How to stand out with video ads (even if you do it yourself)

▶ 0:00Now, with every single renewables marketing agency offering video content, how can you stand out and can you in fact do it yourself? That's what we're going to cover in today's video. Obviously, we are one of those that provide that service. We go out and we shoot with the clients. In fact, I quite often go and direct to the clients. Sometimes if I'm going to shoot, Joe has to go and direct to the clients, which he actually finds very enjoyable being a little Steven Spielberg for the day. But can you do this for yourself? Is it possible? Can you do it on your own? Can you do it with a small team? Can you have one of your installation team hold the phone for you, et cetera, et cetera? The answer is most definitely yes. And there's some key pointers that I'd like to

▶ 0:37go through to basically set you off on the right starting track to get your first video advertisement out there into the wild, right? This stuff at its most basic level doesn't have to be that hard, okay? You can very easily record a video that will get you results, that will get you traction, will generate demand that will maybe fuel or at least kind of fund your next step to maybe working with one of the specialist agencies in the market to take it up that extra level, okay? So some pointers. Do you need an expensive kit to be able to accomplish a video that's going to look half decent? Absolutely not. I am shooting this video right now on my iPhone 15 Pro. It's not even the newest model, okay? It's pretty new, but it's not the newest. You just need a modern, high quality

▶ 1:20phone that can shoot ideally in 4K resolution, okay? And if you're shooting like B-roll shots, so shots that are kind of secondary and not like the main subject being on camera, then ideally you want that to be able to shoot in 50 or 60 frames per second. If you want any more information on like the exact technicals, feel free to drop a comment or DM me and I can send you like our settings that we typically use or that we did use when we originally started when we were shooting on an iPhone because when we first started, we couldn't afford professional videography services, etc, etc.

▶ 1:52And we didn't want to outlay that cost onto our clients in the position that we were in. So we did it on an iPhone, as I'm saying that, and we got fantastic results doing so, okay? So that should hopefully nail the gear question. There are some other elements you're going to need. You're going to need a wireless microphone. People will put up with low quality video, but they will definitely not put up with low quality audio. If your audio is crackling, if you can't hear you, especially if you're at an in-progress installation, you're going to have a lot of background noise that a wireless microphone that is typically quite cheap should be able to do a good job of reducing and making sure that you are the focal point in that video,

▶ 2:27okay? So I would actually place more emphasis on your audio than I would on your video. Final thing, probably going to want a drone. It's just going to give you a lot more versatility. If you get one below 250 grams in weight, that means you're not going to need a special license and things like that to fly it. So you should be able to get the hang of it really easy. It's like a little video game. You can do it on the little controller. And that will just give you a really nice versatility to your videos because you'll be able to get drone shots from above. You might be able to highlight certain things that you can't really highlight from the ground level, such as certain cable routes, such as trenches you may have dug to help the customer run their panels from their garage through

▶ 3:03to the home. Things like that that aren't really very easy to capture with a phone up close, but with a drone and some animations and things, they can look absolutely fantastic and really highlight your expertise. So we've covered the gear. Now, what about the content of the video itself? Now, when we first started, we used to go through this really extensive process of scripting every single line that we wanted in those video ads. Okay. And this was not only very time intensive, but also we almost took the approach of kind of quantity over quality because we were just trying to farm as many shots out as possible. And what we found was that when we presented that script to the installer, even though

▶ 3:42they had a week or two to practice and to kind of get ready for the shoot, they'd get on site and we'd get the cameras out and they would start to just stumble over the words continuously, just like that. And it was really hard to actually get a nice free-flowing ad out of the installer. Now, we had kind of a sudden realization point when we just asked someone to just walk us through a system without the cameras on. And all of a sudden they start talking about the throughput of the battery and the app and how the homeowner absolutely loves it because of this one specific feature and this really specific cable on that they did. And the fact that the conduit changes from the white, white conduit on the white render to the

