Introduction
Short attention spans and visual appeal have dominated digital marketing. Businesses are constantly seeking new ways to capture the interest of their audience. One powerful tool that has emerged on the marketing horizon is the sizzle reel.
In this lesson, we’re exploring how to use sizzle reels to increase revenues. This way, you can sell more online courses, communities, and coaching services. We’ll cover what it is, why to use it, how to use it, an example of setting up, and then we’ll discuss the various types of content you can use on your sizzle reels. Finally, we’ll summarize our top tips.
Challenges online course creators can face if they don’t use sizzle reels to increase revenues:
- Online course creators may struggle to captivate their audience, leading to lower engagement.
- It can reduce course visibility, hindering reach and potential sales.
- It may be challenging for creators to stand out in a competitive market.
- It may contribute to decreased conversion rates and fewer enrollments.
- It could lead to missing out on marketing opportunities
Video Lesson – Learn How To Sell More Online Courses, Communities and Coaching Services
Who Can Use Sizzle Reels?
Almost any teacher or professional can use sizzle reels to increase revenues for their online courses.
- To highlight key insights from their courses, creating visually appealing previews that attract audiences and drive course sign-ups.
- To showcase the design process, fabric choices, and the unique aspects of their courses through sizzle reels, building anticipation and boosting enrollment.
- To emphasize the value of their courses in improving writing skills, using dynamic visuals to convey the impact of their proofreading expertise, and attracting learners seeking polished communication.
This can work for a wide range of professionals like graphic designers, bloggers, and proofreaders.
What Is It?
Sizzle reels are short, high-energy video compilations designed to showcase the most captivating and impactful aspects of a product, service, event, or brand. Typically ranging from 60 to 90 seconds, these reels are crafted to leave a lasting impression, utilizing dynamic visuals, music, and concise messaging to engage and captivate the audience.
It’s a collection of carefully curated testimonials used to give buyers confidence in your service. So, it’s an exciting video that you put together with real customers talking about how your services help them. You combine them so that after a minute or two, your prospects feel good, and you build trust with them.
Sizzle reels are commonly used in marketing and promotional efforts to create excitement, generate interest, and highlight key features, ultimately as a powerful tool to boost brand visibility and increase revenues.
Why Use It?
They increase the sales of your service by showing how students have benefited and achieved goals in the past. A prospect might be on your webpage, perhaps checking out your course, community, or coaching services. They’re on the edge; they read your sales page, they know it’s for them, but they’re still on the edge.
A sizzle reel is like a two-minute video that goes through many prior customers, showing how they have benefited. They had a problem, took a leap, learned new tricks, and can now achieve their goals.
By finishing that video, they should be primed and ready to buy, feeling confident. It’s not just some internet person selling them stuff; they can see real value there. It’s more than text testimonials. It’s just motivational proof that you do what you say and you will do for your customers.
How-to Guide
Combining Testimonials in a Sizzle Reel
Combine several powerful testimonials into one ~3-minute video. A few of these testimonials—you will edit, pick, choose, and combine them into a montage, a snowball, if you will, from the beginning to more and more powerful.
Use several testimonials which will snowball into a compelling case for you. It’s for prospects to use your services; maybe it even ends up being two, three, or even five to seven minutes.
You’ll create a video, maybe two to five minutes, with three minutes being ideal. It will build up and go through many prior customers from various angles.
Clips Can Be Ad Hoc Feedback or Case Study
Clips can be ad hoc feedback or case studies with before/change/after scenarios. The clips can be ad hoc feedback, almost like a quick verbal testimonial. Alternatively, they can be a case study where you ask these customers about their former situation, what they learned after taking your course, what new skills they acquired, and where they are now.
A case study format covering the before, what they learned, and the after in their current state can be compelling. You can use your clips to grab short sound bites, maybe 15 seconds here, 30 seconds there. Alternatively, you can build a comprehensive case study where prior customers come on for 30 to 45 seconds, highlighting either their journey or a specific aspect of it, such as what they learned and achieved after.
