Real Estate Video Marketing Guide for 2021
Real estate video marketing is hotter than ever, and the industry isn’t showing any signs of slowing down in 2021.
If you’re a seller or real estate agent/realtor and/or marketer looking to boost your real estate business and build a stronger connection with your potential buyers – the time is now to develop a real estate video marketing strategy for your brand. Check out our real estate video maker and see how you can create awesome marketing videos right now.
With this real estate video marketing guide for 2021 – you’re going to learn:
- The perks of real estate video marketing
- How your small business can compete with bigger businesses
- The basics of incorporating video into your real estate brand’s online marketing strategy
- How to strategically use video for real estate listings
Why Use Video Marketing For Your Real Estate Business?
How can video marketing benefit small business real estate agents and brokers?
Tell Your Story
For starters, video marketing will give your real estate business the opportunity to make your operation seem more personable. With video, you can tell your business’s story directly to your consumer: what made you originally want to pursue real estate, how your business got started, what your favorite part of the industry is etc. Real estate involves trust and intuition – a personal video will help you seem more likeable, which can increase the amount of trust your customer has in you.
Here’s a great video example from real estate investor Kris Krohn about how he got started out in real estate:
Read up on the concept of digital storytelling here for further insights.
Position Yourself as a Real Estate Expert
You’ve worked hard to get to where you are in the industry – share your real estate expertise in a video! This works great as a listicle video (i.e. “My Top 5 Tips & Tricks for Buying Your First Home.”) Here’s some inspiration from real estate agent Loida Velasquez:
Show Your Properties, with Promo Videos
Real estate video marketing makes it possible for you to show off your properties to potential clients. You can use the videos to give potential buyers a tour of your properties, as well as discuss relevant details about it (price, location etc). The remote aspect of being able to show off homes and properties is a game changer for brokers and clients who don’t live in the same area.
Real Estate Video Marketing Statistics in 2021
When it comes down to it, video marketing has proven to be immensely successful across all industries. In 2021, research shows that:
- Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year, and a 54% increase in brand awareness.
- At the same time, marketers who rely on video will be able to grow their revenue nearly 50% faster than those who do not.
- Videos excel on social media, since they are more engaging and more easily shareable than images alone. Video content can help generate 1200% more social shares than images and text combined.
Here are some unique real estate video marketing statistics (source):
- 50% of buyers find their new home online.
- Almost 51% of shoppers use YouTube as their number one destination for research.
- 84% of new homebuyers say the information they found online was crucial for their research.
The numbers don’t lie: it is 100% crucial for real estate businesses to improve their video marketing in this day and age. Potential buyers are spending more and more time on digital and their phones are likely to be their first destination when researching a potential home. Create videos to ensure that your content shows up (and hopefully catches their eye!) as they scroll.
Real Estate Video Marketing Services
If you’re a real estate professional who’s just getting started out with video content creation and doesn’t have a lot of experience with video editing tools – don’t worry! Here are two routes that you can take for improving your video marketing:
- Outsourcing – If it’s within your budget, there are plenty of video marketing services out there that will take care of every aspect of the video content creation process for you. Before choosing a company to handle your video marketing, be sure to do your research. Focus on finding out whether the company is reputable and worth your time and money.
- Use a Video Marketing Tool – If your plan is to create videos in-house, check out Boosted – a promo video maker app that enables you to create professionally-designed real estate videos, in minutes. You can use your own footage or select stock footage, and then add text and other elements to customize. It’s free to download and use (you can upgrade to access all video templates), which is always a plus for any bootstrapped real estate agent trying to grow his or her business.
12 Tips For Creating Awesome Real Estate Marketing Videos in 2021
1. Create promotional real estate videos
Boosted makes the otherwise daunting experience of creating a promo video simple and fast.
There’s a dedicated category within the app for real estate video templates:
Here are some examples of real estate marketing videos that you can create with Boosted’s real estate video maker app:
2. Create a real estate video script
Every good piece of content starts with a plan. A video script will give your real estate marketing video framework and direction. Here are 8 steps to writing an effective video script, according to HubSpot:
- Start with a brief.
- Use your brief to write an outline.
- Introduce yourself and/or the topic at the beginning of your script.
- Start writing your script, section by section.
- Support any B-roll with the proper callouts in your main narrative.
- Be as concise as you can.
- Use this video script template (see HubSpot article).
