GoPro’s global trainer Cohen Summers is in Australia briefing the brand’s retail partners on its new product offering: the Hero 4 Black edition, Hero 4 Silver edition and the entry level Hero. Here are his top three tips for selling action cams like a pro.
1. Qualify your customer and sell on the accessories first
The action camera market is growing, and while surfers, snowboarders, skydivers and adrenaline junkies in general have fueled the category’s growth in recent years, GoPro is looking to broaden its consumer base.
“At retail mounts and accessories are one of the most things because first of all it’s going to give our customers the best experience of our product,” Summers said. “If they just buy the camera they aren’t going to have all the cool versatile camera angles that can be created, they’re not going to be able to mount it in those unique ways and to get the best use out of it.”
Summers provided a straightforward method for floor staff to gather all the ammunition they need to help qualify customers and what accessories they may need.
Do you own a GoPro?
Answer A: Yes.
Follow up: What do you use it for?
Answer B: No.
Follow up: What would you use it for? What do you like to do?
“Every single person in the world is going to list off activities and you’ll know which accessories to throw at them.”
Whether it be cooking, kite flying, sand castle building or knitting, with the right angles, accessories and post production editing anything can be made into compelling content.
Editing tip: Encourage consumers to film from different points of view. Filming the same thing from multiple angles makes it easier to edit a more interesting video.
2. Qualify what kind of camera they need
“Don’t sell them on the camera first, sell them on the accessories first. Then once they are sold on GoPro and sold on the accessories for the activities, figure out whether they are a Black edition, Silver edition or just the entry level Hero,” Summers said.
The GoPro Hero 4 Black (RRP $679) is the brand’s most advanced GoPro ever released, but Summers said it won’t be retailers best seller because it is targeted at ‘prosumers’. The Black captures cinema-quality 4K video at 30 frames per second (fps), 2.7K video at 50fps and 1080p vide at a blistering 120fps.
“Not everybody is that prosumer that needs those high end bells and whistles that someone working one Terminator or Discovery Channel is going to need. But they want to maintain that professional quality because we live in the world of HD.”
The GoPro Hero 4 Silver (RRP $549) offers the same professional image quality as Hero4 Black minus some of the higher performance video capture modes, however a built-in touch display offers convenience and ease-of-use.
GoPro Hero (RRP $129) is designed with simplicity in mind and built directly into a rugged, waterproof housing, it captures high-quality 1080p video at 30fps and 720p video at 60fps.
3. Encouraging sharing
“It’s very important for us, we want them to share their content, that it what is going to drive them to come back into the store and buy more mounts and accessories,” Summers said.
GoPro’s marketing strategy taps into some powerful emotional pulls. Point of sale displays showcase professionally produced content which inspires one’s own creative pursuit, sharing their own content encourages consumers to think ‘How do I make a different video that gets even more people to like it and share it next time?’ and thirdly, recording and reliving moments is nostalgic. All these elements combine to form a bond between consumer and product.
To make it easier to edit and share video, Summers said reatilers should highlight the free GoPro app that controls the camera from smartphone or tablet and the free editing software, GoPro Studio.
GoPro Studio features templates of some of GoPro’s most popular videos, allowing users to drop their own content in to achieve a similar result. New to GoPro Studio is Flux, a powerful ultra slow motion and speed ramping tool that enables the dramatic time-shifting effects.