Add an Intro, Music, Transitions, Captions, Outro, and Branding.
Now, once you have this video, consider adding an intro – that could be you as the lead teacher, or it could be branding or even a picture or video of your service. I recommend adding some background music – nothing too powerful that takes away from what they’re saying, but just a buildup of music from the beginning, up, and then down as you wrap up the sizzle reel.
You’ll have transitions in between – maybe fade to black and then black to the following video. You might have these jump scenes where you quickly go through many prior customers. Nevertheless, think about your transitions from customer to customer.
As you go from the intro to your customers and then from your customers to wrap up, you should have captions in case they’re babbling, or maybe the potential future students aren’t fully aware of the new words they will learn in your community or course.
You’ll want to call those out because they might not know what these more advanced students discuss. Having those captions there – transcribed subtitles, captions, etc. can be helpful. You’ll have an outro, which is a call to action. They saw all the stuff; they’re ready to buy – tell them what to do, like call us now, buy, or save, and use our coupon to start immediately. One the other hand you can say “Our classes are beginning in January.” Whatever it is, have that outro. That transitions that peak excitement for your service and converts it to that call to action you need to get that sale.
Finally, don’t forget branding – whether in the intro or outro. You might have your brand name; you might have your logo throughout the entire sizzle reel on the bottom right. Have your logo there or your brand name. Remember, you’re going to take these things, and you might put them in a bunch of places like YouTube, or you might share them, or somebody else might stumble upon your sizzle reel.
You want to have your branding there so it’s obvious. That way, no matter how they find your sizzle reel, they can contact you to learn more.
You Can Overlay Text of Name, Age, Situation, Location, and Goal.
Once you review the individual prior customers, you can overlay some information about them. It could be their name; you don’t want to reveal their identity. Maybe their last name is just an initial, or their first—whatever makes sense. If you’re teaching a sure thing, show the ages of these customers or show their location.
You may also want to show their location if that matters. Let your prospects know you’re supporting remote students if that’s what you do in different time zones. Letting them know about those things might leave a subtle hint—again, it’s just piling on all these other things.
Finally, you can overlay some texts following each customer about their goals. “Was trying to get ready for a show, was trying to start an art business, was trying to get a certain job switching careers from music editing to music production”—those goals for those prior customers could be beneficial. Then, they help set the context. Maybe the video clip for that particular customer doesn’t have to be 60 seconds.
It could be 30 seconds because you’ve overlaid some context, so you keep the pace going. The prospects that are watching this video can quickly get oriented. It is noteworthy that just using the overlay text combined with the perfect audio and video clips could be a compelling way to quickly allow your prospects to sample all of your prior success.
Standardize On Your Feedback Tool, Orientation, Questions, and Volume
You’re also going to want to standardize your feedback tool. For example, VideoAsk, or you could use Zoom. You could use Loom. There’s a wide range of testimonial tools if you Google them, and you’ll see different pricing and capabilities. As part of that, you’ll also want a preferred orientation, whether you will have most of your videos be horizontal (landscape) or vertical (portrait), and even questions.
You don’t want to open it up and say they should tell us about your course–That’s just too open. Then they’ll say all sorts of things. You can go ahead and give them some good prompts so that they can respond in a standardized way.
Then, when you’re combining the different customer testimonials, you’ll have some similar approaches and some similar answers, allowing you to build a story. Even standardizing from an AV point of view – whether you’re zoomed into the face, it’s a wide shot or even the volume. Whether they’re indoors or outdoors, all these things, and some of these things you might be able to do with your A.V. tools like Premiere or Audacity, etcetera. Just think about that as you’re receiving these testimonials.
