I work with one of the biggest names in the home inspector marketing coaching arena, a guy by the name of Mr. Ken Compton, owner of Home Inspector Startup and Growth!
Since implementing a YouTube marketing strategy into his marketing plan, he has managed to get even more exposure to both his Atlanta home inspection website, and his coaching website for inspectors. I’m not talking about a few hundred eyeballs… I’m talking about tens of thousands of people!
YouTube is a site where you can watch pretty much any type of video imaginable. You can see videos of teens pulling pranks, people singing their favorite songs, and senseless people doing some really stupid things. In addition to those, you’re starting to now see small, medium and large sized businesses using YouTube to promote their products and services.
It costs you nothing to setup an account with YouTube and it costs you nothing to post videos via your account either. The only cost you have is shooting and editing the video, which takes only a few minutes of your time!
Without going into all the boring details about how YouTube works, let me spend the next few minutes showing you examples of how powerful YouTube marketing can be for your home inspection business!
Post Videos of Unusual Home Inspection Findings:
For whatever reason, people seem to enjoy watching videos of problematic stuff. Plus, you get the added benefit of using this time to convince the viewers that you are the “local expert” when it comes to home inspections in your area.
For example, this video from one of Ken Compton’s recent inspections was viewed nearly 24,000 times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JXL7I8Acpo
24,000 people were exposed to Ken’s company and it didn’t cost Ken one penny. In a sense, YouTube works like a search engine — the only way this video shows up is if someone types in a series of keywords/phrases related to Atlanta Home Inspections or Atlanta Plumbers…
Not only that… all of this ‘targeted’ traffic was totally FREE! Each of Ken’s inspectors are armed with a flip video camera and when they come across unusual findings during their routine inspections, they’re instructed to pull out the camera and spend 1-3 minutes outlining what they’re looking at, while explaining how this could pose a problem if undiscovered!
You can then take these videos and embed them into your website so visitors and prospects can see what they’re getting themselves into if the thought of not getting an inspector ever crossed their minds!
This is your chance to establish yourself as the local expert when it comes to home inspections in your area! Chances are… your competitors aren’t using this strategy!
Customer Testimonials from Home Inspection Clients:
This is also a great opportunity to pull out the camera and get a video testimonial from the client. You can take this testimonial and upload it to YouTube and put it onto your website as well!
It’s one thing to say how great your services are… but it’s another thing when you have 30-50 clients saying it for you.
Here’s an example of a testimonial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wziZeqSGYUY
Building Brand Awareness Locally:
I know… branding doesn’t make you money immediately, but if used properly, it can ensure you make money for many, many years!
Here’s what I mean… if you took the time to have a professionally created video made, outlining “why a person needs a home inspection”, and you take the time to briefly walk through a house pointing out some of the things a routine inspection covers….” then you can take that video, package it up in such a way that you can e-mail it to all the real estate agents in your area, instructing them to add it to their website for their clients to look at!
You’re now positioning yourself as a ‘publisher of information’ and you can send these video links to all of your referral sources; so they, in turn, can pass them on to their clients who may have questions/concerns about the inspection process.
If you have a script idea that you want recorded, keep in mind that we can professionally shoot your video here in our facilities and add it to your website for you. You don’t even need to be here!
Go Direct to the Public…
Websites like YouTube allow you to go direct to the public and put your best pitch forward. No more NBC, CBS or ABC… This is the YOU network and this medium allows YOU to access the public directly and without restriction.
In the example videos above, people searched the net and came across those videos. The key to Internet Marketing is positioning your company to be out there so that when people start searching for the services you offer… YOU come up! And video is quickly becoming the media of choice on the Internet.
A Few Tips for YouTube Marketing:
- Don’t try and sell your services in the video. Simply present the problem, agitate the problem, and provide a solution. At the extreme end of the video, simply mention… “If you or someone you know is in need of a home inspector, visit our website at www.your-site-name.com, or give us a call at….”.
- Tag the bottom of your videos with your website address throughout. This allows the user to know how to get to your website.
- Leave a link to your website in the description portion where you outline what the video is about.
- Use keywords/phrases in your headline and the description. Make sure it’s relevant and don’t try to stuff a ton of keywords into the “tags”. Ideally, keep it down to maybe 3-4 keywords/phrases.
- Keep it short and to the point.. don’t go off on a wild tangent.
- Be yourself and have fun… Don’t worry about trying to create a Hollywood production. People respond more to ‘real people’.
That’s it for now… and I hope this has been helpful.
We do offer a YouTube Marketing package where we’ll create you an account with YouTube and some of the other well known video directories. Once these accounts are setup, we’ll take your videos and upload them to the various directories as well.
If you don’t have videos…. we can also take your photos and create a video slide show and upload these to the video directories!
If you’re interested, shoot an e-mail to:
thenetsavvyinspector@gmail.com