Thank you, David, great to be here and thanks so much for the introduction.

Transcription

1 All right, David Corbaley here with the Real Estate Commando and I m really excited about this session of the podcast because I have a special guest on today, and what I m going to talk about well, he is going to talk about actually - I m just going to have the privilege of chatting with him about it - is video video marketing and online video- all things video. We re going to cover those things because video for me is extremely powerful. It s very near and dear to my heart because it s an exciting component of marketing. Video is growing more and more in the market space and the value of video, you probably already know what it is, but in this podcast, you re going to learn even more about how powerful video can be! We are going to talk about some really important things regarding video. How you can maximize video, how you can actually easily create videos yourself. Some people when they think about, Oh gosh! I need to make a video, they think of themselves behind the camera with all of these expensive lighting and this expensive camera, and everything else. You can certainly do that. You can do that very effectively but there are alternatives as well that you can use and really, really capture some great video, minimum cost, minimal time that can have a great effect for you. So what we re going to do is just a conversation. I m going to ask my guest some questions about video, some best practices and he is going to give you some great tips and some information on video, things that you can actually put to use right away and it s going to be very helpful. I m excited to interview him as well. My guest is Ryan Spanger. He has been in video since, well, his business, he has been in the video business for about 15 years but he started even prior to that and he started out learning about film making, making documentaries, and all of those kinds of things. 1

2 So this isn t some internet marketing guy who started playing around with video and now he s talking about it. This is actually a person who is in the video or filmmaking business. They know what they are doing. They understand video. They have worked with big corporations like IBM, Yamaha Music, and Blackberry. We all recognize those names. That s how good this guy is and that s how good his company is. I m excited to chat with him about it because think about that, video, remember the days not too long ago when we can t even really watch video online just because we didn t have the bandwidth, the internet wasn t fast enough. He has watched this entire thing progress from not even being able to watch video to the slow, choppy videos, to making videos better, to where we are today where we actually stream movies and watch movies online. We ve come so far. He has seen it all happen and he knows how it all works. So on that note, I just want to welcome you, Ryan. Thank you so much for taking some of your time today to spend with me and chat about this. Thank you, David, great to be here and thanks so much for the introduction. Absolutely. What the people on the podcast are typically looking for is a way to market their business. We re in the real estate niche and we market our business using different methods, direct mail and there are so many different ways to do it but the real push for what I teach is marketing your business online and specifically using different components, video being one of them because video is extremely powerful. If you could chat with us a little bit about why video. I like video but explain a little bit. You know much more than I do. Why is video so important and why should we be using video in our business to market it? 2

3 Everyone is hearing about the fact that video is really important and it basically comes down to the fact that audiences have an increased appetite for video. So to the listener, when you think about it, when you go to a website and there s an opportunity to watch a video rather than reading long amounts of text, what are you going to go for? In most cases, you re going to go want to watch a video because it s giving you a much more sort of detailed immersive experience. There are some areas like if you re reading a technical manual or something like that, a PDF, is ideal, but in most cases, the fact that when you watch a video, there s audio, there s a story, there s music, you can see people. It s increasingly sought after because it s so engaging. It has just become the medium that we use to communicate and if you do a search on the internet, there will be plenty of facts and figures about how more and more videos are watched on the internet, the fact that people consume more video. It has become the sort of de facto communication medium. Generally, there s an idea out there that video is important and it s what audiences want. Some of the real strengths of video is that video shows rather than just tells and in marketing, we can make all sorts of assertions about how business and how we re the best, we have the best customer service, and our product is the most powerful, but the great thing about video is it s a type of proof. It s visual evidence. For instance in the real estate market, you can really talk up a property using lots of flowery language and stuff like that or you can actually just show it through images and through videos. The great thing about video is showing a property is the next best thing to actually being there. But it s not just about showing real estate. It s about showing the people who sell real estate, and that s where video is so powerful 3