Don’t forget that people are recording these testimonials with different tools and different apps. Some people have their desktop computer or their laptop, or they do it in a cafeteria. So you want to guide them on finding a quiet spot and not having a window behind them. Then, you could prompt them with some of the handful of questions that you’re hoping to receive from your prior customers.
Host Video on Wistia, Vimeo, YouTube, or Your Site
Once you have the sizzle reel created, you must put it somewhere. You might have to host it on Wistia or Vimeo, and those are cool because they don’t provide any extra advertising, and at the end of the video you’re in control. You can say what happens.
YouTube is free, but at the end of the video, it might show other content. You might have to play with the privacy settings there. You could even host it on your website, but you’re talking about potentially a gigabyte or more content. That might blow your hosting plan and website files like WordPress files. That’s not the same as a streaming server made for video, whether it’s Netflix.
Once you have your sizzle reel created, you’re going to want to share it in a variety of places, whether it’s on your specific sales page, your online course at the bottom, or once you have the sizzle reel created, you’re going to want to share it.
So you could put it on the bottom of a sales page. You may have several sizzle reels, so you will want to put one in each of your unique courses or communities. You might share it on the specific sales page of that e-learning product, right, that course, that community, that coaching service. You’re going to want to also maybe put it on your website that’s not on your Kajabi or your Teachable.
You might also post it on your social media. You might also take clips of your sizzle reel, like shorter 60-second versions, and post those on social media, like TikTok or Shorts, and even in your communities.
You may want to share it in your communities. If you have different chat rooms or a Facebook group, you can undoubtedly share and let people comment. You could post a link on how to learn more.
Make It Like a Movie Trailer
Make it exciting, make it honest, have multiple points of view, and make it motivating. So when they’re watching this, they’re getting excited. They’re already on the edge. They’re watching this thing, and they’re like, “Yeah, that’s me. Oh my gosh, that’s what I want to do. Yeah, that’s my problem.” You want to build that up, and finally, you will direct them to buy or do the next step—either buy or contact you for the next step.
Those tips are for creating a sizzle reel to help you increase your revenues.
Examples: Content Options for Sizzle Reels
Let’s go into an example of some of the considerations you’re going to make as you’re choosing actual content for your sizzle reels. There are two main types:
Testimonial Quotes
You can go about this by getting testimonial quotes where you ask people to tell us about their experience or what they liked about your course or your community.
Case Study
Then, you have the case study approach where you’re guiding them. “Here they’ll tell us where they were before, where some of their problems were, what new tools and techniques they learned, where they are now, what’s going on, how their world is different now that they’ve learned these things, and what breakthroughs and achievements they have accomplished. You’ve got these testimonial quotes and this case study approach. Let’s go over a couple of them.
Good
Testimonial Quotes
From just the quote’s point of view, it is significant. They’re short, positive little snippets. You can quickly go through a bunch of customers. You’re going to have multiple points of view. These little quotes go great with positive music.
These quotes go great with an excellent positive music soundtrack in the background. Once you get these quotes, you can extract the text and use them in other places where you might have traditional sections on your website or your sales page. So you can leverage not only the video quote but also the text version of it.
That’s pretty cool. As far as the case studies go, you can get into a before-and-after story. You can hear the journey, and that could be powerful for prospects.
Case Studies
Case studies are great for higher-end services, for courses or communities that are higher commitment not only in money but also in time. It’s good for prospects to see similar people, and they might not be able to know right away with just a quick quote. But with a case study and the overlay, they might be able to say, “Oh, wow, that’s me. That’s my situation,” just because they could hear enough and see enough of that prospect of that prior customer.
Don’t forget; you can show graphics or videos as that prior customer tells about their challenge. You could potentially switch and have different footage, somebody sewing or designing or crafting. You could show their particular content or general content or maybe even the content that you’re teaching for those topics while they’re talking about some of the stuff that they’ve learned.
To get those case studies, you could record videos, and there are tools like VideoAsk, or you can get on Zoom and talk to them and ask them questions, or you could even interview your prior customers. From there, you’re extracting segments that they’re raving about what you’ve done.
