Prospective home buyers most often see a home online first. Their initial touchpoint is usually a video, either of the homes they’re interested in or an agent they might want to work with. For this reason, video marketing is essential for real estate agents and brokers. 

We had the privilege of chatting with Joe Siciliano, a managing broker with Compass’ real estate brokerage in Chicago. Siciliano has 30+ years of experience in real estate, and Compass is the largest residential real estate brokerage in the United States by sales volume.

In this short interview with Joe Siciliano, we uncover dozens of practical tips for incorporating video to build stronger business relationships, gain new listings, and sell more homes. Learn how to leverage videos that drive action as a real estate agent.

Video Marketing for Real Estate: A Guide To Building Connections

Use Video To Build Your Authentic Brand

“Be authentic and build genuine connections with clients. Taking action now is more important than waiting for it to be perfect a month later. You’ll figure it out as you go.” 

Joe Siciliano, Compass

Siciliano’s primary message on video marketing for real estate agents is to be authentic and build your brand. He reiterates that authenticity is more important than perfection, and video is an easy way to showcase your expertise and personality. 

Reach Out to Five People Daily

“Video, over the last 10-15 years, has become an integral part of our business in many ways. It goes back to making truly authentic connections with people.”

Joe Siciliano, Compass

Siciliano recommends reaching out to five people in your sphere of influence daily. For example, if a past client recently visited Hawaii, reach out to inquire about their favorite part of the trip. 

Share five personal messages in short, two-minute videos across your network daily. This regular action will multiply your impact over time. Production level isn’t important here; it’s all about connecting with folks through authentic exchanges. 

Share Your Expertise on Social Media

“You want to be a go-to resource for clients. For example, a video on the ‘Top 10 Things to Consider When Buying Lakefront Property’ provides insights that build credibility and trust.”  

Joe Siciliano, Compass

Create niche-focused videos that highlight your specialization. For example, an agent specializing in lakefront homes can use video to demonstrate expertise and provide unique value. In this way, you leverage video to solve problems and answer client questions.

Create A Video Website (or Vlog)

“You’re never going to compete with Realtor.com from a sheer number of views—but don’t try to be all things to all people. Agents use their website to showcase their team, philosophy, video testimonials, and thought leadership.”

Joe Siciliano, Compass

A 2024 NAR survey, Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, showcases opportunities for agents to stand out. The study uncovered that sellers expect agents to list homes on their websites in addition to the MLS. 

Yet, only 46% of agents market homes for sale on their website, leaving an opening for many agents to up their game. The survey revealed that home shoppers value websites visually representing the property with detailed property information and floor plans. 

Learn More: How to Make Your Video Website MLS Compliant

Consistency Is Key

“Consistency is key. Commit to your schedule—whether it’s one video a week or a month—and stick to it. Over time, your audience will value your insights and remember you when they’re ready to buy or sell.”

Joe Siciliano, Compass

While patience is essential, agents who embrace video as a consistent practice gain the most success. Siciliano suggests creating a realistic posting plan, given agents’ hectic schedules.

Invest In Production

“When showcasing homes, video quality is super important. The seller expects it to be a beautiful production with great lighting—everything has to be right. If I’m professional, my video needs to look professional.”

Joe Siciliano, Compass

When creating content to showcase your expertise and the homes you’re selling, Siciliano strongly recommends hiring a professional videographer and editor to ensure clients recognize your professionalism immediately. Ultimately, it’s worth investing the money into producing professional-level videos as a real estate agent.

More Actionable Insights for Marketing With Video

“This business is developing relationships and nurturing those relationships for a long time.” 

Joe Siciliano, Compass

Ready to level up your video marketing? Watch the interview for more actionable tips and video content ideas from real estate veteran Joe Siciliano. You’ll gain at least one new idea to add to your video marketing playbook—whether you’re a real estate agent or not.

Or check out our other resources on video for business:

• Create A Professional Video Website in Minutes
• Maximize Video Marketing Distribution ROI
• Why Businesses Choose Private Video Hosting

The post Video Marketing for Real Estate: Ideas from a 30-Year Industry Veteran appeared first on SproutVideo.

