It was not so long ago every property sale started with a phone call or a visit to your office. Buyers came to gaze in your shop window and, if they wanted to see a property, it involved a ride in your car. The start of every sales cycle began with a personal interaction with you. Then along came the internet and everything changed. Helen Mitchell shares how video can help you engage more customers online by telling a richer story.
Today both buyers and potential vendors can view your listings and make decisions without ever picking up the phone. When they do make contact, they are already well-educated on the property, the area and the market. It is not that the art of sales died with the growth in popularity of the internet, but your opportunities to use your interpersonal sales skills were progressively pushed back to later in the process.
I have heard it said that using video to present your properties can accelerate this trend towards buyer self-education and self-determination. I genuinely understand the fears of agents who think they might become bypassed or marginalised in the sales process by supplying too much information online.
However, I see it differently. I think that using video as a key component of an online content marketing strategy may well herald the return of your ability to touch your audience emotionally and bring the art of sales back to what has become a very uniform and sterile online sales environment.
According to Shift Learning, “The visual memory is encoded in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, the same place where emotions are processed. The brain is set up in a way that visual stimuli and emotional response are easily linked.”
Video lets you connect your properties to emotional states that engender optimism and encourage engagement. The art of sales is not to sell the proverbial ‘steak’, but to sell the emotional ‘sizzle; to involve the buyer emotionally in your properties from the outset.
The amount of information you supply is independent of whether you use rich media, like video. It is always possible to leave viewers wanting to talk directly with you to learn more. Video or not, surely the choice of what to say and what not to say in any type of sales listing is a fundamental part of the art of sales?
In other words, the art of sales is independent of the choice of media. Surely media with the potential to carry more emotional bandwidth presents a greater opportunity to use more sophisticated sales strategies?
Video is simply increasing the emotional bandwidth of the connections you can make in the online sales environment.
A key element in any content marketing strategy is having content people genuinely want. For content, your real estate business is blessed. You have core content about the properties you represent that buyers and vendors will spend hours searching to find. Your core property content can be easily formed into presentations that can become the epicentre of a brilliant content marketing strategy which you can use to promote yourself, your brand and your business.
Video allows you to build multiple layers of self-promotion around your core property content. The dimensions of sight, sound and motion can entertain while simultaneously communicating multiple messages. Video allows you to promote yourself in ways that are simply not possible with pictures and text. The opportunity lies in taking the knowledge you have about the property and subtly interweaving your videos with layers of self-promotion so that the two become one. In consuming your property presentations, the viewer should be consumed by an enthusiasm to engage with you and your business.
Adding self-promotion around your core content can also win listings. Most vendors start their journey by looking at all the properties listings in their area. Surely your skilful use of rich media will be a key determinant when they choose who to list with? This is where your embedded self-promotion can seriously grow your business.
By personally introducing and closing a video property presentation and using your voice to tell the story behind the pictures, you engage the viewer’s emotions and make them feel like they have met you before they have even picked up the phone.
This effectively brings your interpersonal sales skills forward in the sales process. You are back in the game.
Unfortunately, many property presentations do little to sell the property’s most important attribute: its position. By including a short area montage you not only sell the benefits of the property’s location; you subliminally convey your position as a local area expert.
The important thing is to intimate that you know the story behind the scenes. Think about it: why would I want to talk meaningfully with you if I didn’t feel that you might have special or inside knowledge of the property, the area or the market, beyond what I can see in the pictures or read in the text? This is where the artful use of voice and careful choice of what information you communicate in your videos can make it compelling to pick up the phone.
Enthusiasm can be contagious. Video allows you to say, ‘What I love about this property is…’ or ‘You have to see this property to really appreciate…’. Your enthusiasm can become their enthusiasm, and in their enthusiasm lies your opportunity.
This is doubly so for vendors. Although they are now selling, at one time almost every vendor felt passionate enough about their property to want to buy it. More than anything, vendors want to communicate what is great about their home to buyers. In choosing a listing agent, they will naturally seek out an agent who will carry forward their passion for the property. The videos you already have in the marketplace can demonstrate your ability to do so.
Using video in email and text communications can also help bring back your online mojo. According to a study by Mist Media, adding video to email increases click through by up to 90 percent. A similar study by Implix found that an introductory email that includes video sees a 96 per cent increase in click through, compared to text and pictures alone. Not only does video almost double your chances of getting through, it allows you to connect emotionally.
There are more mobile devices in Australia than there are people. You have a better than even chance that your online content is being consumed on a phone or tablet.
How emotive can text and pictures be on a mobile phone? With tiny screens, small characters and difficult navigation, video is the only realistic way to break through emotionally on the small screen.
So I predict a world where the internet becomes an endless flow of video communications; where websites are really coathangers for all your video content, and listings with text and pictures alone will go the way of the fax machine.
The buyer’s expectation will be that every communication will involve some video content. Already, 73 per cent of vendors say they would preferentially choose an agent who uses video. According to Cisco, by 2020 more than 82 per cent of internet traffic will be video. Every second, nearly a million minutes of video will cross the network. The interpersonal art of sales will return to the internet, and the winners will be those who can communicate with the greatest emotional bandwidth.
Co-founder of Busivid – a rapid video creation, distribution and management system – Helen Mitchell has coached agents in Australia and the USA to embrace technology and marketing strategies since 2006.
