Lykken on Lending

Video is not just a medium; it’s a powerful tool that can help businesses achieve their goals. It delivers their message, builds their brand identity, and engages with their audience in a way that no other medium can. In this episode, we have Neco Turkienicz, founder of Leib Productions. Neco owns a company that helps businesses create compelling video content to achieve their marketing goals. Today, he discusses the effectiveness of video as a marketing medium to enhance a business’s brand image, drive customer engagement, and drive sales. Neco also offers tips on how to create high-quality videos on a budget and how to measure the success of video campaigns. Tune in now and learn how video has the power to improve your company’s marketing.

—

Watch the episode here

How To Use Video To Achieve Business Goals With Neco Turkienicz Of Leib Productions

I’m excited about this episode because many of us struggle in telling our stories. Do we tell it well? How do we tell it? We have an expert on this and it does through video. I have Neco Turkienicz here with us. What nationality is that?

I am Brazilian. I was born in Brazil, but my father was from Poland. My father was a Jew from Poland. Turkienicz is a Polish name. Every time you see a CZ at the end of a name, you can tell it’s Polish. I’m 100% Norwegian and live in America, so we’ve lost some of those.

It’s great to have you, Neco, on the show. Also, joining me is Mark Helm. Mark, it’s good to have you here with me as well.

I’m glad to be here, David and Neco.

One of the things that you do so well, Neco, is you’ve helped me get my story told through our clients. It’s the testimonials. One of the most powerful things getting someone to consider working with us is the testimonials. That’s the thing that I am excited about sharing with our readers. Before we go there, you already gave us a little bit of an idea of your background, but let’s learn a little bit more about yourself and what brought you to where you’re at now. What’ll be your background real quick?

As I mentioned before, I was born in Brazil and originally, I studied Journalism. I was always drawn to the visual stuff, photography, and stuff. I started being interested in video very early, back in the ‘80s. I’m that old, but I moved to Israel very early. I got married early by 21 and we moved to Israel. I made a decision after studying Journalism for a few years that I wanted to be a farmer in a kibbutz, which is a collective farm in Israel. I worked there for ten years. I worked in agriculture. After ten years, the itching came back and I had to go back to the visual arts.

I went to study Film and Television in Tel Aviv University. I went to university later in life. You could say like 21 or 18. I was very lucky that exactly when I finished my years of studying the Tel Aviv University, cable television started in Israel. All my colleagues and I got hired quite immediately in the new television channels that were appearing. I started working in sports television, beginning as an editor and then as an editor and director. That’s what I did for fourteen years.

I became a video director, doing all kinds of different programs and ended up coming to the US many years ago, invited by a friend of mine who had an animation company. He invited me to be a creative director in this company. That’s how I came to this country. To make a long story short, now I have my own company, which is Leib Productions and we are dedicated to creating video content for businesses.

I’ve experienced it firsthand. I love what you do in the work and I’m excited to share this again with our readers. Why is creating and putting good and effective video content an absolute must for business nowadays, Neco?

We are surrounded by video now. Video is everywhere and the reason for that is video is much more engaging. Video is engaging, as we all know. When you work with marketing, you know that people don’t make decisions, even buying decisions using their logic. It’s based on emotions. Most of our decisions are based on emotion. When you want to appeal to people’s emotions, video works much better. It goes directly to your emotions. If you want to influence people and have people hear your story, you want to appeal to their emotions. That’s why many times, movies touch us more than a book telling the same story.

I’ve always believed, and I think you do too, that it’s very important for people in business to put their best foot forward. What type of videos do you recommend based on you being a pioneer in this industry? Do you recommend businesses that have out there representing their company?

The list is long, but I’ll make it a little bit shorter. The first type of video a business would want to have is what we call a branding video. It’s something that when people come to your website, that’s the first thing they see. The reason for that is, first of all, if you have a video on your website, people will stay for more time and that’s what you want.

The main reason will be, again, having a video that tells the story of a company, what you do, and not only what you do but how you help your clients. That’s the reason for you existing. You can do that in a short video and people will learn and understand how you help your clients faster than reading a ton of text. That’s why it’s very important to have any video.

Video Content: Have a short video that tells the story of your company, what you do, and how you help your clients. It will help your clients faster than reading a ton of text.

Is it also true that once you see a video, you’re more inclined to want to go back and read the text? You don’t start by reading the text. The first thing is you want to collect emotionally and visually to something. At least most people are wired this way. I’m sure there are some people that prefer text. I’m thinking about my wife, for example. She’s a text reader. She goes there first, reads, then watches the video second. I think the general population is to do that, which goes into the question of the different ways on which videos can be used to help a business. It’s not one way. Talk about the various ways and the different ways.