To produce high quality, engaging real estate videos, you don’t need to be a video expert and you certainly don’t need to hire a team of professionals. With this guide, some basic equipment, and lots of enthusiasm, you can do it yourself.

In this post, we’ll show you how to make videos that will help sell your properties faster than ever. We’ll share tips on how to use emotion and humor effectively, explore the surrounding environment, and livestreaming.

Getting Personal

No matter how amazing the property, it’s hard to get your audience truly excited with a virtual tour of the house. It’s difficult to convey the ambiance and the quality. Choosing a home doesn’t just involve the right dimensions and money – emotion is also brought into play. Try making the following videos to tug at viewers’ heartstrings:

Interview with the owner:

In this emotive video, the owner can share stories about the happy times they’ve enjoyed in their home. They probably have some ideas about the type of buyer who would love living there, and why. Their opinions about the best points of their home could be all it takes to persuade one of the viewers to take the next step.

Behind the scenes:

Every home that’s on the market will be absolutely spotless, all junk removed, and items tidied away that aren’t in keeping with the story the owner is telling. But that’s not real life. A ‘hidden camera’ style video of the house in action shows viewers how the home is really used. A time-lapse video over 24 hours would work well.

Making changes:

This type of video is especially interesting for older homes. Ask the current owners to share their renovation story on camera. They should show before and after photos to illustrate the difference their hard work will make for the new residents.

Beyond the House

When you’re making a real estate video, it’s helpful to look beyond the home. That’s certainly what your audience will be doing. With location having such an impact on property prices, a video that highlights the benefits of living in a particular neighborhood will help viewers to make a decision.

A whistle-stop tour of the neighborhood:

You don’t need us to tell you that location sells! Get out there and make a short film of the local parks, greenery, even beauty spots that are in easy traveling distance. Check out our post 6 Tips for Outdoor Filming to learn more about using the right equipment outdoors.

We’re sure you’ll be inspired by this neighborhood tour:

Interviews with small business owners:

One of the things that helps sell a location is an abundance of independent stores. A short video featuring the indie shops, their products and the people who give them their unique personality is sure to be engaging. Plus, it’s great PR for the shopkeepers.

Community events:

Make an effort to attend the neighborhood’s next event and film it. It will communicate the message that this is a vibrant, interesting place to live.

Feeling Brave? Try Humor!

If you’re confident you know what your target audience will find funny, make a humorous video. This approach is better when you’re advertising your realtor services as opposed to a home. Your clients want to know that you are taking their property seriously. They might not appreciate a humorous video of their home.

Humor is difficult to get right, so before you upload anything to your website or social media, run it by colleagues, friends and family. For more impartial feedback, use split testing: one video with a humorous tone, and one without. Our post How to Maximize Engagement by A/B Testing Videos has all the information you need to make an effective real estate video.

Here’s an example of a video that used humor so well, it went viral:

Livestreaming Ideas

When you hold an open house, you choose a time that’s likely to be convenient for most buyers. But, inevitably, this won’t work for some potential clients.

That’s why livestreaming is a tool that could have been developed with realtors in mind! It not only allows you to reach a wider audience, it enables you to develop a closer connection with them.

Be sure to record your livestream to serve as a point of reference for anyone who misses the live event. By uploading it to a professional video hosting platform, like SproutVideo, you can easily share it with future prospective buyers.

Use these tips to truly engage viewers who can’t be there.

FAQs:

Try to address common questions buyers typically have. Whether specific to the house, or home-buying in general, the helpful information you provide will motivate people to pay attention. This is especially useful for first time buyers or those who might be unfamiliar with purchasing or rental regulations in your city.

Ask viewers what they’d like to see.

Someone might want to see more of the storage space. Another virtual visitor might want you to show them the garden. And what about another look at the kitchen? Livestreaming allows you to be viewers’ eyes and ears.

Staging homes.

