Flick Quick Tips

Social Listening with Video

by Tim James

It is a well-known fact that video marketing is the most desired and powerful way to engage customers. There are many ways to use video to engage customers including explainer videos, video walkarounds of vehicles, live interactions, and more. Most of these are either customer-initiated engagements via a submitted form or an inquiry to dealers. A good best practice is to send all leads video introductions. But… what happens if they don’t respond to your video introduction? If you aren’t working with a technology provider that allows you to have real-time alerts when someone views your delivered videos, then you won’t know if or when the consumer opened it, and you won’t know when the best time to follow up with each individual is.

A friend of mine had an interesting experience recently that truly shows the power of video. They had purchased a Buick from a dealer that was one hundred miles away. The salesperson delivered the car to his house, it was after dark when it arrived and the salesperson did a poor job of explaining the features. Six months go by and the weather starts to get colder. The friend decided to tweet that he had just discovered (by accident) that the Buick had a heated steering wheel and he was excited! A local dealership replied to his tweet with a message along the lines of, “Isn’t that cool! Here is a video walkaround explaining all of the features you may not know your Buick has.” Even though he didn’t buy the car from them, eventually it will need to be serviced. Out of all of the competing dealerships that he COULD take his vehicle to for service, which one do you think will be top-of-mind? Now fast forward a few years when it is time to purchase another Buick. Who do you think my friend “likes” and “trusts” more, the Buick dealership 100 miles away, or the local dealership that went out of its way to assist him, even though he didn’t purchase from them?

According to this article, 96 percent of consumers have watched explainer videos with 7 out of 10 stating that the explainer video convinced them to buy that product or service.

How do you think this one dealership, out of the many in the United States, found this local person asking a question (or discovering a new feature in this case) and knew he was someone with whom they should interact? Everyone can access social platforms regardless of geography. All platforms use hashtags (in this case #Buick) to read and listen to conversations about those topics. Some can also filter hashtag conversations geographically. In this specific example, going above and beyond and simply replying to my friend’s posting with a video earned this dealership brownie points, and awareness and started a conversation that can lead to brand loyalty.

Imagine using the same hashtag and discovering a post on social media about a horrible experience a customer had at your competition? You could then respond with a personalized video to them, sympathizing with them about the experience and inviting them to your dealership, informing them that they will not have a repeat of that experience with you – that you will take care of them.

Video introductions result in increased response rates and additional engagement, and you start building a relationship between the salesperson and the customer that a text-only email cannot accomplish.

Being “aggressive” isn’t bad if you do it right – with the intent to “help” and not “sell.” The conversation should start around questions asked and include solutions to their problems. Not “buy from me,” but rather explainer videos that you’ve already made that can then be personalized for that person. Listening, caring, and helping are great. Combine that with video and you’ll hit a grand slam.

Posting videos on social media is a great way to have fun and get attention. But posting videos with a purpose will make you money.

The Right Way to Include CTAs in your Videos

By Tim James

Video marketing has come a long way over the last few years. However, an increasing number of dealerships are creating great video content but then wondering why it isn’t delivering the desired reaction it was created to achieve.

I get a lot of calls asking if I can provide some insight into why this great content sometimes seems to go unnoticed. More often than not, it is because the videos are missing one key fundamental element of marketing: a Call-to-Action (CTA). As with all your other marketing mediums, you can give a consumer information, but without having an effective call to action, it isn’t likely you will get the desired response you are looking for. And as with all your other marketing mediums, your CTA needs to clearly communicate not only HOW to take the action you want them to but also WHY they should. The fundamental rules of marketing do not change or cease to exist, just because you are delivering your message via a video. 

The problem with CTAs is that when they are included, too often the CTA fails to tell the customer exactly what they should do. Or, if it does, it is too late in the video to get the desired result. The oldest rule in marketing (which is still used today) is that a customer needs to hear (or see) that CTA at least three times before they can remember it. Think about the last radio, TV, or online commercial you saw or heard. How many times did the commercial display their website address and phone number while also telling you WHY you should act? If you don’t know off of the top of your head, go and watch or listen to a couple and count.

