Lights. Camera. Action.
The thought of video marketing can be a bit overwhelming for financial advisors. Where do you even start?
Here are our top five secrets for financial advisors who are looking for successful video marketing.
1. Adults are like goldfish
The average adult attention span is about 8 seconds. This means you have 8 seconds to capture the attention of the person watching your video, before they decide to move on to the next thing.
With this in mind, keep your video short, engaging, and on-point.
Depending on the video as to how long it should be; most videos should remain under 90 seconds, however, if it’s extremely detailed it is okay for it to be longer.
If you’re creating a video about retirement planning, make sure it’s kept on topic and don’t deviate.
Video secret: Keep each video under 90 seconds and on one topic.
2. Start with the good stuff
It’s normal for the viewership to start strong and dwindle off. This is because people get bored or distracted easily. Because of this, start with the good stuff. Have the most interesting part of the video first to help guarantee that it will be watched.
If you’ve ever watched a recipe video you’ll notice they always start by showing you the finished product. It’s a trick of the trade to keep you captivated as you know where it’s going because you’ve already seen the goods.
The longer the video, the higher the engagement loss. Source: Wistia
Video secret: Have your key information at the beginning of the video
3. More than just a pretty face
It’s recommended for you to feature in your own videos. It’s important for the viewer to build rapport with you. But, no one wants to watch someone speaking for long periods of time. This is why it’s good to include alternate imagery, graphics or animations in your video.
Not only can you support your messaging through images or graphs, but it also helps keep the viewer engaged in the video.
Supporting imagery doesn’t always have to be fancy, but simple photos, animations, graphs/tables, text headers, or anything at all to support what you’re saying.
Video secret: Keep your audience engaged by using supporting imagery.
| Side benefit: videos can help put your prospects at ease as they develop a sense of comfort before they even meet you. |
4. Don’t wing it
Keeping in mind that you don’t have long to capture attention and you want the good stuff first, you don’t want to wing your video. It’s best to write then follow a script (however, you don’t want to appear that you’re reading a script).
By writing a script first it’ll help keep your video on point and give you the ability to prioritize your messaging.
If you need help writing a video script, here are some key points to follow:
- Write an outline; start by listing some bullet points of what you want to talk about.
- Write an introduction that sets up the rest of the video.
- Turn the bullet points into sentences in a conversational manner (writing and speaking can use different nuances).
- Time yourself reading it slowly.
- Edit, tweak and refine to make it sharp.
- Think about where you can use supporting images, graphs, etc (see point #3).
For those who require compliance approval, it’s recommended to send your script to compliance before filming. This will hopefully mean your final video will be approved with no edits so you don’t need to re-film.
Video secret: Use a script.
| Tip: don’t forget to practice and read your script out loud… most people write differently to how they speak, so you want to make sure it’s conversational. |
5. It’s a production
The production quality is often overlooked. Sure, you can film and edit on your iPhone, but the audio quality and final production output might not be very good.
There are some really great programs available for editing your video.
Free: DaVinci Resolve 16. To download, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to find the download button.
If you have an Adobe account or want to pay for a program, then you can’t look past Adobe PremierePro.
| Tip: If you’ve never edited videos before, don’t fret. It’s a skill that is easy enough to learn by watching tutorials on YouTube. You can type anything into YouTube and include the name of the editing program to receive tailored training videos, for example, ‘how to add backing music in Da Vinci Resolve’. |
Video secret: Make it look professional.
Once you have your completed videos, you’re able to use them on your website, social media channels, and provide links to them in your emails. You should leverage them wherever you can.
We hope our top 5 secrets for financial advisors provide you with some inspiration to kickstart your confidence with video marketing. Video marketing doesn’t have to be hard, but it has to be professional, short and straight to the point.
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