Planning: The First Aspect of Video Marketing
Nowadays, REALTORS® rely heavily on videos to create a buzz on their listings. And why not? Video marketing is a highly effective and efficient method of delivering your message to the world. Most people would rather watch a video than read text. In fact, all over the globe, people spend more than 6 billion hours watching online videos every month. That’s equivalent to almost an hour for each person in the planet. Another fun fact: video-sharing website YouTube is the second most used search engine behind only Google. (Google owns YouTube)
Integrating Video Marketing into the Internet
In this digital age, video marketing is time efficient and cost effective because uploading a promotional video in websites doesn’t take much time and is often free of charge. Traditionally, video marketing was used for television advertisements but by taking advantage of the Internet today, anyone can easily upload a video on Youtube and look for ways to make that video viral. Real Estate Agents can also buy ad spaces or simply post their video in their own website. It might all sound easy but video marketing isn’t just about uploading videos; there are 5 aspects of video marketing and they all require substantial amount of work. These are strategic planning, pre-production, production, post-production and distribution.
The Conceptual Stage
Video is an exciting marketing tool which can be used to convey a message that will most likely guarantee an emotional response from viewers. However, not all video content is appropriate for all kinds of audience. Before creating a video, strategic planning is crucial in order to clarify the objectives and set the stage on how the video is going to be developed. Prior to anything else, you must identify the purpose of the endeavor. What do you want to achieve? Pick one primary goal and generate a strategy from there. This will also help you decide on what your message is. The video should be tailored to communicate a clear and specific message to your viewers. A strong “for instance” is are trying to appeal to buyers or sellers? You would want to produce a different video for those two different audiences.
Define Your Audience
Carving out your core objective requires knowing who your target audience is first. Marketing campaigns often fail because they did not focus on their target viewers, hence their content seemed either irrelevant or too broad for them. Make sure that your goal is aligned with the most important people in your business: your prospective customers.
Building a buyer persona will simplify things for you. Determine the imaginary profiles of your customers by establishing their age, gender, income and preferences. By doing this you will narrow down their wants and needs and anticipate what kind of content will be suitable for them. Moreover, you can decide on what kind of platform you will use to deliver your video — YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, blogs or your own website.
Map Out Your Success
Planning also involves budgeting, deciding on the amount of money you want to invest on this endeavor. The budget you create will guide you throughout the whole process by determining what your limitations are.
Make sure that you also set a timeline and provide allowances to compensate for unforeseen events. In this stage, you should also pre-determine your distribution and marketing strategy. Remember, the best laid plans always look ahead.
