Sunny Lenarduzzi uses Video Marketing to build her Brand & Business
by 2019, video will comprise 80% of all internet activity ( source). Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, says that 90 percent of content posted on Facebook will comprise video.
Most entrepreneurs and organizations are starting to realize this and adapt their social media content and strategies accordingly. Other entrepreneurs recognized this trend early and are well ahead of the curve. Sunny Lenarduzzi An award-winning social media video creator, and online business strategist , is one of these entrepreneurs.
In only a couple of years, Sunny has built a lucrative business that has helped other companies utilize videos and social media effectively. As one of her successes is helping Hootsuite create an YouTube series that increase subscriptions by 75%, and Applebee hit 1 billion impressions in a single day. The channel was named among the 20 to Watch YouTube Channels That Will change the way you do Business by Forbes and was featured in national television, radio, and numerous online publications such as Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post, Social Media Examiner, as well as Fast Company.
Sunny was also the author of numerous online courses, with her most recent offering achieving an 90 percent conversion rate after she introduced the course to her followers (we'll unpack how she did this in the next report).
Check out the case study in the following article or
Watch our interview on video featuring Sunny Lenarduzzi here
The woman quits the "dream work" to launch an online-based business
When Sunny began her journey in the field of broadcasting a decade ago, she set the goal of reporting on the 2010 Winter Olympics in her hometown of Vancouver, Canada. After a couple of years in her career, she managed to achieve her goal, but the satisfaction that came in achieving it, she found out, was short lived.
"My main objective was to cover the 2010 Winter Olympics", says Sunny. "I achieved it, but after I arrived and started reporting on a daily basis, I realized that, as much the Olympics were a goal of mine, it didn't be as satisfying than I imagined it going to be."
Although she was getting great results on her path to success, Sunny was beginning to recognize that being a broadcaster was not the same as the dreamed of it would be. She wanted to be creative however, it was not an option in her job as a reporter.
"It seemed like I was being micromanaged and being instructed the right words, the best way to convey it, how to dress and where I should be which didn't go very well with me", says Sunny. "I was looking to create things my way and was looking to develop something that would have more of the characteristics of the new media that I could speak to people in person without just sending an ad to the world."
Sunny was aware that to be free, she would need to leave the familiarity of radio broadcasting. She decided to become her own boss, and create her own way as an business owner.
After Sunny returned to her home after covering the Olympics (literally on the same day) She launched an online magazine - her first business online that she was able to officially run. "I didn't know how to do it", Sunny recalls. "I was one of 10 working on the magazine. And we utilized YouTube and video to promote it. Additionally, we also used social media."
This was Sunny's first time making use of social media in the growth of the business she runs and she enjoyed each and every moment of it. "I was awed by the fact that you could actually talk to your readers and your customers one-to-one and build real relationships" She says.
While Sunny continued to use social media to grow her magazine's popularity and expand her reach, other businesses began to take notice. "I encountered a variety of businesses in Vancouver but then all overthe world, approach me to say, 'We've noticed what you've done building your reputation on social media and are hoping that you'll be able to be able to do it for our business'", Sunny recalls. "So I began a business consultancy and I worked with a bunch of different companies in these various areas."
When she began working with increasing numbers of clients, consulting eventually turned into the principal source of income for her company. "For the past four and a half years, I didn't really talk about my work and was just super happy having clients and work from wherever I wanted to expand this brand and develop these businesses using social media" Sunny says. Sunny.
Creating video tutorials for her clients who she consults
Sunny finally reached a stage in her career at which she couldn't accept any new clients. She also found herself answering the same inquiries from different clients repeatedly in a manner she realized wasn't the most efficient utilization of her time. "One day I got to the point of having numerous clients, and I became exhausted", Sunny explains. "I received repeatedly asked the same question over and over and. That's why I was spending my one-to-one answer time, and this is not the most efficient way to run a business."
To address this issue, Sunny decided to create video tutorials for clients and then publish them on YouTube. The YouTube channel did not have users at the moment, and as she planned only to show them to her customers, she wasn't expecting any viewers to see them.
One of the biggest concerns Sunny was asked by her customers, for instance for example, how to utilize live streaming. "One day I sat down and I decided I was going to do the video of a tutorial of how you can use live streaming, because that was one of the biggest inquiries I got" Sunny recalls. "The first thing I noticed was that I was getting a few hundred views on the initial day, and then 1000 views within the first 24 hours and then 80,000 views and I thought, oh my God, what are these people from?'"
