How To Use Video And Image Marketing To Generate Business - Part III, Featuring Shannon King, the Real Estate Road Warrior!

How To Use Video And Image Marketing To Generate Business - Part III, Featuring Shannon King, the Real Estate Road Warrior!

Hi Everyone!

Today I'm so honored to have my friend Shannon W. King co-write and participate in this blog with me.  Shannon shared with me one of the most innovative video branding ideas I've ever seen, and this idea will help you generate leads and create raving fans out of your clients. An idea so revolutionary and interesting that I've shared it everywhere I go, and I've asked her to describe it in the video below for us and while she's at it - share some of the ways she uses video in her business.

Shannon is the Real Estate Road Warrior, co-owner of Schoolhouse Realty in San Diego and Tribella Realty in Austin. She serves on national boards with NAR and the Young Professional's Network.  Shannon has successfully used video marketing in various aspects of her business to become one of the top agents in the country, and today she shares some of her video tips with you here on my Post. I've had a blast working with her on various projects with the Young Professionals Network, and I hope you find this last segment informative, creative and fun! I want to thank Shannon King for her time and ideas, as well as being one of the warmest and nicest individuals I've ever met! She's going to help me conclude Part III of my series on using video marketing to generate business, and share some video tips and tricks with us! 

So here we go!

How to get your clients to market for you - HINT:  You have to give them something they LOVE- Video          

Shannon pioneered the idea of involving your client in the process of searching for their home using a branded video camera.  When she feels the opportunity is right, she will buy a client a camera like the Kodak Zi8, and skin the camera with her brand or picture.  This makes the camera personalized and also makes it a branded tool she can give the client to be involved in the process of buying or selling the home.  We talked about it a little bit, and here's how Shannon described the process.

             

Q:  Shannon, could you describe how you thought of this concept and how it has helped grow your business?

Shannon:  We wanted to come up with a creative way to allow our clients to remember the homes we showed them, and we quickly realized that arming them with a video camera not only helped them do that but also turned into a source of video for our sites and business.  We asked the clients to take video  of the homes, but also to chronicle the experience of working with our team and giving us video testimonials that we could use for our website!  It was also a great way for the client to show the video of the home to their spouse if they couldn't make it.

Q: So the idea was to use video to assist the client, generate video content, testimonials, and sort of marry the client to you because nobody else was really doing this right?

Shannon:  Yes!  Then what happened is we came across sites like Skinit.com or Zagg.com, where you can personalize devices like your cell phone, and the idea of uploading our logo and creating a custom "skin" for these cameras was born!  We started "branding" the camera with our custom logo skin, which only costs about $20 bucks, and gave it to clients that we felt would take advantage of it.

Q:  I bet that made them pretty loyal huh?

Shannon:  Yes!  They were thrilled to have a camera of their own as a gift and a tool for them to chronicle their home buying experience with us, and also let us use some of the videos for our client testimonial section.  But something really unexpected and wonderful started happening from giving the video camera to them!

Q:  What was that?

Shannon:  Referrals!  They were so excited to get a camera, they would run out and tell their friends about it, and how they get to go out with us and shoot video. As you can imagine, anybody who talks about and shows the camera to their friends and co-workers will also talk about us, and this extends our brand and potential referrals.   So a simple $150 camera generates tremendous goodwill for us from the client, becomes a source of new testimonial video, and it also branded us to that client's sphere of influence, which can generate leads!

Q:  Now there's a ton of Zi8 fans out there, but can you do this with any camera?

Shannon:  Yes you can.  Any commonly sold, popular consumer video camera will have Skinit options for you to do this on.  We started doing this with another brand of camera early on, but switched to the Kodak Zi8 for a couple of reasons. One, it is a higher quality camera and less expensive, and two, it has the external mic jack.  A huge component of why we do this is to get their testimonials, and to really be able to hear what they say when they're doing a video overview of their homes for us.  So having that external mic really makes the audio rock!

Q:  Shannon, this is an amazing idea and it's so EASY.  Now, some agents I've told this idea to have said, "Great idea, but I can't see giving a $150 camera to everybody I work with..isn't that just too expensive?"  How would you respond to that?