Chances are, the viewers seeking a home to buy will be selling their own real estate. Share your own professional advice on preparing their property for listing by walking them through how you helped prep this particular house.

Livestreaming these tips gives more of a sense of authenticity. It removes any sense that the content is scripted, and shows them that it really is as quick and easy as you say. Read The Best Way to Make Authentic Videos to ensure you come across well on camera.

Conclusion

A good real estate video is one that takes into account the role played by the head and the heart when it comes to buying or renting a new home. The best way to do this is to make videos that:

• Share the experiences of the current homeowners
• Highlight the positive points of the neighborhood
• Use livestreaming and recorded content to maximize the residence’s exposure

Are you interested in making video for your industry? Let us know what sector you’re involved in, and we’ll share our expertise with you!

The post How to Make a Real Estate Video that Doesn’t Send Viewers to Sleep appeared first on SproutVideo.

The most common problem with the audio in amateur videography is a noisy soundtrack, meaning the viewer can hear a lot of white noise or environmental sounds in addition to the focal sounds you intended for them to hear. This could be the rumble of traffic outside, an airplane going by, or just the white noise that registers when the microphone is too far away from the sound source.

Luckily, it’s pretty simple to get rid of that extraneous noise by doing a few simple things. Without further ado, here’s your audio to-do list:

General Audio Tips

1. Ditch the Audio Track: The safest bet for a home tour video is to ditch the audio track recorded on site in post-production editing, and replace it with music or another separately recorded track. With lights, fridges, AC units, street traffic, and other sources of background noise, you won’t miss it.
2. Invest in a Quality Microphone: Whether you’re adding audio in post-production, or if you’ve decided to record an actual person walking virtual visitors through the house, you’ll need to get the right mic for the job. For guidance on what sort of mic to get, see this post.
3. Record a Voiceover: You have the great option of replacing your original audio track with a voiceover that corresponds to the progression of the video (for example, describing the amenities being shown on the video as they’re shown). This also gives a more “human” feel to the video, closer to the non-virtual realtor experience.
4. Use Audio Filters: In post-production editing, you can edit out certain noises using audio filters, which can be helpful regardless of whether you stick with the original recorded track from the video, or record your own afterwards.

Soundtrack Tips

1. Add a Soundtrack: If you want to include a soundtrack instead of, or in addition to, voice narration, there’s a variety of free or cheap music available. It can add a necessary element to lighten the mood and improve viewers’ overall impression of your home.
2. Beware Copyrighted Material: To avoid accidentally using something against copyright, it’s helpful to look for free music under a Creative Commons license. You can also obtain reasonably priced tracks from sources like Tunefruit or Triple Scoop Music.
3. Edit to Fit Narration: When adding a soundtrack, be sure to fade the music to be very low or silent during dialogue. Try a few different tracks to see how they work with your content.

Voiceover Tips

1. Record it Separately: For the best quality voiceover, record in a quiet location, separately from the rest of the recording process. This could be in your basement, surrounded by a pillow fort, or in a professional studio, whichever is more accessible and budget friendly.
2. Keep a Calm Cadence: Even though you will not be on-camera, consider using a teleprompter app to ensure you don’t speak too fast. Most home tours move relatively slowly from room to room, and you don’t want your viewers to feel rushed.

Sound Effect Tips

1. Enhance Your Audio: Use sound effects for any aural element that’s too quiet or missing in the original recording. For instance, if you aren’t using sound recorded on location, you might want to add a door shutting or other household noises without trying to record them yourself, which is trickier than it sounds. Sound effects can be distracting, so use with caution.
2. Find Them For Free: You can download free sound effects from a variety of sites and transfer them into your video editing software without too much trouble.

Final Tips for Editing Sound in Post-Production

If you’re not yet a pro at video editing, you can get fantastic results (on a budget) with simple, free editing software like iMovie or Microsoft MovieMaker. For more exacting control over the final product, consider something like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere (more advanced and more expensive). Both Final Cut and Adobe allow you to manipulate your audio tracks separately from your video, which can help make sure you get it right. Find out more by reading our recent post on video editing.

