Video is an incredibly powerful medium. This is also true for real estate. Listings with video receive 403% more inquiries. To put it this way, if you usually receive ten inquiries for a listing, a video could turn that into 50.
But adding videos to your listings and uploading these on Facebook and/or YouTube means that you are only touching the surface of what you can do with video. There’s so much more you can do.
Many real estate agents shy away from video - and this is precisely why using it as part of your marketing strategy can give you a competitive advantage.
Video is becoming a more and more popular content format around the world. YouTube has more than two billion active users and 122 million daily active users. On the other hand, Facebook generates more than eight billion video views daily, while video posts get the highest engagement rate (13.9%, almost double the engagement rate on other social media platforms). Posting video content on Instagram makes you four times more likely to be featured in their Explore feed.
Today’s smartphones produce exceptionally high-quality videos, which is more than enough for social media. So, there are no excuses for avoiding video in your marketing efforts. Get in front of your smartphone camera and start practising!
This blog post will lay out some additional ideas for your video marketing efforts besides the usual presentation videos done for new listings and give you extra tips on making a better impact on your viewers.
Video Ideas for Real Estate Agents
Sometimes, the most challenging part of making a video is coming up with an interesting topic.
The key to making good content, no matter on which platform you’ll share it afterwards, is to understand what your audience might be interested in.
Here is a list of video ideas on which you can start working right away
#1 Talk about the market
You can make weekly or bi-weekly videos about what’s currently happening in the national and local real estate markets, e.g. which areas and neighbourhoods are seeing increased or decreased demand. Elaborate about how this affects inventory and prices.
These videos will also be helpful to you. All this market information will help you be more confident when talking to your clients on the phone.
By sharing market information with your followers, you build an image of a knowledgeable real estate agent who can help their clients make well-informed decisions about their real estate sales and purchases.
#2 Present the neighbourhoods you work in
You already know that some of the most important factors driving a person’s purchasing decision on real estate (besides the price) are the proximity of different facilities within a neighbourhood: schools/universities, recreational facilities, shopping venues, restaurants, etc. So, why not create short tours of the neighbourhoods you work in?
You can show some of your favourite places, but you can also show the properties you helped purchase or sell recently.
#3 Talk with other experts
There are a lot of questions people have when purchasing a property. Some are more interested in the newest trends in interior design, some would like to know what to pay attention to when buying a home, some would like to know what renovation works increase the value of their properties, and some are more interested in financing options.
Talk with your partners - staging specialists, interior designers, builders, mortgage agents - and interview them. This content will create a lot of value for your audience, and it’s more evergreen - than talking about markets.
#4 Client testimonials
Testimonials are essential in every business. But in real estate, they are even more critical. Your clients trust you with (probably) the most important and most significant purchase of their lives, and having testimonials does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to building trust.
While many agents focus on written testimonials, you can go further and make video testimonials. If your clients agree, these can even be done within the home you helped them purchase.
While video testimonials mean more work, they are also more credible. Besides, you can always steer the conversation in the direction you want - for example, you can ask the client to talk about how you helped them in the process or what they particularly liked when working with you, why they chose you, etc.
#5 Welcome video for your first email or text to new leads
As automation and bots become prevalent in real estate, more personalized communication will make you stand out. Suppose part of your marketing strategy involves online lead generation. In that case, you can create a short welcome video about yourself for the initial email and/or SMS you send to your online leads.
With such a video, you are helping them put a face to the website or Facebook/Instagram page through which the lead came in. This way, you are reassuring these leads that there is an actual person behind the form they just filled in. You are building trust from the very first point of contact you have with your leads.
#6 Use live video
Facebook, Instagram and YouTube offer live video options. One powerful statistic that can motivate you to do more live videos is that Facebook users watch live videos three times longer than non-live videos. After you finish your live video, you can decide whether or not you’ll keep the video on your page/channel.
One of the best ways to use live video is virtual open houses. Virtual open houses allow people who cannot make it to the in-person one to see the property from another perspective. And you can engage with them almost in the same way you would do during the in-person one. But any of the video ideas mentioned above can also be done as live videos (if you are comfortable with it). The biggest added value of doing live videos is that they allow you to answer questions from your audience right then and there.
Additional Tips to Make Your Video Content Better
Here are some bonus tips that can help you optimize your video efforts:
Don’t forget to add subtitles to your videos - 85% of videos on Facebook and Instagram are watched without sound.
To get the most out of your video for SEO, use your priority keywords in the video title.
If the platform uses tags (e.g. YouTube), don’t forget to use them. They are also an important part of your SEO.
Don’t forget to create dedicated playlists. Once you’ve made a few videos on a specific subject (markets, neighbourhoods, testimonials), bundle them on a dedicated playlist, so it’s easier for your followers and subscribers to find the content most relevant to them. We do this with our live dial webinars and lead conversion tips.
Embed your videos on relevant pages on your website (e.g. if you are doing a neighbourhood tour video, embed it on that neighbourhood’s page on your website). Web pages with embedded videos about the same topic rank higher in search results.
Remember Facebook Feed, YouTube, LinkedIn and IGTV favour horizontal format, Facebook and Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels and TikTok favour vertical format.
If you’re doing long-form videos on YouTube, don’t forget to include timestamps in the video description, so it’s easier for your audience to find the part of the video they’re most interested in.
You can hire a professional to do your video editing, but if you want to try it by yourself, here are some popular online video editing tools for beginners: WeVideo, Biteable, Magisto, VEED, Animoto, FlexClip.
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All social media platforms are putting more and more focus on video content - long-form and short-form. And so should you. Leveraging video allows you to tap into new audiences, increase your engagement rates and create a stronger real estate brand.
We hope that this blog post will encourage you to take your smartphone and start recording and, why not, live streaming.
