Vidlisting Blog: Web Real Estate Video

I fell behind in my reading as usual while “heads down” during the current development cycle and missed Joel’s post about ActiveRain’s video platform. Of particular interest is Daniel’s comment asking aboout the value proposition around online video on at least two sites:

“still, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would pay for a video service from Wellcomemat or ActiveRain, for that matter. I am a Wellcomemat user. I love the player, but I’m not sure how much it would be worth to me if I had to pay for it. “

A business with a product or service that people won’t pay for isn’t a business - it’s a hobby

We’ve always maintained that the real estate video player has been commoditized to a price point of zero due to YouTube and other large players in the space. As Daniel’s comment suggests, users simply don’t see an obvious value proposition in the conversion of video into an online digital format and/or inclusion into a feature rich embeddable player. So, assuming some level of validity in the above suggestion, where then is the value proposition of online web real estate video?

 The value is in the ability to reliably and rapidly deliver content in front of prospective paying consumers of that content.  I’d offer that value proposition for business uses of real estate video has been stunted by the limitations of the flash video player itself: 

- The flash video player is designed for a general user to paste content on their own site and not for sites that need to effectively manage the large amounts of content required for high traffic sites

- Video channels are geared for the content creator and have very little value add for the consumer

- You are limited to the strengths of your own contacts as to places that will accept your cut and paste video. (an exercise for the reader would be to think about how many high traffic websites with likely demographics for buyers of the product, property, or service that you have to sell would accept a dozen cut and paste video players today and how much work that would involve for either you or them)

- you are on your own in terms of marketing assistance and support

Wrong Focus Impacts Perception Of Value

Only about 5 blog posts or websites can occupy the valuable positions on any given google search result pages - those that are on page one and “above the fold” with no scrolling necessary.  If the value proposition of real estate video relies solely on the SEO talents of the sites in which they are pasted, only these limited sites will benefit. I’d also argue that given their position perhaps these sites don’t need video at all to be successful especially within highly competitive search keywords.

The sizable market therefore is more likely with websites and bloggers that aren’t on page one of search results. There is an entire group yearning to sell properties or contract their services - they want some tangible value with a clear path to a transaction and some vague and unsubstantiated promise of improving SEO as the main selling point. 

People clearly will pay for things for which they perceive value. The real estate video industry has focused the value of video on the costs of production and having feature rich player rather than the marketing/lead generation (”advertising”) potential. The skew in thinking is as follows:

- The real estate video professional thinks (and often says) that video is expensive because of the costs of equipment, production, and software

- an advertising savvy REALTOR thinks that real estate video is expensive not because of the overall cost but because they divide the price for videos by the anticipated views/leads/sales. (I’ve seen videos that appear to have cost $100 per view after being online for 6 months)

Measuring success by the same metrics as advertising is a great forcing function for making changes in the industry - how many views/leads/sales are videos directly responsible for? Raise each of those areas sufficiently and the perception of vale will naturally follow. If a service reliably brought quality inquiries, sold a few of Daniel’s properties, and brought in new listings, then he (and others) just might see enough value in real estate video to pay for a service even though the same technical conversion  functionality is available elsewhere. If the service brought enough consistent sales, what would people pay then?

Rather than simply copying Youtube or Facebook in order to make videos available to other agents or videographers, shouldn’t the right challenge and focus of our collective efforts be in generating a tangible and measurable real estate video value proposition for the clients’ buyers?