Chicago DP
lvl.2
Offline
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Oh I see. I've given up on real estate, I do get requests but they're too cheap, and I am in the affluent suburbs of Chicago! Here's what my mentor taught me when I first started out. It is the most important lesson to learn to make it in this biz and I practice it daily. He said:
"All clients can be broken up into two categories: Those spending their own money and those spending the company's money. You ALWAYS want to be dealing with the latter."
When I did go after the real estate market, before it was flooded with video guys, I found I was dealing with brokers, so not only were they spending their OWN money, they didn't even have the funds yet because they would need to reimburse themselves out of their commission check which would come many weeks, or months, later. So even though they appeared affluent on the exterior with their BMWs they were expert negotiators and cheap, cheap, cheap. I then figured I'd move onto the commercial market and go after the really big builders, forget residential. I made some progress, found clients and did really big developments (before drones when you needed a REAL helicopter) but once you land a commercial client they won't need another video for a very long time, because their projects take years! By the time they need a new video for their new development the players have changed. I did surmise that often the videos were for the EGO of the founder or CEO!
Here is the new trend for real estate video and if I was younger and wanted to invest into the gear this is what I would go into: 360 VR tours-
http://glendalediggs.com/sps/1214idlewoodrd/
All this has been discussed in depth over the last few years on one of my favorite forums that I am a regular on, and I suggest you do a keyword search for Real Estate: Creative Cow's Business & Marketing forum. So I will be leaving this forum soon, once I figure out the post issues since I do believe I have the physical Osmo aspects down, such as the original title of this thread. On CC no one can be anonymous. No trolls or snarky dweebs, wannabes, Aholes. You see, when posters don't use their real identity they will be dicks plus you don't know if you're communicating with a rookie. CC is a community of pros. DVXuser half and half.
Some guys swear by RE but I figure they married well. In the Chicago area the major RE brokerages have an in-house video and stills guy and for stills they have specialty non-distort wide angle lenses and software to unsqueezed the image, so it would be hard for me to compete. The still guys usually also do the video, even if they are half ass. Maybe the Osmo will help them?
But I digress...even if you get good at collecting RE clients it's to me basically chump change. Like weddings. Here's what I do on my slow days when I need to do some hustling and marketing I go after only FOUR MAJOR INDUSTRIES, I am an expert at LinkedIn's Advanced Search function, I target only locally HQ'd: Healthcare (includes hospitals, medical devices, pharma, medical associations), Software, Financial Services, Robotics Manufacturers. Only those four. I then specifically go after the marketing execs. Every now and then HR because they need training videos, but ONLY those four industries, through my research of Chicago's business scene, they throw money into marketing. Most of the time they have a critical deadline so they go into Panic Mode to find a video vendor. And Presto! There I am! I may hit the trifecta if I get a company that does financial software for hospitals!
When I get a request for an estimate from a marketing exec in one of the above four industries it's amazing how much money they have because they are in the "latter" category of the above maxim. They equate spending more with getting more. You can't compare that with dealing with a RE broker even if it's concerning a McMansion. Remember, any halfway technical and slightly creative geek can now make a decent video but very, very few will be able to make a long term sustainable revenue business out of video and survive in the long term. By me concentrating on those above four industries and targeting the marketing execs I am a thriving survivor. In sum, forget RE. Chump change. And you used the pronoun We which suggests you have partner(s). Means you have to split the profit!
So sorry to digress and hijack this thread. I hope to see you on CC and learn the real you! Also, how do you change the avatar on this forum?
Best,
Ned
www.nedmiller.com
P.S. 99.9% of all video guys don't know this but...one of the main reasons I have such great SEO? My consultant told me years ago that by using my URL in the posts and people clicking on it from various video expert forums like CC, DVXuser.com, etc., Google thinks I'm some sort of video guru. That's another reason to not be anonymous. |
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