Today, as many as 63% percent of home buyers make their offers sight unseen — and 3-D walk-through views are up more than 500% since 2020.
Real estate agents and brokers want to stand out in this crowded, hectic marketplace. As housing prices soar to all-time highs and properties get snatched up almost immediately, this is more important than ever.
While buyers don’t seem to need any more incentive to make their offers, the right listing details can bring in higher prices and quicker closings — especially as so many potential buyers are shopping from behind their computer screens.
Your listings need to stand out — and video is a unique and eye-catching way to make them do so.
In this article, we’re going to share with you our best tips for creating real estate videos that will help you sell more properties and land more sales, including:
- Why video marketing is such a powerful tool for your real estate business.
- How to make real estate videos that will move your sales needle most.
Video allows you to make stronger connections with buyers and more effectively show and sell more properties — especially when buyers are searching for properties online.
Let’s dive in!
Free Course: Video Sales & Marketing Strategy
Why real estate video marketing works so well
Before we explore all the videos you should make to help sell more, let’s take a moment to consider why video is an effective tool for your real estate business.
We know that video, in general, can drive a 200-300% increase in website visitors, which can attract more buyers and leads. Real estate listings that use video tend to get about 400% more inquiries than listings that don’t.
Video can help your real estate listings:
- Save time in your selling process. With powerful sales videos you can answer prospects’ questions in advance.
- Build your brand and more efficiently showcase who you are.
- Train other agents. When using video to educate prospects, you can also use that same video to bring new agents up to speed.
- Describe properties better by showing details that photos can’t.
- Generate more business since buyers have a better understanding of what they’re walking into.
In short, the benefit of using real estate marketing videos to sell properties is worth the investment.
Now that you know how video can be an important part of your real estate marketing business and help you land more leads and sales, here are the videos you can create that will help you grow your bottom line.
Best real estate videos that will help you sell
There are so many different types of real estate videos you can produce and incorporate into your video marketing strategy.
The beautiful thing is that you can get started with video using just a smartphone or SLR camera. Pretty quickly, though, you’ll see the limitations of those tools. We recommend hiring an in-house videographer to take the lead on your video strategy.
This is because with all the tasks that need to get done — such as keeping on top of the latest video trends, filming, editing, and posting your videos, and more — you’ll want to consider hiring a videographer who is available to help create video content for you full time. This person will be able to film and produce high-quality content at a steady pace so you don’t have to rely on bland stock footage.
Once you’re ready to get started, you will want to focus on some specific videos that fall under what we call The Selling 7.
Below, I’ve listed specific types of real estate videos that will help you attract viewers, answer customer questions, and speed up the buying process. I’ve included a bunch of examples to help inspire you.
Once you learn the ropes, you’ll see that these same types of videos are useful in a variety of settings and applications.
Here are some useful videos to create to help educate your buyers. As we go through the list, remember that all of these could be YouTube videos, social media videos, or embedded video content on your website or in a listing.
The 80% video
Some of the best marketing videos will help you shorten the amount of time you need to spend explaining the buying process to prospects.
As a real estate agent, how often do you get asked the same questions by buyer after buyer? Questions about insurance, school systems, closing costs, easements, tax escrows, and more.
To save yourself from having to answer these questions over and over again, create an 80% video to help with all the heavy lifting.
The 80% video has a simple mission: to answer these questions in advance, which saves you all the time it takes to recite the same answers.
Here’s an example of an 80% video from IMPACT client AQUILA Commercial, where broker Max McDonald runs through the top questions clients typically ask about working with tenant representation brokers:
Create these educational videos to explain frequently-asked questions for each of your biggest products and services, such as:
- Information about local areas that buyers will find valuable.
- What to know about applying for mortgages.
- How to find comparable properties to help gauge pricing.
- Common questions about working with your real estate agency.
And many more.
Your team will dramatically shorten sales cycles and no longer need to spend the time answering those same old questions if you can film these videos and send them to prospects to answer their questions in advance.
Or better yet, upload these educational videos to YouTube so your brand is seen as a trustworthy one that’s focused on helping prospects learn.
Employee bio videos for email signatures
When employee bio videos are created and used in the right way, they allow prospects to “meet” and see your team or any other customer-facing employees before they interact with them.
Videos like these are more likely to turn prospects into customers because they immediately establish a human connection and trust.
By mixing professional and personal information in these short 90- to 120-second videos, and placing them in your email signature, you can get an average of 25-30 additional views per month.
Consider this example introducing California-based real estate agent Jillian Allen of JMAK Properties:
This type of real estate video works because it takes the time to show what the agency does well (she loves working with her clients, has a strong support network, is skilled at negotiating pricing). It also reveals personal details about the agent herself, such as where she grew up and how she got into the industry — and all in under two minutes!
The property walkthrough video (or video tours)
Pictures and 3D renderings are great, but nothing gives the feel of a property better than a video walkthrough.
We recommend providing a silent tour like the example below. Otherwise, you’ll need a host, and that can make the experience feel too salesy. You can let the property speak for itself, and give prospective buyers the feeling that they are walking through the rooms themselves.
This is especially important in a tight market where some buyers might not be able to visit a property before they bid — or for buyers moving from out of state.
This example from Zen Lense offers a silent walkthrough (albeit with music) of a luxury property in Virginia.