It turned out that Sunny's clients weren't alone individuals who wanted to know how to utilize live streaming to advertise their company. Thousands of people from all over the world were searching for information about that topic (hence the over 80,000 views for her YouTube video). "I noticed that my YouTube video was getting indexed by search", Sunny explains. "It was ranking on page one of YouTube as well as on Google, and I was thinking, wow, I'm convinced that I'm tapping into something here. There's obviously a need for details on how to utilize social media for business and how to use video for commercial purposes."
Recognizing that she was onto something, Sunny decided to continue creating video tutorials for the YouTube channel on a daily schedule. "Every week for a year I made a tutorial and I'm still making them. I just had my two year birthday" Sunny says. Sunny. "It's changed my life. It's changed my business. I started from nothing with YouTube to having 50,000 users in a year. I now have over 10,000. I've racked up 3 million views within twelve months, and am now over 5 million."
A few of Sunny's videos have done extremely excellently. Take her instructional video about how to create videos using your smartphone as an example, which currently has over 1 million views
The reason Sunny chose to develop online classes
Understanding how to utilize social media for the growth of a business, consulting with other businesses as well as gaining an audience for videos by posting them on YouTube are all crucial steps that helped prepare Sunny to move on to the next step in her business: creating online courses.
"So from that, I was able to discover the entire online education market and that led to me developing my first course that was more than a year and a half ago now. In the time since, I've made two other courses", says Sunny. "It's been a great experience and an enormous learning curve , but I'm loving this and am so excited about the online education space and how many people you are able to help and reach."
For Sunny, creating online courses was the perfect opportunity to reach many more people than she was able to do by only working as a consultant. "It is really just a matter of being able to reach a much bigger population, and recognizing that it was way easier to scale my business than continuing to work with people one-on-one", Sunny explains.
This could be a perfect opportunity to pass on an important lesson from Sunny's journey:
One of the main reason why Sunny has been successful as an online course designer is that she grew her following before she created her first course. In actuality, she did not start her course until the volume of inquiries for assistance were being received on a regular basis exceeded the number of clients she had the opportunity to collaborate with. Demand was greater than supply.
Sunny had an audience that was ready to buy from her. The only thing she needed was more than just consulting services to market them.
"I thought, 'OK, I can't possibly accept all the clients as one-to-one clients, so how can I reach more people to help them while still providing a high level of guidance and mentoring and information?" Sunny asked herself. "Courses are the solution."
Her first online course
In the end, when it came to take a break, Sunny chose to concentrate on something she was very proficient at and frequently complimented by both her clients and audience.
This is a smart choice, because equally as important in choosing a subject you are an expert in is picking a subject that people believe you to have expertise in. It is easier to promote a course to your audience by presenting yourself as someone they are already accustomed to on your chosen topic.
"I focused on what I'm sure I'm skilled at and what I was getting lots of praise from, which is a big key for anyone who is creating any kind of paid product", Sunny explains. "For me the key was social videos. And the reality that I had not justmastered YouTube. It was because I'd spent five years studying the platform , and had figured out how to use all of them for commercial purposes, from Snapchat to Twitter and from Facebook, to Instagram as well as live-streaming."
The very first course Sunny designed was Recording for revenue. Even though she was experienced in creating videos for YouTube and other social networks making the content needed for an online course was an entirely new endeavor for her. Naturally, there was a bit of a learning to be done.
"The process of making it was not a success. It was an absolute nightmare", Sunny recalls. "It was awesome as I learned a lot as did my team who gained so many things. It was difficult to make it , but when we finished we realized, "okay that if we could overcome that hurdle, we can do anything."
One of the major difficulties Sunny encountered in the course's creation was technological "It was an extremely difficult to build the course on" Sunny explains. "It wasn't . It was also a number of different integrations and making sure that everything worked together with everything else and it was just hard."
Using to create her most recent online class
The process she uses to create online courses has certainly changed since creating her first course. With her most recent course - YouTube for Bosses - for instance, Sunny outsourced several aspects of creating the course to her team.
"The learning experience took place over the course of all day and night from the creation of my first class", says Sunny. "We outsourcing the video component of the course. We shot the video and then I designed the slides as well as the rest and we hired an editor put them together. We also outsourced some of the most tedious work in the creation of the course and the result was a easier method."
"I am convinced that you are among the top on the market" Sunny says. Sunny. "I consider your customer service is hands down the best which means that you actually care and you will answer any inquiries when I want answers."
One of the biggest nightmares for a course creator is that they don't receive the assistance they require from a support team when they have technical problems with their courses. In the middle of a big launch, such as if, for instance, the checkout option isn't working properly the course, you'll lose money until it is fixed. We understand this, which is why we place such importance in responding to any request from our clients in the shortest time possible (and to clarify our checkout buttons we use on our courses sales pages work perfectly).
