Video. It’s a tough dragon to slay. My most recent attempts have done little more than wound the poor beast.
We know people like pictures, and we know that pictures sell homes. Over the years, our stills first morphed into the 360 degree fish-eye lens tour. Then, when it became clear that the consumer found these cumbersome, the photo slide show came along. Finally, the photo-rich visual tour of the pan and zoom variety set to music was born. It’s where we go from here that has me in a bit of a conundrum.
Our current visual tours are “sort of” video in the sense that there is movement and sound. It could be argued that this format gives a more complete picture of the home being showcased than could any traditional video footage complete with my chipper voice-over. So what’s missing? Entertainment value.
The perfect video home presentation, I believe, is going to include the following:
- First and foremost, it must give a complete picture. The buyer needs to feel as if they know the floor plan, the flow, and feel, not to mention the details, of the home once they have finished, that they have been virtually delivered to the space. Our current tours do well in this sense.
- There needs to be a hook. Online shoppers are speed browsers, their remote is their mouse, and you only have seconds to capture and hold their attention before they click through. We are currently missing the hook.
- Both the agent-as-host video and the voice over video counterpart need to provide something of value to the buyer which the traditional visual tour does not. This is a tougher one to get your arms around, particularly if you are dealing (as we most often are) with tract homes distinguishable only by their unique upgrades and appointments. Why do you think we are able to provide a link to Scripps Ranch floor plans on our website? Because housing in our community is fairly predictable. Look! They put the TV on the other wall!
- From the agent’s perspective, video is an opportunity to showcase the agent. While this may mean little to the seller of the home, the reality is that listing agents market themselves in large part through the homes they market. Unless you have the voice of James Earl Jones or the acting skills of Meryl Streep, true video can backfire. I fall more into the category of Alvin the Chipmunk and the Olsen twins.
- Practically speaking, unless your agent lists one home a year on average, the video needs to be something producible on short notice and with minimal time investment. Given enough time, I am confident I could produce a compelling short that would send any serious buyer scurrying for his checkbook. The problem is what we call value-engineering. While I am out channeling Francis Ford Coppola, I’ve got six buyers, two property inspectors and one ticked-off termite guy camped out on the front lawns of various homes throughout San Diego County. Alternatively, someone needs to offer a cost effective service for not only producing the video but for ”designing” a unique and creative presentation for each home I need to feature. The trick here is keeping it fresh. As soon as a formula is developed, it is destined to be perceived as tired and canned. Click.
Here is an example of a video which hit on three of the five cylinders beautifully. The problem I see is two-fold. It is so good, it is destined to be a one-hit wonder. (Admittedly, Mike produced this video as part of a contest.) Secondly, while it sells the agent beautifully, does it really get the seller one step closer to that Sold sign in the front yard?
Ultimately, our marketing decisions must consider cost, time, and return on investment, and it is forever a balancing act. If any of our five readers are trolling, I would love to hear both the consumer reaction and the agent solution. And, if you are a vendor who has a cost-effective way to tame this beast, do tell!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kris Berg is Co-Owner and Designated Broker of San Diego Castles Realty. If not-so static web sites are your thing, go here at once where you will find loads of real estate information including homes for sale, market trends, floor plans and more. Kris's hobbies include fencing and spot welding. She likes kittens. 
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This is like Steve Carrell from the Office trying to sell paper by giving customers gift baskets instead of a better online experience. If you want a customer to buy, make it sound like they would be stupid not to buy. Rather than rave about how nice everything is, make it sound like they are getting a great deal that only a bonehead would pass up. While that video is nice, it doesn’t make me want to buy the house. A video explaining how this house was below comp and some of the costs of recent upgrades would inspire me more.
Sven – I appreciate the comment, and I sort of suspected this. The point, after all, is to get the home sold.
I think your list of five is pretty accurate, with special emphasis on the #1 – give a complete view of the property. For a casual browser, entertainment value and creativity are great – it’s fun to see something *different*.