- Do a verbal run-through off-camera.
3. Make sure your real estate marketing video is high-quality
Nowadays, you don’t need professional, expensive video equipment to create HQ video content – smartphones make shooting impressive video content accessible to everyone. Be conscious of which way you hold your phone when shooting (horizontal vs. vertical). Knowing which social media platform the content is for will help inform this decision (i.e. you would film a video vertically for Instagram Stories).
4. Niche Down & Analyze Audience
You’re in real estate. We all know that. But what are your specialties? What helps set you apart from any other real estate professional on the market? Who exactly are you trying to sell to?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then I strongly suggest that you sit down and think about it before you begin planning out any type of video content that you’re going to create.
In fact, knowing the answers to these questions is crucial is you plan on being in sales. Period!
Essentially, by focusing on your unique selling points (USPs), specialties, and everything else that sets you apart, it’ll be much easier to attract the right type of consumers to your brand.
And, at the same time, it’s also important to perform a thorough analysis of your target audience and ideal buyers. By understanding who you want to sell to you, again, it’ll be easier to create video content that speaks to the right type of consumer.
So, for instance, if you were a realtor that primarily sold family homes, you wouldn’t want to create videos showing rich people in lavish homes with luxurious interior designs simply because of the fact that the people you want to sell to (the average family) can’t typically afford lavish homes or luxury interiors.
On the other hand, if you were to create videos based on family life, showing modest homes, but focusing on wholesome family values, then you might have a video idea that speaks to your target audience.
Knowing what makes you unique, as well as what your target audience wants, is crucial for creating effective real estate marketing videos.
5. Analyze Your Competitors
Before nailing down any specific plans as to what type of real estate videos to make, it’s a good idea to take a look at your competitors to see what type of video content they’re currently making.
Obviously, the idea here isn’t to steal their video idea or to copy them. Instead, it’s important to truly examine what they are doing that’s being well-received by their audience.
By doing this, you’ll get a much better idea of what type of real estate videos are currently popular, and that should give you plenty of ideas for video content to create for yourself.
At the same time, instead of solely looking at what they’re doing, it’s also a good idea to try and spot any content gaps that your competitors aren’t currently offering, which your target audience might be interested in.
For example, maybe there’s a large number of consumers that are looking for information on home inspection in Iowa. However, out of all the realtors and real estate agencies in the state, none of them are currently offering any information on home inspections.
In this case, if you were able to create real estate videos that focus on this topic, there’d be virtually no competing content, and you could easily generate a large amount of traffic for you or agency.
Plus, at the same time, by providing information video content that your competitors aren’t currently offering, you easily make yourself stand out as a leader in your industry.
6. Perform Keyword Research
Keywords are very specific terms that internet users enter into search engines like Google and YouTube to find relevant content.
Keyword research analyzes the most popular keywords used by your audience, which you can then use to base your video content on. Essentially, performing keyword research will allow you to identify keywords that are frequently searched by consumers.
By optimizing their videos and blog content for these keywords, realtors, and agencies can work towards having their videos’ rank on search engines like Google. Once video content begins to rank well, hopefully on the first page of results, it can easily generate consistent traffic to your website or real estate listings.
7. Play On Human Emotions
While I’m not advocating that you try to trick people into watching or liking your real estate videos, it can be extremely beneficial to create video content that plays on positive human emotions like joy, happiness, and love.
Not only do videos that elicit an emotional response get better reactions from viewers, but they’re also considerably more memorable as well. And this is especially true when we’re talking about selling real estate, since consumers tend to relate better to other warm humans rather than cold property listings.
In fact, whether we’re talking about sales, marketing, or any other type of human relations, emotional appeal is one of the most powerful tools that can be used to win over other people.
8. Focus On The Highlights
When it comes to niching down and focusing on your target audience, focusing on your or your agency’s strong points is essential. And this same principle should also be applied whether you’re creating videos to promote yourself, your agency, or your property listings
In other words, when it comes to creating videos for property listings, don’t simply think about the property itself; think about how you can sell the lifestyle and locations that go hand-in-hand with the property.
For instance, maybe you’re selling a property that backs on a beach.
Instead of only showing the property itself, it might be a good idea to create a video that shows the beach lifestyle, maybe even including shots of people swimming or sunbathing. While these shots aren’t necessarily about the house, they work to sell the beach lifestyle that potential buyers will get when they purchase the house.
