Selling
a house is an inherently visual process. Before making one of the biggest
purchases of a lifetime, many buyers spend countless hours poring over
elevation and floor plan options, pictures of model homes, flipping through
design idea books and browsing sites such as Pinterest and Houzz. However,
while pictures are a great tool for feeding our inherently visual nature,
videos are what can truly sell a home.
Time
and time again, data proves that video is a powerful driver of consumer
engagement. According to a 2011 report from the Pew
Internet and American Life Project, nearly three-quarters of Americans use
video-sharing sites, and according to Flimp, more than half of
marketers say that video provides the best ROI for content marketing.
Luckily,
for those marketing homes in today's real estate market, there are plenty of
social video sharing options, including YouTube, Vimeo, Vine and Instagram. However, with more choices, determining which video
tool(s) are right for you can be difficult.
The
key is to ask yourself what kind of videos you want to and are able to produce,
and where you want to showcase the finished product. Most builders focus on
creating longer videos with model home or community tours for prospective buyers.
When these videos are professionally shot and well produced, this is an
excellent way to allow people to experience (or relive) a walkthrough from the
comfort of their own home.
In
this scenario, uploading longer videos to sites such as YouTube or Vimeo can
help improve search engine rankings, allow buyers to discover your homes and
communities and make embedding this content onto your website, blog or social
media profiles much easier.
However,
to be truly effective, builders have to step back from just selling, and start
to develop relationships with their audience. The new breed of video
apps such as Vine and Instagram can help bring out a new sense of creativity
that will resound with buyers on a deeper level.
Vine,
which launched in January 2013, was one of the first high-profile social video
apps to achieve popularity. It challenges its 40 million-plus registered users
to create six-second videos and share them, either within the app itself, through
Twitter (which owns the company) or on Facebook.
Some
of the brands that have put Vine to good use include:
·
Lowe’s
Fix in Six series
·
Honda, which responded to
real customer tweets with Vine videos for their #wantnewcar campaign
·
Nordstrom,
which achieved a viral hit with their “Pass the Puma” video
Vine
received a healthy dose of competition in June when the popular photo-sharing
app, Instagram, which boasts 150 million users and the backing of social media
behemoth Facebook, launched its own video capabilities. Instagram users now
have the ability to share 15-second videos on the site, on several popular
social networks and embed the videos on blogs and websites. With the longer
format and the ability to load pre-recorded videos and use their famous filters,
Instagram allows brands to achieve a more polished product and route their
videos through internal review and approval processes.
Builders
who want to use these short-format video marketing tools should think beyond
the community tour and create new types of content. Some suggestions include:
·
Answers
to frequent buyer questions
·
How-to
or short educational video series
·
Time
lapse video of a home under construction
·
Short
tours of your model home
·
Sneak
peek into a new home or community
·
A
day in the life of various company employees
·
Videos
and pictures submitted by buyers
There
are many creative ways builders can use these tools to connect with potential
buyers. So, grab those video cameras and smartphones, and start recording.
For more information on building your home building company's
brand through video, make sure to ASK Carol! East Coast Carol (aka Carol
Morgan) can be reached at http://www.CarolMorgan.net or http://www.mRELEVANCE.com. West Coast Carol (aka
Carol Ruiz) can be reached at http://www.newgroundco.com.