Video will make people curious and they will want to learn more. That’s why they would go on, read, and go to the written parts of your website. Video can help in many different ways. One of them would be brand awareness. You’re posting content out there, and I’m not talking about salesy content. I’m talking about content like giving away content. You are showing your expertise. You’re showing that you know what you’re doing and you know what to help.

That creates brand awareness. That establishes your professional authority and that will eventually bring sales because people will see you as an expert. Another way is sales like people use videos to sell as ads. Marketing training, onboarding clients using video training and employees using video can use video in so many ways that will also help you get more business or also help your business function in a more efficient way.

I want to ask a follow-up question. Do you believe that the videos that you do for clients provoke the watcher to know more and ask more questions and be more thorough in the review of the company they’re looking at?

I do. There’s so much you can say in a short video. Video works well when it arouses the curiosity of the person who says, “I understand that you, as a company, you as a professional, can help me. I understand that from the video. I want to know more once I trust.” It establishes trust. That’s the first thing. Video helps establish trust. We have the old saying, “Do business with people you know, like, and trust.” A video helps people know you a little bit and start trusting you. Once they trust you, they will want to know more. That’s a logical progression.

What are remote video productions and how are they different from traditional video productions?

Remote video production is something I would say is new in the world of video. A person like me that has been doing a video for over 30 years now, they classify it as traditional video production and remote video production. Traditional video production is the video production where you go with a video crew to a location and you film there with the lights and the cameras. That’s all good and people are still doing it.

Remote video production is being able to create a high-quality video without the need for a video crew on location. There are different ways to do that. I’m talking about high-quality, meaning like the technical quality of video, HD, 4K. Nowadays, for example, my company, what we do, we leverage people’s phones to do that. Smartphones have awesome cameras. They have very good cameras, provided that you frame it correctly, have decent lighting, and you have a good microphone because they have great cameras but not good microphones. That’s the truth because microphones are too wide there. You leverage that.

We use a platform that allows us to record locally in people’s phones. This way, we record people. Let’s say we interview someone. We send them a little tripod and a microphone for their phone and we interview them. We make sure that they’re framed and lit correctly. It’s as if they were recording themselves. We then upload it to the cloud. The original footage could be 4K and then we edit it.

This is remote production and you can do all the things. You can do a B-roll, and additional footage, and I’ve done that in the past. You can create branding videos using remote. I will never say that it looks as good exactly as if you had a professional videographer there, but it looks damn good. For many things that you are doing, it’s for most things that businesses need for their videos. It’s very good. It’s less logistics and budget. That’s why we work a lot with small and mid-size businesses because many of them will not do video because of the price. When you do remote video production, you can do high-quality production for a lower budget and that helps.

Video Content: When you do remote video production, you can do high-quality production for a lower budget and that helps.

You have done these for us and for those that are going to be looking at our new website, you’ll be able to get a chance to see Neco’s work. I appreciate our clients that have come on and give client testimonies. One of the things you have said to me is that client video testimonials are as good and sometimes even better than referrals. Why is that?

What is a referral? A referral is a person that works with you and knows you that refers you to another person. When someone tells me that their business is based on referrals, I always say, “That’s great, but how many referrals do you have in a month?” If you have a lot, you will have 2 or 3. A person will give you one referral. That’s why I say that on the other hand, you have research that shows us that people believe people take seriously written reviews by people that they don’t know as much as they take referrals.

What you’re getting to is when something’s on a website where you can hear a testimonial, it’s they’re coming to the site and seeing it rather than waiting for someone to make a referral and push it.

What I’m saying is that people do take it seriously and they do believe in reviews coming from someone that they don’t know as opposed to someone that they know that would refer you. I’m saying a video testimonial is stronger than a written one and it’s running 24/7 for you. No human referral is giving you referrals 24/7. That’s why I say a good client video testimonial is a 24/7 giving referral.

Video Content: A good client video testimonial is a 24/7 giving referral.

Mark, I’ll get back to you.

Since you’re an expert at this and we don’t get the chance to talk to many experts in the videography area, what do you think the key elements are in producing a video testimonial?