4 because more and more people want to know who they are doing business with. They want to have a relationship with the people. They want to get a sense of who you are, what your personality is, what your values are, and video is such a fantastic way of doing that. I think that really makes sense. So, it s more and more about trust when even if we go to Google and we look for a restaurant or a car repair shop, whatever we re looking for, all of a sudden, over the past couple of years, it went from just showing a bunch of listings of websites, now, it s reputation based. Now you see stars, rating numbers, and everything else, so just what you were mentioning, it s based on trust now and people are making their buying decisions based on trust or the decisions to do business with a company based on trust and what other people are saying. So, if you have the opportunity to get that information out in front of your audience, Hey, here s what all these other people are saying about my business. Great, you can do that. If you don t, the next best thing would be to actually interface with them, just like you said, with a video. That way, they can understand who they are talking to and that, I think, will build trust much better than just having a picture of your business or the words about your business, or something like that. I can see. That s exactly right. I mean, the way that people buy products and services these days is completely different to 10 or 20 years ago where in the past, people will begin their buying journey by speaking to a sales person or going into a shop. Now, they are doing most of that research themselves and they are only speaking to a salesperson when they are much closer to actually making that buying decision. So, it s important for the listener to start engaging with that prospect much earlier on before they even meet, 4

5 and they can do that by making videos. By the time that prospect actually speaks to you, they ve got a really good sense of who you are, how you present, what your interests are, what your values are, some of the other clients that you ve helped, and they almost feel like they know you already by the time they meet you. Yup, that s excellent because it easily puts you above the competition just by having that out there where people can see something from you that they are not seeing from your competition. So that is very powerful. Can you talk a little bit about, there are different things we can do with our videos, even different types of videos that we can make. I know, I teach a lot of making these quick videos, use a few different slides of like houses, sold signs in front of houses and things like that to make just a quick image based videos that are nothing more than something that we ll rank and have a call to action in the video. Can you talk about a few different types of videos that we could create from something that simple or to even something more complex and maybe what we would use them for? Yeah, so a lot of cost way of making a video and getting involved in the video game is creating a video of still images, text, and music. That can still be sort of a powerful engaging, immersive way of showing audiences about your business or showing some different properties. That s just one way to get started. Once you ve done something like that, there s a whole lot more that you can do with video. There are things like a home page video for instance that when visitors come to your website, they can learn about you, they can learn about your business, the history of your business, who your target market is, the type of people that you work with, and the sort of challenges that you solve. 5

6 This is actually live action video, so it might be an interview with you or importantly interviews with happy customers whose challenges you ve helped to solve and when audiences watch these videos, they can picture themselves in those videos and they can relate to the challenges and concerns of those customers and so they will put it together in their mind, Well, if you were able to help someone like that find their house or whatever the particular challenge is that you re helping them with, you look like the sort of person who can help me do that. So, there s a next step. There s a whole range of ways that you can use videos. There are sales videos where you can drive traffic to a particular site on your web page based on a particular product that you re selling. It might be a property, it might be an information product, and there, you can be talking to your audience, looking directly into the camera and communicating your story, which is quite an engaging way to communicate. There are training and induction videos where if you have staff, you can create a video which will show how to do a process or a system so that way, you re not having to, every time you re teaching staff how to do something, speak to them face to face or over Skype. You can actually use a video to do that and the information is uniform. You re not missing out on anything. So, video can help to sort of automate and systemize your business. Another type of video which I really like is the documentary style of video because we re talking about this idea of showing the personality and the culture of your business. These days, we like to think that our business is really unique that we offer better service, that our product is higher quality, etc. The reality is that in most cases, there is usually a few other businesses just like yours who actually offer the same level of quality and ways that you can 6

7 differentiate your business is by demonstrating your personality, the culture of your business, the commitment that you have to customer service, and a documentary can do this. So, an interview with you with the staff of your business and the sort of clients that you help solve their challenges will really distinguish you from your competitors. So that really brings the reality of your business and you as a business person into your potential customers mindset by creating some type of documentary. It makes it more of I m not quite sure how to say it. it makes you more like a real business instead of just somebody out there with some advertising out there online. I really like that. That s right. It s a humanizing effect because there has been this trend over the last 10 years to move everything online and the thing is, people haven t changed. They want to do business with people and we still have a sort of village mentality where in the past, if you wanted to buy something, you d go down to your local shop or local village and you d interact with people. People still want to have that type of experience but they want to do it in a more convenient way. They want to do it online. They don t necessarily want to just buy a product and services in their local area but they still want to have the experience of connection and they want to do business with people that they trust, that they know are going to be there when challenges come up. It s something like a documentary which reveals your personality and shows the type of people that you work with really helps to build trust and by the time that these clients area actually speaking to you, they have a background about you and your stories. Just to give an example, one of the things that I do in my business is 7