Next, your CTA should be memorable and convince a viewer that doing what the CTA suggests will benefit them. And remember to include it early enough to create action. You can’t just wait until the end of the video to ask a customer to take a certain action. You have to repeat it several times in the video to influence a customer. I’m not talking about interrupting your video message or making it intrusive. Let’s say that you are making a video walkaround of a vehicle for a customer. Many salespeople will only include a CTA at the very end, such as “Call me to make an appointment,” (or whatever). There are many more opportunities in these videos for CTAs. A salesperson has many opportunities to subtly include a CTA: “Mr./Mrs. Customer, this car is very clean. This video doesn’t do it justice but if you saw it in person, you would see for yourself.” Or something such as, “I can give you a virtual test drive. It’s not the same as driving it for yourself, but it will give you an idea of what it would be like.”

Little things like that interspersed into your videos can influence a customer to WANT to come in and see the vehicle in person. They end up KNOWING this is the vehicle for them. Even if it isn’t the exact vehicle that fits their needs, the bottom line is that you create an action and they come into your dealership. Then you have the opportunity to show them other vehicles that may fit their needs or that they like even better. And we all know that it is much easier to sell a vehicle to someone in person.

Start including multiple CTAs in your videos. Not outright sales pitches but ones that may influence a customer, pique their curiosity, and make them want to come to the dealership. Video marketing is a tool that engages a customer. You are too. By combining you and multiple CTAs into your video marketing strategy, you are more likely to get the customer to choose you, your vehicle, and your dealership and convert those customers into more sales.

Home is Where the Money Is

By Tim James

As we head into 2022, a dramatic shift has occurred in online consumer shopping behavior, according to an article in Forbes. While online shopping was growing, COVID hit, forcing an increasing number of consumers to do their shopping online. Shoppers started buying more than books, but necessities such as groceries, household goods (remember the toilet paper shortage), pet supplies, and more.

Due to the pandemic, for most everything a consumer needed, they looked online – and businesses had to adapt. Even big-time movie production companies changed strategies to online content. As consumers were so worried about being around others and as restrictions were in place, Warner Bros. teamed up with HBO to deliver first-run movies on HBOMaxx the same day as the official theatre release.

Another example is real estate. The most expensive purchase most consumers make in their lifetime. Due to Covid, people didn’t feel comfortable visiting multiple properties in person — so what happened? Real Estate Agents adopted video walkthroughs, drone footage, and more!

Let’s now talk about the second most expensive purchase that consumers make in their lives — vehicles. Videos are extremely valuable in the car-buying process. What do industry disrupters that operate completely online do? They use video to make the emotional attachment that is missing when a consumer can’t visit their lot! Through an aggregate of data on our platform, we’ve seen a huge spike in video usage by dealerships as well as a marked increase in consumer consumption. It’s convenient. It can be done remotely. It inspires significantly more emotion than photos alone, and consumers don’t have to visit multiple dealerships to buy a vehicle.

To create a great video experience that builds emotion in your shoppers it is important to include personalized videos to the customer as part of your video strategy. These can include “Why Buy from Us”, “Why Buy from Me”, or service-related videos. Selling yourself and your dealership along with your vehicle in your video presentations can build a solid trust relationship just as it does when the consumer is on your lot. People buy from people they like and a majority of all online auto shoppers are looking for a salesperson and a dealership they can trust – just as much as a vehicle to purchase. Use your vehicle video presentations as an opportunity to build that personal relationship as well. 

Next, focus on the data. Having the data necessary to continue interaction with a customer is imperative. The data you get from your online videos can continue engagement while informing your dealership that a customer is interested. Think about when an email is sent by a salesperson or BDC agent. Most are never responded to and in many dealerships, it is almost impossible to know if the customer has read those emails or not. If your dealership is using video in an attempt to engage customers and hosting them on sites that don’t provide individual viewer data, such as YouTube, the same result occurs. You’re shooting in the dark and don’t know if you’re hitting the target.

