On the sofa with a cup of tea and a video camera: Video marketing for advisers

Kathryn Knowles, MD of Cura Financial Services, made this special video for us where she explains how she uses video marketing to engage with Cura's customers.

Here's a transcript of the video if you'd prefer to read it.

Hi, I'm here to chat to you about how to use video marketing as an insurance adviser to engage customers, insurers and other brokers. I'm doing a bit of a mix of digital and a bit of old school pen and paper here because I'm using this as memory joggers and I'll try not to have to obviously look at it as I'm chatting. But I have my iPhone right here recording me and that's how I do my videos.

It's quite simple. I have pretty cheap tripod. I'm just sat at home on my sofa and I have the iPod on it in video mode, in selfie mode. And then the only fancy thing I've got, and it's not really that fancy, is there's a little wire coming out of this side of my phone and it goes all the way down, up through my dress and microphone right here.

And hopefully that's hidden and not too obvious. But it does mean they see my videos. You always see them some distance from the phone and that's because I'm stuck by the wire, so I have to do it within a certain distance. It's not essential. A lot of my videos haven't been done with a microphone, but it does make those sound quality a little bit better if you do use one. And they're pretty, they're pretty cheap to sort of pickup.

So there's a few areas that I was going to cover today. First being the importance of video marketing. We started in video marketing, well I did, in December of 2016 with my insurance advent calendar and the 18 months of including that and following our client bank increased by 16.5%, which was a good increase and it's continued to do so.

And it's, it is quite simple. I mean the main things to think of are; getting somewhere that looks nice and where you can sit. Somewhere that's comfortable because you probably going to do quite a few takes, before you actually start getting to a point where you're happy with the content. You can always do the fancy and I've started doing, you know, transitions in transitions out. It's once you know how to do it, so like if you're using a Mac, it's not too bad. But I also think as well that you have to be careful cause I think sometimes those things can distract from the content that you are trying to get across. You know, I've had it suggested to me, oh you should be doing this and doing that and it should have musical intro and it should have all this stuff. And I could. But I think it's, there's a fine line between sort of getting people's attention and letting them know that you're just the person who sat on a sofa, usually with a cup of tea, chatting to them and giving them information and then somebody who's from a company and there's all these fancy schmancy stuff to it.

And then I think there's just, to me, I think there's a bit of a barrier there because people want people. We live in a digital world. And I think anything we can do to reintroduce a human touch to things is, can only be a positive really. And I do think video marketing is a good way towards that. You also have, just doing audio as well. You can be quite, well it's, it's, it's definitely powerful. I mean, you have people who do podcasts all the time, that brilliant. You've got Roger Edwards, you've got Pete Matthew, Martin Bamford, all of them doing very well. And I think for those people, and as well for myself and my own videos, and I'm not saying my videos are perfect, but the feedback that I get that people like, and I can see a similarity with the podcasts, is that we're not selling ourselves.

I'm not on there going, "Hi, I'm Kathryn from Cura Financial Services. My website duh duh duh." You know, I'm just giving information and giving people what they want. Or what they need and then they can do what they want to do with it. It's then their choice. They can either come chat to me, they can chat to someone else, they can ignore me. It's completely up to them. But I'm giving them the choice, I'm informing them of what they need to know for their circumstances. And then I'm leaving it up to them. And I think that is something that people are really saying stands out as someone who's quite unique.

In regards to the video marketing side of things has also been, there's been a number of insurers doing video marketing and they do stand out as sort of like a good approach to be doing things. You know, it's much better I think. I, I think it's nice to have a video rather than a little graphic. I think it's nice to have a video of somebody that's speaking and talking about what they actually do for a living and you've got like a Doctor Rob Rosa and he was featured in the AIG video series. You know, he was just there giving out information, along sat there with Helen Croft. And it's, it's stuff like that that, you know, that makes well for me, that makes me stop. And I think, I wonder what they're trying, I wonder what they're saying. And I think that is something that a lot of people respond to now. I think we're kind of going a bit anti technology in some ways. We're kind of wanting to move back to people want people, they want to see people.

A big thing that I've had feedback from clients is that they like it. You know, if they've heard me on a podcast or they've heard this, see my videos, they like it because they've seen me, they've heard me. And then when they speak to me, they also know it's me because they know I'm there and that I'm caring for them. And I'm not just some random person in the call centre in a, sort of, you can envisage the grey skies, grey, London, big buildings and everything, and just being lost amongst all of that kind of madness. And instead they know actually there's a person who sat there at home or at work and she's chatting to me. And that's given people a lot of confidence when they, when they speak to me that I'm somebody, real. Social media is huge for me.

