By Ingrid Menninga
Video is exploding in popularity among real estate professionals, with more and more sales reps jumping on the amateur promotional video trend. Videos are low in cost, easy to make, provide a lot of useful information in a short period of time and take almost no effort for your audience to watch. Videos also give your audience clues about you, your service and your professionalism that can never be obtained from a postcard, newsletter or other marketing materials.
Through your video, clients assess the way you speak, your choice of words, your physical presence, your confidence in your delivery and your comfort discussing your work. A video makes prospects feel like they already know you before you’ve even met them, and is a great way to convert leads into clients.
On the flipside, poorly made videos can turn away prospects and make clients reconsider their choice in you as their Realtor. To avoid this, make sure you follow these basic guidelines when making videos to promote your business.
First, you must prepare your setting:
– Ensure you have good lighting, and that the light source (sun or bright light) is in front of you. Your face should be fully lit and shadows kept to a minimum.
– Tidy up your space, remove anything that is not necessary, and if possible have as few distractions in the background as possible. One sign or a picture can look good, but a lot of visual noise can be distracting.
– Put on a solid coloured professional-looking shirt or jacket. Avoid wearing busy patterns or faded colours because they do not present as well on camera.
– Set up your camera at approximately one metre from you – allowing enough space so that it’s not a close up but your mic will pick your voice clearly.
Once you’ve done the background work, you’re ready to prepare your message. You don’t need to have a memorized script for your video, but you should have basic speaking points to follow. Here are some important points to keep in mind when preparing your message:
– Have a focus. There should be one main idea you would like to articulate to your audience per video – any more than that and you may appear disorganized and your video will not be effective.
– Think only of your target audience. You should have a clear idea of who you want to speak to, or attract with your video – be it first-time buyers, families looking to move up or residents in a specific neighbourhood. If you want your message to speak to your target audience you must think of them – what they want to know and what they are interested in.
– Prepare your format to follow an introduction where you state what your video is about, followed by supporting statements in order of most important to less important, and then a summary at the end.
– Keep your video under one minute if at all possible. At the 30-second mark, most viewers will stop watching. You can stretch your video up to 1.5 minutes if you really must, but at the two minute mark you’ve more than likely lost your audience.
Now you are ready to start taping.
– Rehearse one or two times and then make your video.
– Once you’ve taped three or four times, you’re likely to get frustrated and make more errors. It’s best to relax, do a few takes, and then move on.
– Spend approximately 30 minutes taping each video. The longer you take, chances are very high that you will not look or sound any better, so accept that you can make a decent video in 30 minutes and give it your best effort.
After you’ve taped your video, upload it to YouTube and promote it.
– Add a keyword-rich description along with one form of contact, preferably email, so people can get in touch with you,
– Add your personal branding logo and colours to your video using movie editing software. It’s important to keep your branding consistent, so when your clients and prospects go from your Facebook page to your YouTube channel to your blog to your listings page, they have seen your logo, branding and colours throughout. This helps increase your brand recognition and your familiarity, making people feel more comfortable and confident in you as their Realtor of choice.
– Once you’ve uploaded your video, make sure you also add it to your website/blog. Share the link with your other social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and add your video link to your enewsletter and email signature if it’s suitable.
HOT TIP: The video set up and preparation can take some time, so making several videos at once can save you a lot of time. To keep each video looking different you can change your outfit for each of them. It’s also a good idea to make your videos after you’ve had your hair cut, or just got your jacket back from the dry cleaner, to present yourself as polished as possible.
Ingrid Menninga is a director at Jolt Marketing (www.joltmarketing.com) where she works with real estate and mortgage agents and organizations to develop their branding and execute highly successful marketing campaigns.