First of all, it’s my philosophy as a professional that a good testimonial has to be interview-based. Why do you want a testimonial? It’s so that a prospect understands how you help clients and gets motivated to talk to you. That’s why you want a testimonial. The testimonial needs to answer the FAQ, the Frequently Asked Questions that a prospect would ask when they are checking you out. If a testimonial does not do that, it’s not an effective testimonial.

If I ask someone to record themselves, first of all, you may have technical problems. It won’t look good or sound good. That’s one thing. My main problem with that is content. They will say, “I love Mark. Mark is so nice. Mark has a nice smile. It’s what’s so fun working with Mark.” That’s all good and dandy, as they say, but he doesn’t help the prospect. I want to know how Mark helped me. What were the results of working with Mark?

Somebody has to have a structure and has to answer those questions. The only way you can do that is by interviewing and asking the right questions. Why are we interviewing live? You may say, “I can send the questions to the person and they will answer.” They can. Will it come out good? It may. When you are interviewing a person and they don’t give you a deeper answer and you can say, “Can you clarify on that? Can you expand on that?” It’s very important that it’s done as a conversation because one of the main things in a testimonial is that they have to sound credible.

When a person is talking freely, answering questions, what they’re saying is true. It’s not rehearsed or scripted. They’re answering questions and people watching it feel it’s true and they trust it. A perfect testimonial has a structure that I would summarize in a few words. For people reading, if you’re looking to do a good testimonial, the first thing is to ask what the problem that prompted you to look for David’s help was.

Why did you decide to work with David? How was the process of working with David? Was it difficult? Was it easy? What were the results of working with David? Did it make a difference to your business? How happy are you with the results? Finally, would you recommend David to other people you know and why? This is not a strict recipe, but this is a structure that we try to follow. You have details that will be different. If you follow this structure, you can do a good testimonial.

Neco, how can client testimonials be used most effectively?

Usually the first thing people will do with client testimonials is put them on their website. It’s called the obvious use of testimonials. It’s a good thing. Most businesses, on their websites, have a tab for testimonials. Many times, it’s written testimonials. I always say the first thing you want to do with the testimonials is having video testimonials on your website. When people come, those 24/7 referrals are working for you there. That’s the first thing.

The other thing is to use it on social media. Many of my clients do that. You post testimonials on social media, on LinkedIn, or your Facebook page so that more people hear about you through your clients. Not excluding the other ones  but the best the way I think, I always call video testimonials as excellent sales tools because they are sales tools. Are they marketing tools? Yes, but more than anything, they are sales tools.

I would say that for my clients, the ones that are using testimonials, the best are using them as sales tools. What do I mean by that? Let’s say you are in a sales conversation with a prospect and the prospect is on the fence. They are not deciding. You say, “I am going to send you a link to this testimonial. It’s someone similar to your case.”

I was recording an interview with a client of mine because I always interview my clients for them to give me testimonials. He’s a consultant. Someone came to him and told him that they came to him because they watched one of the testimonials that we did for him and decided to call him. I was very happy to hear that. That does help.

I have clients that include testimonials on every proposal they give. They send a PDF with a proposal and there’s a link to testimonials. I love that one. Also, using testimonials as sales. I have another client that does systems for hospitality groups and he was presenting for this big prospect. He wanted to get this job, a big prospect, a PowerPoint presentation in the room.

In the middle of the presentation, a sales representative from that company asked, “Could you tell us what do your clients say about your service?” He looked at them and said, “I can’t tell you, but my clients can.” He showed one of the testimonials. He closed the deal. I won’t venture and say it’s only because of the testimonial. Of course not, but it was a big help.

Let’s talk a little bit about the process. We’ll wrap this interview up by saying if someone comes to you, what is the process for how you execute on this? First of all, you get engaged and get in a contract. By the way, readers, Neco is so affordable. His testimonials, the way he records them are some of the most affordable I have found out there. It’s the reason I went to him.

I saw the quality of his work. You’ve got a great product. I’m not going to quote your price on here because that might changed by the time someone reads this. I encourage you to get a hold of Neco. Your pricing is very good. Talk a little bit about the process. They engage you, write you a check for your services, and what happens then? You pretty much take it from there.

I do. First of all, it is affordable because you never want one testimony. You want 2, 3, and 4. You want different testimonials for different prospects. It’s important. The other thing is to get a video testimonial, you have to make it ridiculously easy. Someone asked me and said, “It’s so difficult for me to get Google reviews from my clients. How do you get video testimonial? It sounds so more difficult than Google review.” I say, “No, it’s easier than writing a Google review because a Google review, you have to write it down. They have to think about something and write it down. You have to make it no hassle. That’s what we do.

