Video Marketing Best Practices in 2015

People all over the world are consuming and sharing videos on a daily basis, not just YouTube videos but now also Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitter videos. All of the major social media platforms are actively seeking to make videos an important part of their platform, and as a marketer you simply cannot ignore this. One third of all online activity is spent watching videos, according to Digital Sherpa’s 25 Amazing Video Marketing Statistics. What’s more, video increases peoples’ understanding of your product or service by a whopping 74%, making marketing videos an excellent tool for presenting new products and services and showcasing them in action.

Video marketing should be a key component of your online marketing strategy. To inspire you with your video marketing campaign, here is a set of best practices which will make your efforts more effective.

Create a realistic video marketing strategy

You need a long-term objective and short-term goals, as well as to decide how the video will try to attract and engage customers. Also, you must decide what sort of action the viewer should be encouraged to take after watching the video, whether it is to buy, join you on social media, or visit your website.

Target a specific audience

Marketing videos are more effective when they provide a relevant experience to a certain group of consumers, whether it’s young mothers, middle-aged men, hockey lovers, or home gardening enthusiasts. The targeting can be further narrowed down to members of a group who meet certain criteria based on age, education, and income level.

Keep your videos short

There is no consensus on the ideal length of marketing videos, but judging from the length of the most popular videos on each networks, as well as by Adweek, it seems that the most popular YouTube videos are under three minutes, while popular Instagram videos are just 15 seconds long. You can always experiment with the length of your videos to see what works best for your brand, but as a rule, keep them short.

Choose topics that are bound to attract interest and create engagement

People are most interested in videos that answer one or more questions they may have about your brand or your products & services or that highlights a problem your business can solve for them.

Don’t overproduce videos

Making videos that look too professional can actually make them less personal and give them a corporate tone that alienates users. Many of the most popular YouTube videos have low production costs, often being filmed with everyday cameras and smartphones.

Embed text in videos

Use a catching and relevant title frame and add keywords and phrases over images, as well as a call-to-action link at the end of the video. Text makes videos more engaging and helps convey your message better, especially on Facebook, where videos in the news feed are auto-played on mute.

Optimize videos for search engines

Don’t forget that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. Use a well-chosen keyword in the title, description, and tag, as well as in the video description. These make a video easier to find online and ranks it higher in the search results.

Upload the video to each social network, instead of sharing the YouTube link

This reduces the number of clicks viewers have to make before playing your video, and also eliminates occasional playback issues.

Be productive.

Brands that successfully harness the power of video marketing have 50% more videos per channel than the rest.

Use video analytics to measure your video marketing performance

Many video-based social networks offer you built-in tools for tracking viewing patterns for your videos. More advanced analytics available as standalone Web-based software or downloadable software also feature video marketing tracking tools.

Video marketing has become highly competitive, but if you stick to the best practices described above and strive to create interesting, informative, or entertaining videos that engage your audience, your video marketing efforts will be rewarded with views, shares, traffic, and ultimately, sales.

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Shop Fitting Skills – What Makes a Good Shopfitter?

If you are going to work with a shopfitter, then it will do you good to understand the general skills a good shopfitter will have.

The largest aspect of shop fitting is project management. This comprises of three main areas; deliverables, the budget and a timescale.

The deliverables – usually made up of a specification which details exactly what work needs to be carried out. This should be as specific as possible detailing each phase of the shop fitting process.

The budget - speaks for itself! This specifies how much each aspect of the shop fit out will cost. Ideally broken down to show shopfitter labour, material costs, shop display fittings cost, etc.

The timescale – specifies the duration of each phase and the completion date.

The entire shopfitter process will be a compromise on each of these.

Design – CAD design allowing you to visualise the layout of your shop early on with your shopfitter. Planning and designing the shop layout early prevents expensive shop alterations later.

Joinery – nearly all shopfitters will have skilled joiners and a joinery as part of their work shop. Either to manufacture bespoke furniture, shop display units and shop counters, or to fit equipment in the shop.

Metal work – used in a similar fashion as the joinery, only in metal. For example specialist staircases within shops.

