Video is an indispensable marketing tool for improving your luxury real estate business. High-end real estate properties generally have a small market – it’s crucial that you’re able to earn the prospect’s trust and effectively close the sale when an opportunity presents itself.
Video content marketing allows you to easily express your personal brand, your knowledge, your listings and successes in a visually appealing and effective format. The power of video is undeniable. Stats show that by 2019 video will comprise an astounding 82% of all internet traffic! 83% of businesses believe that video returns a good ROI and 97% of businesses who created video suggested that it improved user engagement and understanding of their business offering.
Video marketing comes in many shapes and sizes from quirkily printed brochures with embeddable video content made by Vidioh, to simply uploading your content on YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms. Regardless of the medium, If you’re not using video you’re leaving money on the table. But what type of videos should you focus on for your real estate video marketing campaign?
Let’s delve right in with 7 ways that you can use video for the real estate market:
1. Brand Introduction Video / Brand Promotional Videos
A video introduction can add a highly personal touch to your website’s biography or “about me” section. This is suitable for marketing your brand to both cold leads online and warm leads who are already familiar with your estate agency.
The idea behind an introduction video is to present your brand, your company ethos, the services you offer and your key objectives or successes. Think of it as an elevator pitch and ask yourself, what can you present in your video that other real estate agents can’t?
Key Points:
- Establish your video’s goal/purpose, for example, this could include: showcasing your team’s talent or your property discovery and matching process.
- Focus on selling your unique selling points, competitive edge and brand values.
Chip James’ video introduction is superbly personal and showcases his distinctive brand within the luxury real estate sector. He decided to start a charitable initiative where he’d offer his client’s closing gift to a charity cause. This video acts as both an introduction and a testimonial video and enables Chip to present himself as an innovative and forward-thinking estate agent.
2. Neighbourhood Tour Video
Neighborhood tour videos provide the context to your home listings. It’s highly likely that your buyers will want to know as much as possible about the neighborhood they plan to move to. A neighborhood tour video is rock-solid evergreen content that remains searchable and relevant to anyone looking for information on your location. Even those who are buying or selling with a competitor may search for neighborhood information and stumble across your video!
Key Points:
- Compile as much relevant as you can find about the area to easily capture the essence of the neighborhood. (Schools, community/family events, universities, churches and local restaurants).
- Repurpose your previous research and include the content on your local SEO landing pages to boost your local search.
- Keep things upbeat and energetic to show clients that your neighborhood is current and active.
School interviews
Neighborhood tour videos can be produced with ‘extras’ that may be of value to prospects, such as a school interview. Firstly, a school interview is beneficial to both you and the school in question. It shouldn’t be viewed as a sales pitch for either party, but more as a way of familiarising those looking to move to the area with available schools.
Key Points:
- Schools are an incredibly important component of a neighborhood as they can shape customer buying decisions.
- Often, parents will not have enough time to make a school visit – which makes a school interview incredibly valuable as they can overview the school at their own convenience.
- Add additional neighborhood information such as attractions for children, nurseries, catchment areas for schools and nearby universities.
Realtor Lisa Doyle created this interview with the principal of Alamo Elementary School. Aside from the obvious promotional benefit for both the realtors and the school itself, this video is comprehensive and covers the school in great detail.
Local Business Reviews
Another key component of the neighborhood tour are local business reviews. You can answer questions for prospects before they even visit the area, which enables you to position your estate agency as highly knowledgeable in comparison to other agencies. Plus it will add another dimension to your property visits that’ll enable you to gain rapport with the client and go beyond simply selling the listing.
The above video is simple and easy to film for any real estate agency. By simply overviewing several local restaurants alongside your main neighborhood review and school reviews, you’re ensuring that prospective buyers have a complete picture of the area before they visit or make a purchase.
3. Client Testimonial Videos
The sticking power of a video testimonial far exceeds that of a traditional text review. Video testimonials are relatable, friendly and empower your message to resonate with your target audience.
It’s all caused by the impact of human faces on our perception of trust. Research indicates that we can successfully judge the trustworthiness of another in seconds. If you bag yourself an authentic testimonial with a trusted client then you can leverage increased trust for your brand.
Instead of scripting your testimonial, allow your client to use their own words to describe you and the way you assisted them.
Key Points:
- Testimonials are important for all businesses but they’re even more important in the buying or selling of houses and the high levels of trust that it involves.
- Videos are more effective than text reviews – it’s easy for people to sense their truth and authenticity.
This testimonial video is upbeat and features lots of snippets from happy clients; both buyers and sellers. This video is effective as it features happy faces with bite-size comments and easily digested positive descriptions of the agent.