The point here is that real estate videos don’t only need to focus on real estate, they can focus on positive human emotions, lifestyles, and location benefits rather than specific things about a property or real estate agency.
And when you keep these tips in mind, there’s truly no limit to the type of video content that you can create. Just make sure to keep it fresh, relevant, human, and fun, and you’re already well on your way to create that your audience will love.
9. Keep Your Real Estate Videos Short & Concise
People’s attention spans are decreasing rapidly. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure to keep your real estate video marketing short and sweet, but still engaging.
The problem with this is that you still want to present all the necessary information in your video, but you need to do it in as efficient a manner as possible.
In general, keeping your videos to 5-minutes and under will ensure that you lose fewer viewers, and potential clients, before the video is over. This means you will need to evaluate what information is essential and what information can be scrapped.
It’s always good to include as much information as possible, but do your very best to condense as much as possible.
When people view your video, they won’t be in the same headspace as if they when sitting down to a watch movie. In other words, you only have a very short window of time to capture their attention and engage with them.
Present the most compelling information you have as soon as you can in your videos. Don’t leave the good stuff until the end! Get it out there as soon as possible. Doing so will lead to more viewers sticking with your video until the end.
Keeping your videos short is also essential if you want them to rank well on platforms, such as YouTube.
While algorithms are changing constantly, they currently favor shorter videos that have high rates of viewers watching all the way through. Therefore, the more your video can fit into that mold, the more it’ll be visible by people and search engines.
10. Create a Budget
There’s no sugar-coating the fact that your real estate video marketing is going to cost some money to make.
Sure, you’ve got a camera on your phone and some software installed on your computer to edit your footage, but you’ll still require a budget, especially if you want to create videos that are compelling enough to sell homes.
Real estate really isn’t an industry where you can get away with an unpolished or poorly put together video.
In fact, real estate is a field based on aesthetics. People need to have confidence in the people they are purchasing their homes from, and unfortunately, publishing videos that look like they were made in an amateur’s basement does not spark such feelings.
The properties you’re showing need to look appealing and this is always going to require certain lighting tools.
As much as cameras on smartphones have advanced, they still can’t do much about a poorly lit location.
So with that in mind, you’ll want to create a budget that includes proper lighting materials, as well as leaving a bit of extra play for some professional editing if possible.
If you don’t set aside a budget for your video before you begin to shoot, it’ll show.
On the other hand, if you take the time to carefully plan your budget, not only can you save yourself money, but you’ll be much better equipped to get things filmed properly and on schedule when the time comes to shoot your footage.
11. Spotlight Yourself
This tip might sound a little intimidating to some, but as a public facing realtor should always try to feature yourself in your real estate video marketing promotions.
Of course, you don’t want to distract from the property. But you do want to make sure that whoever watches the video is going to remember the name and face of the realtor they might want to deal with in the future.
For some, this idea is exciting. For others, however, it’s terrifying.
The idea of starring in a real estate promo video that will be seen by many people, including potential clients, can invoke fear, stress, anxiety, and the works.
However, to put this in perspective, there is nothing that you would be saying or doing in a marketing video that you wouldn’t be saying or doing with a prospective client. Therefore, you really shouldn’t worry too much about having yourself filmed in a video.
People relate to other people, not necessarily to a house or piece of property.
In other words, you’re the person your prospective client needs to relate to.
Use your video as an opportunity to share with people the feelings that you’ve gone through when buying a home, what made you feel confident about your purchase, what made you nervous, etc.
The more your viewers can relate and connect with you, the more they will see you as a credible expert in the field and as someone they may want to work with in the future.
Obviously, you don’t have to come off as a movie star, nor do you need to buy new clothes or get a makeover.
Just be yourself, be relatable, and people will naturally want to connect with you.
12. Don’t Just Sell The Home, Sell The Location
As a real estate professional, you know that a person doesn’t just purchase a house, they purchase a home. And that home doesn’t just include the structure itself, but also the location it sits in and the lifestyle that’s possible by living there.
In other words, when creating your videos, don’t just focus on the homes that your selling.
Instead, give your viewer a glimpse into the world that surrounds it. In fact, images of the city, town, or area where your property is located should almost always be used to fill a prospective client’s imagination with ideas about the kind of life they might one day lead if they lived there.
Is the house you’re selling near the beach?