"Why that's been much more evident to me was when I started my first program and it was an extremely painful experience in the event of issues, it took about 3-4 days before getting an answer. And in this space, you can't do that because customers will say "I'm not getting what would like, or it's not working, or something else, I'd like an exchange. You're making the time and money. Time is money", Sunny explains. "You guys have done such amazing job at providing accessibility and the most excellent customer service out of any company that I work with."
Launching her online course with live video
In fact, before Sunny was even able to begin creating her latest course was able to identify the topic was able to gauge her audience. "We have such a great crowd that is very engaged and who offer them so many free material", says Sunny. "We truly listened to their needs. I conducted a survey of my followers on their needs in terms of YouTube, and the answers which we received guided how we created the course."
To launch her course, Sunny set up an online boot camp within the Facebook Group ( Be Your Own Boss Mastermind Group). Her plan was to provide a series of free classes during the boot camp on Facebook Live, and then sell her course at the conclusion of the boot camp.
"The promotion of the channel was super fun because we did not do paid advertising", says Sunny. "We conducted 10 days of live training each day, we were teaching a different point about YouTube. For the first week, it was just simple quality. Then we would teach a tip a day and asking questions on the spot within the group. On the sixth day we went through our Boss YouTube Strategy, and it was about a half an hour of training before we presented the strategy, and saw a 95% conversion percentage."
A 90% conversion rate for any type of marketing or sales campaign is almost unheard of in the majority of sectors (kudos for Sunny for this feat!). However, this wasn't an chance. Sunny was very strategic in how she communicated her message for her viewers.
"I think that was the case as we took advantage of the communities, we created value for one week. We prepared and primed them, we told them what the price was , and then we explained exactly what the curriculum was", Sunny explains. "So they were aware of it going to happen and were ready to face it. They also had set aside the finances in order to invest in it."
Create free content in order to earn trust from her followers
Without question, a huge key to Sunny's success is the trust she has with her audience and the trust she's built by regularly publishing free content and not asking to do anything more.
"We aren't content creators only and produce value when we've got something we can sell" Sunny says. Sunny. "A lot of the time this is a launch plan and it's fantastic. Learn the techniques and strategically open up the cart, and everything else. The thing is, I'm creating each week a YouTube video regardless of whether I'm selling something. I'm doing live trainings whenever possible, and producing content for all of my platforms in all of the times. And I think that's an important aspect that a lot of people forget about. You constantly need to be making content and continually creating your own community. When you finally have something to sell the people say 'Yes! great! Now you've got something that you can market. I'll take it. I'm in.'"
"I'm doing an YouTube video every week, regardless of if I'm selling something or otherwise. I'm offering live classes whenever possible, and creating content on all my platforms all the time. And I think that's a really important factor that many individuals overlook. You constantly need to be making content and continually building your community ."
Sunny Lenarduzzi
Sunny is proof that publishing top-quality content for free online can be a fantastic way to build your audience to establish you as an expert in your field and get customers interested in your online courses. In Sunny's case most of the content she creates is video content, but an effective content strategy may include other types of material (like written pieces and audio podcasts, for example) but still work.
"The biggest benefit, specifically for YouTube, is the fact that it's forever-green. I refer to it as an evergreen traffic machine", says Sunny. "You aren't required to produce time-sensitive content since timely content will not constantly drive traffic. Therefore, I make tutorials that I know people are going to look for over a long period of time. Therefore, I'm always getting views on my videos, and then using those views to increase traffic to my website."
related: 5 Methods for Creating Free Content which will draw your ideal clients (Video)
Sunny's 3 most important videos marketing strategies for YouTube:
Since Sunny is a renowned YouTube marketing expert, with millions of viewers through her YouTube channel It would be a disservice to our community not to ask her to provide a few video marketing tips.
If you want to learn about this topic in more depth, we strongly recommend taking the YouTube for Bosses class. Here three tips that you can use to get greater results from your marketing on YouTube:
1. Content quality trumps video production quality
Don't worry about the production quality of your video (especially in the initial stages of starting out). Quality of your content is far more important than the high-quality of the production.
"People get really hung up - and I was among them - about being able to get the perfect lighting and the set, and the audio, and all that stuff" Sunny says. Sunny. "But the irony is that I was shooting videos around a year prior to when I made my first tutorial, and I would put so much effort into these videos. My first time creating one, it took 8 hours of filming, it was tiring and I'm not even getting views about them since nobody's looking for these topics."
"The day I began to create tutorials, I actually did it on a whim because I had no intention of communicating it to my customers. When I began to create my first tutorial, I hadn't washed my hair that day. I was in pajamas. I sat on the other side of my home and used a webcam. That was all it took. That's how the video went off."
