• Stop being a LURKER - join our dealer community and get involved. Sign up and start a conversation.

Taking videos of your vehicles

Jump to latest Follow Reply
#71
shudson said:
I'm curious what everyone thinks of ANIMOTO for creating videos?
Click to expand...

Just signed up for a free account and ran through photos of a conversion van I shot yesterday. Impressions:

-The file upload is amazing. I pointed Safari to the files, they uploaded quickly and without any fuss. Nearly instantly, I'm on to rearranging. eBizAutos, if you're reading, take a look at this!

-On the free version, I can't really reach the last row of images (their upgrade button is blocking them). Irritating, but not a problem if we ponied up and went pro (which, in my mind, would be a logical choice.)

-Might be my file sizes (but I only exported Large!), but the rendering process seems this side of glacial. If I were doing this on a production basis, I'd start this process up before uploading stills to eBiz and upload the videos either right at the end of the day (after all my stills uploading) or first thing the next morning.

-Branding opportunities with the text are highly limited. I'm glad our domain name fits, because Jim Hudson Buick/Pontiac/GMC/Saab sure doesn't! (We'll be under the limit once we're done with Pontiac, though. Anyone want a G6?)

-On a remix, the process seems to move faster. Great for those of us who now know what we're doing.

-At least some video is mandatory if it's going to be awesome, otherwise it's just another slideshow with no robo-voice. That said, I like the ability to get a little more mileage out of our stills.

You can see my second attempt here. I'm not ready to toss our current plan and efforts yet, but this is something to watch. Good find!
 
#72
I've been using and messing around with Animoto for a little over a year now and I love it. Not only for business but for personal/family videos as well.

Easy to use and professional look. They also no offer the ability to upload actual video and mashup your still photos and video.

They have a personal and business solutions for a cheap price overall. One click distribution to Youtube, one click upload to facebook and several other social websites.

Here is one we through together of the new Audi Q5 using stills and actual footage.
animoto - Audi Q5

If you want to save a few bucks and test it out..On the sign up page, there is a section near the bottom that says, "Promo Code" Click it and a field will appear. Type yhzeirsj to get 5 bucks off.

Enjoy.
 
#74
This is the first video I ever made on a vehicle for a specific customer. She was a phone-up and had a very specific budget to maintain, and some negative equity to overcome. As I spoke with her, she made it very clear that she wasn't going to make the 50 mile trip if the #'s didn't fit her budget. We had just signed up with a local vendor that supplied a video tool that we were impressed with, and this was the video we quickly put together.



Notice in the video, I never mentioned the price or payment which is what she claimed was most important to her. Within minutes of sending her the video, she called me back to let me know she had just watched the video and was on her way down to meet me and see the vehicle. Not only did we spot the vehicle, but she stretched herself by $35 a month over the payment she claimed was the absolute highest she was willing to go.

The process was quick and simple. From the time the phone call came in, to the time she called to say she was making the 50 mile trip was just over a half hour.

Now I understand that sometimes it can be near impossible to do this with every internet or phone opportunity. We also have a full video library of more general walk-around or introductory videos that we can use when time is precious. That being said, in my experience, if you can personalize your video to the customer, your closing percentage will skyrocket
 
Last edited by a moderator:
#77
Great thread, just like many of you, I am faced with a manpower challenge as well. Two things I have considered:
-In our 1st response to customers putting in something like "Please let me know what are the most important features of this car and I will send you a personalized video upon your response"
or
-Having a button on our vehicle detail page that says request video-then ask for customer contact info and gives them a spot to write anything specific they would like covered in their video.

Then shoot the video, upload to youtube and send them the link.

Anyone tried anything similar?
 
#80
We have the same issue. Unless I want to add Videographer to my job description I'll stick with our Dealer.Com CarFlix videos which, by the way, when shown to laymen like my wife can't be differentiated between live video and the SEO value is there!:)


Alex Snyder said:
We struggle with man-power. I find it difficult to get things done on the store level, with a few exceptions here and there. Doing individual videos is tough - shoot - taking photos of all new cars is damn near impossible with the inventory we have! The answer is to hire more people, but the times don't allow that :(

But we are also confronted by a brand image protection our dealer principle works very hard to keep. He is not in favor of doing on-the-lot videos for anything unless it is professionally done. Our compromise was to go with the pictures to video solution, and I think Dealer.com does a fantastic job with those.

Right this second we're having some "funkiness" with ours due to changing our inventory aggregator from HomeNet to iMagicLab - iMagicLab was sending stock photos over on every car. We finally got that disabled and are slowly working through some of the lingering cars that have a mixture of dealer photos and stock photos - as you can imagine, that really makes these stitched videos look bad.

Back to the man-power issue. We have to do new things from an executive level and over time the stores start to buy-in as they realize the effectiveness of these "new" things we do. Of course, we can design a payplan or crack a whip to get them to conform, but you're never going to have true success unless someone believes in it. A salesfloor can sabotage anything.
Click to expand...
 
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Menu