Then make sure your video showcases not only the home and beach, but the surrounding restaurants, shops, and all the other things to do in the area as well.
Real estate marketing videos should always include footage of happy people enjoying their lives.
You can even ask local business owners if they would like to be featured in the video. It’s free advertising for them, and it goes a long way to showing potential clients what life is really like in the community.
Alternatively, a few testimonials from locals could go a long way toward bringing you new clients, and the footage you shoot can be reused in the future for multiple videos on homes or properties in that same area.
7 Best Real Estate Marketing Video Examples in 2021:
Get inspired to create stellar real estate marketing videos by watching successful videos that have already received a lot of views, engagement and subsequently, real estate leads. Here are some videos that will get your creative juices flowing:
1. How to Shoot Drone Commercial Real Estate, Property Videos | BTS – Discover a way to show off your properties from (literally) a whole new perspective using drones. Watch for tips on how to record real estate videos using a drone, as well as insights into different angles and shots you can record from. Incorporating aerial footage into your real estate marketing video is a surefire way to make your video stand out.
2. Realtor Commercial Video | Real Estate Agent Profile Commercial | Chicago – This video provides an in-depth look into an individual real estate agent’s services. It tells the realtor’s story in a personal and engaging fashion, and includes a customer testimonial as well which adds a level of trustworthiness to the video.
3. Jennifer Skoff Realtor – Profile Introduction Video In this very basic profile video by Jennifer Skoff, she makes a perfect example of how to get your message out there by being curt and to the point, all while looking stylish and professional at the same time.
Because this is a profile video, Skoff gets straight to the point, introducing herself as a realtor and explaining how she understands that each of her clients is unique and that she does her best to cater to their specific needs.
When creating these types of profile videos, always remember to stick to your main point, and try to keep your videos short so that there’s a better chance viewers will watch them in their entirety.
4. Real Service Luxury Real Estate – Promo Video This next promotional real estate video is a prime example of how a real estate agency can make use of modern technology to display their home and property listings. In fact, by using drone footage, Real Service Luxury Real Estate is able to show their property from angles that aren’t even possible when visiting a location in person.
By doing so, this video adds an extra touch of value to potential buyers that are interested in learning about the property.
In the end, if you want to successfully sell homes and properties in today’s competitive marketplace, you need to be offering as much value as possible, telling potential buyers as much as you possibly can, which is exactly what this quick real estate promo video has done by showing the property from both the inside and out.
5. EVIA Real Estate – Promo Video EVIA truly did a fantastic job when creating this short, one minute promotional real estate video.
One thing that you’ll notice within the first few scenes of the video is that it doesn’t really seem to be about real estate or realtors at all.
In fact, the narrator goes on about “lines on paper”, “raw materials”, and “elegant interiors”, which might lead you to think he’s talking about anything other than real estate.
However, the voiceover then ties things together by talking about how EVIA builds spaces. The video then shifts to displaying the many different property types offered and owned by EVIA, as well as explaining many of the values held by the company.
In turn, this video hardly focuses on real estate at all.
But instead, it focuses on establishing a positive image for the company and building a better, deeper connection with its audience.
6. Renderforest – Real Estate Video Template Although this next video is only a template idea, it’s still an excellent example of a powerful, effective, and engaging real estate video.
In this Real Estate Video Template, the video creators made sure to keep two things in mind: powerful, vivid imagery of homes, as well as the benefits viewers will get when interacting with the company.
In turn, by keeping the imagery relevant to the topic at-hand, and by keeping the customer’s best interest in mind, a video like this one should easily be able to generate some buzz for your listings.
7. Tom Ferry – Tips And Advice For New Real Estate Agents. Finally, in this last example of an effective real estate marketing video, Tom Ferry’s Tips and Advice Video reminds us yet again that a good, engaging video speaks directly to its audience, and keeps their best interest in mind at all times.
Of course, this real estate marketing video isn’t intended to sell homes or to promote a real estate agency. But instead, it’s focused on offering tips and advice specifically to other realtors in the industry. In fact, this video is so targeted that Ferry mentions that it’s only for real estate agents who have less than 5 years experience selling homes.
By doing this, he’s literally narrowing down his audience, ensuring that only the right people will follow through with watching his video.
In the end, the point is that real estate marketing videos don’t always have to be about selling homes or properties, so long as the end customer and target audience are always kept in mind.
