How an expert interview will help sell your services or product

In fact, a good expert interview not only helps to get N number of sales, but also gives a plus to the recognition and reputation of the company. This method is so inexpensive and accessible that you can use it even if you have 10 people in the company, and only one is directly involved in marketing. Some budget for organization will be needed in any case, but these expenses will be many times lower than what is usually spent on advertising. In the long run, these investments will pay off if everything is done correctly. Below is a step-by-step instruction on organization and promotion.

What is needed for an interview

1. In any case, you need an expert - a competent specialist from the company's management team who knows the specifics of the market and understands the advantages of your product or service. He will need half a day of work time to prepare and half a day for the interview itself. The time is approximate, we set ourselves and the boss up for it.
2. Budget. The size directly depends on the method you want to use for promotion. You can negotiate with a large niche media portal, pay for the organization and placement. This is reliable, it will take less time, but it is expensive, and sometimes very expensive. In addition, this method will not allow you to get an audience for retargeting, which means you should not expect specific sales. Another option is to do everything yourself. More time for organization, but lower costs and there is an opportunity to collect a database for remarketing.
3. Time and resources for organization. Here we take into account the working time of the manager's assistants, marketers and all those who will be involved in the preparation of the event.

How to organize an interview

Here, everything depends on the format. Video is more difficult to organize, but you can also make a text version from the resulting material. In addition, we get additional opportunities for promotion on YouTube and social networks. By the way, there are life hacks that allow you to create very decent content in video format, but at a reasonable cost. So let's stop at this option.

If you decide to pay for placement in the media, you need to first find out whether your partners have the conditions for conducting an interview. Large portals often have everything you need (studio, decorations, equipment, etc.), so in most cases you only need to agree on a time. Otherwise, you will have to organize everything yourself. Then there are two paths: the right and the wrong one.

The wrong one is to produce it yourself. Anyone who thinks that you can shoot everything on a smartphone (because the camera is “good”) in one take and then cut it into pieces in a simple video editor is very wrong. Creating decent video content is long, difficult, requires serious skill and expensive equipment. You won't be satisfied with a "home video" from the height of a selfie stick, you need universal material that you won't be ashamed to post in any media. By the way, a fifteen-minute interview is about a week of work: preparation, studio, filming, editing, approval and correction of the finished material.

The right way is to outsource production. In this case, all you need is an expert and minimal time spent on organization: agree, come to the recording, approve the finished material.

How to find a contractor? Don't call TV channels, it will be very expensive. The best option is an event agency. Through them, among other things, it is easy to enter show business if you need, for example, a representative host or in the future want to do advertising with voice actors.

A few simple tips on how to organize an interview with a company manager so that there are no unpleasant surprises.

• Clothing. Ideally, a strict business style, but focus on your audience and the objectives of the interview. In IT, casual clothing sometimes looks even more appropriate, but this is a matter of format. In any case, try to avoid third-party brands in the frame and no sunglasses, even if this is your boss's signature style.
• If a digital background is supposed to be used for the recording, check with the organizers what color the clothes should not be. This is a purely technical point: studio video is usually shot on a blue or green background, and then during editing, the "color" is cut out and the desired image is added instead. If the boss wears a blue shirt, he will have to change his clothes right on the set, and this is unnecessary hassle.
• The skin in the frame should not shine. Be sure to bring powder to the shoot. An additional money to the budget, but it will be nice to look at the result. Regular women's perfume is quite enough. Professional lighting often raises the temperature in the studio to 30+ degrees, especially if the room is small and the recording takes a long time.
• Any mistakes, inaccuracies, awkward moments can be cut out during editing. Don't hesitate to stop the recording if something doesn't suit you. Record the answer to the question several times, then you can choose the best option.

The duration of the finished material is from 10 to 20 minutes. It is irrational to do less, more tires the viewer (unless your boss is from the top ten Forbes). Accordingly, there should be 5-8 questions for the interview. Only relevant topics that interest your potential clients the most, no stories about the beginning of your life journey or vacation plans.

How to promote an interview

The first thing to understand is that an interview with a specialist shows your expertise, but it does not bring a powerful call to action to the sale. A potential client may be interested in the information, but he will not immediately rush to buy.

The downside of working with large niche media is that the publisher is unlikely to share metrics and traffic data. It will be unclear where the viewer or reader came from, which means we will not know our audience: neither geography, nor gender, nor age.

In addition, PR is still more about communication and journalism than about attracting traffic and SEO optimization. And this means that portal specialists will not study demand, competitor activity, collect semantics, etc. In special projects, such options sometimes exist and even provide traffic guarantees, but this is where the price tag is 700K plus.

Marketing promotion with the help of a PR partner

In 2022, our team conducted a study on the services and cost of publishing articles, interviewed the leaders of the IT&Digital media market: VC, Computerra, Habr, Delovoy Peterburg, Cossa. In short, the conclusion is this: no one could explain what the benefit of a one-time placement of a promo on their site is, they only give the audience reach and the actual price.

The actual results of the study are approximately as follows:

However, interacting with large media can be profitable. There are two mechanics of working with their content:

1. Place for free or at a minimum rate. Some portals offer this option. Then work with internal traffic. Portals have advertising accounts, where you can additionally buy traffic for your material.
2. Drive external traffic from social networks, contextual advertising systems, YouTube, etc. This is a more diversified option. We still won't get anything into the retargeting base, but at least we manage the traffic.

Cooperation with large media helps to buy the trust of users. The result is an increase in trust and conversion, the probability of a deal is higher with those leads that we receive through partners.

Marketing promotion without the help of a PR partner

Our interview is a labor cost of 40-80 hours, as well as the costs of creation and placement. Published but not optimized for search engines content gives at best dozens of clicks per month. Material created according to the semantic core is hundreds, and sometimes thousands of views (depending on the topic). If you supplement the result with targeted traffic, a retargeting funnel and a funnel in messengers, then even with small budgets you can get the coveted applications and sales. And we will also have a remarketing base for sales in the future.

Why do you need a base? To interact with the audience at a long distance of b2b sales. Having a base of potential clients, you can constantly remind about yourself with short informational materials about updates and new features of your product or service. The costs are small, the warm-up is maximum.

What do we do with the interview? There are two ways.

Option one:

1. We cut Instagram* Reels and YouTube Shorts from the full version.
2. We add text there for optimization.
3. We distribute the finished materials to the sites.

Following this scheme, there is a chance to get good organic traffic. It is unlikely to work on a dead profile, but if you do it regularly, the chances are high. If you did not get organic traffic, then we turn on the second option.

Option two:

In modern conditions, Instagram* Reels, YouTube Shorts and other similar formats are perfectly promoted from professional advertising accounts. If we manage to get something there, we connect the retargeting base and target these short videos. Then we add all this to cold traffic and then to the sales funnel.

Special offer for marketing promotion

By the way, we can offer our own services for posting and promoting your interview (and not only) on our portals INTEGRUS and INTEG.

1. We provide traffic guarantees (targeted, we work with semantics, competitors, optimization).
2. We connect advertising systems and build a product sales funnel in messengers.
3. We work with the audience through retargeting funnels.

*Meta company recognized as extremist in Russia