Pictory is the first product Andrew recommends to his clients.
Andrew Low is a Business Coach who creates story based videos using Pictory. Today he talks to us about how Pictory has been revolutionary for creating videos and how it’s the first product he recommends to his clients.
Pete Bennett: I'm with Andrew Low who is an elite coach and a Pictory user.
We're gonna have a quick chat today about how he's using Pictory within his business to help not only grow his business but that of his clients.
So welcome Andrew.
Andrew Low: Thank you glad to be here.
Pete Bennett: If you'd just like to explain a little bit about your business and how you started it and the sort of people that you serve that would be brilliant.
Andrew Low: I'd love to. So started my journey helping everyday people live a better, full, fuller, more enriched life.
And it sounds a bit cliche but really at the end of the day, all of us have a story to tell and you know believe that your message, is your message.
So, in the past life was working 16-plus hour days, weekends and really a workaholic and wearing workaholism like a badge of honor.
It got me into trouble because it got me so exhausted in my life that crashed my car and realized that at that time that things had to change.
So I went on a journey of self-improvement, of personal development, made some changes in my life and realized that I was inspired to help other people do the same.
So my journey started working with everyday people and now I train and accredit international coaches.
Pete Bennett: That's brilliant. And I know you're very keen on emphasizing the story aspect of this, aren't you?
Tell me how that fits into your business?
Andrew Low: I believe that we all grew up with stories and stories are the best way to connect with people on a deeper level. It has an emotional resonance attached to it.
When I started my coaching business as I was discovering how to grow my own business, from a whole host of marketing experts.
They told me everything from complex marketing funnels to being on social media 24/7 and they all worked to a certain degree.
But the one thing that changed everything for me was when I peeled back the mask showing some vulnerability and told the story of my journey.
And, that got me my first few clients when I converted my story into a video and posted that across both my organic social media network, as well as through Facebook ads.
It got me my biggest stream of high-ticket coaching clients. So I love the idea of storytelling with integrity.
Pete Bennett: That's really good. I like the integrity angle because there's a lot of stuff out there at the moment, which is just not coming from the heart and people can see right through it.
Also, your emphasis on video, tell me how the scripting and the video process used to work and how it works better using Pictory?
Andrew Low: So, in the past, without the technology that we have today, like Pictory.
You have to get videographers, to get a good b roll. You have to get videographers, you have to get good script writers to write a script for you and then pull it all together.
Either doing it manually through complex video editing software or getting someone to do it, required a really high investment of time and money.
Particularly when starting off a new business to be able to do that for one story maybe, that was the end of it.
But now with something like Pictory I can create stories and professional-looking videos that attract attention to stop the scroll, in a couple of hours.
Pete Bennett: Wow. Okay, so you don't no longer need to have an external video editor or complicated desktop software?
You're doing it all using Pictory now, are you?
Andrew Low: Absolutely, A lot of the script is written in word. Then I pull the script into a Pictory, through the text to video module in Pictory.
Pictory goes off and searches for what Pictory thinks relevant stock images are and I can change those at the touch of a button.
Especially with Pictory Storyblocks, stock video and stock images, you get really professional work, quickly.
I think one of the most powerful features of Pictory for me is how it aligns the narrative with my voice-over with the scenes in the video.
That used to take hours. In fact, that was what took the most amount of time to try to align my voice with the scenes and the captions.
Pictory does that automatically.
Pete Bennett: That is one thing that we find difficult sometimes to explain to our customers, is that unless you've struggled before and tried to do it using a desktop editor. You really don't have any comprehension as to how much time and effort
Pictory is saving you time over creating it the old-fashioned way. Because it could take a day or more to do a short video you're using something like Final Cut or Premiere Pro.
Absolutely. Most of my videos are story-based videos that are 3 to 3.5 minutes and it would take me, in large part a day or maybe two days just to align my voice-over with the scenes.
Pictory does that in, one minute.
Pete Bennett: Well, that's really good. And your clients are predominantly helping professionals, coaches and therapists, is that the target market that you serve?
Andrew Low: Yes. So my main target market is aspiring coaches who want to grow their business to the next level or struggling coaches, who want to level up their marketing.
Coaches who are working full time, who want to level up to the next level and go to the six-figure, seven-figure mark.
Pete Bennett: Are you teaching them to use Pictory as part of their marketing and part of their prospects?
Andrew Low: So there are two parts of my business.
The first part is to work in the business as a coach, you have to be specialized as a coach.
You have to be accredited and learn coaching skills on a deeper level.
Look, everyone's a coach these days, but the area that I'm focusing on is emotional therapeutic coaching, so that requires another level of expertise and experience.
Being an expert in what you do, doesn't necessarily mean you can grow and expand your business to the next level.
You've got to be a good digital marketer, and be able to put yourself out there with eloquence and professionalism.
That's where the business-building aspect of my program, applies to coaches who are qualified.
The first module is to help them with crafting their origin story.
What was the problem that they experienced, that led to a crisis in their life?
How did that crisis help them realize that they had to make the change?
What resources were then acquired to make that change to have victory in their life?