"So I'm convinced that it's about more than the camera's quality or the equipment you use. It's all about the quality of the content that you create and how much you're actually capable of answering questions or solve people's problems. And that's true of numerous videos that are available on YouTube. You can find videos with millions of views that were made with iPhones. iPhone."
2. Include a short introduction to describe what the video is about.
The majority of people who come across your content on YouTube will discover them when looking for certain topics rather than looking for specific videos made by you. Thus, the vast majority of people that view your videos for the first time won't know who you are.
"A majority of people going to discover you through a search and they won't recognize you as a person", Sunny explains. "So when they find myself and then click my video, if I'm on the screen for two minutes explaining who I are and what I do and the reason why people should watch the video, they'll just turn off since there are a million viewers who have the same question. Therefore, it's crucial that you create your videos that you include a 5-minute intro."
When you begin your videos, introduce yourself brief in a short and concise manner, then tell the viewer what they'll learn in your video. The information you provide immediately. This can encourage them to watch the entire film.
3. Always have a Call-To-Action (CTA) in your video
To reap all the benefits of creating an audience that is a part of YouTube, it is important to give each and each one of your subscribers the opportunity to engage with you in a way that isn't YouTube. "Because your viewers are discovering you and they don't know of you beforehand for the most part so it is important to maximize your reach" Sunny says. Sunny. "You do not want viewers watching your video and then thinking, 'okay that's great, bye' and later forgetting about you."
Within all your videos (typically at the end of every video), give your viewer the option of taking a particular action. It is referred to as a Call-To-Action (CTA).
"If you're an offline business offer them your phone number, tell them about your site, and give them an email address, and provide the information they need so that they'll be able to move from the film to becoming an eventual customer. For an online business, give them a free checklist, guideline, or cheat sheet, add the email address to your list, send the visitors to your site, offer them a no-cost 15-minute consult", says Sunny. "Whatever you can accomplish to boost website traffic into a prospective customer database is vital to the growth of your business."
"The fact that we've been able to launch two courses of warm-up the traffic without spending anything on marketing is a rarity in this field."
Sunny Lenarduzzi
How teaching online has changed Sunny's lifestyle
Sunny's experience over the last 10 years is certainly an inspirational one. Beginning in broadcasting, and reporting for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, to launching an online magazine, consulting with other companies and attracting millions of people to her video on YouTube, and most recently, making and selling online classes.
Of all the activities that Sunny did to build her business, her choice to begin sharing her experiences to others via YouTube and social media was certainly a crucial one.
"If I compare my life now versus two years ago , and this is the most amazing thing is that so much is happening in just two years. An exponential amount of things have happened in the space of two years . It's all because I decided to start" Sunny says. Sunny. "I began managing 10 clients at a time before being discovered and recognized by millions of people. It changed the way I work, and influenced the way people view my work, which has lead to me being paid to travel and speak around the world and working with many incredible companies, and increasing my customer base and student base by a ton."
Being aware that her writing has assisted thousands of people and is reaching more and many more every day, provides Sunny with an incredible sensation of happiness and satisfaction. The work she does helps other people to improve particular areas of their life as well as businesses, and from that viewpoint, she's making a difference.
"The most important thing for me to work every single day is leaving a legacy, and knowing that I'll leave this planet having helped a lot of people", says Sunny. "So that the greater number of people I can help, and the bigger reach I can have with what I do in empowering people to be their own boss in whatever method they choose, that's really my goal each day. This is what motivates me which is why creating online courses has been able to accomplish for me, as I've had the opportunity to aid a lot of individuals."
The final words of guidance for creators of online courses
In closing our discussion with Sunny she was asked to share a few final words of advice for other those who are attempting to create a business through sharing their expertise with others.
1. Listen to your audience
Publishing helpful free content on the internet, like Sunny has been doing for several years, is a great opportunity to grow your following online. Equally important in growing your following is paying attention to the needs of your customers. Paying attention to the needs of your audience will help to create courses and content that will appeal to them.
"My most valuable lesson to learn from anything in your business is listening" Sunny says. Sunny. "Listen to as much as you can. Pay attention to the verbiage that people employ to describe the things they're looking for or want from you. Use this in your marketing."
2. Be sure to show that you value your community
People purchase from people who they like, know, and feel comfortable with. The creation of free content as well as advertising yourself can help people become familiar with and become acquainted with you. The ones who resonate most with your voice and style are likely to appreciate them. Showing your audience you truly take care of them is the key to making them believe in you.
"Just care", says Sunny. "Care greatly about the people you serve and stay consistent and create frequently-updated content that's going to help people as well as build a tribe of people who are eager and eager to be customers of yours for life."
Thanks for sharing your thoughts for us Sunny!
For more information about Sunny or get in touch with her, go to SunnyLenarduzzi.com
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