Tip of the Week: Create Quality, Professional Real Estate Videos

By Travis Saxton, contributor for RISMedia

The focus of this article is on the professional side of the video conversation in real estate. Consider it a one-to-many approach. You are creating content with the sole goal of marketing. This is where things start to degrade in our industry. Oftentimes top coaches, brokers, and agents alike mix up the importance of quality with quantity. We have heard time and time again to just shoot something on your iPhone and get it out there. That is fine in a personal setting—shooting a message to a friend or contact for the purpose of building that relationship—but all the research shows doing that for marketing purposes outside of a one-to-one relationship can actually be detrimental.

Quality Matters

Sixty-two percent of consumers are more likely to have a negative perception of a brand with a low-quality video experience. Let that resonate for a minute. Quality matters, and to add to this, professional video outperforms user-generated video by 60 percent, in all metrics that matter (views, clicks, shares, likes, etc.).

Quality video also matters when it comes to social media. Just because it’s social doesn’t give us the right to produce something quicker and low quality. This, as well, is a common mistake in real estate. Professional video has proven a 1,200 percent increase in engagement on social media versus posts with text and images alone. Facebook has it figured out, and they have invested heavily in video. Have you?

Here is our advice to you. There are ways to do quality video, within reach of every real estate professional and brokerage.

• Custom can be expensive, but the impact is lasting. Neighborhood videos can provide immense impact, and if done and used properly, give you a big bang for the buck. Most people stop at the video. Some post it on their site, and others get it to social media. There is so much more you can do with quality video, though. Think email campaigns, lead conversion, digital video marketing, and much more. Thinking outside the box with this kind of content dramatically impacts your ROI.

• Custom video is not for everyone, and can range from $500 on the very low end to $10,000 on the high end for a 60-second video. This may put it out of reach for many real estate professionals and brokers. Semi-custom can be a solution. It involves injecting some local content and info into a video template. At VScreen, our Community Videos are a great example of this. They are much lower cost, from $10-30 per video depending on volume. This gets professional quality video at scale in your hands!

• Lastly is automated, or dynamic, video. Most commonly used on listings or market data, these videos can provide great content and very low prices, under $10 per video. While they can’t be personalized beyond some branding and calls to action, they still provide impactful reach and engagement.

The moral of this story is that there is a solution out there for every professional in real estate to produce quality video. Make sure your consumers think of you in a positive way, and don’t settle for the shaky iPhone DIY video.