As a serious/imminent buyer, though, I want *sameness* – same video length, same general order. It’s the same reason I want to see MLS sheets instead of agent brochures – I can compare all houses by putting their info side by side to get an accurate comparison.
I don’t expect a video to make me fall in love with a house, though it certainly can help justify why I should put it on my list to see. As you said, most videos provide “something of value which the traditional visual tour does not” … a sense of how the house ‘feels’. For that reason, it’d be great if all listings had them – more efficient for everyone involved!
To the list I would add high quality encoding. Apple understands this. Regular YouTube encoding is just too compressed.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/gettingstarted/guidedtour/large.html
Kris – Good topic and I hope you get the constructive stuff you want, but I think you are on target with your points. I had fun watching the video and certainly it must have been fun to make and write. Did it accomplish it’s goal? ABSOLUTELY …. defining the goal as creating a unique piece that will catch the contest judge’s attention. Does it sell the property? Sadly no. Could it have been designed to sell property with just a couple of small changes? A resounding YES.
I’ll bet that very few viewers actually went to the single property web page listed in the last few seconds of the video. I did and found a masterful job of representing the home with abundant pictures, detailed information and convincing material that made me want to buy. I thought this was well very well done. If the video had focused any time at all on directing the viewer to the static web page it could have been more than just a contest winner.
What a great video! It got a ton of exposure for the propertyand it DID NOT feature a link to the agent’s website (which it could have done – rather than to the property).
Now do I think that will sell someone on the house – not really. I am not sure that anything whiz-bangy will make a house sell. This goes back to what realtors talk about all the time – there is no magic formula for selling houses, just hard work.
You need to make sure your house has enough information to compel someone to ask to see it, they have to be in the market for that type of house in that area (you cannot MAKE someone like the type of you are selling, they either like new construction / historic / ranch or they don’t and there is nothing that an agent can do to MAKE them).
That having been said, snaps to the video guy!!!
The video’s clever but I don’t see it helping with the house. People aren’t looking and thinking “great hardware floors!” They’re probably thinking, “man that room looks dark.”
Oh, and the “K-8 schools steps away” is a Fair Housing violation.
But the rubber chicken was really cool.
First of all, I have to say how flattered and humbled I am to be catching up on some of my favorite RE blog reading and find my video featured on one of my top 20 RSS feeds. I am so not worthy, Kris.
The original intention of this video was to create something clever for the current Century 21 “Dig the Digs” contest (would certainly appreciate your vote at http://youtube.com/century21). After it was done I stumbled upon the ActiveRain contest and threw my hat in that ring as well.
Long story short, I won the ActiveRain contest earlier this week and will be one of 50 attendees at a very up-close-and-personal day long Seth Godin seminar later this month. If you can’t tell, I’m a bit of a marketing junkie and Seth serves up some of the best Kool-Aid around. The value of this experience far outweighs the days work that went into the making of the video. For that I am grateful (my “thank you” video is posted here: http://www.vimeo.com/891605).
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a rookie agent. Less than 10 months in the biz. I don’t have 6 buyers, 2 inspectors and a pissed-off termite guy. I’ve got time. Too much sometimes. If the first intention was to win my sellers $21,000 in the C21 contest (which equals a well-deserved $21K price reduction for the listing agent I would argue), the second intention was to market myself. I’m happy to report listing appointments are happening more frequently as a direct result of the exposure the video has generated. As a new agent with no track record behind him, differentiating myself with a unique marketing approach is, in the words of Seth Godin, my purple cow.
The video was never intended to directly sell the house site unseen. Very tough (ie: impossible) to do in 2 minutes. It was intended to entertain people long enough for them to want to know more. Is the video perfect? Hardly! Do I have a lot to learn? Duh. But I’m convinced (apparently unlike many of my colleagues around here) that “marketing” a property these days consists of way more than a yard sign and an MLS listing, so I had to stretch myself and go for something different.