To add a tip of your own, or to ask us a question, leave your thoughts in comments below or tweet to us!

Note: This post is part of our Real Estate Series on selling your house with video:

• Real Estate Series #1: 8 Tips for Staging Your House for Video
• Real Estate Series #2: Filming Your House for the Best Effects
• Real Estate Series #3: 10 Tips for Lighting Your Home for a Video Shoot

The post Real Estate Series #4: the Importance of Audio in the Home Sales Video appeared first on SproutVideo.

To achieve a polished and professional-looking video tour of your home, lighting is one of the most important elements to get right. The quality of lighting will also have a major visual impact on how attractive—and large or small—your house looks on camera. As a general rule, dark spaces appear smaller, and bright spaces appear larger. But you also don’t want the lighting to be too bright or too harsh. Here are some simple tips for getting the lighting right.

1. Avoid blue-tinted lights at all cost

Fluorescent lights and many LED lights have a blue tint due to their color temperature, which tends to make things look hard and cold versus soft and inviting. If you have fluorescent or LED lights in your home (many energy-saving varieties will fall into this category), turn these off while filming, and rely as much as possible on warm-white and natural lighting. It can be as simple as swapping out some bulbs for the duration of the shoot. You can also use lens filters, or cover “cold” lights with diffusers to warm them up depending on the gear you are using.

2. Natural light is best

Natural light tends to give the best effect for showcasing a home. Open the curtains, or let rich natural light filter through light-colored thin curtains to get a soft glow. Most prospective homebuyers want to see bright and sunny rooms, so this can be a great way to capture that. Try filming at different times of the day to capture different levels of sunlight to see what looks best in different rooms.

3. Diffuse

If the natural light in a room is overpowering, you can use white paper or thin curtains to diffuse bright light from a window. If you are unable to capture the best features of a room due to an overwhelming light source, such as substantial glare or backlighting, try blocking certain sources of it entirely, and lighting the space with lamps and other types of artificial lights.

4. Film with the light source at your back

Facing a direct light is going to give anything in the room a silhouetted look, and details won’t be clear. Instead, film with the light at your back. There might be instances where you can get an artistic effect by facing more directly into a light source, as long as the light isn’t glaring directly into the lens. Play around with different angles to see what works for your home’s style and layout.

5. Take it outside

Natural light can be an amazing resource, so film the outside of your house using the sun as a backlight. If it’s too bright, use lens filters to eliminate reflections and glare. If your camera doesn’t support lens filter attachments, wait until the “golden hour” (see below) to film the outside of the house.

6. Use lamps

You can create dimension in a large space by lighting it with multiple lamps. For example, angling different lamps to illuminate back walls, doorways, stairways, different seating areas, or artwork can make a space seem more expansive. Using lights at varying distances from the camera at different levels of brightness can also make a room seem bigger. Soft lights typically work best – try to avoid creating harsh shadows.

7. Test it out

Once you have a strategy for each room in mind, carry out a test shoot at the time of day that you plan to do the real thing, and make sure the footage comes out well. Note any issues so you can obtain additional supplies as needed, like diffusers, curtains, bulbs, or filters, and be sure to check the weather for the day of the shoot.

8. Use the light you have

If you are facing a situation with insufficient light sources, you can use professional reflectors or even a white foam board to bounce light into shadowed corners of a room. Try placing them on the floor, angled against furniture, or clipped to a stand. This will help amplify the light in the room and make it brighter, while softening shadows.

9. Golden hour

For outdoor shots, or to get beautiful shots of a conservatory or sunroom, you can potentially use the “golden hours” of daylight, just before the sun goes down. For a more general overview of the basics of lighting for video, you can also have a look at this post.

10. Look out for flickering

Some types of lights on dimmer switches or with fluorescent bulbs flicker ever so subtly. Sometimes, the human eye can’t even detect it, but because cameras capture fewer frames per second, a subtle flicker can become problematic on camera. Avoid using dimmer switches, and use diffusers instead, and swap out any fluorescent bulbs for regular bulbs when filming.

