. They're very likely on Tik Tok, right? And they're probably not on YouTube Shorts or maybe they are, right? You know what I mean? Like so when you look at it from that
perspective, okay, so what's my product? My hair my hair loss product. Okay. A lot of older people, like you know, 40 plus hate Tik Tok as far as just because it's obnoxious, right? So, they're not on TikTok, right? So, if you're like going full steam on TikTok, sure, there's definitely some 40-plus people on TikTok, but there's not a ton of them. There's probably a lot of them are probably on Facebook looking through Reels, right? Cuz they do use Facebook and all that kind of stuff, right? They're probably on YouTube because they like longer-form video, but now you've got Shorts that are filtering in there, so they're probably there. And then they may be on Instagram because that's where they see videos and pictures of their family and friends and stuff like that and may get some So, you have to like So, I think you have to be on all of them. It's easier today than ever to be on all of them. And if you're already creating content on one, congratulations, you've created content for all four, right? Like, realistically, you can put So, if you've
created a short video on your Instagram Reels for your, you know, dog grooming like brush, right? Congratulations. Post that on Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok. There's no reason to not be doing that. And that's like that's So, that is one of the things that we've led with primarily. It's specifically, that's what we do for brands is we create the content, we we can we do all the editing, photo shooting, we do the B-roll, we do the voiceovers, we do the text overs, we do the whole packaging. >> Nice. And then we use a social media scheduling tool for our clients and we will schedule it on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, Facebook, right? We do it on all four of them cuz there's no reason to not. >> That's cool. Yeah. >> tricks There's some tricks to doing it cuz there's some nuance to it, but there's no reason to Like you said, there's no reason to not be on all of them. Pinterest now has vertical video feed. X now has vertical video feed. >> Pinterest, I didn't know that. Vertical video. >> Pinterest is Pinterest is taking off right now. Uh a lot of uh what is it?
Gen Z? Gen Z Gen Z? They're flooding to Pinterest right now. Um it's from some of the Gen >> that's the new thing, right? >> Right. And so, we use a scheduling tool that has Pinterest as an option. So now it's like okay, just brands, like just turn and make a make a Pinterest account really quick and we'll just post we just cross post it, why not? Like why wouldn't we do it? Why just put you need you need you need to be everywhere and it's easy, super easy to be everywhere. Yeah, but I I see and I think you can you can help us understand there. I I see main issue with that because me being the creator also for my for my own uh agency it's so time consuming, I mean uh I'm really not my videos are not fancy as as as my viewers know the best, but I try to edit as as less as possible, just get the information out there, but my content is specific. But if I now want to go on all of the the other platforms, that would probably be so time consuming. It could easily become a full-time job just to record
and adapt videos to every single platform and not just in a in a format like aspect ratio and etc. what what works for each one of those networks. So yeah, can you tell us a little bit about it? I know that your team does a lot of that. That's specifically what we do. So there's there's a lot of nuance to it, but yeah, I know that and that's so that's one of the main hurdles that we try that so when I back in November when I start when we started doing the social media video content like we were talking about for brands, I came at it from a perspective, okay, what are the main reasons why small to mid-size D2C brands for example don't do this, right? Like why aren't they posting on their own social channels and why aren't they on every platform? And so that's what I so we built our specific service model to break barriers, which is cost is first of all, right? Obviously, you've got you've identified, hey, I want to post on all these platforms, I can't do it cuz I don't have enough time. So now I got to pay somebody. Well, the moment you go out there and start looking at marketing
agencies or video production agencies or social media marketing agencies, you're like, "Wow, okay, this this gets really expensive very quick, especially for video." Right? Static image posting, you know, and if they're going to do all the photography, then it gets expensive. But like if you're taking photos and stuff, like that's not that bad. It's when you get into the video production and having it consistently created and scheduled, that's when it gets really expensive. The second hurdle is time. Obviously, if you're like, "Hey, you know what? I can't afford to do it, I'll just do it myself." You'll probably do it for a couple weeks and and you know, but then you're going to be like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I can't This is like you hit burnout just like YouTubers and content creators do. We all hit burnout at some point, right? And you got to systematize. Um maybe it's skill. Obviously, you're like, you know, you've identified that you're you're like, "Man, my quality is not very good." You know, and like it but and it's hard, right? You got to have a good camera, you got to you know, you got to learn the process of creating