Electrical and plumbing – this may be something that a shopfitter will subcontract out to local plumbers and electricians. Only larger shop fitting companies are likely to have in house plumbers and electricians.

Signage – it is important that the shopfitter has the capability to produce good quality signage for your shopfront. This is what will draw passing customers in, so it should be good!

Security – the nature of your shop will dictate the amount of resources you will dedicate to security. If you have a jewellery shop then you’ll need a secure shopfront. If your shop sells vegetables then shop security will be less of a priority.

Maintenance – a lot of shopfitters will also carry out maintenance works, both internally and to the exterior of your shop. you should keep on top of this. A poorly maintained shop looks tatty and small maintenance works when left develop in large maintenance works, which will cost you more!

Shop fittings – your shopfitter will be able to fit any shop fittings you have. They may also be able to purchase them for you. Sometimes shopfitters have deals setup with display shop fittings companies which allow them to purchase at reduced prices.

These are the core trades and skills that are utilised by shopfitters. As you go into more specialist types of shops then of course more skills are required!

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Investment Real Estate Marketing Plan – Putting Details Into Action

Marketing is one of the most important things a real estate investor can do to grow his business. It is also one of the areas that is easiest to make multiple mistakes. From failing to properly plan, failure to track your results and even worse, failure to control spending; marketing is fraught perils that beginning investors and long time investors alike must be aware and prepared to avoid.There are 3 main areas of marketing to concentrate on when seeking to grow sales and revenues. The first is education, the second is planning and the third is tracking for adjustments and success. All three are important for investors to watch as they seek to grow sales and revenues and more importantly, build a business model that is sustainable through any real estate cycle.EDUCATIONEducating yourself as a real estate investor and marketer is absolutely paramount if you are going to have success and grow your business. There is simply no excuse for not understanding the basics of each as they both are extremely important for the longevity and ability to stay relevant and profitable. Here a few examples of places to become educated on good marketing techniques for real estate investors.1. Local Library – There may not be a better place to become educated on real estate marketing than the local library. Break the topic down into two subjects and you can have the basics down inside of a week. Under the real estate section there are multiple titles that explain the basics of real estate investing from beginner levels to expert levels. In addition, many of these books will give a basic outline of some simple marketing techniques and tools to get you started. When you combine that knowledge with a good Marketing 101 book from the library, you can quickly pick up the basic outline of why marketing must be done and how properly set up a marketing plan. The best part about an education from the library is the cost – practically free!2. Real Estate Investment Clubs – Often times, these clubs are referred to in the industry as REIA’s. Associations of local real estate investors who come together several times a month to discuss topics relevant to real estate investing. These are great sources for so many things related to real estate investing, including marketing ideas and plans. By attending and immersing yourself into these groups, it is easy to develop friendships, partnerships and even mentors who can answer questions and provide guidance. By paying attention to what the top performers are doing in the field and how they are marketing their businesses, you can pick up ideas and integrate those ideas into your marketing plan. It is called modeling and it is one of the best ways to educate yourself on what is working in a particular real estate market. The biggest upside to becoming educated at a REIA is that you are surrounding yourself with the type of people that are going to be vital to your future success. The costs are usually very affordable and you can often avoid mistakes made by other investors before you.3. Go it Alone – There probably does not need to be a tremendous amount of discussion under this heading. It speaks for itself and generally goes against all advice I could ever give any business person, especially a real estate investor. As far as education is concerned, it is an approach that many investors choose to take and often at a tremendous cost. Going it alone means deciding to jump into the deep end of the pool with both feet and learning as you go. Trial and error can be good and can sometimes lead to good results, but often after many hours and many ups and downs. Strictly looking at costs, many investors have experienced huge losses in the areas of marketing to learn what works in their particular market and often are a little behind the actual trends due to not properly learning to track and adjust.My suggestion when it comes to education to use all the resources available including those that come with little to no costs. When you are becoming educated on how to set up a proper marketing plan complete with tracking and adjusting, then I would make sure I was a part of a local real estate investors association so that I am always up to date with the latest marketing techniques.PLANNINGWhen I talk about planning and marketing, I mean to process of laying out the actual strategies you are going to use to market your business, the time frame you are going to use those strategies, the way you are going to track those results and