About Atiba de Souza: Atiba is the CEO of Client Attraction Pros and Video Content Superman. His goal is to help you discover those moments and position content that will deliver a victory for your customers. For 25 years, he ran an exclusive agency that got regional and national brands ranked on page 1 of Google. He was doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) before the term was even invented. But one day, Atiba realized that his agency was not growing because he was not applying what he did for his clients to his own brand. Atiba has been using a unique method of blending storytelling with search keywords for more than 15 years. He has ranked regional and national brands in the US on page one of Google. He’s also an award-winning marketer who has been featured on many renowned platforms, including Fox, USA Today, Times, CBS, and many more. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Atiba.
In this episode, Nancy and Atiba discuss the following:
- The importance of video marketing in the modern marketing world.
- The background of Atiba’s story of owning his agency.
- SEO is not just about Google Search.
- Using a method of blending storytelling with search keywords.
- How does a newbie get started in the video?
- The start of AI in 1992 and Atiba’s contribution.
- Tips on getting the attention of posting the video and catchy title.
- Is YouTube the only platform for posting videos?
Key Takeaways:
- The statistics say that almost 80% of business owners are going to watch a video before they make a purchase.
- Google right now wants to rank videos that solve people’s problems on page one.
- Concerning the video length, you need to talk long enough to answer the question and not a moment longer.
- The title of the video needs to be your question.
- The truth is that as your organization grows, you need both organic and paid video marketing, and they complement each other and work together.
- When doing a video, you want to think about your target audience and the pains they may be going through.
“Every network now has a search and an SEO component. All SEO means is that whoever owns a network, whoever has the data, wants to put that data in front of the right people. That’s all it is, getting your message in front of the right people. So this now starts to get into some of the synergies between where you are in the cold calling world and the sales world and what we do as well because I think it’s no secret that those who are super successful at doing cold calling aren’t the ones who call and say “Mr. and Mrs. Jones, this is Johnny, and I’m calling today from So and So Company, and let me tell you all about the features and benefits of our thing that you’ve never heard of before.” Those people aren’t successful, okay? ” – ATIBA
“ The way we look at it is there are three buckets that content falls into before someone’s willing to call you. And those buckets are WHY, HOW, and WHAY. When you first have a problem, you ask big philosophical questions, WHY-type questions. And you’re trying to figure out what’s going on and what my options are, and you’re looking at those types of things. Those are pain point questions. Okay, the next bucket is HOW-questions You should be doing the WHY-videos, the HOW-videos, and maybe 20% of the videos you create are WHAT-videos. And the WHAT-videos should say “Okay, so we’ve looked at the different factors that it would take for you to determine how many leads or how many leads you would get from a cold calling campaign. And we’ve analyzed how to build your lead list so that you can have better results and whatever else. And now if you’re looking for help, I can help you”. So, those are the three levels of content that we bucket into for you to create.” – ATIBA
“Video marketing is an umbrella term that has two segments to it, organic and paid. Just like digital marketing has two same segments to it. Organic video marketing is video marketing, which we’ve been talking about. You create a video, we’re gonna post it on YouTube and we’re gonna allow the algorithms to rank the video.Versus paid video marketing, or paid marketing for that matter, is when you take the content and you publish content and then you go to the network and say “Hey, I created this piece of content and I’m going to pay you to show it to this group of people.” Which one is better? It depends on your goal. If you are in a massive hurry, organic is not the way to go. Because organic takes time, okay? If budget is an issue, organic is the way to go because it spreads the cost out over time. Please, hear me, I did not say organic is less expensive. I say it spreads the cost out over time. The key difference is there.” – ATIBA
Connect with Atiba de Souza:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atibadesouza/
- Client Attraction Pros: https://clientattractionpros.com/
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/oneofakindsales
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/
- Website: https://oneofakindsales.com
- Phone: 908-879-2911
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/
- Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Atiba de Souza, CEO of Client Attraction Pros, a video-first content marketing agency, and digital marketer-certified partner. In other words, Atiba is the video content Superman who was killing search engine optimization, and SEO, before the term was even invented. Atiba has been using a unique method of blending storytelling with search keywords for more than 15 years. He has ranked regional and national brands in the US on page one of Google. He’s also an award-winning marketer who has been featured on many renowned platforms, including Fox, USA Today, Times, CBS, and many more. Welcome to the show, Atiba. I told you before we started, I need a lot of help in this area. [1:26]
Atiba: Nancy, well first, thanks for having me. I really, really appreciate being here. I look forward to learning from you as well because I think the reality is these two worlds live and should live together, not separate.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Interesting. All right. Let’s just jump in. Why is video marketing so important these days?