content, which isn't easy, right? And then you've got obviously you've got the ability to like just stick with it, right? Because what's going to happen is you're going to start posting and you're going to get like five views. And like you're going to be like, "Man, I spent 3 hours editing that video, like 2 hours shooting it, and I got nothing out of it, right? And so now you're >> to depression, yeah. >> Yeah, you're done. You're done. You're you're done, right? Like it's rough. Like trust me, I did being a YouTuber for for this long, I hit that probably in about a month after I started my channel. It's it's brutal. It's everybody does and it's hard. So we built that's what we specifically built our service offering for is like to help reduce cost, obviously to be able to do it be turn key for you, like be able to actually do all of the production as opposed to just like, "Hey, you know, and then and then if you want us to do all the scheduling, we can do all of that as well." And that then allows you to say, "Okay, Jay Dub, here's our brand new product. We just launched it. Like
do your thing. Then that's it. We've already got a brand profile for you. We take your product, we start doing all the B-roll and A-roll, and then we will put it we'll put it everywhere we've determined, you know, and stuff like that. And so like then if you're like, "Hey man, like I want to start a Pinterest account." Cool. Create the Pinterest account, log into the account, and we'll we'll just start posting there as well, right? Um we know the nuance of how to schedule appropriately. There's tricks to doing multi-platform, um you know, uh posting strategies. There's tricks to the obviously you have to have the right copy on each platform. There's different hashtagging situations. Um like Instagram, we just heard this week that Instagram says that basically that I think it was like the uh one of the executives of Instagram basically said that hashtags do nothing for you anymore. Like they're basically getting rid of hashtags on Instagram. They don't they don't they don't help with discovery at all anymore. People aren't using them, right? So now you've got to switch it up a little bit
and make sure that all your keywords are in there properly. >> Complicates stuff a bit. I would say. It does. So anyway, so that's kind of what we done. So it's it yes, it's really really hard. It takes a lot of time. There's a lot of effort involved, but you've got to be out there, right? Like when you talk about TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram and Facebook Reels, these are algorithm-driven platforms, right? And the beauty of algorithm-driven platforms is that regardless of whether you're paying to boost them or not, you're throwing your ticket in to the the visibility lottery basically with everybody, right? Like if you never spend a dollar on on boosting one of your posts, any one of your videos could potentially take off for whatever reason, right? And so like if you're not involved in it, if you're not posting, you're you don't have a chance of that being even a possibility for you, right? And like, you know, even if you get five views on a video, if one of those people watches that video and they're like, "Man, that's a
cool-looking brush for my dog." That might There might be an instantaneous conversion, right? So, people look at it like, "Well, I need to have like 10,000 vid views on a video or it's not really worth it." Yeah, the the video must be really explanatory, must be of high quality, and send the right message. It's not just have a video. Uh what I like about what you said, it's not just you're not just recording a product video and sending the finished product back like a like a video, but you actually do the heavy lifting. That's actually I mean, not that the creating creating a video is also heavy lifting, but what happens afterwards is is as important as actually just recording the video because I had opportunity in the past that I I worked with brands who had an amazing videos and they used it in one campaign, that's it, you know? And maybe that campaign took off, maybe it didn't, maybe the data was wrong, and they took the video down. Video is in the archives somewhere, Google Drive, or
whatever, share drive. And that's it, you know? That's okay. So, I'm going to That's one tip that I'm going to give for anybody who's out there trying to create their own content, right? Let's say you're in the mode where like, "Hey, I'm going to do my own videos." Great. Good for you. I'm glad that you're doing that. You should, right? And then when you need help later on down the road, feel free to reach out. But if you don't, that's great. This is a This is a term that I've like kind of coined myself, I think, recently. I don't know, maybe. I call that what you're talking about content abandonment. Okay? Let's track with me on this. Is this cool? Is it Is that Actually, I think I might have just came up with that term. I like this. Content abandonment. So, what a lot of brands think is, "Hey, I made a video about my product. I showed I did I did this video, right? And this video is now done. It's been posted, and I'm never going to do anything with that video again." Right? Because everyone saw it, right?