the possible adjustments you are going to make as your results come in on your plan. One of the biggest mistakes that we see today in the real estate marketing world is not a complete failure to plan, but a failure to lay the full plan out from beginning to end. That being said, here are a few tips to properly develop a plan.1. Know what you are currently doing and what results you are currently achieving. Even if the answer is that you are doing nothing, you can not work on where you are going if you do not know where you currently are starting from. You should be able to pinpoint today any marketing you are doing and the cost of that marketing as well as any results you are seeing.2. Know what results you are looking for before you begin. So once you know where you are starting from, the next question is were are you going? Lay out concrete results you want to achieve and be specific. One of the glaring mistakes in this area is not being specific enough. You cannot track abstract goals. Your goals must be specific and detailed so that you can verify if you are achieving them. An example would be a specific number of new leads you want to bring in from each marketing source.3. Give yourself set time frames to test your marketing. This is definitely the second biggest problem for real estate marketers and most marketers in general. Marketing plans must be given time to take shape and develop. Most real estate marketers are developing marketing plans which are call to action in nature. They are asking their target audience to take a particular action so that they can capture that action and develop a new lead. An example would be to “Call Today to Sell Your House Quick!”. This is a call to action marketing phrase. Often times, there will need to be multiple impressions of that message before the action is followed. Failing to plan a specific amount of time such as 60 days or 90 days, leads to a marketer stopping his action before his target audience responds. If you allow your plan to last longer and stick with all of your marketing pieces and techniques longer, you give yourself a greater chance for success in the long run. It allows for you to see over a longer period of time the results you are getting and that provides a clearer picture of what works and what does not work. DO NOT quit marketing after a couple of weeks simply because your phone is not ringing off the hook. Set your time period on the front end and then let your marketing plan work.4. Failing to get input from other experts can be costly. If you have access to other real estate investors, I would definitely get their input on your marketing plan before implementation. If they are able to give you advice and direction it can often times help you to figure out the best route to take or at least if you are on track for success. If you have taken your time and all the steps necessary so far to put together a quality plan, then take advice from other experts, but do not be persuaded to change everything. Simply let others take a quick look for feedback, but be prepared to move forward with your plan and any adjustments they think would make a difference.TRACKINGTracking means having a way to actually follow and measure all of the marketing activities you are doing and the number of results each gets you. Here are some examples of the things that real estate marketers need to track for every marketing action they take.1. What are the total number of leads generated per marketing technique tracked daily, weekly and monthly.
2. How many of those leads turned into qualified prospects daily, weekly and monthly. (qualified prospect means you were willing to invest more time to develop the lead)
3. The number of offers made to purchase property daily, weekly and monthly.
4. The ratios of offers made to where the original lead came from.I am going to insert a quick note here to make sure everyone understands exactly how to track. It is not enough to simply know how many calls you are getting or how many leads are generated or how many offers or deals are being done. When you actually purchase an investment property, you MUST know where that lead came from at the very beginning. Tracking ratios is extremely important to this. It is important to be able to track and measure not only the leads but the quality of those leads. You can have one lead generator that gives you a majority of your leads and another that gives you a majority of your transactions. It should be obvious that you would want to spend more time and resources with the marketing technique giving your more transactions unless you are in the business to simply feel busy and not necessarily to earn a living!5. What is the cost per lead generated, per marketing technique daily, weekly and monthly.6. What is the average income generated from each transaction generated by each marketing technique daily, weekly and monthly.When you are able to track your business in this way, it makes it much easier to make adjustments as you go and it definitely gives a clearer picture of how well you are spending marketing dollars. Often times, as legendary basketball coach John Wooden would say “we mistake activity for productivity” The entire reason for developing and implementing a proper marketing plan is so that we can determine what works, what does not work and what changes we need to make so that we are spending the fewest dollars possible for the greatest impact and result. If we fail to implement any part of this type of marketing plan, then whatever success we achieve cannot be measured against any activities and therefore cannot be duplicated.I am a big proponent of education and immersion as the best learning tools available and I believe that when it comes to marketing, it is simply too easy to learn the proper way to plan and track. When you have the basics down and solid plan to follow, success will follow.

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