Posted: August 3, 2020
While many commercial real estate brokers have taken the plunge into property video marketing, not all property videos are created equal. We’ve broken down the faux pas and ways to improve videos in the past. But as time passes and technology develops, so does digital marketing.
That’s why today, we’re talking about what aspects of a property video you can and should consider when building the most effective property marketing videos for your listings. Raw drone footage is a little bit better than a lack of drone footage, but you aren’t telling a story. Just like a brochure or OM weaves a narrative about a listing’s potential, so should a property marketing video.
Ready to get started? Here’s how to build the most effective property marketing video.
Focus on the top 5 features of a listing and make those your focus.
The brochure, flyer, and OM can list out all the facts, figures, and demographics that you can fit into the documents. With a video, it’s important to get choosy. What five features are the main selling (or leasing) points that make sense to show in tandem with the video footage? Be selective and ruthless when making your selections.
Now use those 5 features/points to build the drone video narrative around. If your listing is an industrial warehouse, the proximity to highways and railroads may be the most important factors, along with the number of truck doors and the square footage. Work with your video editing to ensure the videos focuses on footage that emphasizes transportation proximity, the size of the building, and shows the loading docks.
For office and retail, square footage and proximity to major landmarks will also play a roll. Office may differ in proximity to major neighborhoods. Retail may want to highlight demographics for daytime population and average household incomes.
Whatever the asset class of your property, choose your listing’s defining features wisely, and then move forward with those features front of mind.
Use maps and high-altitude footage to provide context for the property’s location.
Showing the outside of a retail building or an orbiting shot around a land parcel provides a great establishing shot of the listing. But it isn’t just the building or the land that makes interested buyers or tenants want to know more about a listing. What else is nearby? Is there a major highway? A large subdivision? A large open-air mall?
If the drone can fly to 400ft, the video footage from that height should be able to showcase other nearby amenities, whether that’s transportation, local landmarks, more retail opportunities, or housing.
For very large land and development parcels, the drone may not be able to fly high enough to capture the parcel and the surrounding area. Or, it’s possible that surrounding amenities aren’t visible from the parcel itself, especially in less developed areas. In these situations, using aerial photos taken from helicopters or airplanes is an option, as well as digital maps like Google Earth. Highlighting the location of the parcel in relation to nearby cities and roadways can better articulate the position of your listing.
Let the video speak for itself and highlight facts with a professional voiceover.
Property videos should not be made to look like overstuffed PowerPoint presentations (say it again for the people in the back!). While there is a tendency to want to avoid extraneous costs associate with voiceovers, the benefits go far beyond the cost.
When you have a video with a lot of animation, call outs, and narration, the human eye can only focus on so many things at one time. Namely, if the viewer is reading a text block, they aren’t looking at the property itself.
With a voiceover narration, your video can have minimal interruptions, allowing the viewer to focus on your listing. A narration is an even stronger method for telling a narrative. Not only can you show how close an office building is to downtown, but your voiceover artist can also mention how many people live downtown and the average commute time, without cluttering up the screen with numbers.
That’s a win-win for the viewer and the broker team.
Keep the video short and concise.
This point is a little bit of a repeat, but it needs to be repeated. Having a five-minute property video, no matter how fancy it is or if David Attenborough is narrating it, means that you’re going to lose most viewers at the 1:30-2:00 minute mark. It’s the result of the average attention span. But it also depends on the medium that you are sharing the video. We are going to assume many brokers are using landing pages, LinkedIn, and YouTube or Vimeo.
Since we all know that the two-minute mark is the sweet spot for a property video, when you work with your editor, be conscious of everything that you ask to be included. It may simply not be possible to fit all the information, maps, drone video clips, and branding information into a compact 2-minute package.
If that’s the case, it’s time to head back to the cutting room floor. What absolutely must stay in the video? What originally seemed like a good thing to include but doesn’t have as much of an impact once you’ve seen it in the first draft? Review with a critical eye and only keep the best material.
Build a CTA into the video so that interested parties contact the broker team.
The best property videos are short, concise, and tell a story that makes an interested party want to learn more.
Then what?
Ideally, you’ve provided a reason for the viewer to get in touch with the broker team. Since your video doesn’t have all the same information as the brochure or OM, you’ll want to direct people to download the marketing material to learn more. You may also want to push people to call the brokers for a tour or visit of the listing, if possible.
If the listing is currently accepting bids, you can include that as the call to action as well. But once the bidding period ends, you’ll need to adjust the video (or end screen CTA) accordingly.
With these guidelines in mind, you can work with your creative team and/or video editor to build a persuasive storyline to market your listing in the best light. A property video is a great marketing tool, so make sure it’s doing the most effective marketing possible!
No idea where to start but interested in having a property video created for your listing? Four Tens is here to help! Get in touch with our video department and we’ll get back to you about the video making process.