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When running and growing your own firm as an independent financial advisor, regularly communicating with your contacts is important. Building and maintaining relationships with your clients, prospects, centers of influence, and even your team requires a personal touch that is challenging to do at scale. This is where video messaging using simple, free or low-cost technology helps.
Sending quick video messages is an effective way to stay top of mind and regularly remind your connections that you are a resource they can count on and trust. You can provide updates, insights, news, and recommendations, as well as check in or ask for feedback in a personalized way. Seeing your face as you deliver your message fosters familiarity in a way that words on a screen can’t.
Here are some tips and tools to get started today.
Video messaging tips for advisors
While video messaging is a simple tactic that financial advisors can pick up with ease, there are some pitfalls you’ll want to avoid and best practices for making things go smoothly.
Keep the content concise and videos short
Always assume your audience is busy, so get straight to the point. The idea is to send quick video messages at regular intervals, not deliver drawn-out speeches or cover a long list of topics. Think through what you will say in advance, and make notes if you need them. Say what you need to say and sign off.
Make it casual, but not unprofessional
The video’s tone can be casual and friendly, as if you are meeting with the viewer one-on-one. As with all your business communications, keep the tone and content aligned with your brand and be sure to maintain your professionalism. Remember, a recorded message isn’t the place for commentary that could be misconstrued out of context or paint you in a negative light.
Record it multiple times
If you don’t get it right on the first take, try again. The video does not need to be perfectly polished, but you always want to make a positive impression. Play the recording back for yourself. If you notice that you’re rambling or coming across as less than confident, start over. When you start, you may need to record videos two or three times until you are satisfied, but it will become easier as you practice and gain confidence.
Batch evergreen content
Batch videos if you worry that creating them will take up too much of your time. Batching is a productivity technique where you create a number of videos at once in advance of needing them. This means you can figure out the topics you’ll want to cover over the next month or several months and record all of the videos at one time. Another approach is to record videos on a regular basis but keep an extra batch of video messages on-hand for busy periods or when you don’t have anything timely to communicate.
Helpful tools for recording and sharing video messages
Technology has come a long way in the past decade. You can record and share high-quality videos easily using your screen and webcam and a free or low-cost tool that allows you to record and share your videos with a few clicks.
Here are some video-recording and sharing tools for advisors:
Bomb Bomb
With BombBomb, you can record your screen, face, or both simultaneously and then share one-on-one video messages easily through Slack, text messaging, email, social media, and more. It allows you to track activity such as email opens, video plays, and link clicks and can even send you real-time alerts whenever a recipient engages.
BombBomb integrates with most major email service providers and customer relationship management (CRM) software, and the price is affordable, as low as $299 per year or $29 per month for the essentials.
Loom
Loom is one of the most popular video messaging tools, allowing you to record your screen along with a “cam bubble” overlay to show your face. After recording, you can share a link to the video, which is stored on their cloud.
A free starter account allows you to record up to 25 videos that are up to five minutes long. Business accounts start at $8 per month, which allows for unlimited videos with no length restrictions and the use of advanced features, such as HD video quality, a drawing tool, and mouse emphasis, and password-protected videos.
Screencast-O-Matic
This screen capture tool lets users easily create and edit videos and images to communicate one-on-one or with an audience. It’s a feature-rich app that functions much like Loom, allowing you to record your screen and/or webcam and share it with a link.
The free account includes much of the functionality you’ll want, but videos are limited to 15 minutes and include a Screencast-O-Matic logo watermark and ads on the playback page. You can upgrade to a 12-month subscription for $48 or $69, depending on the video length you will need, whether or not you mind ads (which distract from your brand), the amount of storage you want, and the advanced features you might want to use.
Start recording and sharing today
If you’re new to using video messaging, it might seem like a big step to take. But once you start recording and sharing your messages, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner. It’s an effective and efficient approach for reaching your clients, prospects, referral partners, and even your team in a personalized and expressive way.
Crystal Lee Butler, MBA is a creative marketer and results-oriented business consultant with over a decade of experience collaborating with independent advisors. At Crystal Marketing Solutions, she delivers exceptional insights for financial professionals enabling them to create a consistent marketing presence so they can focus on the things that matter most to them.
Read more articles by Crystal Butler
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