Plus, how else could a rookie agent just getting his feet wet get the kind of national exposure this video has generated so far for me? I am completely overwhelmed by the positive feedback this effort has earned me, and I CAN NOT WAIT until I am too damn busy to make another one!
On the other hand, Kris, I willingly accept your challenge and vow to prove you wrong on the one-hit wonder comment! : )
Thanks to everyone for caring enough to have an opinion and write it down. The other plus is I have learned a TON from this experience! What’s the value of that? Priceless, right?
Stay tuned loyal viewers. I have not yet begun to market my properties!
Mike Lefebvre
Here’s my 2c. As a person buying real estate, this is my perspective:
Someone wants to buy, they say “I want a house in areas X or Y”. If those areas have nothing that meets their desires/price, they’ll look in area Z, Q, W, L, etc… until they find something that fits or give up. They look in a specific price range, and I’ll tell you right now, what will drive buyers to a house like nothing else is a good deal. This will blow away any video no matter how good that video is.
Let’s say I wanted to buy something along the lines of that house, and I see that video. The first, the VERY first thing I would do is look in the neighborhood and area for similar listings to get an idea of value. If a house across the street is listed for $50,000 less and is comparable, well your video just sold the neighbor’s house.
Now I could see a video like that being useful for driving traffic to a developer’s complex or a new suburb of a city that is in development. Even then, value is everything. You can post the crummiest pictures (all sideways and grainy), put N/K on every item in the MLS listing, post it in a downward moving market, and it’ll still sell if it’s priced right.
Thanks, everyone, for the comments. I took a blogging break yesterday, so I am late getting back. Jonathan – LOL. That is the first thing I thought – Fair housing violation.
More to the point, I think Sven summed up nicely what I have been wrestling with. With all of our time strangling technology, it really comes down to value, doesn’t it? Our marketing tools and offerings can not be infinite; at some point we all have to make decisions about where to focus our limited financial and time resources.
Our current visual tour product is not cost prohibitive, and since the photos are taken by others, professionals, the time commitment is manageable. I would be more than willing to pursue a different approach to the whole video offering IF I was convinced it would improve the market time or the ultimate bottom line to the seller. I am not convinced of either… yet.
The exception, I suppose, would be the truly unique home which has a story to tell that can’t be told in the traditional video tour format.
Mike – Welcome! I just saved you from my spam bucket. Lucky you.
You hit on the biggest reason for taking the time to do something like this. It markets the agent, and I can appreciate the exposure you got from this project – All deserved! You have the voice, the composure and the presence to pull this off beautifully, and you did.
Now, as you said, when you have ten or more transactions chugging along at once, I suspect it is going to be a bit more of a challenge to pull this sort of thing off. For every problem, there is a solution, and I have got to believe that there is a third-party someone out there with video skills who can develop a cost effective way for an agent to produce something unique for each and every listing without breaking the bank or leaving no time for that agent to do other things (like, say, their job).
Awesome job with this one, in any event!
Kris! Aint this fun!!! This is exactly why I have been so incredibly busy over the past nine months. However, I had a darn good break when my GIANTS took the cake (and tainted my pockets with cash)…what a streak they had. I still get tingles just thinking about it.
Anyway, I have been so busy developing an intranet for the office I work with…one of them new real estate start ups! This particular website finally launches this week after 4 solid months of intense development and is allowing me to free up some of my time. So, I have decided to try and jump back into the blog world again and train the audience I’m gaining over at my original prospecting baby (Virginia Beach Estates, Inc.). I’ve recently pulled the videos I had on display, one of which illustrates my movie talent, although I couldn’t come up with a witty way to describe my “On Camera” talent. I’ll try to keep in touch as much as possible and very soon will come back to show you the fruits of my labor!
For a brief introduction, please take a trip to my youtube video (It’s nothing special…actually quit disturbing). However, I’m very excited to be in the position that I’m in and look forward to sharing with you over the next few weeks!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WhSmhOHSAG4
That was a wonderful idea you and Steve put together for the unfortunate…