▶ 4:21black conduit on the black render. And all of a sudden we were like, oh, oh, okay. So all we need to do is basically ask prompting questions that are going to carry a cohesive video through from start to finish. Right? So quite often what we was actually suggesting, this is what I suggest now, especially if you're filming for the first time or on a phone, just have someone hold a phone and follow you around an installation site, just talking about the key components that were installed and the reason that the customer went for them. And of course, the most important thing, what it's going to do for that customer. And that doesn't necessarily need to be just savings. It could be that the main purpose of that specific part of the

▶ 5:00installation was to keep the property looking really nice and tidy. That can be what it's going to do for the customer. That can be the benefit. And for, you know, top tip for those top, top level installations, you know, 15,000 pound plus residential installations. We've got some clients averaging almost 20,000 pound on average residential installations. That's the kind of stuff they care about because they don't care about, you know, they don't want a 5,000 pound system on their 5 million pound house. They want a 15,000 pound system that's going to last and stand the test of time and be installed to the same quality that all of the workmanship around the house has been installed to. So just turn up on site, get the phone out and just walk someone through as if you had a prospect with

▶ 5:40you that you had invited or your, your customer had invited to come and see that installation, talking exactly the same way, be conversational, use tonality and phrases that you would normally use when you speak to customers. Don't feel like you have to become this like news presenter or this Jack the lad that is super funny and super charismatic. You just need to be yourself because at the end of day, if you've got a successful solar business and if you've sold solar systems in the past, then whatever you said and however you said it worked. So like why change it when you get on video? You just don't need to make any difference. So we've done the gear, we've done the content and then how about actually

▶ 6:17running the ads themselves, right? So with that kind of video, you're very lucky now in 2025. If you're in 2016, 2017, it might've been a different story, but in 2025, Meta does a lot of the targeting for you. It will figure out who to target based on an age basis. It will look at what kind of ads they've already engaged with it, look at what kind of content they engage with, what things they follow. And to be honest, a lot more, which is here or there in terms of the data that Meta have on those prospects. And it will quite quickly be able to figure out who to show those videos too. Now, obviously you could basically go ahead and just throw that straight into an ad account, allocate

▶ 6:53some budget to it and see how you get on. And I would actually be quite confident in you getting some initial kind of intermediary results. But the maybe safer option, especially if this is the first time you've done this, is to record a few of these, go to a few sites, post them organically, get feedback, see which ones get the most views, get the most reach, etc. Then start to analyze what did I do in that one that was maybe a bit different. Maybe it was a bigger system or maybe it was a more regular system that would appeal to more types of or the more typical customer, right? Or maybe you said something right at the start or maybe you didn't say anything at the start and you just jumped straight into the video and that was what made it

▶ 7:32perform better. That can give you a good insight as to what is going to work on the advertising platforms. Now, there's of course absolutely tons more that I could go into. I could go into how you want your hook to be strong, how you would need a call to action, etc. How you actually going to convert the leads, etc, etc, etc.

▶ 7:47But when you start to go to that kind of depth, that's when you may be at the stage where you start to consider working with a specialist, where you start to think, okay, for me to learn all these other things to go from 80% to 100% and beyond, then it's going to take me so much time that I'd probably just be better using that time to sell the solar systems I'm already selling rather than learning all of these marketing tactics, etc. And that is where we come in. So we would take you from that iPhone level advertisement that maybe you're getting some initial results. You've got a few installs over the line from it. And when you're confident enough and you're looking to allocate a lot more budget to

▶ 8:23it and actually scale that up progressively for it to become a real core deal, not lead deal, acquisition channel for your business, then you need to reach out to Solar Stories. And that's what we do. So hopefully that was useful because we get tons of questions like, ah, the shoot is pretty expensive. Or, you know, I'm a bit nervous, especially I've never been on camera. And then I'm going to turn up and there's going to be this big professional film camera in my face. I don't know how I'm going to react. The best way to overcome that is to just get ahead and to do it yourself with a phone.

▶ 8:52Take all the pressure off and you'll probably actually get some really great results from it as well. So that's all for this evening. Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.