Consumers are getting more comfortable shopping from home, online. Escrow services are even paying notaries to travel to a customer’s house to get the paperwork signed to finalize the sale. Many dealerships are also offering this type of service. There are several ways to “complete” a sale nowadays, especially with the new digital retailing technologies now available.

That being said, no house can be sold, no car can be sold, nor any other high-ticket item, without the consumer being confident in their choice. They also need an emotional attachment to their planned purchase. Even comparatively low-priced items on Amazon have video descriptions and/or reviews and information about the product.

In 2022, resolve to incorporate more video into your marketing strategy and ensure you are hosting on a platform that provides actionable data from those videos. Then you can create a game plan not just for the dealership, but for each prospective buyer.

To your success in 2022 and beyond!

To Be Successful, Stop Over Talking About Yourself!

A very interesting article published by Entrepreneur shares an analogy about how marketing is a lot like dating. The article explains that marketing is essentially about building relationships with your consumer audience. Most people would agree that it is aggravating on a first date, or when meeting someone at a social gathering for the first time if the other party simply talks about themselves the entire time. This illustrates they only have an interest in themselves and none for you or anyone else in the group.

The same philosophy can be applied to marketing. A lot of marketing revolves around concepts such as “This is what makes my product great!” or “Buy My Product!” and many consumers tend to lose interest fast – exactly like you would on a date or in a group at a party. The key isn’t to start by giving shoppers a long list of all of your product’s features, but rather to have a benefits-focused message that gets them engaged and yearning to learn more.

While in today’s Covid-stricken world people are seeking interaction, we still want to buy the things we need or want. Wouldn’t your dealership want to satisfy both of those needs? In doing so, you create a bond between the consumer and your dealership that can last far beyond the pandemic. Consumers will absolutely remember those that take the time to recognize them as individuals and not just random wallets.

How can you do this? Video email/texting and live video communication and by using your past customers to “sell” your dealership to current shoppers with video testimonials.

Cell phones are pretty much stapled to everyone’s bodies. They are the first things many people look at when they wake up, checking them constantly for all communications. Emails are fine. Text messages are better. But video messages – including personalized videos; live-streaming videos; and other forms of communication that involve targeted one on one communication with another; trump everything. Can these types of communication be combined? Sure! You can send an email or text with a video message. You can live-stream with a consumer regardless of whether you can both see each other, or they can only see you.

Additionally, one of the best ways to sell your dealership’s value to your customers is through customer testimonial videos. These videos use customers that have already purchased from your store. They explain their great experience working with your dealership. Placing these on your website is an amazing way to let potential shoppers know that they can trust you.

Using personalized videos and live streaming to communicate with the consumer more ABOUT their needs than about yourself is gold right now. Don’t just talk to them about a vehicle, inspire trust in yourself and your dealership by taking the time to truly get to know each shopper. It should also remain gold post-pandemic as this is what consumers want. Canned and templated messages are no longer very productive (not that they ever really were.)

Find tools that can assist your dealership in easily creating personalized video messages and communications. By providing your salespeople and service advisors with tools that are easy to use employees will sell more cars and service advisors will find that service recommendations are accepted more easily.

Stop being “that guy” on that date who only talks about himself. You will get much more attention, interest, and interaction by being more interested in the other person.

Make Your Videos Talk, Even When They’re Silent

by Tim James

When it comes to marketing, video is the most effective, engaging, and preferred medium by consumers. Every social media platform has preached this for years and statistics support this fact. Streaming video is beginning to outperform cable and consumers increasingly choose video online over all other mediums.

There are ways to supercharge your video content by using the videos you are already making to further benefit your marketing strategy – specifically by adding subtitles to those videos.

According to an article on Marketing Week, adding subtitles to your videos produces multiple benefits. Similar to I-frame content or widgets added to your website, Google cannot always “read” video content when crawling your website, and so it has no benefit to search results. But Google (and other search engines) can read videos that have subtitles included. Why? Because by including the text, it transitions your unreadable video into a readable one. This adds incredible value to your video content from an SEO stance.

