How to Use Real Estate Video Marketing

Video is the best marketing strategy in real estate. It’s informative, engaging, and cost-effective – ideal for showcasing your real estate on the web. To learn more about real estate video marketing, check out our primer on the topic in the paragraphs below.

What is Real Estate Video Marketing?

Real estate video marketing is the practice of using online video to promote your real estate business. You can use real estate marketing videos on your website, blog, social media profile, mobile app, and practically every other communication channel.

10 Real Estate Video Examples

The best way to illustrate what real estate video marketing is all about is by way of example. Here are 10 real estate video types you can include in your marketing campaign.

1. Cold Outreach Video

Cold emails are a widely used marketing in real estate. They’re extremely cost-efficient, and can net you some serious clients. A good way to enhance your cold emails is by adding video into the mix. Video is more engaging than text, and combined with the outreach potential of email, it is a powerful tool for convincing customers to buy or sell real estate. Short introductory videos work best here – you don’t want to overwhelm potential clients with too much information up front.

2. Follow-up Video

Once you have clients signed up for your email newsletter (with the help of your cold outreach video emails), you can entice them further with more video content. When it comes to follow-up video content, you have more options to choose from. You can follow up on your story from the previous email, or go in a completely different direction. For instance, you can share videos explaining interesting stats from the real estate industry, guides for buying a new home, or even a short compilation of previews of your best properties.

3. Social Media Video

Video is huge on social media, even on legacy platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Video content gets more views, shares, and comments than text and images, making it an excellent tool for spreading awareness about your real estate brand. Social media video content is typically lighthearted in nature, so save your talk about mortgages, property valuation, etc. for other video channels. When creating social media video content, pay attention to video specs on each platform – each has different requirements in terms of size, aspect ratio, and bit-rate.

4. Testimonial Video

Testimonials are one of the most powerful forms of marketing. Testimonials from satisfied customers will paint your real estate operation as trustworthy, sending a signal to potential that their investments are in safe hands. Testimonial videos should never be scripted – let your customers express themselves in any way they want. It’s easy to spot when someone is doing fake advertising.

 

5. Neighborhood Tour Video

The decision to by real estate is never made in vacuum. Savvy clients will always take into account the surrounding neighborhood before buying a property. So why not make their decision easier by showcasing the surroundings of your property? Depending on the type of property (residential, commercial, industrial, other), you can showcase local restaurants, culture sites, schools, hospitals, parks, and anything else the clients might be interested in.

6. Virtual Tour Video

Thanks to frequent Covid lockdowns, virtual tours are not only popular, but they are often necessary. Virtual tours allow clients to preview properties from the comfort of their home, empowering them to make better purchasing decisions. There is also the wow-factor to consider – most people are still unfamiliar with virtual reality tech, and seeing their new home in rendered in VR is sure to keep their interest piqued.

7. Drone Video

Drone video footage is a bit more common in real estate, but it is nonetheless a powerful tool for showcasing your properties. Drone videos are excellent at showing how a real estate property fits into the local environment, highlighting its connectedness via roads, walkways, and other paths. Drone videos also emphasize scale. The client will get a better grasp of distance, property density, and the general lay of the land.

8. Educational Video

Real estate buyers are often inexperienced folk, which makes their decisions tougher than they need to be. Fortunately, you can address this by providing educational video content on real estate topics. You can share interesting industry stats, talk about problems real estate buyers often face, discuss the impact of technology on real estate and how clients can benefit from them, etc. You can host educational videos anywhere, but posting them on a video-focused platform like your YouTube is a good way to ensure they will reach your target audience.

9. Video Ad

Video ads are a tried and tested strategy in real estate marketing. Nowadays, real estate ads are commonly seen on social media, particularly on platforms such as Facebook. They are extremely useful for raising brand awareness, selling properties, and spreading positive word of mouth online. Note that each social media platform has different technical specifications for ads, but so you’ll have to convert your content in to repurpose it.

10. Instructional Video

Instructional videos are excellent for teaching real estate buyers how to get the most of their properties. Unlike educational videos, instructionals are all about teaching practical skills. For example, you can create an instructional video on how to efficiently use space when placing furniture in your home, how to clean windows efficiently, and similar skills unique to each property.

5 Real Estate Video Marketing Tips

Now that you know what real estate video marketing is all about, here are 5 tips for making the best real estate videos.

1. Start With an Outline

This one might be obvious, but in order to make a video, you have to plan for it. You don’t need a full production schedule, just a basic outline to keep track of tasks. Your outline should describe your audience, available equipment and other resources, the goal of the production, and other basic details.

2. Production Values Matter

More than in other industries, real estate videos greatly benefit from high production values. It’s what separate real estate professionals from people showcasing their home on Instagram with their phone. That being said, production values are more about cinematography, editing, and an eye for detail, than about expensive equipment. Watch a view guides on how to make videos look good, and work with equipment you have available.

3. Script Your Videos

Improvising in front of the camera might work for social media influencers, but in real estate, you have to get your facts straight and tell a coherent story. So devote some time to polish your video script. This will help you greatly down the line when you start recording footage. You’ll have a structure to fall back on if you get lost in details.

4. Be Short and Concise

Real estate agents often have the impulse to talk on and on about the many benefits of the property they’re currently selling. This approach doesn’t work that well for video. Sales talk is interactive, whereas watching a video is passive experience, so you want to keep your videos short and concise. Focus on a couple of core ideas in each video, and skip the details where possible.

5. Check Your Competitors for Ideas

If you’re new to video marketing, it can be tough to start making videos from scratch. And the best way to get inspired is to check out what works for others, namely your competitors. Browse their websites and social media profiles to check out their content, and use your industry knowledge to determine how well it works. Then, steal their ideas, and make them better by improving at least a single aspect. For example, if they’re making instructionals, address topics they haven’t covered.

Conclusion

That’s basically everything you need to know to get started with real estate video marketing. As a final piece of advice, don’t get bogged down with the details. Instead, start by making videos as fast as possible, then iterate based on feedback. It’s much quicker than attempting to do everything at once with your first production.