I'm on, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. I do a little bit on Pinterest as well. I've had a look at Tumblr that really confuses me. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not really sure what to do with that. And Snapchat's about messing about, choosing some funny faces and changing the voices with the kids. I'm not really sure what that is either, but I think we're always saying in our industry that we need to try and engage the younger generation. And I don't think anyone could argue with us saying that we live in a social media world. I mean, that is it we do.

I don't think young people have much experience now of not being in social media, so we need to change with the times, but we need to engage them that way, which is again where video marketing really stands out because somebody on their commute straight away, headphones in, they're flicking through Twitter, different things. If they then see a video that's maybe 45 seconds or minutes or something, I'm giving them some information that just stands out as something as that they've, we wondered about, then they're probably going to pause and listen to it.

And I think again, it comes down to that giving them just the information that they need as well in that video. Because we're used to being in an age now where we get information straight away. We'd gone to Google, we've got millions of information pages and data that's just thrown at us that we know and we expect to have information straight away. So if we have to go around the houses, if I have to go through a website link to go through here, here and here, I don't think people, I don't think people generally like to do that. I think they want to have the information and if you've got the information there then then they'll maybe go on the link. And then what we think, actually I could probably find out a bit more this way.

So just be smart with how you do it. I use, how do I use SmarterQueue as an auto schedule for some of my posts? Simply because I own a business. I have three kids. I'm looking after my parents as well. I couldn't, I could not for my own sanity be doing posts on every single social media platform every day. It just want to be possible. I'd have to sort of lose the quality of time that I'm able to give to my clients. So on some of my most standard posts, posts were just getting information out there about some of the videos I've done or some of the specialist areas that on my website, I put them on a bit of an auto schedule, but then I'm also on the pages anyway and I'm putting in fresh content because again, I think people, you know, if they just see the same content again and again and again. They start to realise and they don't like the fact that you're maybe not there on hand and sort of like at the end of the button, putting that information out there straight away.

And also with the social media, again, people like people, you know, if somebody likes something that you've done, you know, maybe follow them or send them a message to say thank you. It's again time wise you just have to figure out what's right for you and your job role and your home life as well because it is so easy to get lost amongst this whole.

A big thing I'm starting to do is blogs and I'm trying to do that more often now. So looking at specific, sort of like events that happen throughout the year and just trying to say, all right, well this is coming up, you know, you know, you'll see it on the, on the TV or something. That's, it will be, such like National Cancer Awareness with a specific type of cancer. So I'll try and do a blog post where I say, right, okay, um, this is what's happening. Touch wood lucky for me, I actually don't have any personal experiences or any close family relatives where I can really, put that towards, but other people can. And I think if you can tell a personal story and you can relate things back to yourself, people respond to that very well as well.

A really good thing that I'm starting to use for blog posting. I use my iPad and I know this is a ridiculous size iPad and when I go into it (I'll just turn it round), I have this which is called, I think it's called Smart Scribe and I've got my pen and so on a night time, the kids are in bed and I have to say I'm somebody I again, I'm a bit old school, I really miss writing so it's a bit to get used to. But what I do is I then just write my words quite standard, hello. And then with a few quick, quick sort of buttons, I can then translate that into, well transfer into it, digitised text and then I can again put that onto my computers, my Mac and my emails. And it's really easy then to sort if, if how many night time and I suddenly have a bit of a brain wave, I can write down a lot of information. I can write down my thoughts on things without feeling like I'm in bed with a computer working and then transfer that over. And that'll be the start of a, of a blog post for me.

And I think the last things that probably really stand out for me with video marketing, because all lots of people do it in a very good and then honestly, and I'm, some people do it and it's not necessarily as engaging as others. And I think the things that stand out, what I was just, if you're going to do video marketing is as I say, don't oversell yourself. People don't really like that and I don't think people are going to respond to that very well. But also make sure that if it's yourself or somebody else in your organisation, make sure that they're comfortable, in front of the camera.

It's very easy to see if somebody isn't comfortable. You know, they can be quite sort of as this as a talking and it can be a little bit scary because they're always looking at one point because you can tell they're just not comfortable at all with what they're doing. And also it's very easy to see if it's scripted. So, you know, if I was reading something at the side of my eyes would go from side to side, you'd be able to tell that I was doing that as we were going along. And you don't really want that either. It's not easy, but it try and memorise things and if maybe do a little snippet videos and then put them all together. But, I think they're probably sort of the main things that I think were useful. Hope so. Bye.