Video marketing is using videos to promote and market your product or service, increase engagement on your digital and social channels, and educate your customers.
But why do we need it for the real estate sector?
- Real estate listings with video receive 403% more inquiries than listings without.
- Of all buyers and sellers, 85% want to work with an agent who uses video as part of their marketing efforts.
Facebook marketing research “Real Estate Trends & Insights” recommended video because:
- 69% of real estate agents are using Facebook to generate real estate leads.
- 86% of prospective homebuyers use video
- Video ads are 2X more likely to create an emotional response
- 74% of people visit Facebook daily
10 Ways to Generate Leads for Real Estate Industry Using Video Marketing
1. Introductory Video: Meeting the Dealer
Real estate is a sector where trust before a deal matters the most in finally seeing any conversions. The familiarity with the working style of your dealers shows them what they can expect from your brand and what protocols are followed.
For example, in this video, the agent shows herself in action by presiding over the completion of some paperwork – a central task in any property transaction.
2. Immersive Experience Using AR and VR Community
In fact, in 2020, 63% of homebuyers made an offer on a home they’d only seen virtually.
Bombarding people with the features of a particular location or showing them the parks available around the location.
The second will be chosen by most as it provides a fun way to view the neighborhood and allows them to get as close to the location they would want to be.
A sense of community through these videos helps build a vision board for the audience on the kind of life they can expect in a particular neighborhood.
3. Property listing videos
These can be in the form of teasers of property in progress or highest or lowest price-losing videos to attract the price-sensitive audience. Call to Action: “Learn how much your current rent payment would allow you to afford…”
‘Just sold’ listings to showcase the number of deals closed in a particular area and create urgency around the popularity of a given location can also be effective.
When you use videos for lead generation, you might get more leads than you are used to. The best way to communicate with everyone without delays is to use an automation tool.
4. Create an Open House Invitations
Open house invitation videos mentioning the event details (date, time, venue.) are a great way to reach a number of people who don’t pay attention to emails or messages.
An engaging video will be shared by people much more than an email. These can help generate qualified leads, increase turnover and boost the chances of finding the right buyer.
5. Educate the Audience on Taking Care of the Property
Besides using videos to promote your business directly, you can also use them to educate your audiences. This will nurture potential buyers by meaningfully adding value to them.
Videos on mistakes that homebuyers make, like “popular smart home renovations to avoid,” are great ideas for this. They help you solve the real-life problems your prospects face, increase their chances of turning to you when they need your services, and generate more warm leads.
6. Create Videos Dedicated to First-time Buyers
The first-time buyers are a confused segment who don’t trust market dealers easily.
Thus attracting this audience by showcasing a checklist for them helps them to come to a decision and maybe move ahead with your business. For this video, put your experience and expertise to use and explain to first-timers how they can go about the buying process.
Talk about how they can determine what they can afford, their credit score, getting pre-approved, how to apply for FHA loans, the questions to ask a realtor, getting a home inspection done, etc.
Here are some ideas on the kind of real estate emails you can send to your leads to nurture and convert them to your customers.
7. Market Update videos
Staying up to date with industry trends and educating your audience about them is one of the best ways to position yourself as a thought leader and expert, translating into greater sales.
And there’s nothing like market update videos to engage your audience, earn their trust, and become a reliable source of industry information.
You can create videos to share market trends, real estate opportunities, interest rates, or policy changes without promoting your services. Make small snippets focusing on easy-to-digest content.
Don’t complicate your audience with information overload. Try to make them understand from a layman’s perspective.
8. Interview Videos
A study revealed that two out of three people are driven to purchase after watching a testimonial video—and real estate is no exception.
People trust people, and watching and hearing your happy clients talk about their experience working with you can help attract leads and convince them about your services.
Storytelling is a powerful resource. Seeing a family describe how a property made it easier for their kids to travel to school and provided them the perfect ambiance for growing a family makes the target audience imagine their own life fitting into this picture.
You can ask clients for testimonials at your open house, when you close the deal, or when you’re done with all the work. Ask them what it was like working with you, so they elaborate on how you understood their needs and helped them find their dream house.
9. Live Q&A videos
It can increase accessibility and make people interested in abetting their fears by getting info from a known person. Live-streaming is not just a common Q&A, it helps your audience to reach the dealer with his doubts more openly and present counter-arguments.
With Periscope and Meerkat, arguably the two most popular live-streaming apps, all you need to do to allow your Twitter following to see you via your mobile device in real-time is click the broadcast button, and you are done.
Live-stream events like common community events and open houses. Also, you should host the occasional webinars through software like GoToMeeting or apps like Google Hangouts.
It can be easily recorded and shared, you can transform what were initially live chats and advice-giving sessions into long-term videos you can use on your real estate YouTube channel.
A home buyer generally goes through various lifecycle stages, from being a lead to a customer. If you capture their attention at the lead generation stage, then only you have a chance to convert them to customers.
10. Special Offers
No, we don’t mean special offers in the sense of you have a printable gift certificate or cash prize you want to give your audience. But rather a unique piece of content they can download on your website or a limited-time free buyer or seller consultation offer: something your audience truly needs, and that can make you stand out in your market.
Ideally, when you produce these kinds of videos, you’ll include a call to action (CTA) link within the video or in the email in which you promote the offer that leads your prospects right to your real estate website.
Specifically, to a dedicated landing page for the offer in question with a form they can fill out for the chance to “win.” The reason behind this is simple: to enhance your site’s lead generation capabilities.
6 Tips To Do Video Marketing for Real Estate Industry
1. Know Your Budget
To calculate your budget, you have to know the target audience demarcation. Then, pickup digital channels as per the audience segment.
2. Learn From Your Competitors
Take note of the dos and don’t for your video as you both might be competing in the same audience segment. Learn areas you need to focus on
3. Keep Them Short
According to HubSpot, popular Twitter videos average around 43 seconds, while popular YouTube videos run a little longer at two minutes.
4. Create A Definitive Script
While creating the content, we suggests the following tips:
- Skip straight to the point: use images as hooks and keep contact info of last
- Focus on interiors more than exteriors
- Stage before your film. Place pieces of furniture at appropriate angles
- Snip boring stuff like hallways and focus on the main rooms
5. Sell The Lifestyle
People don’t want to stay in their homes, they need a life outside of it. So, describing the lifestyle around which your property you’d like to sell is a good idea. For example, show the beach houses and restaurants nearby then showcase the life if they can live in this vicinity.
6. Learn Video Hacks from Experts
Video marketing ain’t that simply. It’s a dynamic field and you can learn it from anywhere. Make sure you’ve followed the video marketing checklist to make your strategy easier. Other than that, learn from experts.
Wrap Up
With these ideas, you will be on your way to creating engaging and high-quality real-estate videos that will help you generate leads.
Like any other campaign, it may take a little to capture the leads you need. But in the long term, it creates value in terms of bringing your brand closer to people.
Don’t forget to track the performance of your videos by adding a CTA in the form of your contact number or calendar link to openly invite them to interact with you further.
Author: Costas Peppas is the Co-founder of Agent Legend