Have a comment or question, or just want to drop us a line? We’d love to hear from you. Tweet to us or leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

The post Real Estate Series #3: 10 Tips for Lighting Your House for a Video Shoot appeared first on SproutVideo.

When it comes to giving a virtual video tour of your house, the best approach is likely to be a minimalist one with no tour guide to distract viewers, just all the most striking views of the house itself. We put together a list of video tactics to help you get the best footage from your video tour. Each of the tactics listed below has the goal of either creating a sense of spaciousness, getting interesting and well-composed shots, and achieving a professional polish — all things that will generate interest from your target audience. Here’s how to get started:

1. Survey the space

Start in each room you plan to show by walking around the space to identify the best viewpoints, keeping in mind that a major objective is to make the space feel big. Taking photos with a phone or digital camera from all prospective angles, and reviewing them once you’re out of the room, will help you judge the best sightlines and scenes since a room might look very different on camera than in person.

2. Choose a shooting height

To get attractive composition in your shots, decide the best height for the camera before you start shooting each space. Essentially, you want to show the contents of the room (not too much floor or too much ceiling) and to choose a height that showcases any interesting house features. The ideal height will show off the spaciousness of the room while allowing for easy panning and minimal tilting, resulting in a smooth shot.

3. Use a wide-angle lens

Invest in a wide-angle lens for your camera, if you don’t already have one. Wide-angle lenses are specifically designed to get more space into a shot, and to emphasize distance. However, if the space is too small, you might end up with a noticeably curved view — dubbed the “fish-eye effect” — that could put viewers off, so keep another lens handy for filming smaller spaces.

4. Use a rolling tripod or camera stabilization system

A rolling tripod or handheld camera stabilization system will help you get smooth, professional shots through the house, and achieve the “tour” feel without a bumpy ride. You’ll also have more stable range of movement for panning across large spaces. If you are shooting with an iPad or even an iPhone, there are many inexpensive options available to lend a more professional polish to your shots.

5. Create distance

Try to shoot with your back close to the walls whenever possible. This will help you get most of the room space into the frame, and help you avoid the fish-eye effect (see number 3). If you’re outside, try several distances from the exterior views of the house to see what looks best, and experiment with different camera heights.

6. Use mirrors

When possible, pan across mirrors or get shots with mirrors, which create a sense of space by “opening up” the wall. The larger the mirror, the better the effect. Just be careful not to catch your own reflection when doing so.

7. Use stairways

Stairways can often be interesting features in themselves, and a good stairway shot creates a sense of depth and flow through a space. Well-composed shots from the top and bottom of attractive stairways are typically winners. You can also get interesting shots of hallways, foyers (or any other room visible from the stairs) from up high, so use staircases to their full advantage.

8. Good lighting

Lighting is one of the most essential parts of getting your house’s best side — it’s so essential that we devoted an entire post to it. Some quick tips include controlling or diffusing sources of natural light, illuminating interiors brightly, and removing sources of glare or backlighting. Stay tuned for next week’s post!

9. Film it all

When it doubt, film everything — you can always decide which shots help create the best impression, and which aren’t as good as you thought, later on during the editing process. Take the extra five or ten minutes to grab those last few angles, or to walk through a room again if you aren’t quite sure you captured it adequately the first time. If you’re filming outdoors, you can also be creative in capturing what the surrounding area has to offer as well. Generally speaking, the more you have to work with, the better the end result will be.

Have a question? A comment? Something to add? Leave it below or tweet to us!

The post Real Estate Series #2: Filming Your House for the Best Effect appeared first on SproutVideo.

If you’re going to sell your house with video, classic staging tips, as well as a few creative ones, are going to be necessary to make sure you capture your house’s charm and value on camera. Key video-centric goals will be to make your house look as large as it really is, to showcase attractive aspects of your house, and to give views that are bright and clean.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a series of eight steps you should take as you prepare to create your video tour.

