We all know how important photographs are when it comes to letting and selling properties. After all, who is going to be interested in a property they find online if they don’t have any idea what it looks like? But images aren’t the only source of visual media available to us agents. In fact, a valuable source of media that is only now showing off its full potential in the wake of the pandemic is video. In the past year we’ve worked harder than ever before to get ahead of the curve and establish video as an essential part of our property adverts, and that’s because we know that video is a vital tool in lettings marketing and will be for a long time to come.
Why you need to be thinking about video content
None of us are strangers to watching videos and it turns out the time we spend watching them has only increased, from an average of 84 minutes in 2019 to an average of 100 minutes in 2021. From funny videos shared between friends, to instructional videos that teach us how to DIY at home, it’s clear that video is an easily shareable and digestible form of content that has a lot of staying power.
Videos help to give our eyes a rest from reading information and instead provide information in an engaging and less mentally demanding way. In addition to this, it’s been proven that video will help lead to conversions, with 90% of consumers claiming a video will help them make a purchasing decision and 97% of marketers claiming that videos help customers to better understand their products.
Why video is essential for property marketing
When it comes to property it’s clear that any source of content that leads to customers being more informed and more likely to make a firm purchasing decision is something we can get behind. After all, a big part of our role in advertising properties is to show them factually, so that potential tenants or buyers can see whether the property is the perfect one for them. In the past, photos have been the relied upon way of doing this, followed by in-person viewings. There’s nothing wrong with these approaches but what happens when – for example – a pandemic means photos don’t give enough insight, and in-person viewings aren’t permitted?
Why this matters both now and in the future
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected many industries and the way they operate and we are not immune. In fact, in the past year we have worked harder than ever to revolutionise the way we work so that we can continue to highlight the benefits of our properties to our customers, in an easy and accessible way.
Throughout the pandemic the regulations around viewings and moving home have continued to change. However, the majority of the time agents have been unable to invite customers into the office, to take them to viewings in cars or to even conduct viewings at all. When viewings have been permitted these have been with the willingness of the existing tenants of a property, with illness meaning viewings are easily called off. The way forward has been to create a reliable way in which viewings can take place, without constant cancellations!
Throughout the summer of 2020 our team got to work updating the images of our properties, which is a task we undertake every summer so that our images accurately reflect our stock. However, we also used this time to create Virtual Tours of as many properties as we could and added new features to our website to ensure our customers could see these property videos within the specific property listing. These videos were intended to help our customers to continue to ‘view’ properties they were interested in, without having to travel and mix with other people.
What videos we create
During our Video Tours a member of our team takes you on a first-person journey through a property, starting from the outside to show off any external features – such as parking – to the very last room in the home. With these videos we intend to display the property as clearly as possible, with a warts and all approach that means our customers can be confident in the property they sign up for, should they be unable to progress to a physical viewing. All our videos are uploaded to our YouTube channel, with average views of our videos standing at 1.8k a month and an average watch time of over 80 hours a month – meaning our customers are engaged for 80 hours more than they were before we had property videos!
So confident are we in the quality of these videos that we now conduct Virtual Viewings as a means of screening interest in a property, before progressing to a physical viewing. This helps to save time for our customers, many of which may be unable to arrange a physical viewing. Not only does this save time and effort both for our customers and our team members, but it also means that our viewings could go on safely during various lockdowns and throughout safety measures that otherwise would have stopped us completely in our tracks.
Another of the benefits of these videos is that they provide a complete and thorough overview of the properties, meaning we are able to review their current condition and any issues that there may be. This makes it easier for our team to plan and arrange maintenance works or even large-scale renovations, working to improve the quality of our stock across Bangor.
In addition to our property videos we are now in the process of creating 360 degree tours, and have completed the creation of these for a number of our properties, with the integration of this video type into our own website to be undertaken shortly. At Varcity we aspire to be at the cutting edge of new tools in our industry, with 360 degree tours unused as of yet by other Bangor estate agents. For all our managed landlords the creation of these videos is included as standard as part of our service.
If video creation of your property or properties is something you would be interested in – and take it from us, you should be! – then simply get in touch with our team today and we can discuss how we can go about this. You can get in touch by calling 01249 719254 or emailing info@varcityltd.com.
