As the world increasingly shifts to digital, businesses must adapt their marketing strategies to stay ahead of the curve. Video marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach and engage with customers online. Not only is it visually appealing, but it also allows businesses to tell their story and build relationships with their audience.
Uzair Kharawala, the King of YouTube Ads, is a strong advocate for video marketing. He believes that video is an incredibly powerful tool that can help businesses reach a wider audience and build trust with potential customers. According to Kharawala, one of the main advantages of video marketing is that it allows businesses to show off their personality and values. This is something that can be difficult to communicate through written content alone. In addition, video marketing is highly shareable, making it easy for businesses to reach a larger audience with their message. Finally, Kharawala believes that video marketing is an excellent way to build trust with potential customers. When done well, it can create an emotional connection between the viewer and the brand. If you're considering using video marketing to promote your business, Kharawala is definitely someone you should learn from.
In this episode, Uzair shares the merits of video marketing and discusses how to build a team that will help you achieve success with your video marketing campaigns.
Listen to the Episode
Atiba de Souza: Hey everybody today, you've got a real treat coming. One of my really good friends, Uzair from SF Digital. Uzair is literally, and you'll see this in the video, he is literally one of the world leaders in video marketing. I mean, absolutely brilliant. He's built a fantastic team as well. He's going to talk to us a little bit today about the merits of video marketing and building your team for that on the Build Your Team Show and as always Build Your Team is brought to you by Client Attraction Pros. If it is time for you to become a recognized leader in your industry, if it's time for people to know who or what your name is then give us a call. We will help you get there with video marketing.
Atiba de Souza: Hey, so today we're here with Uzair. Uzair, tell us a little bit about yourself and your business.
Uzair Kharawala: Thanks, Atiba for having me.
Atiba de Souza: You're welcome.
Uzair Kharawala: Glad to be here. So my name is Uzair. I'm from SF Digital Studios, we're based in the UK. And we're a full service digital marketing agency who specialize in Google Ads.
Atiba de Souza: So that's the politically correct answer, guys. All right. I've known Uzair now for over a year. And the thing that I know about Uzair is, Uzair is the king of YouTube ads, right? Like I'm, I'm just saying the king, like, you know, like the world leader in YouTube ads.
Uzair Kharawala: Well, we're not too bad on YouTube ads.
Atiba de Souza: Yeah. So how'd you get there? How'd you get to be so good at YouTube ads?
Uzair Kharawala: So it's not only YouTube ads, but it's organic as well as paid. So it's video marketing. So with ads you put fuel on the fire. Four years ago, just at Christmas time, I came back home after one of these business networking breakfast meetings.
Atiba de Souza: Yup.
Uzair Kharawala: And I came home from 6:00 AM till 8:00 AM kind of meetings and my wife goes, why are you always so miserable when you come back from these meetings? So well, I see the same people from the morning to the lunch, to the evening. They are not my target audience and I'm just wasting my time.
Atiba de Souza: Wow.
Uzair Kharawala: Because it's the same circle. Right? We all go through the same local meetings and they're all the same faces. And I'm thinking, what do you do? So she goes, well, why you, stop going there and do something different. I said, well, as they are always are right, I better listen to her.
Atiba de Souza: That's right.
Uzair Kharawala: So over the Christmas period, I lock myself away in the office and I kept thinking, kept going online, looking at ideas and the buzzword was starting that time, four years ago, video marketing, video marketing and all. So I thought, oh, let me try video. YouTube, this looks interesting. Now, sometimes you are in the right place at the right time, and you need a little bit of luck, but I know the harder you work the luckier you get.
Atiba de Souza: That's right.
Uzair Kharawala: So Google Ads were changing the whole interface. They had like a 2.0 version coming up. So if the button was here, then in the new version, the button was up there or something different. Right? I thought, oh, this is a great opportunity. Let me do some video tutorials on how to create a campaign, how to write ads, how to do this, that, and that, so on. And I knew that everybody will be searching because with my Google Ads background, I can see the number of searches being made and it was spiking up. Because people are now starting to look or the new interface, how to do Google Ads in 2019 or something like that. So I started doing those ads and that's how we got started because that was a little push, which I needed. And then people started to like, comment, share and appreciate
Atiba de Souza: what you're doing
Uzair Kharawala: what we're doing. And yeah, the rest, as it say is history.
