How to Incorporate Video Into Your Real Estate Marketing

Many of today’s house hunters are utilizing the internet as a first step toward finding their dream home before engaging with a professional real estate agent. They are going online to research, search and obtain additional information as part of the house-hunting process. In the age of digital, it’s imperative for agents to bolster their online property marketing efforts to appeal to consumers. Yet, in a highly competitive real estate environment with numerous homes on the market, how do agents effectively cut through all the marketing noise to attract attention to their property listings? Incorporating compelling video into marketing efforts might just be the answer.

According to the National Association of Realtors, online video sites have quickly grown in popularity, with 36% of consumers using video as an informative source during the home search. Video is becoming an essential marketing tool for agents and can help generate significant interest in a property and greater leads. Video adds extra depth to marketing efforts and offers buyers a three-dimensional vision of a property.

Here are four tips to help create and incorporate compelling video into your marketing efforts.

Tell a story: Property video should tell a story and introduce the lifestyle and the location. The video should never be drawn out by scenes of every room in the house. Too much footage will make the video dull, repetitive and boring, and encourage your audience to stop watching it before completion. A video also shouldn’t show every aspect of the home. That is for the property visit, not the marketing. Ultimately, you want to entice consumers with the video and have them contact you to learn more.
Get creative: Go beyond just creating the basic property video that we’ve all seen many times – aerial images of the home and redundant music. Don’t be afraid to get creative and develop something unique. To do this, scout out videographers not commonly used by real estate agents, and identify quality talent with a unique eye and passion for creating something truly special. Impactful videos take time to create and require a lot of planning, site scouting, and filming over multiple days from different locations.
Four minutes max: A full property video should never be more than four minutes long. The shorter the length of time it takes to convey the property vision through video, the better. The goal is for consumers to watch the entire video from beginning to end, and to love it so much that they watch it repeatedly, and share it with friends.
Share on social media: Once the full property video is complete, it should be edited into smaller clips to be shared on social media. Pick the strongest parts of the video along with dramatic music to create enticing teaser videos. One marketing technique that has worked for me is to create a one-minute teaser video before launching a full property listing. The teaser video creates excitement before the full property video is released and added to YouTube. One of my teaser video examples can be found here, along with the same property’s full video.

In conclusion, property videos done correctly and disseminated through the appropriate marketing channels can generate incredible online traffic, attract larger audiences, and encourage greater leads.

Author Bio

Brian Langlois is a sales associate at Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty in Austin, Texas. With more than 18 years of experience, Brian specializes in current market trends and conditions of the luxury real estate market in the Texas Hill Country. He utilizes cutting-edge local and international marketing with state-of-the-art technology to ensure that his client’s properties get the exposure they deserve. He truly understands the importance of pricing, positioning, and extraordinary marketing. Brian attended the University of Louisiana and since has furthered his knowledge in real estate with continuing education from Texas Tech and Texas A&M.