This testimonial video focuses on just one client experience in more intricate detail. It’s surprisingly personal and insightful.
4. Listing Videos
Listing videos should be the primary focus and drive of your video marketing efforts. Once you’ve established a listing template that you’re happy with, you can create a coherent series of videos that showcase past, future and current listings on your website and social media channels.
Video listings allow you to apply your own style with graphics, music and extra features like narratives or short interviews. Video listings can capture top-of-the funnel leads as well as mid-tier and bottom-of-funnel leads, motivating them into making meetings and inquiries.
Key Points:
- Listing videos are essential – photos alone are not enough to animate and describe bigger or more luxurious properties.
- Listing videos can form a cohesive backbone to your video marketing strategy.
Luxury Real Estate Listing videos can take a few different forms:
This style of video listing provides full coverage of a home’s features complete with a narrative description. It might take some time to create a video of this type, but it can cut viewing times as prospects will have an idea of the house before they visit.
The second video here overviews a beautiful $17 million mansion in San Antonio and makes use of drone footage as well as an extensive narration which covers both features and history. It goes without saying that it’s worth going the extra mile for stunning high-ticket homes of this type.
Short Form Real Estate Videos
The first video here features a short introduction followed by a quick walk-around tour. The second video doesn’t feature any dialogue but still illuminates the house’s best features in an informative and engaging manner. Listing videos don’t have to be long and comprehensive as long as they sum up the flavor and style of a house inside and out.
5. Housing Market Update Videos
As a real estate agent or realtor, you should be an expert in your local housing market. Illustrate your professional insight to reinforce the image that you’re trustworthy, knowledgeable and in-the-know.
You can do this with housing market update videos. These provide benefits for both buyers and sellers who may or may not have any understanding of the housing market. You could overview and discuss data from recent sales, historical trends and construction data or plans.
Your local housing market is your oyster, so showcase your thoughts and knowledge in a way which is educational and interesting not just to those in the sales funnel but to objective viewers too.
Key Points:
- Housing market videos provide indirect marketing benefits by showcasing your skills and intellect, heightening trust.
- Periodical updates can keep prospective buyers in the loop. This can be especially beneficial to those moving from abroad.
- Market updates and review also increase your B2B authority. If you build yourself as a source of advice for both customers and other brands/aspiring realtors then you’re doing a great job for your long-term reputation.
In this video, Owen Bigland overviews key local trends in Vancouver and discusses some interesting points surrounding increased sales across Chinese New Year. It’s interesting for viewers of all types, not just customers.
6. Home Buyer and Seller Advice Videos
Similarly to presenting informative content on the real estate market, presenting advice to buyers and sellers can forge a positive image for you and your real estate brand. You can create this content in text form for your blog and then repurpose it for video scripts.
Talk directly to first-time buyers or offer advice on topical subjects like standing out in a crowded housing market. Proactively solving issues for your clients will build respect.
Key Points:
- Lending objective advice presents you as a helpful individual, an attribute that is vital for real estate agents.
- From an SEO perspective, channeling viewers who are looking for general advice to you will aid your engagement rates and increase your top of funnel research with Google search.
Jon Jones has become a key giver of advice for prospective buyers. Here, he reviews a topically useful subject for buyers: making an offer stand out amongst multiple offers in competitive markets.
In this video, Jessica Edwards overviews some unique tips for first-time buyers. Simple yet engaging.
7. Live-Stream Q&A Videos
The meteoric rise of live streaming has been quite phenomenal and studies now suggest that 80% of customers prefer to watch live video from brands on social media when compared to other content types. Studies by Yahoo suggest that people are drawn into the immediate excitement of tuning into others on a live stream.
For real estate agents, live streams provide an awesome opportunity for you to interface with customers in real time. Not only can you display key insights, knowledge and answers to viewer questions, you can also offer yourself as a helpful individual which people want on their side when buying/selling real estate.
Key Points:
- More internet users are looking for live-streams, take advantage of this boom to captivate possible clients.
- Live-streams build engagement, reach and authority.
Live-streams can synchronize with your social media pages: Facebook Live and YouTube are the best spots for live-streaming.
The entrepreneur and realty expert Lo Sheriow regularly live streams and has thousands of followers across various forms of social media. Lo’s passion is instantly evident and her video style is captivating, even for those who aren’t explicitly interested in real estate. This has enabled her to branch out into neighboring industries as a real estate entrepreneur.
Video is the ace in the pack for real estate agents who are looking for innovative marketing techniques. A great starting place for your video campaign is your blog. Repurpose your existing text content to kickstart your video marketing campaign.
Once you’ve started, you can work through some of the styles in this guide. Always look to innovate and distinguish yourself and your brand from your competition.