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Great Estate Agent Video

How can you make video work for you, not against you?

Agents often ask us our view on the use of video.  We think it’s a double edged sword:

  • Video is terrible if done in a formulaic, factory approach – solutions that are seem too cheap to be true are, in fact, just that.
  • It reflects poorly when done in an amateur way, too stiff, straight to camera, with no humanity – professional videographers add a lot, they make it work
  • It has to have life…  Basically, if it’s a straight corporate marketing video, we tune-out (indeed in an era of media saturation, we doubt people ever really tune-in, in the first place)
  • It is also weak, when auto-produced from photo stills, set to scroll to music, or with some auto-generated robo-script

Yet, done well, video is extremely powerful – nothing else can give the same rich and consuming brand impact.  And we think it’s relatively easy to make shine with the right help.

So when Chris and Michael from Wilsons in Taunton asked us for an idea to spruce up their existing website, we quickly suggested video.  They specifically wanted something to entice more vendors and communicate why they were different and really cared about their craft.  We introduced them to Luke from Property Videos who we often use for videos on sites we produce, if you’d like an intro to him or one of our other video experts give us a shout.  And we think the end result is really great.  It has humanity.

Have a watch…

(Aside:  Let us know what you think?  We’re interested to hear from you with other links for great agent video, and also for any truly terrible ones, we might publish a list of both if we get a few).

What is it that makes us think this video is so great?

A few ideas to consider when making an agency video, not exhaustive of course:

  • Tell a human story – humans love stories – keep it informal
  • If possible impart some free advice at the same time, to make it meaningful.
  • It needs a beginning, a middle and an end
  • Get the lighting and the sound level right
  • Be natural – shoot tons of footage – and edit it down hard – even the most tongue tied, can be a star, when you are just looking for a few ten second soundbites between the reams of film on the cutting room floor (ok, so not literally anymore, but you get the drift).
  • Keep it short (our only criticism of the video below is we feel it’s just a shade long)
  • Shoot outdoors as well as indoors
  • Find interesting scenes that you customers will identify with – use your local area and town, use your team
  • Feature nice properties – to go with your testimonials – the use of the garden centre, and the cute cottage here add real colour.
  • Cut interesting points, sound and picture don’t need to cut together
  • Shoot from low angles, high angles, over shoulders, into backgrounds
  • Don’t look direct at the camera – speak to a person off the shoulder of the camera man for a more interesting conversational style
  • Chat to your customers, with your customers – let them tell your story with you
  • If budget allows, consider three testimonials aimed to speak in a tailored fashion to three segments of the market: cross cut stories from,  a cohort of high end vendors, mid market vendors, and lower end of the market vendors respectively
  • Set to bouncy, upbeat music, to lift the spirit
  • Add a good intro and outro – with your branding, and links to your website (for when it is viewed from within Youtube rather than embedded in your site, which should always be the preference, clearly.)
  • Smile.  Have a laugh.  Enjoy it.  We love the moment where Chris rings the sales bell for example.

Once you’ve got a great video, you’ll want to get it viewed lots…

So here’s an article we put together with a series of ideas to get your video distributed as widely as possible.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

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