Let’s say if you have a client and you want us to interview. The only thing you need to do is call that client and have them agree to invest up to 30 minutes of their time being interviewed on video in something that looks like a Zoom chat. Fortunately, we are all used to that after the pandemic. Everybody’s used to being on Zoom. It’s not Zoom, but it looks like a Zoom chat.

That’s all they need to do. They don’t need to write anything down and they don’t need to record anything. They don’t need to prepare anything. Just agree to that. If they agree to that, that’s it. You introduce your client to us and we do all the rest. We will contact the client. We’ll send them an explanation and schedule the interview with them.

We will send them a little kit that includes a little stand for the phone and a microphone for the phone. To make it very easy, they do not need to return it. That’s our philosophy. Make it easy. If you send people a kit and say, “You’re going to have to print a label and go send it,” that’s hassle. No hassle. It’s yours. It’s a gift. Also, it’s a nice gift. All they need to do is log into the session.

We interview them for 10 to 15 minutes. They answer the questions. We upload it to the cloud. We take the footage. We edit it down to no more than two minutes. We bookcase it with graphics. We’ll have your logo in the opening, the name of the client and then end frame that has your info and your contact information and we send it back to you and you start using the video.

It’s an easy process. You do such a good job. You take all the work out of it. What our clients talk about after they’ve worked with you is, “That was so much easier than I thought it would be.” Kudos to you on the systems and the process you’ve set up. Great job. I’m very pleased with the product. I encourage our readers to get ahold of you, which is my next question. How can people reach you? What’s the best way?

First of all, people can go to our website, it’s LeibProductions.com. That would be the best way.

There are also good examples on your website. Check it out. Go to www.LeibProductions.com. You’ll be glad you did and encourage you to get to know Neco and get a call started. Get the conversation started and see what it can do for you. It’s made all the difference of my business. I cannot begin to tell you most of the biz we get comes as a result of the video testimonials that are on our website and our LinkedIn page. It’s amazing what it can do. Mark, thanks so much for joining in. Any last comments, Mark?

I’ve been very impressed and very enlightened by this conversation. Neco, you signed up somebody new for business because I want to utilize your company to do a soft launch on the book I’m finishing on leadership on social media. I could be very successful with that. I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you.

We’ll put in a plug for Matt Harms too. Matt Harms is the one that connected you and I, Neco. He’s writing my book and I referred him to Mark Helms and he is finishing up Mark’s books.

Matt Harms is awesome, best ghostwriter and book editor. I would recommend him to anyone wanting to write a book.

There’s a good example here. We started talking about you and all that. Mark opened up the door for us to give a shout-out. Readers, if you think about writing a book, it is a great idea. It’s a great way to brand yourself. We’ll introduce you to Matt. In fact, we probably need to record a video with Matt. I think we’ll be doing that soon as well. Neco, thanks so much. I appreciate you being here. Congratulations.

Thank you so much for the privilege of being here and for the opportunity. I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much.

You’re welcome. Thank you for being here.

Important Links

• Neco Turkienicz
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/necoturkienicz/
• https://e62cddff-f9c3-4aba-8918-69624cb9e188.pipedrive.email/c/qkv19prmqk/z48mlzjr6k/5nkdjdzekw/0?redirectUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2F%40leibproductions
• https://e62cddff-f9c3-4aba-8918-69624cb9e188.pipedrive.email/c/qkv19prmqk/z48mlzjr6k/5nkdjdzekw/1?redirectUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fanchor.fm%2Fneco-turkienicz2
• Matt Harms

About Neco Turkienicz

Neco has been directing and editing for over 30 years, and he sees every new project with the same excitement and curiosity as his first one. Being able to put yourself in your client’s shoes, and embracing their goals as your own, is a self-requirement that guides Neco to create video content that is emotionally engaging, truthful to who the client is, and, above all, effective.

Neco is a storyteller who studied Film and Television at the University of Tel-Aviv, Israel and started his career as an editor and later a director in Cable Television in Israel. He directed eight documentaries for TV and worked as a TV director and editor on the Israeli Sports Channel for 14 years. He moved to the US in 2004, where he was a creative director in two NY-based animation companies, working with the largest ad agencies in the world. He founded his own company in 2009 and has been working since then creating video content around for businesses. In the last few years, Neco became a specialist in Remote Video Production, which is creating high-quality, professional videos without the need for a video crew on location. His company, Leib Productions, is dedicated to creating this kind of content for businesses and non-profit organizations in the US and around the world.