Atiba de Souza: So that was four years ago.
Uzair Kharawala: Yeah
Atiba de Souza: Right. And guys, I'm serious. You know, we may say kind of jokingly, he literally is the king. Right. You built an agency now around this. Now, is it only you or do you have a staff?
Uzair Kharawala: We have a team.
Atiba de Souza: Okay so, so tell us a little bit about building that team and what you've done, because that's what we talk about here on Build Your Team, it's all about how we build teams as business owners.
Uzair Kharawala: Yeah. So when I started the video marketing, it used to take me almost four hours
Atiba de Souza: Wow.
Uzair Kharawala: for each video. Because in the beginning, you're very slow. Right. Cause everything is new. You make a lot of mistakes, shooting, reshooting, taking multiple takes and so on. Then editing, uploading, syndicating, repurposing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and all these places. So I had to learn it first, because if I don't know the system or the process, how am I going to put it into
Atiba de Souza: somebody else's hands
Uzair Kharawala: Somebody else to do it.
Atiba de Souza: Right.
Uzair Kharawala: So I know I used to go to these meetings and it would by the time you go and come back, it will be three, four hours anyway. So I thought, instead of going to these meetings, I'm going to just sit on my desk for four hours and then make a video and see what happens. And very sure within a matter of weeks, literally, I used to not only get views and subscribers, but I also started to get leads and customers, or can you help me? Or can you run my ads? And so on. So that's how we started and then slowly, slowly, I then go after. I did this myself for almost two years, and then I started getting more people in so now our content marketing or video marketing team consists of six people.
Atiba de Souza: Okay. Okay, great. Have you found hiring hard?
Uzair Kharawala: Yes, absolutely. You need to kiss a lot of frogs, right? So this is absolutely, it will never be the case of all you found. I mean, you can get lucky sometimes. But if you've got a process of filtering out the good ones from the bad ones, then yes, you will get more lucky than getting the wrong or hiring the wrong person. There's no shortcuts. There's no two ways about it. You would just become good at hiring. You will know, after a little while, once you interview a few people that who they are, what they do and how much they know.
Atiba de Souza: Yep. Absolutely. And there are no shortcuts. You know, we talk about that here a lot. There are no shortcuts. Now let's get back to YouTube and video ads. Let me ask you this, is it for every business? Like can any business use?
Uzair Kharawala: Absolutely, 100%. Still after so many years, people aren't using video as a marketing tool. It is one of the most powerful marketing tool to build yourself, your brand, your business and so on. We don't have any excuses now going back four years ago. Oh, I'm camera shy. I don't like the way I look on the video or the, I don't like the way I sound. You're not watching it yourself, others appreciate. And it's the, it's the content,
Atiba de Souza: That's right.
Uzair Kharawala: You know, we're not making a Hollywood movie, a high production value movie. It's content. You want to create somebody's... You'll just solve somebody's problem,
Atiba de Souza: Right.
Uzair Kharawala: That's it. When you got the solution, it doesn't matter if the lighting is not well effect, but the audio needs to be good.
Atiba de Souza: Yes,
Uzair Kharawala: That's key.
Atiba de Souza: We gotta hear you.
Uzair Kharawala: Yeah. Even if it's a little bit, you know, underexposed or overexposed, or the lighting is not good. Lighting doesn't matter, but the audio needs to be decent enough that they can listen to you.
Atiba de Souza: Okay. So with your customers, how have you seen the video specifically help them?
Uzair Kharawala: So with video, 95% of our work for our clients is video ads. Organic, I do consulting because we try to offer it as a service, but you know, after two weeks we are chasing, chasing, chasing. We need more videos because we can create the content, but it's not the same as if you were to create content for your business.