Atiba: It’s a great question. And the reality of life is video was coming as the future of marketing for quite some time. But there was something that happened in 2020. I forgot what it was called. Something that started with the word, the letter P, but that thing that happened in 2020 through 2022 accelerated. The need for video. And what was that? It was that people had a choice and their choice while they were stuck at home for those two years on their devices was, they could read, or they could watch. And overwhelmingly, humans across the globe chose to watch and they have not gone back yet. They want to consume content from you. Now, that all sounds cool and wonderful, but get this, get this, especially if in the world of business-to-business sales, the statistics say that almost 80% of business owners are going to watch a video before they make a purchase. [2:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Interesting. Where do you come up with those numbers?
Atiba: So, these are numbers that attract and there are tons and tons of studies. I can share some of them with you. There are tons of studies that attract these in the marketing space of how, especially in the B2B sector, how are decisions being made.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Interesting. So how, what’s been your journey to owning this agency? Did you just out of nowhere decide to do it? What’s your background?
Atiba: Yeah, so it wasn’t out of nowhere in that sense. But I started in really in 92, but truthfully, the company started in 96 with myself and two friends. And we were a computer consulting firm back then because back in 1996, that’s all people understood. And we wrote a search engine in 1996. [3:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh wow.
Atiba: And I’ve been in search and helping people get their message in front of their ideal customer using search ever since. Yeah. It’s been a few years.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, let me ask you, you know, SEO, when I think of SEO, I think about Google search. Is that the only one out there?
Atiba: Absolutely not. Every platform at this point has SEO built in. So, if you’re on Facebook and if you ever went to Facebook and you want to look for anything on Facebook, you did a search on Facebook, guess what you’re using? Facebook’s version of SEO. It’s not very good, but they have it, okay? Instagram is, the same thing, just much like Facebook. It’s not very good. It’s based on hashtags, but they have it. LinkedIn has SEO. TikTok. Get this, TikTok when they were created years ago said that they wanted to be an entertainment platform. A year and a half ago, they changed their mission to be a search platform. So, every network, Pinterest, I mean, you name it, every network now has a search and an SEO component. All SEO means is that whoever owns a network, whoever has the data wants to put that data in front of the right people. That’s all it is, getting your message in front of the right people. [5:25]
Nancy Calabrese: So in introducing you, you have been using a method of blending storytelling with search keywords. Tell us about that.
Atiba: Yes, so this now starts to get into some of the synergy between where you are in the cold calling world and the sales world and what we do as well because, you know, I think it’s no secret that those who are super successful at doing cold calling aren’t the ones who call and say Mr. and Mrs. Jones, this is Johnny, and I’m calling today from So and So Company, and let me tell you all about the features and benefits of our thing that you’ve never heard of before. Like, those people aren’t successful, okay? [6:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Totally agree.
Atiba: And we all know that, right? But the people who are successful are able to make a connection with the person that they’re calling. And I guarantee you, 99 times out of 100, that connection has something to do with the story. It has something to do with a journey that you took someone on of identifying a problem, either in common or that they have, and a solution, and being a guide of how you can help them. What we realized is that’s exactly what search engines want too. Because that solves problems. Listen, Nancy, in today’s world, people talk about this all the time, especially after the pandemic. They say now that the average adult American’s attention span is seven seconds. Okay? [7:08]
Nancy Calabrese: That’s not very good, is it?
Atiba: It’s not very good, however, how many of us will go to a movie theater and sit and watch a movie for two hours without looking at our phones? Like… a lot of us do it. So, therefore, our attention span is longer than that if…if the story is good.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. That’s really cool. All right, so how does a newbie like me get started in the video?
Atiba: That’s a great question, Nancy. And I get the pleasure of helping lots of newbies. So, I love this question for that purpose. Okay. And here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. Your customers are asking questions of you. You got to answer those questions. Here’s another place where there’s an intersection between, cold calling and video marketing specifically. Okay. I would also wager that the majority of the cold calls that are successful, short term or long-term, are because the person that you called recognized that they had a problem and was already looking or thinking about some sort of solution for it. Okay. [8:28]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, right, okay.
Atiba: Nobody calls you up and just says “Hey, want to buy a new car?”, And you just, and you weren’t thinking about buying a car “Oh yeah, let me just go buy a car”. It’s that, you know what, my car broke down and you call and said “Do I want to buy a new car? – Yeah, I want to buy a new car”. Right.