8 create regular news videos. So, I m sharing interesting and useful information with my clients and prospective clients. On my website, there s also a video about me, about my background, about the team and about our philosophy, and what I found is that often, by the time I m sitting down on the table face to face with prospective clients, they already know a lot of this background information so we can move more from the getting to know you building trust phase to the How can my business help to solve your challenges and let s actually negotiate the best way to do this. There are even times where they will say, I m actually familiar with a lot of the material you re telling me because I ve watched your videos and I know who you have worked with and I know exactly what the value is that you provide, and they are far more ready to move forward because we ve done a lot of that relationship building prior to actually meeting. What I d like to do, I m just going to make this side note, once we get closer to the end of the interview, I d love to get your website address or something to share so they can see some of the great videos that you have created and I think it would be good to share that more towards the end of the video, if that s alright. Yeah, absolutely. We talked about just making a video and throwing a video up on YouTube, Here it is. I m just going to put it up there and see what happens versus actually coming up with a strategy to use video with. Here s my strategy. I m going to make x videos, x type of these kind of videos, this many per month, and I m going to do these different things with them and so more of an overall strategy for video marketing as opposed to just, you know, a lot of 8

9 people, Oh I m going to make a video and throw it on YouTube and see what happens, which we know isn t really effective. Can you talk a little bit about video strategies versus just making a video? Just like anything, it s important to think about the strategy behind it. It s amazing how often a client will come to us and one of the first questions we ask is why do you want to make a video? They might say something along the lines of, Well, we re really designing our website and the website design is set. It would be a good idea to put a video there or We have a screen in our entrance area and so we thought it would be cool to show a video. Now this may well be true but it s important to go a little bit deeper and actually start with a strategy, and the strategy is built around what is it that you want to achieve? There are so many different things that you can do and it s important to actually identify what that one thing is, like for instance, do you want to drive more traffic to your website? Do you want to convert more traffic? Do you want people to contact you by telephone? Do you want them to fill in a form? Do you want to educate people because once you ve actually decided what you want to do, that will affect the type of video that you re making. So a video for YouTube, which is mainly going to be about driving traffic to your website, it s going to be really different to a how to video or really different to a video on your websites about your capabilities or a customer testimonial video. So, the first step is actually think about what you want to achieve and then ask, Is video the best tool to achieve that? In many or most cases, video will be. There might be times where creating a brochure is going to actually solve that challenge better or if it s a highly technical complicated project, then you might as well be 9

10 that a PDF with diagrams is going to solve it. If it s about showing the personality of the business, if it s about the showing the type of products that you work with like the houses that you re selling then video is going to be great. That s the first step. The second thing is to think about video more as an ongoing process than a one off thing. In the early days of video production, people would commission one video which will be a general video which will tell the story of the business, the owners, and how it was started and why. It was just one video which would tell a general story. It s much more powerful now to use video as an ongoing dialogue or conversation. You might have one video for people who are coming to your site for the first time. You may then direct them to something like a customer testimonial or case study video which will help to deepen the relationship. Following that, you might send them regular news updates or information videos which will help to build the relationship, to build trust, and to demonstrate your expertise. So, start to think of video more as an ongoing process rather than just creating one video that you drop on your website or put on YouTube. That s great information. An example of what you were talking about, more than one video and following up with additional videos, that takes us into something a little more advanced which is automated follow-up. Now, there s non-automated and there s automated follow-up where in our industry, we have a very small window typically to make contact with and get something set up or actually get a business transaction set up with a prospect. For example, if I m a prospective home seller and I m just in a position where I need to sell my home now. It s this giant asset or liability probably because I m trying to sell it now. I need to do it 10