That's the structure, a four-part structure to an origin story.
Once they have crafted that I work with them on a one-on-one basis and in a group coaching environment.
Once they've got the three-minute script, we put that into a Pictory and create a professional video within a couple of hours, if that.
Pete Bennett: That's really good. That allows them to get the message out about what they do as a professional, without having to become a professional video editor and video creator.
Pictory takes the script that you've worked with them and makes it into a video without them having to worry about the technicalities of doing that.
My customers, my clients range from tech-savvy to no tech savviness at all.
I cover a wide range of demographics and technical skills and all of them have been able to create the videos in a really short period of time using Pictory.
Pete Bennett: That's great. Do you also use the edit video with text feature?
For those people who perhaps don't know, Pictory can do the script to video, but also recordings, such as the one that we're doing now of a Zoom conversation or a webinar or some kind of sales presentation which is recorded online.
You can use Pictory to edit that and make short-form content that you can use for promotional activities or for trailers using Pictory.
Again, without having to use something like Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro. Do you do any of that?
Andrew Lowe: I have experimented with it. I have not yet used that to its full extent, maybe that's for the next level.
Pete Bennett: Absolutely.
Andrew Low: Most of my business has been inclined towards the storytelling aspects of it.
The text to video has been my go-to for a lot of stuff. Not just for an origin story or social media posts, for instance, video repurposing content is excellent using Pictory.
A text-based social media post, which is an image, can be repurposed into a narrative with Pictory
It can be repurposed to, shorts, shorter snippets. To be able to just bring a five-second video-based ad together in Pictory, it's really little to no effort.
Pete Bennett: It makes it much easier than trying to do it the old-fashioned way, doesn't it?
Andrew Low: Absolutely. It's my go-to tool now, and it's a go-to tool that I recommend, it’s the first thing that my coaches purchase as a product when they start their coaching business.
Pete Bennett: That's brilliant. Thank you very much for sharing the love about Pictory in that instance.
Another very popular application is turning blog posts into videos. Many people nowadays have a blog but the blogs are static text.
All you need to do is feed the URL of the blog into Pictory and it will produce a lovely little video, that you can then upload to YouTube and embed within your blog.
It's a little bit of a ninja marketing trick that can really give existing content a boost and help repurpose that for something useful.
Andrew Low: Absolutely. I've used that for my blog posts, converted them to videos and uploaded them into my video on my Youtube channel.
Pete Bennett: Amazing. Thank you. Sounds like you really have your finger on the pulse of digital marketing.
Andrew Low: I do the best that can. I wouldn't say I'm an expert in digital marketing. I just know that story-based videos work.
Pete Bennett: Well, we'll continue to develop Pictory and make it even better.
We release updates at least once a month, often several times a month
So we're going to do our bit to make video creation increasingly easier and more fun.
Andrew Low: While you're on that point, I want to affirm that, because as you know before Pictory there was another product out there called Vidnami.
The sun set on Vidmani a little while ago and we were all rushing around looking for alternatives.
Pictory was the closest alternative that I could find at the time.
At that time Pictory didn't have the voice narrative alignment and a few of those components, but within a span of just a few months, it has elevated its features even higher than what Vidnami used to be.
So that's a testament to you and your team, for listening to what we want as customers.
Pete Bennett: Well, thank you for your kind words.
I know the development team worked long and hard to make it better and better and we're going to continue to do that.
If people would like to engage with you further, do you have an offer or some way that they can contact you that you would prefer to have them do?
Andrew Low: Sure. So I have just released in the past few weeks a program called "Your Story Sells" Which is to help coaches, healers and therapists write their origin story.
Pete Bennett: Well, I'm sure after this recording we will have a link to that.
Andrew Low: So that's one way to start engaging with me and start to use stories that help convert ideal prospects into paying clients with integrity. Where I teach the structure of crafting the origin story.
Plus, there is also an add-on module if you decide to purchase it, that shows you how to convert that script into a video using Pictory.
I will also give you a link to my website that tells you what I do in my business.
Check out Andrew Low Business Coach!
Pete Bennett: Perfect. Well, we'll make sure that we put that either on the video, around the video or however it's done depending upon the platform that we put it out on.
Andrew Low: One other thing about Pictory, it's fun to use and that's super important to me in what I do.
If you're going to work in your business with passion and purpose, then you want to make sure that marketing can be a bit of an exciting thing to do.
Otherwise, it becomes just as you know, something that drags us behind. So, I enjoy using Pictory and that's super important.
Pete Bennett: Well, that's really good to hear and something that we are always teaching our clients is that make marketing part of your business as usual.
So everything that you do can be repurposed, to help you market what you're going to do next.
At Pictory we're working hard behind the scenes to make it easier and easier to do that.
Many people, particularly coaches and helping professionals have an absolute goldmine of content sitting on their hard drive or on their Google drive, which is not working for them.
With Pictory, we can take that and chop it up into little bits and get it out there and make it sell for you on autopilot.
So that you can get on with delivering what you're passionate about, which is helping people.
Andrew Low: Do what you do best and let the technology support you to put your message out there.
