The Playbook | How To Get Sales From Short-Form Video

Hello friend. Welcome to The Playbook.

This newsletter is designed to give you a competitive edge in content marketing.

Each week, I break down top 1% content and creator economy trends to help grow your business faster.

I also share the behind-the-scenes of building a content business with all my wins/failures.

If you’re new here, I’m Gianluca Piovani and I run Storyforma, a content studio in LA. You can always unsubscribe by clicking here.

How Posting Videos Helped Me Land $15k in Sales

This year, I realized something ironic: I’m always telling my clients to use content to grow, but I wasn’t doing it myself.

Why? Because I hate talking on camera.

A few months ago, I finally bit the bullet and posted my first video on Instagram.

It was awkward. It was cringe. But I kept posting every week, and it worked.

It opened up more opportunities than I expected, and now I’m actually having fun figuring out how to game the algorithm.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

🔄 Remix Viral Content

My best performing videos were this one (3,775 views, 94 likes, 138 comments, 59 shares) and this one (2,614 views, 17 comments, 28 shares).

Both of them came out from this process:

• I made a list of creators in my niche and found outliers (videos that got way more views than the others from that creator).

• Took the script and “remixed” it with my own voice.

• Created an automation with Manychat that would send the resource to everyone who commented with a specific word. More people commenting = signal to the algorithm that the video is worth promoting.

If you’re just getting started with short-form video, this is the best way to get initial traction. Find 10-20 creators in your niche, save their best performing videos, and recreate them with your own sauce.

📈 Leverage Paid Ads To Get Predictable Traffic

Organic content is algorithm-driven, which means performance will always be unpredictable. If you sell a high-ticket service, it’s best to combine content with paid ads to get predictable traffic and sales opportunities.

I spent $523 on ads, generated 25 leads, and got 6 calls booked. Two of those turned into clients—totaling $15k in sales.

Here’s how:

• I created a series of ads (some static, some video) calling out a specific client avatar and focusing on solving a specific problem,

• I setup a booking page for leads to schedule a call after opting in.

• I setup email + sms automations to nurture the leads.

⏭︎ What I’m doing next

• More original content: Remixing viral videos is a good way to get started–you’ll quickly learn different content styles, storytelling techniques, etc.

  But you won’t build your tribe. To do that, I need to build my own world with my own ideas.

• Optimizing funnel: while my ROI was great, one issue I ran into was that many leads were unqualified. That meant I was wasting time with people who weren’t not a good fit. To solve this, I’m reworking my funnel and messaging to make sure I only get on calls with my ideal clients.

How Kallaway Broke Instagram

Kane Kallaway is a tech creator who cracked the code of short-form virality.

Since posting his first video in July 2023, he’s been averaging 1.1M views per video, over 546k followers across platforms, and over 170M views total.

He’s become so influential in the tech space he even got to interview Mark Zuckerberg.

He’s also extremely generous with his knowledge and has shared his “viral formula”:

• First, he finds an uncommon idea. This could be a topic nobody heard of (Russian engineer builds real Ironman suit, Taylor Swift’s Era Tour stage construction) or a unique POV on trending news (how the deal between Messi and Inter Miami revolutionized sport).

• Second, he makes sure the idea has a large applicable audience. Ironman, Taylor Swift, Messi are names with mass appeal–which means more people are likely to watch and share the video.

• Third, he packages idea and audience into a curiosity gap hook. The first 3 seconds create a curiosity gap in the mind of the viewer, incentivizing them to stay until the end to know the answer: “This guy is building a real ironman suit in his garage… But to do it, he had to invent the world’s first personal hydrogen reactor”

Made a video with some examples here.

Related: everybody uses the same Alex Hormozy-style captions for their reels. If you want to spice up your fonts, here are 3 of my favorites.

This Gym Owner Make $1M/year with <1k Subscribers

Came across the case study of a local gym that scaled to $90-100k/month using content, and they’re the proof you don’t need thousands of followers or even views to do well.

When Jay started Hale Fitness 13 years ago, he was getting clients primarily with SEO and Google Ads. In their early years, this was fine.

But then ad costs started rising–so he decided to give YouTube a try.

He used a smart strategy called “Mirror Method”. The results:

• Shorter sales calls → from 45 minutes to just 15 minutes

• Higher conversion rates → from 20% to about 50%  

• Premium price → They’re able to charge more since clients now see the gym as the standout choice, rather than comparing it to other gyms.

If you want to learn more about this strategy, I made a video about it here.

LinkedIn Short-Form Video Is A Massive Marketing Opportunity

LinkedIn recently rolled out LinkedIn Shorts, their short-form “For You” style video feed. Think TikTok, but for professionals.

Here’s why you should care:

• Right now, LinkedIn is pushing it hard. They want creators to use it, which means early movers get rewarded.

• There’s a huge supply and demand gap. 130 million professionals scroll LinkedIn daily, but hardly anyone’s posting shorts. Right now LinkedIn is in its “golden era” for creators similar to 2010s Youtube or 2020 TikTok/IG Reels.

• LinkedIn users want great content to share. On most social platforms, the default user behavior is to consume in silence. LinkedIn is the opposite: users are looking for interesting content to share, because they earn professional credibility by doing so.

• All users are verified. Other platforms are full of bots or fake accounts, but LinkedIn has a much stricter sign up process which means most of your viewers will be real humans.

I wanted to test this myself by posting some of my IG reels here.

The numbers are staggering: 26,804 Impressions, 18,120 Members reached, 130 profile viewers.

What’s wild is that most of these number came from one video alone (how Nike outsmarted Adidas at the 2012 Olympics).

Related: How to grow your LinkedIn company page to 2M views in 12 weeks. [LINK]

5 Content Formats Every Brand Should Make

If you're a brand looking to make content, these are the 5 formats you should to be creating (from the great Alex Garcia):

• Social Tv Shows → Basic level = challenges, interviews, and trivia [Kollective]. Advanced level = docuseries, reality tv, or gameshows [BPN]

• Founding Story → Tell your audience why you started your company, what you see wrong in the industry, what’s your mission and vision [Poorboy Coffee]

• Collabs → Partner with influencers, athletes, or customers to amplify your narrative and product [Represent 24/7 x William Goodge]

• Behind the Scenes → Pull the curtain and show how your product is made or who are you collaborating with [On Running]

• Narrative Building → These are brand campaigns–the goal is to get people to identify with your values and build a “cult-like” fanbase [Tracksmith Running]

Related: How to get a celebrity endorsement for $35 [LINK]

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