Have you ever scrolled through a social media platform, seen a video without the sound on, and kept scrolling? By adding subtitles to your video, consumers can not only watch the video but also see what you’re saying. The Marketing Week article shares statistics from Verizon stating that a full 50% of consumers watch video content with the sound off. This percentage increases to 69% when consumers watch a video in public. Subtitles allow those consumers to watch your video content and get the words, thus increasing the percentage of people who see and continue to engage with your video content by simply allowing them to absorb the content and keep engagement on their terms.

Google (and others) penalize websites that aren’t compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Many OEMs and website providers are also requiring ADA compliant videos and more are soon to follow. Plenty of car shoppers are hearing impaired and, while a video is great, if a potential car buyer can’t hear your video, it’s useless to them. By adding subtitles, those consumers will be more attracted to your dealership in the same way that having a salesperson that knows sign language, speaks Spanish, Korean or any other language makes those customers feel more at ease. Consumers feel more comfortable when dealerships (or any business) communicate with them on their terms.

While all of your videos should be ADA compliant, there are some videos that would benefit the most if they can be watched in any setting. Customer testimonials, value proposition, finance & service, FAQs, and other “Why Buy” videos all benefit by having great subtitles. If your shoppers are in a situation where they need to watch your videos without sound, these informative and emotion-inducing videos must have subtitles so they can still make an impact no matter the setting.

Competition between dealerships for consumers is hyper-competitive from acquisition to retention to brand loyalty. Anything you can add to your arsenal gives you an advantage over your rivals. Making your videos ADA compliant and available to watch in any setting gives you an edge over dealerships whose videos can’t evoke emotion or transfer information when customers have to watch silently.

Consider adding subtitles to your dealership’s video experience so your videos stand out and shout even when they’re silent.

Live Video Calling: Carvana’s Kryptonite

Video marketing has been a growing focus in nearly every industry for over a decade. But during the past year-and-a-half, due to a majority of business moving to virtual, video use at dealerships has exploded. While covid-related restrictions have started to ease in recent months, video has taken root and continued to be an essential tool to help sell more cars. This is because not all consumers are ready to venture out, or they recognize the convenience of an online car buying experience.

At the same time, the used car market is exploding, forcing dealers to increase prices on their lots, with few new vehicles to sell because of chip and parts shortages.

As Carvana and other disrupters are making a play to capture even more market share by running anti-dealership campaigns while willing to lose money buying vehicles high and selling them low, consumers are gravitating towards them.

There is a way, however, to overcome the marketing tactics that these online retailers are pushing so heavily: live video calling. The ability to follow up with your leads with a live video call humanizes your dealership. It gives a face and personality to your sales staff that builds the valuable trust relationship that these companies are trying so hard to break.

While vehicle description pages exist, there is no emotion for a consumer to connect with when they look at text on a screen. Your shoppers will almost assuredly seek more information, while also trying to decide if your dealership is a place that they want to do business with. Through live video calling, your salespeople can connect with their customers, show them the vehicle live and answer any of their questions in real-time.

It does not matter if the live video call is one-sided (where the consumer sees you, but you can’t see them) or two-sided (like a Facebook Live video call). You can build rapport with a customer through a live call, show them the vehicle they expressed interest in and reassure them that YOUR DEALERSHIP will be there for them for whatever they need during the car buying cycle.

As the market continues to lean more and more to the digital side, both dealerships and these industry disruptors will continue getting online leads. The good news is your dealership can still have an advantage over these online companies. Through live video calling, you can prove that you are a business that can still be trusted… much more than any multi-story “car vending machine” can.

Three Tips for Great Live Video Conversations with Customers

By: Tim James

During these times, consumers are becoming more comfortable with online transactions and are much savvier about how they chose to communicate with businesses. As a result, dealers are having to utilize technologies they may not have previously embraced

Video, in and of itself, has proven to be a necessity for successful marketing for dealers. In today’s world, live video is even more important. But not everybody does it as well as they could!