11 quickly. There is a lot of stress involved and I have this feeling of necessity. I have to get this done now. I might go online and start searching. So that window, once that prospect actually starts, that window is fairly small. I mean, days maybe a week or two, if they find someone, a business or an individual that they trust can get the job done and purchase their house or whatever they need done with it, they will most likely do business. So, we have that small window. What happens is, let s say the prospective home owner goes online and types in how to sell my house fast and city name. Maybe your website shows up if you have it ranked well from SEO or maybe a YouTube video shows up, it s one of your YouTube videos. They go look up the YouTube video or let s just say they end up on your website and there is an opt-in there, a name capture page. Here s why you should give me your address so I can help you or so I can give you a free report on the five biggest mistakes sellers make when trying to sell their home. Whatever it is, you capture that address. Now you can send them additional information. Can you talk a little bit more about how powerful that can be using video? Absolutely. Well, you mentioned the word trust which I think is key because if people come to you from a referral, that s one thing. If they find you on the internet, they don t know you. They don t know your background or your history and they don t know how great you actually are and so it s important to actually start to establish a relationship with them and have a dialogue. The great way of doing that is to use video. One way they may do that is do a search on YouTube and watch your video which will then drive them back to your website. 11

12 The first thing that you want to do is it s unlikely that you re going to sign them up at that point, so you re starting to have relationship and have a dialogue by sharing information. As you mentioned, there might be a step by step guide. It might be a PDF or it might be a video, and people need to sign up with it using their address. There are different lead capture tools that you can use. There are a couple that I really like, one of them is a tool called lead player. If you are using YouTube, you can use lead player which is a WordPress plug in which actually modifies the YouTube interface and adds a sign up box at the end or wherever you want it to appear on the video, so people need to actually add their address to watch the video or given the opportunity to enter their address to receive more information. So, they have watched the video, they really like it, and they are open to receiving more information, so you re starting the relationship. You can also do this with a video player called Wistia. Wistia is a similar idea but it s a private video hosting tool which has really good compression. It serves up the right quality of video depending on people s internet connection and it has a tool called turn style so you may give people the opportunity to watch the first minute of the video and then a box will pop up saying, Do you want to watch the rest of the video? Please enter your address or you can just encourage them to enter their address and they can skip that and they can continue, but by using these tools, you are going to get a whole lot more sign ups. So the first step is really using video as a lead capture tool. The next step is to use video for lead nurturing and a great way to do this is once you have signed people up, you can send them regular news updates about your industry and about the challenges that they are trying to solve. It may be videos about how to 12

13 prepare your house for sale, it may be about how to sell your house in the down market or what s selling your house in the spring market is like versus an autumn market, or some tips to inexpensively improve the quality of the house before sale. There is so much information that you can give your clients and these types of videos will mainly be based on the types of questions that your clients are regularly asking you. They will sign up for this video and they will be receiving weekly videos from you, which is showing your expertise, it s building your authority, it s showing your personality, and it s building the connection between you and your audience. That s the lead nurture tool. As they are watching these videos, they are getting to know you and they are saying, Oh gee, this person, he is an expert. He knows his stuff and he is sharing useful stuff. The final way that you can use video is as a conversion tool and again, you can use a tool like Wistia where once they have watched the video, you can click on the screen and it will drive them to either a contact page or a buy now button, or whatever the action is that you want to take, but you re basically turning video from this passive medium where people are sitting and watching from the start to the finish to a tool which helps move people from one step to another in that sales funnel. So those are some excellent tools that you just mentioned. In addition to that, I think you can do some even more advanced stuff and an example would be, let s just use Wistia as the example. I think there s a software that you can use in conjunction with Wistia. Let s say they didn t quite get to the end of the video where it forwarded them over to the opt-in page or where they enter their info or fill out a contact form. You could actually set it up in your system so if they didn t get that far, the system knows 13