Shannon:  You know, I don't give it just any client, only the ones that I think will use it.  But if you think about it, agents can easily spend $200 trying to get a listing, sending a run of post cards out to the zip code for that much or more and get absolutely nothing!  Or instead, when you show up to a listing or buyer appointment, you can incorporate this into your presentation. Sometimes, I bring one along, and if they decide to work with me, I'll conclude the appointment by telling them, "Here's a video camera for you to walk through your home because you know it intimately and you'll be able to tell me the best parts so that I can properly market your home."  What this does is enable them to be a part of the process and gives me something I can take back to use for my marketing. And most importantly, they love it!    

Q: Wow!  I think that would make you stand out just a little bit huh, and maybe win the listing?

Shannon:  Everything you can do to set yourself apart helps! This is one of the best ways to do this, and one of the many tools in our arsenal.  The ROI on this from a client satisfaction and word-of-mouth marketing perspective is really great.

 

 

So that's an amazing way of using a simple gift of a video camera to generate business for yourself, enable the power of "Sphere of Influence" marketing, combined with a steady stream of content for your video blog and client testimonials.  I asked Shannon to share with us some additional techniques for how to use video to increase your business:

1) Facebook - Tag your clients in the video or photos you take, and post it on Facebook.  Then link it to your site so they can comment on it and drive traffic to your site.  

2) Tweet about your videos - send people to your site to watch your latest video.  

3) Interview local restaurants, Interview the school principal etc.  Interviewing the people and places in the niche markets you serve creates items of interest that would appeal to your clientele, post it and tag it on Youtube and Facebook, and send it to your clients and prospects as they search on your MLS page.  Help them get to know the area they are looking in.  

4) Use local talent to shoot and edit the videos.  Sometimes we don't have the time to do all the video we want, so we use high school kids as unpaid interns to go shoot the videos of the areas for us.  It's cheap and saves a lot of time.

5) Create "bio" videos of the areas you serve, and let people know about who you are and why you are the expert! Post them and tag them on Facebook, Youtube, your blog, and your website.

6) Interview your past clients about the neighborhood, and what they love about it.  Post that on your blog.  It's a simultaneous client testimonial and neighborhood expert video, and shows your current clients and prospects how much expertise you have in the area, and really helps promote you too!

7) Give a camera to your listing clients too!  Let them walk around their home and video what they love, what is important to them, and this gives you a way to describe the home in the best light when you're coming up with your marketing text for the MLS.

8) Send a congratulatory video clip to your client when the transaction is done, congratulating them on buying or selling their home.  They send it to their friends, they love the memory it creates, and it becomes yet another way of driving traffic to you!

 

 

I want to thank Shannon for providing the ideas and content on this post.  Many of you in my previous blogs have shared your video, tips, and techniques and I think the best way we can contribute to agent learning is by having other people who are in the trenches with you selling real estate sharing their ideas and successes.  So we're proud and thankful to feature Shannon's content in our Sponsored Post today!

As always, please consider a Kodak video product like our Zi8 Camera if you're looking to implement these ideas, and you can visit Skinit.com or Zagg.com to make a quick skin for your Zi8 to try this great idea out!  The Zi8 is only $129.99 with free shipping in the continental USA through our store.  It makes a great gift and you get a very special 20% off discount on our other products as well with free shipping through our real estate store at  www.kodak.com/go/redeal.

I wanted to leave you with a video of Shannon King shot by an audience member at NAR Conference Live 2010.  Shannon is speaking at our Kodak booth in this video to a group of agents who stopped by to hear her mini-seminar.  Watch as she and Terri Murphy discuss these techniques and more on the NAR Expo floor, and Enjoy!

 

In addition to selling real estate, Shannon is also one of the most sought after speakers and voices for real estate with video and social media. Please visit her site at www.shannonwking.com or her real estate site www.schoolhouserealty.com or follow her on ActiveRain at www.activerain.com/sdseminars. In this special time of year, I wanted to also highlight her company's practice of giving 10% of their earnings to their local schools, and investing back into the community they serve.  I know so many of you do similar things in your neighborhoods, and it's really great!  Thanks to all of you who do so!