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Atiba: And so, in today’s society, and it’s been so for really the last 10-11 years. When I have a problem, when you have a problem, what’s the first thing that you do?
Nancy Calabrese: I go online and try to figure it out.
Atiba: Exactly.
Nancy Calabrese: Do research.
Atiba: And so that’s where video marketing helps you so much. Because Google right now wants to rank videos that solve people’s problems on page one.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Atiba: So, imagine that you made a cold call that you thought was cold, but to your prospect, they’ve already watched the video of you.
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Atiba: That’s the beauty.
Nancy Calabrese: All right, so what I’m hearing you say is you want to talk about when you’re doing video, you want to think about your target audience and about the pains they may be going through. Is that right?
Atiba: Yes.
Nancy Calabrese: And then you take that and then you talk about that in the video, right?
Atiba: Even more specifically, what are the questions that they ask? So, I’m going to put you on the spot, Nancy. I hope you don’t mind. [9:53]
Nancy Calabrese: No.
Atiba: What’s a question that your customers ask you?
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, they always ask how many appointments I am going to get.
Atiba: Fantastic. So, you’re thinking and so then you would create a video, right, and the video title would be “How many appointments would I get if I hired a cold calling specialist” or however you term yourself, okay? And then you record a video. You know, I get the question, how many appointments am I going to get if I hire a specialist to help me with my cold calling? And, truthfully, the answer is, and then answer the question.
Nancy Calabrese: The answer is you just never know until you hit the lead list. And there are so many different factors, size of the company, and the availability of the person at the time of the call. And at the time of the call, are they experiencing any of the pains that our customers can solve? [10:46]
Atiba: Yes. And so that’s what you would put in the video that you create.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow! You gave me a great idea now. This is awesome.
Atiba: That’s your video. That’s your answer.
Nancy Calabrese: When you build these videos, I think you talk also about thought leadership and why that’s important. Do you need to only address the pains? What other kind of content could you include?
Atiba: Yeah, so you can include other content, and that then starts to map to the customer journey. [11:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Atiba: And let me put this pretty succinctly for you. The way we look at it is there are three buckets that content falls into before someone’s willing to call you. Now, here’s what’s interesting. For you, it’s, oh, or before they’re willing to take your call. A little bit of a caveat there, right? In terms of the twist. And those buckets are why, how, and what. When you first have a problem, you ask big philosophical questions, why-type questions, okay?
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Atiba: And you’re trying to figure out what’s going on and what my options are, and you’re looking at those types of things. Those are pain point questions. Okay, the next bucket is how-questions. So, in that example that you gave just now is about the size of your lead list, then a question that’s going to come out of that is, well “How do I grow my lead list?” We’ll create a video about that. Okay, that’s now, it’s not a pain point per se, but it’s a how to question, and you can give practical tips on growing your lead list. [12:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Atiba: Okay, then there’s what-questions. The what-questions is what most people think they should be doing when they create a video, which is blah, call me, call me, call me. Okay, and you shouldn’t be doing that at all.
Nancy Calabrese: No.
Atiba: You should be doing the why videos, the how videos, and maybe 20% of the videos you create are what videos. And the what-videos then say, okay, so we’ve looked at the different factors that it would take for you to determine how many leads or how many leads you would get from a cold calling campaign. And we’ve analyzed how to build your lead list so that you can have better results and whatever else. And now if you’re looking for help, I can help you. If this sounds like, if it all makes sense, but it’s too much, I can help. Okay, that’s a very crude example, but those are the three levels of content that we bucket into for you to create, right? [13:42]
Nancy Calabrese: How long should a video be?
Atiba: Ooh, that is the question of questions that people ask. How long do I need to talk? Well, guess what? You need to talk long enough to answer the question and not a moment longer.
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Atiba: Now, what does that mean?
Nancy Calabrese: Well, personally for me, I stay away from long podcasts and videos. I just, it’ll lose my attention.
Atiba: And so therefore that doesn’t fit you and it probably doesn’t fit your audience and that’s okay.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Atiba: And if you can answer the question in three minutes or 18 minutes, it doesn’t, it’s how long it takes you to answer the question and not a moment longer. See, here’s why. Because the algorithm knows, they’re smart enough, it’s always interesting to me when people look and say, oh, AI is new and it’s so cool and it’s so fresh. AI has been around forever. I started in AI in 1992. This isn’t new, y’all. [14:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Are you the father of everything?