14 and it might send them A that says, Hey, I noticed you didn t quite get to the end of the video where the super great info about x was. Go check it out here, and get them to go back and see the great nuggets that you have for them and maybe get another chance to have them submit their web form, or if they actually did complete the entire video, you can actually send them a different and you can actually set up triggers like that and more advanced things, correct? That s right. That s the next step which is automated video marketing using tools like Infusion Soft or Office Autopilot. There are other programs that you can use like AWeber or MailChimp Now, regardless of whether you re using these automated tools or not, the same principle still applies. So, we ve worked through this idea that in video marketing, it s a process people are going through a marketing funnel and you re sending them different information based on the point that they are at in the marketing funnel, and we talked about lead capture, lead nurture, and then conversion. It s all about having a relevant conversation with your prospect based on the point that they are at. The type of video that they are going to watch at the lead capture stage is usually more around general information that they are going to find useful. As they go through that funnel, it s more about giving proof, things like customer testimonial videos or case study videos, and more news updates to sort of give proof that you re the right person for them to buy from. Using something like Infusion Soft or Office Autopilot means that you re sending them a relevant video at the relevant stage that they are at in that funnel and these tools can actually track firstly where the people open their that you send them and then secondly, 14

15 you can track whether they watched the video, how much of the video they watched, how many times they have watched it, and are they part of the video that they have watched again, which gives you incredibly powerful information. For example, if you re in the lead nurturing phase and you send an to a prospect, then the next action that the software will trigger is have they watched the video? Like you mentioned, if they have, you can then take the next step, which maybe to contact them by phone. Now for your sales team, they are just going to have a much more powerful, more interesting, more relevant conversation if they know the videos that the prospects have watched and the other thing is that you can contact them in a timely way. If someone watches your video and you follow-up within a few hours, you re still top of mind. They have thought about the video that you have watched them. It s the right time to have that next conversation. As you can see, this type of video marketing gives you really powerful tools to follow up with prospects. That s excellent information and it makes great sense. So, your sales team or yourself if you were doing the follow ups via phone, you can get an notification. This person watched your video. Here s their contact info and you know exactly when they watched it so you can actually pick up the phone and call them. Hi, this is David. I m calling from company x and I saw that you just watched our video and filled up our form. I m just following up to answer any questions. I think that s very powerful because now you have that in common with them that they watched your video and you know they have watched your video. You have a topic to even open the discussion with, What did you think about this part in the video or whatever? I think that s very powerful. 15

16 It is. It s really powerful and it has helped us solve some of the challenges that I have in sales because in the past, I would often follow up with clients, What did you think of the quote? or We haven t spoken for a week or two. How is the process going? Is there anything that I can help you with? I can now follow up in a much more useful and interesting way because we can have a conversation about the topic but also, it s a conversation that s happening at the right time because it s when they are actually thinking about it. Excellent. One other thing that is worth mentioning on that is that you can set up these automated software programs to send an like you mentioned, if they don t watch the video so you may set it for, let s say, three days. If they haven t watched the video, you can send a reminder and by doing that, they are going to be far more likely to watch the video and move to the next stage of your marketing funnel. Just excellent. Let s talk about one more thing and that is, we ve talked about the different types of videos that we can do. Let s talk about videos not necessarily the still image type videos but more about, let s say, I wanted to create a video for either my About Us page or even my homepage, a video about our company and I wanted to make it a personalized video with just maybe me talking about some things. I know this is a topic, what I m going to ask you, we could talk about for hours or even days probably but if you could summarize, if I was newer at this, what are some of the equipment that I might need on a limited budget that I can actually put together a fairly decent video that isn t going to look terrible? What are some tips that you could give? 16

17 So there are two ways of doing this. One is to hire a production company to do it. The other way is to do it yourself and it s just a time versus money equation because it s like most skills. You can learn these skills and it s important to just decide whether the investment of time for you to do it yourself is going to outweigh paying someone to do it. If you decide to do this type of video yourself, then I would say the number one thing that you need to think about is sound. This is often overlooked and people tend to talk a lot about cameras and lighting, and that sort of thing but if the sound is no good, people aren t going to be able to hear what you re saying or it s going to be too distracting. Audiences are very fickle and they will move on so the first thing that I would encourage people to get is a decent microphone. You don t have to spend a lot on this. It s really just about getting a microphone, like a lapel microphone, which is a small microphone that you ll clip to your shirt or your jacket. You can even get lapel microphones which you can plug into your iphone and record it that way, but the most important principle is to get the microphone in nice and close to you. The biggest mistake that I see people make is they will set up a camera and the microphone will be on the camera, a few meters away from where they are sitting and the sound will just be horrible. You know the types of videos that I mean. Right. Get a decent microphone and if you just want to use your phone, if that s all that you have available, then you can get a microphone which you can just actually plug into your phone and you can record it that way. If you have a camcorder as most people do, then that s great. The key is to use what you have available. 17