A great article on Business2Community lays out some simple best practices dealerships can use while performing a live video for a prospective car buyer. These tips are great for salespeople or BDC agents who communicate with your customers.

Here are three of the top tips:

Pause! –  When you are having a conversation with someone and they do all the talking – that quickly gets old, right? A one-sided conversation is not something many people enjoy which leads to the first tip in the article, Pause!

You have the customer’s attention. You have them on a live stream and, just like selling a car in person, you need to listen to their needs and wants. You have to listen to tailor that walkaround and your conversation to supply the information they requested. Listening is also how you find out what is important to them so that you can tailor your conversation to that specific customer.

It is much more effective to listen to your customers, answer their questions, and proceed to the sale than to dominate the conversation. Take a breath. Don’t worry about the uncomfortable pause. As long as the customer is still with you, you don’t need to fill the gap with conversation. They may be digesting what you have already told them and considering their next questions. If they don’t ask any questions, you can easily prompt them by saying something along the lines of, “Should I proceed with the other features I was going to show you or did you have specific things you would like to see?” — just like you would if they were physically on your lot.

Engage – The customer didn’t agree to a live video engagement because they weren’t interested in the vehicle. The very reason that they are on a live video call with you is that they are VERY low funnel and in the market RIGHT NOW! Think about all the Internet leads your dealership gets and how hard it is to contact the majority of these opportunities. Here you not only have a customer that engaged with you but one that agreed (or requested) to do a live video call about a specific vehicle.

Perhaps something about the vehicle which they inquired about doesn’t suit their needs. Since you have them live, you can easily ask them if you could show them similar vehicles you have in stock and, essentially, show them multiple vehicles.

What’s the other option? The customer doesn’t like the one you showed them and disengages simply to move on to the next dealership. Don’t waste the opportunity to show them more inventory. You only need to ask them — just like you would if they were physically on your lot.

Eye Contact – While you may not be able to see the customer, the customer can see you. If you aren’t looking into the camera while engaging, you lose the opportunity to build rapport. Most of our communication is physical. We typically read expressions and interpret answers by how someone is looking and/or physically gesturing. In a live video, the customer can see you. By making eye contact with them, it is much more personal.

How do you do that? By looking into the camera, itself. Not just at the phone. You can practice with another salesperson beforehand to get the hang of it. When you are talking to the customer, look directly into the camera. To them, it will seem as if you are talking to them rather than seeing your eyes focused elsewhere.  — just like you would if they were physically on your lot.

Bonus Tip:

Smile – There’s magic in your smile and smiling while engaging in a video call can be one of the most important strategies for success. Smiling while on the video call will not only help you relax and improve your mood and energy, it will also help the consumer relax.  Remember, it’s not only “what you say,” but “how you say it” that matters. The video call is your opportunity to build a personal relationship with the consumer and get them to truly like you. We all know that people buy from people they like, and a simple smile while engaging the consumer is scientifically proven to improve your chances of being liked — just like you would if they were physically on your lot.  

Live video has never been more important in the sales world. Buying a car is a big decision for most customers, typically the second-largest purchase any consumer makes. Regardless of whether you are open for business completely, or only online, consumers are getting more comfortable with online shopping. If you are a veteran in the automotive industry, think about how different your communication strategy was in 2010 versus 2020.  Now imagine how different it will be in 2030. Trust me, the next ten years are going to fly by, so make sure you stay ahead of the competition and are prepared for the acceleration and adoption of this technology by consumers. Great conversations certainly lead to more sales. And live video is a highly effective way to have great conversations with your customers.

How to Maximize the SEO Value of Website Videos

Tim James, COO of Flick Fusion, shares tips on how to maximize the SEO value of your video content.

 

Flick Fusion Video Marketing is a pioneering video technology company, specializing in creating, managing, and distributing dynamic and cost-effective online and mobile video products on the world’s largest content delivery network. Each video is designed to help our clients reach and engage their customers with richer content and greater impact that results in increased sales and ROI. Data, photos, inventory, audio, music, and special offers are automatically combined to create compelling multimedia video solutions that are fast, easy, and affordable.