1. Plan which areas to show

The first thing to do is to plan which parts of your house will be most important to show, and the order in which you want to show them. While large rooms are important, small rooms – even closets – can be too. Obviously you can’t show every nook and cranny, so go for a solid preview of all the most attractive rooms, spaces, and storage areas. You also might have a particularly good feature you want to show off, such as an original stained glass window, or vintage crown molding. Be sure to include these striking features in your staging plan to see how they come out on camera, as they might make excellent (and eye-catching) selling points.

2. Repurpose under-used spaces

As you plan which rooms to show, consider repurposing areas you might currently think of as throwaway spaces, like a guest room used to store odds and ends. By emptying out and reorganizing this kind of space, you can actually increase the apparent value of your home. You can easily repurpose a spare-room-used-for-storage into a sitting room just by adding an armchair, bookshelf and table (which you can also use to organize or hide its contents) meaning it isn’t necessarily that difficult to create new usable spaces.

3. Repaint

As a general rule, houses sell better if main rooms are painted in neutral, light colors. The opposite can be true, however, for small spaces, where bold colors can feel interesting and cozy. On video, light-colored rooms will appear even larger, and having a light-colored space makes it easier to achieve optimal lighting.

Image Credit: Outreachr.com

4. Fix small imperfections

If you have small projects you’ve been meaning to take care of, now is the time. Fix cracks in floorboards, sidewalks or walls, fill and cover unsightly hardware holes, etc. The goal is to create as seamless a visual as possible for the camera to pan across. The tidier appearance also tends to raise the buying price by making your home look well-maintained.

5. Group furniture

If your furniture tends to be pushed back against walls, think through ways you can rearrange it to create a more dynamic sense of space. Reposition your seating into groups to make the room seem larger and more accessible. This is also a good moment to move furniture around the house, using a mix-and-match strategy to get the best effect.

Image Credit: Penn Waggener

6. Get rid of clutter

Clean, clear spaces will look the best on film, so take time to de-clutter the house, and pack away anything that doesn’t add to the usefulness or beauty of the space. Clear out closets and piles of things to show off your space and make it look as expansive as possible. Packing away personal items temporarily is also useful, as it allows potential buyers to more easily envision themselves living in the space. You’re planning to move anyway, so this might also save you time down the road if you do it in an organized fashion.

7. Make it shine

Smooth, shining surfaces will do well on camera, so make sure windows and glass doors are glossy, and be prepared to showcase gleaming stainless steel appliances, sparkling countertops, and freshly waxed hardwood floors. Take the time to thoroughly vacuum, mop, wipe down and dust all surfaces.

Image Credit: Chalon Handmade

8. Add fresh flowers, plants and fruit

Finally, you can soften the feel of each room by adding freshly cut flowers or real branches in vases and bowls (even wildflowers or ones from your garden), as well as bowls of fruit in the rooms where that’s appropriate. Having natural beauty around sends a message of the space being lived-in, which is exactly what you want.

One major benefit of creating a video home tour is that you only need to maintain the “staged” look for the time it takes to make the video. While the usual way of selling homes effectively requires sellers to be on-call for visits for months or even years, this method allows you to stage your house in the weeks before the video shoot, and then afterward, relax back into your natural living style while the house is viewed by potential buyers online.

To add a suggestion of your own, or to ask us a question, leave your thoughts in comments below or tweet to us!

The post Real Estate Series #1: 8 Tips for Staging Your House for Video appeared first on SproutVideo.

To hook potential buyers, compete for a listing, and sell houses faster, some home owners and real estate agents are commissioning absolutely over-the-top “mini-movies” featuring the property for sale. These videos have professional actors and actresses, Hollywood production quality, and the best part? They actually work.

We took a look at some of the best ones, and examined what makes them so effective. We’ve laid out video marketing takeaways that can be applied to any industry.

What Makes Videos about Luxury Houses OTT?