Atiba: No, I’m not. I’m not the father, except for my three children.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Atiba: But AI was data analytics back then. And guess what? In 1992, we built an algorithm that predicted what word would come next based on the word that came before it. Guess what? That’s chat GPT. It’s a lot better than what we built in 92, no doubt. [15:08]
Nancy Calabrese: So, let’s talk about how to get the attention of posting the video. What about the title? Do you have recommendations for catching titles?
Atiba: The title needs to be your question. There are a lot of people who will tell you differently. And I’m going to tell you why they’re going to tell you differently and why I tell you what I tell you. There are two schools of thought here. The first school of thought is trying to get your views on YouTube, which is cool. And it makes you feel really good about yourself until you realize it didn’t actually put money in my bank.
Nancy Calabrese: Right?
Atiba: Now, I’m not against getting views on YouTube. Don’t hear me wrong, it’s important. And you can create catchy titles that will get people to click on them on YouTube, et cetera, et cetera. You can master YouTube SEO. You absolutely can. And you should. Here’s what I care about more though. I care about mastering Google SEO. Why? Because nobody goes to Google to search for something that they weren’t interested in. Nobody goes to Google to search for something that they aren’t interested in taking the next step of action. [16:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Atiba: And so, go ahead.
Nancy Calabrese: OK, the other question I have, so do you only put these on YouTube? Where else would you post them?
Atiba: So, everything lives on YouTube, okay? So, we start there. If you’re going to create a video, you post it on YouTube. Why? Because Google owns YouTube and Google is the largest search intent engine in the world and Google wants to rank more videos on page one. Where would they love to get those videos from the property that they own called YouTube? Now, do we get TikTok videos to rank on page one? Yeah, we do. Do we get videos from other platforms to rank on page one? Yeah, we do. But it’s way easier to get a YouTube video to rank than it is any other platform. Now, that being said, once the video is on YouTube, can you take it and cut it up and put a piece of it on Twitter, put some on Instagram, put some on LinkedIn? Absolutely. [17:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Great.
Atiba: Can you embed it in your blog on your website? Absolutely. And they all point back to… the YouTube channel.
Nancy Calabrese: Love it. So those are the snippets, right? That you’re referring to, cool. And last question, because we were running out of time. I heard that there were two terms, organic video marketing, and video marketing. What’s the difference?
Atiba: Great question. So, video marketing is an umbrella term that has two segments to it, organic and paid.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay?
Atiba: Okay, just like digital marketing has two segments to it, organic and paid. Organic video marketing, much like regular digital marketing that’s organic, is digital marketing, sorry, video marketing, where we’ve been talking about. You create a video, we’re gonna post it on YouTube. and we’re gonna allow the algorithms to rank the video. [18:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Atiba: So, we’re going to do all the right things to tell the algorithm to rank the video. Versus paid marketing, video marketing, or paid marketing for that matter, is when you take the content and you publish content and then you go to the network and sa “Hey, I created this piece of content and I’m going to pay you to show it to this group of people.”
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Atiba: Okay.
Nancy Calabrese: So I would think organic would be the way to go, isn’t it?
Atiba: That’s kind of the same as how many leads would you get. It depends, and here’s what it depends on. It depends on your goal. If you are in a massive hurry, organic is not the way to go. Because organic takes time, okay? If budget is an issue, organic is the way to go because it spreads the cost out over time. Please, hear me, I did not say organic is less expensive. I say it spreads the cost out over time. The key difference is there. The truth though is as your organization grows, you need both and they complement each other, and they work together. [19:32]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, Atiba, you are fascinating to me. How can my people find you?
Atiba: Well, I hope that they also find me fascinating, and thank you for that compliment. I appreciate that. But I probably opened some things for you that make you say, hmm, and that leads you to some more questions. Well, guess what? I kind of like to answer questions. That’s kind of my motif, right? Oh, and everything that we’ve been talking about so far. So, here’s what I would love for you to do. Go to meetatiba, that’s A-T-I, B’s and boy, A, dot com. That’s going to take you directly to my LinkedIn. Go to LinkedIn, connect with me, and send me a message. Let’s chat.
Nancy Calabrese: So, people take advantage of this. First, I want to thank you. I mean, I told you I was going to learn a lot in this conversation, and I have, and you piqued my interest. And everyone out there, you know, take advantage of this expert. Not only is he learning in an area that we could probably all improve on, but he’s also a funny guy. And you know, you made me smile throughout this whole time at T, but I hope you’ll come back and visit. [20:45]
Atiba: Absolutely.
Nancy Calabrese: Good.
Atiba: And thank you.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, everyone out there, have a great sales day, and we’ll see you next time. [20:52]
