Vidlisting Blog: Web Real Estate Video

We covered two lessons in Part 1 of this series on how to select your professional real estate videographer. Now, let’s focus on the meat of selecting your real estate videographer. You’ll likely be surprised to know that it has little to do with actual video and more with the business aspects of selecting your real estate videographer.

Lesson #3: Decide if your real estate videographer is going to deliver a video product or is actually partnering with you to provide a marketing service.  Is there a difference?  We believe so but the difference is’t necessarily a bad thing as long as the expectations of both parties are met. 

Some videographers focus on the video as a product- they film, edit, hand you a video file, and perhaps upload to a few video sites. These are what I call product focused videographers. They see their space as providing the product and putting the onus of marketing on you, the customer.  In their view, whether or not you sell a property, product, or service as a result of their video or even if anyone views the property video tour at all isnt their problem. 

There are also videographers that see their space as one of being a marketing partner.  Video is simply a tool with the larger intent of helping the customer sell. 

The key is to balance your costs with your results. If you dont know how to market online, then the value of a partnership with a video company that consistently helps you to deliver leads or works to provide an end product that drives leads and has usefulness in both online and off line mediums is often higher than a company that simply is focused on making your video. If you have a solid background in online marketing and new media, then perhaps having someone just deliver a video may be of benefit.

Lesson #4: Learn How To Tell The Difference In A Product Focused or a Marketing Partner Focused Videographer. This step involves a lot of questions. If you are looking for a marketing partner, your natural internal skeptic should be out in force. Some questions that you can ask  include:

- How many property videos for commercial clients have you filmed? (take a look at as many as you can to determine their quality.  Keep in mind that the first ones will always be the best ones.)

- How many views did they get and how many leads were generated? (ask to see examples and talk to the agents of properties sold via the videographer’s videos)

- Where do you post your videos online and why are those good places specifically for property videos? (go to those places and look at only property videos to determine how often they are watched. Ask yourself if *you* or any other internet savvy person would go to those places to seriously look for a property)

- Consider your quoted price in terms in terms of cost per view or cost per lead.  Are either of these reasonable? (we think that your cost per view should be under $0.10 if the property isnt sold in 3 months). If you arent getting a few thousand video views or at least a dozen leads in return for a few hundred dollars, it will be difficult to say that the real estate video company is helping you market. 

Lesson #5:  Find a real estate video provider that will bring you the entire distance. This is known as “controlling the vertical”. If you use one real estate videographer to film and edit and another provider to host your video, who will you complain to when there is a problem?

In our next blog post on this topic, we’ll actually get into the video aspects of choosing your real estate videographer and cover the approach that your videographer will take to film the property.

Tags: marketing partners, professionals, real estate, videos

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Videographers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.