4 Must-Know Real Estate Video Marketing Terms for 2021
As with any industry, when it comes to real estate, there’s a wide range of industry-specific terminologies and jargon that every marketer needs to know. Knowing these terms is only important for your own marketing and promotional purposes, but understanding them will also help you impress potential partners, sellers, and buyers in the future.
Below, we’ll take a look at some of the most important real estate marketing terms to know and understand in 2021.
1. Real Estate Videography
As implied, real estate videography is a very specific type of videography that focuses primarily on displaying and showing real estate.
When it comes to real estate videography, there are many different avenues that real estate professionals can take to either introduce themselves or their agencies or to promote and market their residential or commercial property listings.
However, in today’s highly competitive digital real estate markets, it’s more important than ever for realtors to fully understand real estate videography, what it is, and how it can be used to get their names in front of the right audience, at the right time.
With that said, let’s take a look at a few different video marketing terms that every real estate professional should know in 2020.
2. Property Video Marketing
When a person is shopping around for a new home, I think it’s safe to say they’re going to make most of their observation by visually inspecting the home or property.
Therefore, property video marketing has one extremely beneficial advantage in the fact that realtors can easily display their listings in a visual manner that their clients are used to and prefer.
For instance, creating a walkthrough video of a home for sale is a great way to show potential buyers what the inside of the home looks like, even if they’re unable to visit the location in person.
As opposed to traditional property listings and images, property video marketing is a much more effective method for showing homes and properties. Essentially, potential buyers are able to tour the home themselves, making property video marketing a much more personal and immersive experience.
When done right, property video marketing can easily put your properties in front of the right audience, literally bringing them into the bigger picture to see what their future home really has to offer.
3. Realtor Video Marketing
As a realtor, although homes and properties are the main products that you offer, it’s truly the personal connections and the relationships between you and your clients that allow you to sell.
However, when potential clients don’t know who you are, they’re often leery to consult or hire you to help them sell or purchase their home. Therefore, realtor video marketing is essential for any real estate professional looking to grow their clientele, and in turn, their career to heights they’ve never dreamed of before.
The purpose behind realtor video marketing is to promote realtors on a more personal, human level than what you’d typically see advertised at an agency level. In fact, creating videos gives realtors far more options as to how they want to present themselves to their potential clients.
For instance, realtors might decide to create a series of videos that introduce themselves to their audience, while explaining all the different services they offer. Or, alternatively, they might decide to create a series of videos about the benefits of homeownership.
Either way, the point is that real estate videography isn’t solely about displaying and highlighting properties. It can also be about realtors themselves, their values, and their current and potential customers as well.
In the end, realtor video marketing is quickly becoming the best way for real estate pros to get their names out there, to network with potential sellers and buyers, and to grow their businesses like never before.
4. Commercial Real Estate Video Marketing
Just like residential properties, commercial properties and real estate opportunities also need to be marketed in a way that’s easy and accessible to potential buyers.
And because video is one of the single fastest-growing mediums out there, commercial real estate video marketing can be an extremely lucrative endeavor for real estate professionals everywhere.
Especially when it’s accomplished with the help of a professional real estate videographer, creating videos that showcase your commercial properties inside and out is one of the best ways to get your listings in front of the right people.
Plus, when combined with the right strategy, commercial real estate videos can easily be promoted on multiple marketing channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tik Tok, and more.
Using Video For Real Estate Listings As A Strategy
Creating a strong real estate marketing video strategy will give your real estate business a leg up in an already-crowded market. Even with amazing videos though – you need to ensure that other components of your business are updated digitally: namely, your real estate listings.
Consider this: One of your videos catches a potential buyer’s eye and they are inspired to learn more about your properties. They scroll for a bit, looking for your listings – and cannot find them. Because the relevant links and information about your business were hard to find, you just lost yourself a potential client and subsequently, a potential sale.
3 final real estate video marketing tips to ensure that a situation like this one does not take place:
- Make sure your listings are easy to find on your website.
- Link to your listings in all the proper places on your social media pages – both in the bio/description, as well as within the captions of the content itself.
- Update your real estate listings continually on all of the proper online real estate listing sites. Here are the top 5 real estate sites that every real estate agent should keep in mind:
No matter which type of video you’re creating, use our Ultimate Guide to Ideal Video Size for Every Social Platform as a resource for your real estate promo videos!
