By Ellie Shaw
Online video marketing is becoming more and more popular. As an estate agent, it is important to keep up to date with the latest trends in order to stay above competition. Video marketing benefits estate agents, as it allows you to provide viewers with information quickly and effectively. For example, creating a property tour video can allow the viewer to get a feel for the layout, space and overall look. A video will also enable you to show accurate room sizes and property features, making it more appealing than photos or text explaining these amenities. In addition to this, given the current circumstances of coronavirus, video communication tools such as Zoom and Facetime have become an essential and effective platform for communication. They are very handy tools for estate agents to use in situations such as communicating with clients, following up with leads, virtual viewings and even meetings. Video communication will allow your clients to feel as if they still get to connect with you comfortably while discussing their interests, due to the video being face to face.
Videos are great ways to increase brand awareness. This is because videos are more engaging, meaning viewers are more likely to remember the information provided and about the subject and business rather than gaining this information from text. If the video contains your USP or even something that is unique to your business (e.g. logos, specific colours etc), people will remember you by this. Not to mention 72% of people prefer video to text, so this could increase a wider audience and catch more people’s attention, meaning an increase in brand awareness.
Before jumping straight into making a marketing video, you need to consider what social media platforms are most popular. This would allow you to decide what platforms you should be posting on, in order to reach a wider audience and gain more interests.
Following closely behind Facebook, Youtube is the second largest social media platform with 1 billion monthly active users. Creating video content on YouTube gives you the opportunity to gain more leads. You could upload content such as: useful tips, advice or you can even upload a video of a featured property. If you regularly upload videos it will give: your viewers the chance to come back for more, your videos the chance to increase in likes, comment and views and your channel the chance to gain subscribers (the more views and subscribers, the more interests and enquiries you will get).
You can even link your website and social media profiles to your channel and videos, giving the viewers the change to look at the properties you have to offer.
Vimeo is a streaming platform that allows you to promote and upload videos as well as taking advantage of its live streaming features. Vimeo allows you to take full control over the content you release, as in customisation and personalisation. It also offers the ability to connect with people who are genuinely interested in your video, so it’s unlikely that the comments you’ll get on your videos will be spam. Like Youtube, it gives you the opportunity to gain leads and posting regularly will give viewers the chance to come back for more if they’re interested. It’s a perfect way to publish video content in order to promote and advertise your properties and services.
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram offer different advertising techniques through paid and organic content. The organic side of social media allows you to promote your page, post on your page, view actions users take, and post photos or videos on your ‘story’, which you can view for up to 24 hours. The paid side of social media allows you to create thorough and refined campaigns that have specific objectives. The main types of campaigns we see for estate agents are brand awareness focused campaigns, traffic campaigns and lead generation campaigns. For brand awareness campaigns in particular, video marketing is a fantastic way of reaching new customers and getting your brand out there. Although generating leads isn’t the main objective for brand awareness campaigns, this doesn’t mean you won’t get any. Facebook allows you to target users depending on their demographics, interests and buyer behaviour. On Instagram, you can add your story’s post to a feature called ‘highlights’ where they can permanently appear on your profile feed. Just like Facebook, Instagram allows you to target your audience. All you then need to do is choose a budget and schedule suitable for your business. Creating ads on social media platforms will be a very effective way of getting your videos out there to a wider audience, due to the fact that social media is extremely popular.
Have you ever loaded a page on the internet but then clicked straight off because all you saw was text? Boring right? 65% of people being visual learners, meaning a full page of written content wouldn’t be retained as well as video content. A video is an easy way for the viewer to process the information you’re sharing and keep them more engaged. Even a short video would have a major impact on the viewer. Video marketing also provides you with the opportunity to advertise your UPS in a unique and creative way, allowing you to make the content a lot more personal to your business.
We have written articles explaining the importance of ranking in all major search engines. Did you know Google is the world’s most popular search engine? Without ranking highly on the search results page or even on the first page, it is unlikely that your website will get much traffic. However, creating a video will improve your chances of appearing higher in the results of Google, by 50%. This makes video content one of the most important and effective factors to add into your digital marketing strategy.
People are most likely to buy from a company they trust. Creating a short online video introducing your company or a staff member will help the user feel like they are getting to know you; this will build trust and can lead to a positive working relationship. Even if you want to create a video showing a new property, instead of just explaining what it is on a website page, you are showing them , which is more appealing than images as you get to see the property at different angles etc. This way the viewer would be able to decide if they like the look of the property or not, which could potentially stop an unnecessary meeting.
Since Covid, a lot of companies have had to work from home or have only been able to meet up with a small number of people. This had affected estate agents because in order for someone to buy a property, they have to view it and decide if they like it or not. This means they need to be in the same household as multiple people from potentially 3 different households. However, video technology has become more and more popular due to this. Using applications such as Zoom and FaceTime to have a video call and to take clients on virtual tours of a property have been very beneficial. With regards to using a video call, this could make the client feel more comfortable. As mentioned before, it could help them gain trust. It’s like they are getting to know you by chatting and seeing you, rather than a phone call where you can see each other.
So, now you know how to fully utilise videos in order to improve your communication as well as your agency’s marketing strategies, why wouldn’t you take advantage of all of these amazing benefits? Something as simple as, creating a video to post on YouTube will help to increase brand awareness, increase leads, and provide information quickly and effectively. As mentioned previously, videos are more stimulating (and appealing) than text and much more popular, giving you and your business the opportunity to reach a wider audience. It is also important to know that 3.81 billion people are currently using social media and 92% of marketers say video is an important part of their marketing strategy. Applications like Zoom will help to improve communication and build trust with clients (This helps build stronger relationships for those who live elsewhere, especially given to Covid19).
By Ben Spowart
By Millie Taylor
By Ben Spowart