These are absolutely not your average property videos, like the ones we showcased when we recently wrote about selling your house with online video. Certainly, a video that shows the layout of a house and its key features will provide a lot more information than still photos, making buyers feel almost like they have seen it in person. But when it comes to luxury houses, that is simply not good enough.

Using the Latest Technology

For large properties, it can be important to showcase the layout of the grounds, as well as to give context for its location. This video, created by Film House, of a Colorado mountain retreat (valued at nearly $10 million) includes aerial shots of snowy trees covering idyllic slopes.

These complex shots were achieved using drones, and add value to the video by giving the viewer a bird’s eye view of the landscape surrounding the property. Rather than just showing the driveway or yard, viewers can tell just how remote and tucked away this spectacular home is, which can help them determine if it just the type of retreat they have been looking for.

Aside from that, the video has a very simple plot and features touching scenes of a family getting together for a vacation, helping buyers imagine their family holidays in that house.

While you may not have the budget to work with professional aerial video companies, you might be able to get a smaller drone or remote control airplane and attach a GoPro camera to it, or achieve a similar effect with a long boom pole or by filming from an elevated vantage point. Either way you would likely have fun trying to replicate these shots (carefully, of course!).

Emotional Connections

Even more important than having a huge budget for fancy equipment is connecting emotionally with potential buyers. Some of the best luxury home videos evoke that calming sense of belonging and family that only a loving home can offer.

This video manages to showcase the neighborhood, the house itself, and the grounds all while telling an adorable story about a young family. While watching, you barely notice that you are being given a tour. That’s because you are seeing it through the eyes of a family living there.

Forget sterile staged houses. This video hooks you on the intrigue of the story. It also invites you in for an intimate, personal view of what it is like to own that house.

All too often, people lose focus on the value-add to the buyer of their product or service. Staying focused on how a product or service makes someone feel is an excellent way to increase their emotional affinity for it, and consequently their propensity to buy. Video is one of the best tools out there for communicating feelings, and this can be leveraged in any number of industries.

Sex (and Humor!) Sells

The last two videos were very family-oriented. But, what if you were an agent selling a swanky bachelor pad in Los Angeles? You would turn up the heat like these next two videos.

Below, in a video produced by Hello and Company, a mysterious woman in black appears to break into a stunning luxury house. In doing so, she explores its many rooms.

You keep watching to find out who she is and what she’s up to. In the meantime, you get a clear picture of the $35 million property’s features and layout.

A slightly more in-your-face take on funny and sexy mini-movies for luxury homes comes from NEO Property, and was produced by PlatinumHD. Two real estate agents selling the property are featured in the video, as well as a lingerie model playing a damsel in distress.

The uncensored version of this video received over 33,000 views. Clearly, this approach is helping them reach new audiences and more potential buyers.

Unapologetically campy, they are having fun with online video. Importantly, they manage to showcase the home’s amenities while doing so.

These Videos Work

The proof is in the pudding, or rather, the signed contracts. The CEO of Film House, Curt Hahn, talked about marketing luxury houses in an ABC News article:

“I’ll give you a perfect example of why still photos don’t sell houses. You wind up with all these empty, cold, still photos that don’t have any emotion. They don’t sell. They just show. Our movies create an emotional connection with a buyer.”

According to a case study Film House published about one of their mini-movies, a buyer from England bought the featured property for 96% of the asking price ($1.495 million) within two weeks of launching the video. The buyer never even visited it in person.

Nearly every home they have made a mini-movie for has a similar story. Buyers just snap them up after seeing the videos.

For those concerned about cost, the exposure and buyer interest a video can garner significantly offsets the upfront investment. Also, when compared to other selling tactics, a video is relatively inexpensive. Consider how much you might give up by dropping the price, especially for luxury homes.

A high production value mini-movie can also greatly speed up the sale of a home. As Hahn states,

“This is the dream for every real estate agent. Put a house on the market. Launch a video. And in a few weeks get an offer from a buyer and you’re off to the races on the next one.”

