Episode Transcript
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the boat marketing podcast. My name is Kristen Bachmeier and I am the director of operations for Boat Marketing Pros, which is a digital agency that focuses only on marine and boating businesses. So today we’re going to talk a little bit about video walkthrough of boats. Should you do them? How do you do them? Why you should consider doing them. And a little bit of a few tips about how you can use them to cross-market throughout the digital realm.
So to kick things off. First, I want to get into a little bit of the why. So I think covid-19 really taught everybody a lot about tapping into technology to keep business going. Now, obviously, the boating industry was a little bit differently affected than other industries because we know that everything just kind of exploded last year. But that doesn’t mean that you should hold back on your marketing initiatives. And one of our biggest clients that we have there are boat dealership here in Fort Myers.
They had a lot of customers start to request video walk-throughs or virtual tours. I don’t think that that will just stay in 2020 and during this pandemic. I think that virtual walk-throughs, video walk-through, and just video tours of boats, kind of like houses will just continue to grow and if not, begin to become a key part of your marketing strategy. So diving into a little bit more of the why so with video walk-through is to give potential customers a virtual look at what to expect.
It’s convenient for them. It’s easy for them. And depending on where your business is, you might be able to tap into a seasonal audience that isn’t necessarily in your area all year long. So we are located in Fort Myers. Everybody around here knows that when the season comes, it’s between, say, October to April. So in those months between April and October, if you do a virtual walk-through, is you have a way to connect with your customers who might not physically be in your location.
Now, seasons vary from business to business, but you get a general idea. And in addition to giving customers that virtual look at what they can expect, you can use the video. To me, this is more important. You can use your video as a way to cross-promote on other channels. So if you take a video, walk-through of your top-selling model, you can take that video posted on your blog, posted somewhere on your website, put it on social media, put it on YouTube, and just adding that content kind of benefits you across the whole business, so those are the two big ways, obviously the first one, again, being giving customers a convenient way to look at boats that they might be interested in. And secondly, they help those videos can help you market your business online content already creating use it to continue marketing and just kind of repurpose that content. So now that we’ve covered the why, going into a little bit about what you’ll need to record the videos.
So. Typically, what I recommend is that, you know, if you’re comfortable doing this by yourself, you know, on your own, that’s fine. But typically the person that’s the best to record those videos would be one of your salespeople, preferably someone that’s really comfortable with recording, is really charismatic, enthusiastic, and is just clear that they love to connect with people and being on camera. So I think that type of person adds a little bit of dimension to the video and just makes it a little bit more fun, which will cause people to interact with that more.
Second. You’ll need a camera, typically a camera phone will work. So most of our clients have used just their iPhones or they have an Android phone. You know, the camera’s pretty good quality, so it’ll capture what you need it to capture. So any watchable video quality is enough. I don’t want you to get hung up on needing it to look like a professional production, because in the world of digital, especially in the world of social media, it’s you know, any video that you can post is just great content.
As long as you can see what’s going on in the video, you don’t want it to be super grainy, but as long as it’s, you know. Medium to high-quality video, you should be fine. The last thing that you’ll need is a popular bootmaker model, you don’t want to necessarily go through your entire lot and take a video walkthrough of every single one, but maybe find the top three to five brands that you carry and focus on maybe the newest model or the most popular seller or just one that’s going to generate a bit of interest, you know, outside of a single customer wanting to look at it, but maybe one that will be of interest to people browsing your website.
Or if it’s a top search model, it’ll help, you know, your organic search traffic. So that’s what you need to record the video and then we’ll get into the “what” now. We’re going to get into the house. So obviously, first tip, don’t hit record until you’re on the boat. Record horizontally if you can. So that means you hold your phone landscape mode. And the reason for this is everybody’s so used to just taking their phone, holding it the way they would just hold it normally taking a video or picture.
And that’s great for social media. But when it comes to posting this content on your website, if you can have a horizontal version of it, that’s going to be really helpful for your web design team or for yourself. If you’re updating it, it’s just good to have it. It’s good to have a horizontal version so you can use it on your site. If you have the time. If you have the resources, you know, you can record it both ways so that we can use the vertical one on your social media and then the horizontal one on your Web site.
But either one will really work. But horizontally is better for your website. Try to keep the video to 10 to 12 minutes any longer than that would probably cause users to lose a little bit of interest. You want to be detailed enough so the customer can get a good feel for the boat, but any longer than that could cause them to lose interest. And then typically, when you’re getting people, just general users on the Web or people using your website, watching videos any longer than that might cause them to exit a little bit early.
And if you’re comfortable with this, I don’t think every video should be marketing. Come down and see us come to you. Don’t want to be super silly all the time. But at the same time, at the end of the video, you probably want to include a call to action, such as call us that this phone number to learn more about this bow or to schedule a tour of other boat models like this, just something that gives the user an indication that you want them to do something.
And then during the video, make sure to cover the top features, so like maybe the engine that it uses, maybe the navigation system cooler in storage, you know what you can use that boat for, whether it’s fishing or water sports or just something that helps them, helps the customer or the user see themselves with their friends, with their family on that boat and how they might be able to have fun with it. So you want to make it a little bit and also personable but just help the user see themselves on that boat in the future.
A little bit of a bonus tip, so if you have your say, you have your video. It’s all done and you want to take it to the next level. What I would recommend doing is to get the video transcribed and then post it as a blog on your website. And the reason for this is that if you post a video on your site, that’s great. The more content you can have, the better. But if you add that extra level of getting it transcribed with the text, that helps your website get noticed more by Google and Bing, and other search engines because it’s able to read and index the actual content.
So we use the tool. It’s called rev dot com. So R E V as in “very” dot com where you can pay a small fee or think it’s at the time I’m recording. This may be a dollar per minute, but it’s really easy to upload your video. You get a transcript back and then you can use that in various marketing materials and especially helps the best of you. So that’s all I’ve got for today’s episode. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you in a couple of weeks for the next episode of the Boat Marketing podcast.
As always, feel free to drop us a line at a podcast at Marketing Pros Dotcom with any questions or anything you’d like us to cover in future episodes. Thanks. And Happy Boating.
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