Jim Lillig's Real Estate Marketing Web Tips

Recently, I wrote a post at my marketing tactics blog on how travel companies can use The FLIP (a small easy to use and transfer files to the Internet video player) to drive User Generated Content (UGC) and use that to get friends and family involved with the travel companies brand.  Here's how agents can close more sales using video online.

I got to thinking about social marketing real for estate agents and how they could easily benefit from having a FLIP player.  How real estate agents can use video is really up to your own personality, but as you shall see, you are not the star of the video, your client and the homes are.

Here's how I see the Flip being used for real estate video marketing.  When you take clients through a home, give them your Flip player and let them shoot some video for themselves.  Encourage them to record the areas they like and can picture themselves and their family in them.  Once the walk through is finished the agent asks for the Flip back, the agent can upload the video very easily to the potential buyer via email or through YouTube or any other social network video sharing site.  They can even put it on their website and send buyers links in email, text messages or Twitters to their site to view it.

The key factor here is that now the potential buyer has personalized what they like and don't like.  This makes a connection for the agent that is missing once the buyer goes home to think and discuss their choices.  Better than a pre-produced walk through video, this is "keeping it real" in real estate agent marketing.

There are several other benefits to this online marketing tip for real estate agents as well.  As buying a house is often a decision that may take into account several immediate family and extended family members' opinions (as well as friends - read: more potential clients), the ability to send to a friend easily (email pass along), as well as being able to send links to the videos can help make the decision for a home that you are showing them.

The Flip makes this all very simple and user friendly.  Once you plug in the attached USB flip out (thus the name) the machine does the rest.  You can't really edit the video all that much with the included software, except shorten the beginning and the end.  It does however record in .avi mode, so if you have a Mac or are handy with the video editing, it is your dream machine. 

If you are so inclined, you may want to add in a simple pre-roll and post-roll branding for yourself.  This can be as simple as a title screen with your name, picture, phone and email information displayed.  If you are really inclined, you can add in a stock intro of yourself speaking directly to the buyers or a custom one highlighting the homes you have looked at in a day or a weekend.  Remember, using this method will help potential buyers sort out a day of multiple home tours or open houses much better, and you can be the cause of it.

Being unique and going that extra mile, can make the difference between making the sale or not making the sale.  When a solution this simple is in your reach, you should at least attempt it.  The worst that could happen is your clients think your are one hooked up agent.

MARKETING TIP FOR REAL ESTATE AGENTS:  Using YouTube or any other video file sharing service over the Internet will expose your video to 1000's of people who type in keywords looking for specific video.  Please do not place anything on YouTube that you would not want the world seeing. 

Having said that, if you use YouTube, Viddler or any other service out there (heck, use them all, TubeMogul will upload to 120 of them) you can very tightly target your keywords and description as well as provide a link to the listing on your website or to your page to contact you. 

Make sure you use the town name (and surrounding town names but use the term "area" with the keyword to differentiate that the main town without the "area" is the town the property is actually in), the area's name, the neighborhood name, the zip codes of surrounding towns, state, school district, home attributes (i.e. 2BR and 2 bedroom, fireplace, basement, etc.) and any other deep search keywords in the listing.  The keywords are what the potential buyer will type in, so think like a potential buyer and what they might search on, then use that.  The video now can be searched by anyone looking for those keywords in Google or any other search engine.  Tagging the video is very important.

The key takeaways are:

- you get a piece of reality TV that you had to do very little for that can now be a marketing piece for you, 

- it took very little effort,

- help buyers make better choices and engage them in a new and refreshing way.

As always, I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Jim Lillig

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