By Adrian Fisher
Real estate is a competitive market. Anyone who ventures into this field needs to take every opportunity to stand out. This applies especially to an online marketing presence. The internet provides the greatest potential for customer touch points because that’s where 51 percent of buyers are spending their time to find their homes. Consequently, it’s where realtors will spend 80 percent of their marketing efforts, which leaves many professionals with one big problem: how to set yourself apart amidst the competition.
Three months ago, I decided to try something new: I began a real estate web series. We created a plan and it caught on faster than we expected, reaching one million views in the first 90 days. Our whirlwind success taught me a few things about video marketing and how to maximize this type of content. I’ve outlined five of my biggest lessons from my video marketing success.
Video Stands Out the Most on Social Platforms
If you want to set yourself apart from the monotony, you have to be different. You’ll need to move away from the typical status update and share something exceptional. Your objective should be to make people pause their scrolling and take notice.
Video resonates. According to an online and social video marketing study, consumers are four times more likely to watch a video than read about a brand. It’s a no-brainer to transition from a standard, wordy post (or even an image) to video content. I created a Facebook group to share my videos but, more importantly, to get feedback and engage with the real estate community. I post videos along with commentary that asks questions, offers advice and seeks to talk with other experts in the field. By providing valuable content via video, I've been able to build my online brand.
Repurposing and Resharing Content Works
Producing video content takes a lot of effort. Luckily, there is a way to maximize your efforts: repurposing. We took Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice and created one piece of content and shared it across multiple platforms in as many variations as possible. Repurposed content gives you more opportunities to rank for a given keyword, more ways to reach your audience, the chance to reinforce your messaging and helps you become an online authority in the subject matter.
You can upload a video to YouTube and Vimeo, share it on Twitter with a catchy headline, switch it up and post it to Instagram, write a summary and publish it on your blog. Try sharing your videos natively on social channels. Don’t limit yourself to one platform or style; create your content and share it far and wide. Everyone won’t consume your content in the same way, so make it easy for your audience and feed it to them in various formats.
You Can Benefit From Your Video Content Too
Don’t create for the sake of creating. You want to think about how your efforts will contribute to your bottom-line (indirectly, of course). Could you entice viewers to sign up for a video series that converts them into leads? Could you drive viewers to your website by encouraging them to comment? Could you get viewers to sign up for email updates? Could you add a preview of your previous video to keep viewers on your channel?
However you decide to reap the rewards of your efforts, your time and energy should not be in vain. Think long-term goals. Content creation, in any form, should be a mutually beneficial relationship.
Keep Your Video Informative to Attract More Potential Leads
Someone viewing your videos for the first time is most likely in the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey; they’ve come to gather knowledge. This isn’t the point where you want to sell them. Instead, keep your tactics top-of-the-funnel by providing information and being a helpful resource. Establish yourself as an authority and to get your audience to trust you. We established Edward Hutchinson as an authority by showcasing his knowledge of the Venice, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills real estate markets and his ability to get access to some of the most interesting properties on the market. Additionally, we interspersed clips of Hutchinson working on property deals, explaining parts of his day-to-day life while keeping production quality really high. When you're providing value, you're establishing yourself as an authority.
While sales could be your ultimate goal, there are several benefits to guiding your audience down your marketing funnel in a slow, controlled manner:
• You gain loyal followers and fans who will come back to your content for more information in the future.
• You’ll get natural traction because your audience will share your helpful content with others.
• Visitors will transition more easily into leads since they feel like they can trust you.
You can quickly turn fans into critics if they feel like you’re trying to sell them. If your audience believes that you are genuinely there to help, they’ll be more likely to stick with you for the long haul and turn to you when they’re ready to make a buying decision.
You Have to Pay to Play
Social media is becoming a crowded space. Facebook algorithms are set up so that most of your followers won’t even see your posts, and keywords are becoming more competitive. With the shift toward online marketing, it's become increasingly difficult to compete in these channels organically. By incorporating paid advertising strategies into your marketing plan, like boosting every piece of content even with a small amount of money, you’ll get in front of more potential customers on social media.
Paid advertising can seem intimidating, but with detailed video tutorials and the average Facebook Ad spend much more affordable than other platforms, the effort is well worth the ROI to start to build your real estate personal brand.
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Adrian Fisher is the founder and CEO of PropertySimple, a real estate technology company that helps real estate agents build a brand worth talking about by leveraging social media channels.