Property Portals Wake Up To Video
October 6, 2020
Incredible Growth For Property Video This Year
Video tours have been part of property marketing for years now (we started producing ours in 2011), but the lockdown & ongoing social distancing restrictions of 2020 have focussed far more attention on the importance of video for estate agents and home hunters alike. The main property portals have recognised the consumer demand, and placed greater emphasis on video content over the past few months, so let's have a look at what they've each been doing.
Rightmove
Having previously only provided access to property videos on their website, in April this year they quietly added functionality allowing users to view video & virtual tours to their mobile app. They then started advising home hunters on how to continue their property search with virtual viewings, and showed estate agents how to share video to each listing.
OnThe Market
Over the summer, as the market heated up, OnThe Market produced their 'Agent's Guide To Video Viewings' and used social media to promote the tool
Zoopla
Having seen how properties with video were generating more interest, allowing them to send more leads to their estate agent clients, the portals started to provide tools that highlighted video content where it was available for each property.
Zoopla Advantage, where Zoopla shares knowledge and advice with their estate agency partners, explained how their clients could add "Virtual Tour Available" prominently to each relevant listing to attract more attention, and highlighted the significant increase in virtual viewings that they'd witnessed.
Results
So has this increased focus resulted in greater awareness, with more people watching property video tours? We've seen incredible growth in our own viewing statistics, with a more than 4-fold growth in views of our videos, and almost 23 times as many people watching them, when comparing August this year to the same period last year.
iViewProperty News
Proactive estate agency is key to securing a sale
If you've read part 1 of this blog you'll be aware that the people who know most about consumer engagement (social media companies like Facebook & Twitter) are increasing their use of video because they've found it's what we like to watch and engage with, and what your local market prefers. So you should be using video to market your properties, but what should you consider when filming your own, or looking for a supplier to produce video tours that buyers will watch? As in part 1, we keep coming back to engagement - will potential buyers watch (enough of) your video? Too slow/long and viewers will very quickly switch off (we’re much less patient than we used to be). On the other hand, your video has got to show enough of the property so that they have a good ‘feel’ for it, and can decide whether they want to move on to the next stage & arrange to visit the property with you. Spending more time focusing on important areas whilst moving more quickly in the hall or going up the stairs etc. is generally a good rule. The next point to consider is more complex. You want the video to be ‘easy’ for the viewer to watch. You might ask how hard can watching a video tour really be? But if you feel like you’re about to walk into walls whilst swinging left & right, and permanently looking at the floor, as is the case with many DIY property videos, you’ll see what we mean. Filming watchable property videos is a skill that must be developed over time. How will you know if viewers are finding your videos engaging? The best way to check is looking at the average viewing time for each video … how long are people watching for? It’s easy to find this on hosting platforms like Vimeo & YouTube, but what sort of figure should you expect? Around 75% is a good target - much less than that is a sign that viewers are switching off too early. Assuming that you’re distributing your videos via the right channels … your website / property platforms / to your matched applicants list etc. you should really be getting close to this figure. (It’s worth uploading video tours to social channels too, but those aren’t targeted views, so don’t expect the same average watch time). It is possible for estate agents to film video tours to a standard that viewers will watch, but for many it’s a skill that takes too long to master in the first place, and too much out of your day to film/edit/distribute etc, when you should be winning instructions & selling homes.