Well, well, everyone saw it or nobody saw it, right? You got five views and nobody saw it, right? And so then it but then it's like, okay, so I just spent all this time and effort creating this content and now it's basically got it's it None of So, video content doesn't have a one-time use. There's no expiration date, right? Obviously, you don't want to post the same video a bunch of times in a row, Yeah. but taking a video and slightly altering it to just change the tone, to change the way you said it, right? Like I mean, especially if you're scripting your videos and you've got ChatGPT, oh my gosh, this is the easiest thing in the world. Okay. ChatGPT, write me a script for XYZ, blah blah blah. Here's all the information that I want you to put in there. Here's all the the talking points. Here's the opener. Like all this information, right? I'm going to go and shoot all the video that matches all of these things and right, boom. Okay. ChatGPT, now make me three different versions that are slightly different for this, right? Boom. Basically, all the information's the same. It's
formatted slightly differently. All the video production you're about to do is going to be supportive of that exact same piece of content. Now you've got three different versions. You post one this month, one in the middle of next month, and then two months down the road, okay? Now you've got three posts scheduled in the books, right? You do that for every video you make because what's going to happen is that first video, sure, the algorithm may not pick it up. It may not perform. A month from now, that one may pick up and you're not leaving content behind because it's used it's used it's burned. It's not like it's not like a cigarette. Once it you know, once you smoke it, you don't just it's not thrown away. It's like you just need to retool it. And so that's one of the things that we do is we have a couple clients now that have a massive bank of b-roll of all of their product line, right? So we have an endless number of historical b-roll shots, right? And we're making new ones. We have so much content that man, if we had an automated system to just like reformat this content and we could make three years
worth of just consistent posts for them like like that, right? And so like I think that's what a lot of people get burnt out by is like I made one video, I dumped a lot of time, a lot of effort, I didn't see anything and now I need to move on. No, make multiple versions of that video, schedule them at a distance, move on. Make more, schedule them at a like you know what I mean? And so like three posts turns into nine posts over the course of three months, right? And and that and then that also helps you reduce the the burnout because then you're like, man, uh next month I got to make a whole bunch more videos. Oh wait, I've already got six videos in the hopper because I did like last month that you know what I mean? It starts to really I like it. It starts to really loosen the blow on that for sure. So, anyway. Awesome. Awesome. Uh Justin, I really love what what you told us. Uh and I think it's something that was missing in the in the Amazon industry or at least I'm not informed, but I this is the first time that I see uh
that that I hear about service of this type where you actually not just record and produce high-quality videos, but you just also handle the specifics of of every platform. Uh for anybody listening, uh can you just share what are the contact options for you? Like is it a website or an email or a phone call, whatever? I am everywhere. Um so you can find us at comquest.com or at comquest.io, I'm sorry. comquest.io uh is our website. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to chat with you on LinkedIn. Shoot me a DM. Happy to um uh to talk to you there. jdub, j d u b b at comquest.io. You can reach out to me there. I'm on WhatsApp. Um you can find me at my on my YouTube channels. There's There's contact information there. I mean I'm I'm very easy to find. Um and I will say if you know if you've got a brand, if you're a DDC person, or you're an agency like trying to, you know, help a brand grow, and you're like trying to figure out this social side, shoot me a message and be like, "Hey, here's our here's our brand, and here's the social channels we have. Like, what would you do with them?" Right? And I
can just I mean, happy to give you like, no I'm not going to sales pitch or anything. I'll just tell you what I see, and what I would recommend doing, you know? And then if you go somewhere else and do it, then do it. Great, right? I I'm happy to just do a like a little mini social media audit just to tell you kind of what what what I would do in your shoes. >> you are the person that can spot the opportunities more than the brand owner can. Absolutely. You know, and and you know, it and I'll be I'll be straight with you, too. Like, if your content is low quality, I'm going to tell you your content's kind of low quality, and you know, here's some things maybe that you should do to fix it. No, I'm I'm I'm truly truly do end up wanting to help you. And if obviously, if you know, if you get to the point where it's like, I I I can't do this, and I I need some help, then we're obviously there for that as well. That's the point of what we do. Um, but happy to help you do it cuz I do think that D2C brand owners, founders, creators should should attempt to create some of their own content. I think it's
very important to keep, you know, yourself if you if you're comfortable, if you're interested, it's it's I think it's a smart thing. I think you learn a lot about just the process, and um, you know, and and and you can even partner with us. We can take some of the content that you've created and help you make it better, make it more consistent, you know, help you repurpose it to to put some post to post out there and stuff like that. We can do a lot of different things um, to come alongside you and help. Sounds like a one-stop shop for everything. It's not everything, but a lot of things. We do a lot of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Justin, thank you very much for being my guest. It was a pleasure. Absolutely. Anytime.
