Facebook Ads to Zoom Classes: How Gannon’s Dojos has used video within their marketing | #Jan30 09

Jasper:
Hello everyone. I'm Jasper from Yellow Glove Productions here. And today I've got a very special guest on. So, would you like to introduce yourself and your business?

Paul Gannon:
I'm Paul Gannon. I run Gannon's Martial Arts and Gannon's Dojos, which is a chain of karate classes throughout England at the moment. By the way, Jasper is one of our black belt alumni. He looks like a mild-mannered videographer, is actually a little bit of a badass.

Jasper:
Certified dangerous man. Obviously this January 30 challenge, I'm talking about everything video. So, I guess the first question is how have you used video in your business?

Paul Gannon:
Well, back in the day, before you people and mobile phones and stuff, this is in the late '80s. We were actually videoing our curriculum. Our katas and our kicks and everything, because my dad had a video camera, right? So, we got that. And we went to this hall where we used to train. And it was so funny, if we had one of those videos. We wouldn't say anything. We'd just be like there in front of the screen. And we say the name of the kat or round kick, and we do the round kick that and no talking, no banter, no nothing. And we sold quite a lot of those curriculum videos. And years later, people used to say, "Yeah, we used to have one of those videos." That's a different thing.

Paul Gannon:
But the idea of, obviously, using video to promote what you do and to enable your customers or your clients, or in our case, our students, to get the best out of the training. We're using videos is nothing new to us. In fact, since you could do video on Facebook or on it, and then since you could do adverts on video, we're on that a little bit as well. So, using it quite a lot.

Jasper:
Awesome. So, just to touch on Facebook adverts, that's been a big thing for video. Because I know the first, very early promos I did was actually, I think it must have been one of the first videos I did as a business was for your school.

Paul Gannon:
Yes, it was. It certainly was. I got to say with videos or in any marketing, regardless of who you use to do filming or whatever. It's good to get people to help you, but you got to understand what you advertise and what you're marketing. You got to understand the story of what you're trying to tell and the end result you want. Because whoever's helping you, whether it's an actual videographer or somebody doing web design, they can only do what you tell them to do. And if you give them the wrong message, that really doesn't help. So, it's good for you to really understand it and even understand filming a bit and lighting and all this kind of thing. Because if you don't, you must have a very professional helping you. You end up with a product or a result you don't want. So, get involved in it as much as possible and communicate with them as much as possible. I think when I digressed off the question there, actually didn't I [crosstalk 00:02:37], Jasper?

Jasper:
Something I was going to talk about like communication between both the client and the videographer as well. Because I remember basically when filming the kids class, oh, don't get them sparring, because that's not exactly what parents want to see, which is very interesting point psychologically in an advert.

Paul Gannon:
Yes, in fact, we've asked some of our recent adverts, there's been no martial arts on them. But oh, we got one where a kid's just running around with a helmet on his head, running around the living room like he's going a bit stir crazy. And it says, "You know when your kid's climbing the walls or something like that, get him to go to karate." And it went really well. It was really good little advert. So, it just put the message going across there. Sometimes mine slightly sucks is when they do videos, had to really show people what they're doing. They know what we do. We're martial arts. They're punching and kicking and self-defense. So, we haven't got to really make it obvious what we do. We know. What is important is to show them an image or an attitude or emotion of what we do. And hopefully it will reflect that when they come in to our classes. For example, take if you're martial arts, if you're promoting discipline and self-control.

Paul Gannon:
And they go down to your classes and there's kids running around like little monkeys, they're going to straight away think, that's not what I saw in the advert, even if it's only subconsciously. But if you promote we have fun. It's really cool for the kids and they are running around like monkeys, they'll think that's fine because that's actually what they expected. No matter what your ad is you are putting across a little bit of what your product's going to really be about. Otherwise, it's not going to work not matter how much advertising you do.

Jasper:
Since the whole fun of COVID, how has the way you use video changed?

Paul Gannon:
We put lessons on Facebook, on live Facebook. And the reason why I didn't get into Zoom was not a petty reason. But when I used Zoom before, it just didn't seem to work half the time, which is probably my fault. And it took me a while to realize you're a month really doing it on Zoom and stuff isn't really going to work. Not on Zoom, on Facebook Live or YouTube isn't really going to work. You got to teach the students. Then we went onto Zoom and we did keep some of our students, but, of course, the lockdown for us in Leicester, most areas, it was three months before they couldn't take class. We couldn't take class for over four months because it was extended here, and so we lost a lot of our student base. But we did keep a fair chunk and they were training every week. And we had to adapt how we taught, because if someone's in a kitchen next to the oven and they're cooking the rice and beans, you can't really have jump kicks in there. So, we adapted our curriculum. Adapted how we did it.

Paul Gannon:
And we had to invent new things they could do in the living room and get parents to help out and stuff. It's still, obviously, not as much fun as real classes, but that's what we had to do. There was nothing else. So, this time around when we had the last lockdown, which I think was November, we're all ready to go.

Jasper:
Moving on from the Zoom then, you've also done and before COVID obviously, it's been a couple of years now, you've been using Facebook Live as well, which is yet another way of video. So, how have you been using that within business?

Paul Gannon:
Yeah, mainly, because people tell you to do it. But I think, well, there's this idea [crosstalk 00:05:53]. With us, we market, we get students. We enroll them in our classes. But I think if you've got the long-term customers or subscription memberships or students, as we call them. You need to keep marking towards them even they're coming in class. You need to keep reminding them of what the product is? What the benefits are? And there's lots of ways, of course, of doing that. In martial arts, we have belt tests and belt promotions, which remind them. We're also doing video lessons or ideas or just telling them what to. It makes it a bigger thing if you're out there on social media and doing videos. It reminds them more everyone that sees that post, that it's a worthwhile endeavor. But if you do Facebook Live, don't just go on Facebook Live, prep. There's all sorts of apps you can get. You can script it if you've got it on your phone. But because when I film things, I'm quite far away from my phone, plus I don't want to wear my glasses when I'm on camera.

Paul Gannon:
I don't want to be a geeky guy. You're not clearly need [crosstalk 00:06:56] glasses, right? This is what I do. I print it out on really big sheets of paper and shove it behind my phone, behind the phone on a board so I can actually remind myself of the script. I think that that just helps.

Jasper:
Any final words at all on video in business?

Paul Gannon:
So, oh, yeah, another way we use video and to say, we use it for our training for our new instructors.

Jasper:
Oh, of course, yeah.

Paul Gannon:
So, we have instructors from all over the country. And there's all sorts of platforms where you can get online courses. Obviously, you can have text for sure, but having video lessons for them, for online training is for our instructors is really good. Someone said to me when I started in 1992, when was it? 1992 full-time, you can have your own TV station. You can have your own editor and it will be there. You could publish for free. And, but we get so complacent we don't use it, right? And we've all done this in business. You do it for a few weeks, you do your pace for a few weeks, then you just stop doing them.

Jasper:
I'm never going to post a video again after late January [crosstalk 00:08:07].

Paul Gannon:
Exactly, so just keep going, be consistent with. Even if a lot of the times you do Facebook Lives and stuff, it is to your own customers. It is to your own, is to your main people. You're not really getting new customers a lot of the time, depends on what your business is. But we wouldn't because obviously they'd be outside our bubble, but it just reinforces what you do. And you should look after, obviously, your own clients, your own students, in our case. And the more you do that the better.

Jasper:
So, yeah, I think that's it. So, thank you for watching. And I look forward to speaking to you tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed that talk, yeah.

Paul Gannon:
See you later.

Jasper:
Bye for now.