Atiba de Souza: Right.
Uzair Kharawala: I would say Atiba, I need some videos. You know, give me top tips on SEO. Give me top tips on how to make a blog or keyword research or whatever. It's not the same. You know your business more, much better than I would ever do. Right. So you are your business. Unfortunately, everybody is too busy for video. So we don't offer video marketing as a service, we would consult. We will teach them. We put all the systems, processes, hiring, firing, everything we teach them. Then it's up to them, whether they utilize what they learned or they wasted all the money which they've invested.
Atiba de Souza: Right? No, that's good. That's a good point. That's a good point. So, staying kind of on that, that course. So we're looking at YouTube marketing, we're looking at YouTube ads, right?
Uzair Kharawala: And organic.
Atiba de Souza: And organic.
Uzair Kharawala: Yeah.
Atiba de Souza: If someone was just getting started,
Uzair Kharawala: Yeah.
Atiba de Souza: Where do they start?
Uzair Kharawala: So first of all, is the technology. I mean, like we are recording this with just a couple of smart phones. So all you need is this little phone and a microphone if you have one. If not, the audio quality on these phones are pretty good and decent enough. Do get started and a bit of lighting, that's it.
Atiba de Souza: Yeah.
Uzair Kharawala: And there's so many video editing apps which you can edit your videos on the phone.
Atiba de Souza: That's true.
Uzair Kharawala: You know, while you're watching TV, you can pretty much edit the video and job done. Export it. Upload it. Whatever you want to do and get done.
Atiba de Souza: That's very true. So Uzair, first, I want to say thank you. Okay. Listen guys, I hope you understand the treat here. All right. Uzair is like the king. I learn a ton from Uzair about video, video marketing. We spend a lot of time together. I sit in awe of him. And I'm telling you guys that honestly. Okay. And so Uzair, tell them how do they get in contact with you and SF Digital, if somebody is ready to start doing video marketing.
Uzair Kharawala: So they can get in touch on through our website, sfdigital.co.uk. We got our own YouTube channel as well and on LinkedIn, I'm there as well. So you can get in touch.
Atiba de Souza: And now I want to also cover this because y'all heard that he's in the UK. Right. But being in the UK, you can work and serve people everywhere. Matter of fact, most of your customers are.
Uzair Kharawala: Oversees. So as you know, I was in Dubai, Abu Dhabi last week. I'm in the US now for four weeks visiting I believe eight or nine cities in the next few weeks. So visiting clients and all my work comes 100% from my YouTube videos.
Atiba de Souza: Wow.
Uzair Kharawala: You've see me when we go on Zoom calls and all. That desk is where I, on my living from. I don't go and visit anybody. Even if somebody calls me to London, I would say let's have a Zoom call now. And thankfully for us, we were one of the winners for, because of COVID because Zoom and Google Meet and video calls and video meeting, everybody can do it now. Prior to that, I would spend two hours trying to work out the audio, the video, or we don't know how this works and all that. So all the techie issues, but I still was adamant. I'm not going to go knocking on doors. If they want to come, they're going to come to me and come on my terms. So if anybody wants to meet up, yeah, we can meet up at any place anytime, through, through a computer or a phone.
Atiba de Souza: And that's the beauty of technology, right? Yeah. So y'all heard it here. Listen guys, this man is a treat. One, it's a treat to be with him in person. We've known each other for a while and this is the first time we actually got to break bread, see each other physically.
Uzair Kharawala: That's right.
Atiba de Souza: Because he is on the other side of the pond. So it's great. Thank you for being here. We will do another one of these, but we'll probably be virtual that time unless we find some time back together again.
Uzair Kharawala: Well, Dubai.
Atiba de Souza: Oh, yes, that's right. We're going to Dubai. We're going to Dubai. All right, my friend.
Uzair Kharawala: Thank you, my friend.
Atiba de Souza: Thank you.
Uzair Kharawala: Thank's for having me.
Atiba de Souza: You're welcome.