18 There s no point in jumping and then spending large amounts of money before you know if this is an ongoing strategy, if you re going to be doing it yourself. That s the first that I would look at. The next step is to think about what you want to talk about and how you can add most value and how you can be engaging. So, come up with content that is going to be really interesting for people and then once you record it, have a look at it and in most cases, I would say just put it to the side and delete it and have another go at it because what you ll find if you re putting yourself in front of the camera and starting to record is you ll pick up all sorts of mannerisms or odd distracting things that you might do, and it takes practice. People on TV make it look really easy because they have practiced it and practiced it. Put in the time to practice it to come up with something that s going to be as powerful and engaging and professional as the rest of your content, as the rest of your corporate identity, websites, and brochures and cards, because the last thing that you want is to undermine the quality of your brand by producing substandard material. Great, that s a great viewpoint and people spend so much time and effort on making everything look pretty, their brochures, their signatures, everything they try to make it just look great to represent their business and then if they have this sketchy video that is done very cheaply and has terrible sound, you re absolutely right. It just drags down the entire image, so great points. Ryan, what s a great website where listeners can go check out some of your fantastic work? My website is dreamengine.com.au. We re a video production company in Melbourne, Australia. There are a lot of resources 18

19 there that people can use if you re creating your own videos. If you go over to the Resources Section, you ll find a whole lot of useful information on how to set up and light your videos, how to create content, how to create your own video marketing strategy. There s also a podcast that I have called the Web Video Marketing Show and there are a lot of useful information for people who want to create their own videos, and that s on the Dream Engine website as well. So I can find the podcast link on the Dream Engine site then? That s exactly right. If you go over to Dream Engine and click on resources, that s a great place to start and you will find the podcast there as well. Excellent. That s great information so I m actually going to put a link for the podcast version that s on the website. I will actually put a link to your site so if you re listening and you re on the website, go and look probably right underneath the right image here. Look underneath and you ll find a link to Ryan s website. You can go check out those videos, those resources, and everything else. I know I want to be over there looking at things because it s a great topic and it s very useful. Ryan, I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to share this great information with us. It has been very helpful and I appreciate it and I m sure the listeners appreciate it as well. Any last comments you would like to make about it? Thank you, David, and you know, we are still in the very, very early days of video and online video. There is going to be so much growth in this area and for the listener listening to this now, this is a great time to get involved because you re going to make a really good head start on your competitors, and there is a learning curve. 19

20 It does take time to learn and implement this stuff, so by getting started now, you are just going to be moving ahead of your competitors. So we re still, you d say pretty much in the infancy of online video marketing, correct? I believe so. I think when I go to YouTube and I look at some of the videos that are on people s websites, there is a level of quality and professionalism which is accepted in video. There are a lot of rough sort of average videos out there as opposed to something like design or websites or business cards where there is a level of quality that often video isn t reaching and my personal belief is over the next few years, that level of quality if just going to rise and rise, so by getting in now and practicing video, learning, and maybe making a few mistakes along the way, but each time you do it, your videos improve. Within a few years time, you re going to be making great quality TV style videos, which is really the future of video on the internet. So get involved now, start learning, start bringing in people to help you if you need to. It s still the early days. So you heard it right there from the expert. Dig into the video component and get busy because it s really going to help your business. You learn it now, start putting it to use whether you hire a production company to do it for you or start doing it yourself, get into video marketing because it s going to benefit your business long term and especially in the future. Again, Ryan, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it, excellent info. You re just to have a great knowledge and I appreciate your time and all of the information that you shared. Thank you so much, David, great talking to you. 20

21 All right, take care. [end of audio 38:58] 21