Still, the costs are substantially higher than a typical home tour, clocking in at up to $30,000. Whether or not that is worth it is ultimately dependent on the value of the home for sale.

Is your company using drones, humor, or emotionally charged videos to connect with potential buyers? How would you implement these elements in your online video marketing strategy? Tell us about it in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!

The post Selling Luxury Houses with OTT Online Video appeared first on SproutVideo.

So where exactly is this gap? Online video for real estate marketing. According to the National Association of Realtors, only 14% agents use video to market homes, whereas 45% of buyers find video tours to be very useful, and more than half of buyers did research specifically for videos of houses for sale. When a home is FSBO, the number of sellers posting online videos of their home drops even further, to less than 10%. Yet, more buyers are searching for homes for sale on Youtube than on brokerage websites:

Marketing a home with online video makes so much sense. You get to bring a prospective buyer into the home and walk them through it from your perspective, highlighting your favorite aspects of the property, and you even have the ability to edit the script afterwards. Further, rather than taking just one appointment at a time, hundreds of people can look at the house simultaneously online, and gain much broader exposure than traditional real estate media, like print ads, could ever hope to achieve.

There are no more excuses when it comes to making a video of a home you are trying to sell. HD cameras drop in price all the time – even a Flip Cam would do the job – and little portable tripods are usually under $20, meaning you do not need to spend a fortune to get nice clean shots of your property. Even better, there are some great apps that can help you with the process, even if you do not have any footage to work with.

Easy Editing Software

Between iMovie and Windows Movie Maker, you probably already have access to free and easy-to-use video editing software.

Most of the editing process in either application is drag and drop, and the best real estate videos feature clean transitions, requiring no special effects to produce. Even a text overlay is simple to create, which you can use to highlight a feature, the listing price, or other important information about the property.

Animoto

If you only have photos of a property, Animoto can help you turn them into an animated property guide. Much more engaging than a typical slideshow, you can add transitions between photos, as well as text and music or a voiceover.

So what makes a real estate video great? Whether you are a professional or an owner looking to market a home, here are some tips and tricks to help you get started.

Keep it Simple

Here is an excellent example of a professional, clean, and simple real estate video:

This video does a great job of showcasing a home because:

1. Note that the video creator properly staged the home, and then took very simple panning shots of the exterior and interior of the home. You get to see a lot more than you would with an online photo gallery, and you get a much better sense of the layout and natural light in the home, both important factors for prospective buyers.
2. Also key, this video is only a minute and twelve seconds long. That does not sound like a long time, but in the world of online video, it is.
3. Using upbeat music and text overlays rather than spoken word is a stylistic choice, but definitely speeds up the editing process. You do not have to worry about a script or editing out any misspoken or repetitive words, and you do not have to worry about your appearance on camera.

How to Market your Real Estate Video Online

Ideally, your real estate video will reach as many prospective buyers as possible. Publishing it on Youtube, as our example video did, is an obvious place to start. Make sure you properly categorize and tag it so that your video shows up under relevant searches for homes for sale. Edit the video title and description as well. Take full advantage of the space allowed in the description to add keyword density, increasing the likelihood it will turn up in SERPs for the right search terms. But you’re not done yet.

If you are a real estate agent or an owner, do you want other people’s property listings to show up once your video stops playing? This is good for the shopper, but not for you, given the housing market is roughly as competitive for sellers as it is for buyers, if not more so post recession. This makes a good case for a more professional video hosting provider that will allow you to embed your videos on your listings website, or provide the website hosting for you as well.

Further, using an online video host like SproutVideo will allow you to use email capture at the end of it, rather than displaying other people’s videos, allowing you to follow up directly with interested viewers. You could even add a link taking them to a page with more detailed information about the specific property:

To learn more about using online video for lead generation and email capture, read our recent blog post on the topic with helpful tips and tricks.

So, if you are looking to sell a home in the near future, get that camera out and start rolling! We would love to hear how you are using online video in your housing search or sale. Let us know in the comments below, and please SHARE this article with anyone you know looking to sell their home.

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