Bad
Testimonial Quotes
With testimonial quotes, look, they’re not going to go deep. These little 15-second blurbs might be excellent, but that might not be enough. Also, you’re going to be editing; you’re going to be chopping up these different little quotes. Some people might get suspicious.
That’s a little tricky with the shorter quotes, and you’ll want to avoid showing the same person twice. If you have these quotes, you’ll want to wait before you build your sizzle reel; collect up to 5 or 10 prior customers.
Then, as you’re showing these customers, as you’re offering these little testimonial quotes, you’re going to want to do at least 15 seconds per, so that way they can get context. They can hear a little bit, not just hear a customer say three words. You’ll want to hear them say one good or two or three sentences. It doesn’t have to be a complete case study.
One of the bad things about testimonial quotes is that you may trim them short. So try to have at least 15 seconds per customer, maybe one or two sentences.
Case Studies
Now, there are other problems with case studies. You may need to edit to shorten these case studies. You may end up with three minutes per customer, blowing your sizzle reel. You’ve got to get those case studies down to 30-45 seconds, maybe a minute. So you’ll want to do some heavy editing there to get the best nuggets from your prior customers.
Since you have these longer segments of, let’s say, 30 to 45 seconds, it will be slightly more challenging for you to weave a story, whereas when you have testimonial quotes, you can organize a bunch of them in a certain way to tell a story.
With the case studies, they individually tell a story, but it’s harder to connect them all. Something that could go wrong with your case studies is not having standard questions. You want to make sure that those typical questions are there so that you can get the main point out of each case study, as well as to build that common theme so that all your different case studies somehow are connected, even though they’re slightly from different angles.
Finally, with the case studies, you will want to pick and choose your best ones. You don’t want to have bad lighting or bad audio. This is like a three to five-minute clip using case studies. If that first one or that second one has terrible audio or weird lighting, you can’t see the person; they might click away. They might move on.
Remember, we’re in this age where people are just scrolling. We’re in that new TikTok world. If you’re going to make them watch a sizzle reel, it’s got to be exciting. There can’t be a reason for your prospects to click away or to scroll. They have to be intently watching. The music has to be there. The content has to keep moving, even with overlay text. I know you might be desperate at first if you don’t have enough prior customers; go ahead and wait; keep collecting them.
Once you do make a sizzle reel, there’s no reason why you couldn’t update it once a year or something like that, as you get a handful of even more fabulous customers. There’s no reason why you couldn’t update your sizzle reel once or twice a year, as you get even better customers with better testimonials.
Frequently Asked Questions About Using Sizzle Reels to Increase Revenues
Summary – Using Sizzle Reels to Increase Revenues
Using sizzle reels is an excellent strategy for online course creators seeking to boost revenues and captivate their audience. As we’ve explored, these dynamic videos serve as a potent tool to elevate your sales by providing an immersive experience beyond traditional testimonials.
Sizzle reels are a dynamic and adaptable tool that increases revenues and builds trust, excitement, and a sense of accomplishment among your audience. With creativity, standardization, and strategic sharing, online course creators can leverage the full potential of sizzle reels to propel their offerings into the spotlight and forge lasting connections with future customers.
Tips for creative online course creators when using Sizzle Reels to Increase Revenues:
- Aim for at least 10 diverse statements of testimonial quotes that capture different perspectives and experiences.
- Use guided questions when collecting testimonials.
- Highlight three to five ideal customers in your sizzle reel.
- Ensure uniformity in camera setup, location, and questions.
- Host your sizzle reel on low-latency video service providers like Wistia, Vimeo, or YouTube.
- Share it across various channels—social media, community forums, and any platform where potential clients can be found.
- Conclude with a compelling call to action, inviting viewers to learn more or take the next step.
You should be a little smarter now. Thanks for hanging out!
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