Property Marketing Media - Video Or VR?
Simon Thomas • March 11, 2021
Audience Engagement is Critical (Part 1 - What Do The Pros Prefer?)
Video Tours have been increasingly popular over the last few years, but the Covid pandemic last year placed far greater focus on them, with benefits extending to include practical & operational factors in addition to the marketing value for both estate agent & vendor. Estate agents have had to find ways to offer video, or other virtual viewing options, with 2 main options available:
1) Video tours
are tried and tested, but must be filmed in a way that engages and encourages the viewer to watch all the way through the property
2) Virtual Reality
(VR) or 360˚ photography is the other solution available. It’s great tech, which we tested a few years ago before deciding that video is the better option. Things have moved on & improved since then, but whilst VR is fantastic technology in the right situation, it doesn’t work well in residential property for 2 reasons:
a)
It’s hard work for the viewer. Looking at technology from the end user’s point of view is always a good idea! The trouble with VR when looking through a potential new home is that it’s very easy to get ‘lost’! You don’t always know where you’ve been & where you should go next once you’ve seen each room, and having to click on the next hotspot doesn’t always give you the result you want.
Compare the experience with sitting back and pressing ‘play’ on a video tour & you’ll see that video offers a far easier experience for the viewer.
b)
As mentioned above, property media must engage the viewer - if people don’t watch it then what’s the point? If you think who knows more than anyone about engaging consumers, it’s the social media companies like Facebook, Instagram & Twitter etc. Have a look through these feeds on your own accounts … how much of their content is VR, compared to video?
You rarely see VR on social media, as they know that consumers don’t engage with it. Either we’re not ready for it (we don’t generally have a VR headset to hand!) or we just don’t want it for some other reason. Social media companies have adopted video as their preferred media type, and for marketing purposes, if you want to engage your market, you should too.
That's not to say that there's no place for VR in residential property marketing, but you need to consider which tool to use for the goals you're trying to achieve. Once someone has decided on a property, or narrowed their options down to a couple of homes, 360˚ imagery is a great tool that allows the viewer to study the property in depth ... look at room sizes & work out whether their furniture will fit. It's a neat solution to be able to offer, but expensive & time consuming when you consider that these viewers are already sold on what you're showing them.
In part 2 of this blog we'll look at the points to consider in order to produce an engaging video, that viewers will enjoy and that will represent your business in a professional way
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