The viewer can clearly see how the rooms border each other, how the layout works, and the proportional structure of the home.
Be ready to provide drone footage as well to give a bird’s eye view of the location.
‘About the town’ videos
A move is a big life change, and any video content that provides a “try before you buy” experience helps the unknown feel less scary. Remember, when you create video content, you’re selling more than just the home — you’re helping sell the neighborhood, town, school system, and region.
Here, Connecticut-based Page Taft provides a snapshot to detail a particular community they serve. For out-of-town buyers who might now know the area, content like this can help them distinguish between two towns that might appear very similar from afar to their target audience.
Similarly, this Boston-area realtor provides this head-to-head video comparing area suburbs, including their school systems.
If you’re moving to Boston from far away, how can you tell Lynnfield from Sharon from Hopkinton? This kind of video content makes that move easier. Real estate professionals have in-depth local knowledge. This type of “advice video” allows them to share it with potential clients.
Cost and pricing videos
Cost videos give your team another powerful tool for explaining the real estate industry to your target audience. When it comes to any purchase, price is on every buyer’s mind.
Cost videos are where you, as the real estate agent, can explain all the common questions you get about cost — even for things you don’t sell directly.
- What makes housing and real estate pricing go up and down in your area?
- What happens to my down payment if the deal falls through?
- When do you recommend paying for points?
- How much are lawyer fees for a closing?
Though you can’t always cover everything that pricing entails, use these videos to address the most common issues and questions about cost. Plus, this type of real estate video content gives you a way to save time explaining these questions during client calls.
Here is another great example by our client AQUILA Commercial explaining the cost to create virtual tour videos for commercial real estate properties:
Other videos that can take your marketing to the next level
When you’re ready to go ever farther, try these videos.
Service fit videos
What if you could create a video that not only explains how your services work, but also helps your bad-fit leads weed themselves out, saving your time wasted engaging with bad-fit leads?
Not only are you explaining the ins and outs of working with your agents, but you’re also strengthening your attractiveness to your good-fit leads.
When you address who you’re not a good fit for, your leads know you are a transparent and trustworthy business. Plus, you’re getting more of the right people in the door.
The most effective product and service videos include information about the product or service (obviously), but also make it clear who your products and services aren’t a good fit for.
For example, if you only service clients in a specific area or with a certain budget, make this known so you don’t have to weed through so many bad-fit leads.
These videos help your prospects understand what to expect when working with you and also help your sales team avoid wasting time fielding prospects who don’t qualify for your services.
Landing page videos
Landing pages are any page that offers a form for prospects to fill out. It might be to “sign up for our newsletter,” “download our free home staging guide,” or “get tips for buying your first property.”
When potential clients land on these pages, most are wary of providing their personal information because they’re not sure what you’ll do with their information. They might not have signed with an agent yet and are wary of committing.
So, what will you do with their email address? Will you spam them with a barrage of sales calls and marketing emails? Will you be sending them more information about setting up a sales call?
A landing page video serves to eliminate your prospect’s fears and set them at ease by walking them through exactly what they can expect when they fill out the form. IMPACT has found this approach increases open rates by about 80% because you’re easing visitors’ fears.
For many of our clients here at IMPACT, landing page videos have helped generate hundreds of thousands in additional revenue they otherwise wouldn’t have seen.
Client testimonial videos
While most agencies know to share social proof or client testimonials, not all agencies know how much more effective it is to structure these types of real estate videos.
Using this age-old technique for leading prospective clients through a well-crafted story helps people see themselves being helped by your business.
Include these three pieces of your real estate clients’ stories to get the most value:
- Have your client explain their problem — all the worries and concerns that led them to reach out to your agency for a solution.
- Next, have them share the journey they took with you to fix their problem (buy their dream home, sell their grandmother’s house, etc.).
- Last, have your client describe where they are today and show how you helped them get to where they wanted to be.
Most happy customers are more than willing to help you out in this way, and it leaves you with a valuable video you can share with prospects that helps them feel more comfortable working with you.
‘Claims we make’ videos
Last but not least, your company should create a “claims we make” video that provides your prospects with proof that you are what you say you are.
These are typically the things we tell our prospects, such as:
- We are the best at _______.
- We have the most _______.
- No one does _______ like we do.
Any real estate agency out there can claim these things, but the most successful businesses are the ones that can prove it. These videos are sometimes similar to an “about us” video, but when they’re done right, they provide visual proof of why you’re claiming what you are.
They also help show the faces of your team and again create that personal connection with your business that videos are so good at establishing.
A real estate marketing strategy that gets results
As Marcus Sheridan, one of the principals at IMPACT and author of They Ask, You Answer, often says, we are all media companies. Our goal should be to show and teach the home buying process and answer our customers’ questions as much possible. When you create videos to accomplish this, you’re reaching your target audience with the content they need to become customers.
And that’s not all. You’re helping property owners, too. After all, it’s not just buyers who have questions.
If you commit to producing multiple videos for every property and for every question, you’ll be doing something that many other realtors aren’t. In a tight market that could make all the difference. More traffic, more leads, more sales. It all starts with savvy real estate video marketing.
Learn more about building a culture of video at your real estate business with this course, Video Sales and Marketing Strategy by IMPACT’s Video Coach Zach Basner.
Before you know it, you’ll be well on your way to creating your own real estate videos that will sell your property listings better than ever.