Friday Freebie: 'Sticky' TV-quality Video for Your Real Estate Website

Brokers (and MLSs) have a new way to engage consumers on their websites, thanks to a partnership between a long-running TV show and a real estate technology firm.

Award-winning TV show This Old House and Elm Street Technologies introduced the This Old House Real Estate Network (TOHREN) in a webinar last week. The network lets brokers add professional videos, as well as articles and tools, to their sites to build consumer loyalty and increase repeat website visits.

The content is drawn from 600+ hours of video footage from the This Old House TV show, and features short, informative clips that are relevant to homeowners, like "How to Hire a Contractor" and "How to Install Your Own Security System." The idea is to offer a trusted library of helpful resources that real estate consumers can return to over and over.

The content is completely free to brokers, and several firms have already started leveraging it on their websites. Take Pacific Union, for example. As you can see in the screenshot below, they've added a "Home and Garden" section to their site. This is where the This Old House content lives. Consumers who click to this page can browse hundreds of videos categorized into channels like "Landscaping" or "Planting."

The video platform is smart enough to learn the user's viewing preferences and dynamically serves up clips based on their predicted tastes. This increases the likelihood that your website visitor will continue watching, or will come back soon for more quality content.

More options for integrating This Old House content into your broker are available. During the webinar, we also saw examples of sidebar widgets, a homepage display, and--perhaps more interestingly—an opportunity to display banner ads in order to monetize your website.

The This Old House Real Estate Network has advertising partnerships with big brands like Home Depot, Target, Sherwin Williams. Brokers can display ads from these partners on their site and earn revenue in return ("pre-roll" ads that play before video clips are another revenue opportunity).

Get Started

Adding content from the network is easy, and all the technological heavy lifting is done for you. The program is completely free, and no long-term contracts are required. It's a "symbiotic relationship" between This Old House and the broker--brokers benefit from increased consumer engagement and monetization opportunities, and This Old House expands their content's reach to interested homeowners.

Ready to see how this program can benefit your brokerage? Contact April Chaffee, General Manager of the This Old House Real Estate Network, at (214) 945-5433 or april.chaffee(at)thisoldhouse.com.

About Elm Street Technology

Elm Street Technology offers a portfolio of real estate technology and marketing services companies that provides one vendor, one point of contact, one solution fully fused into one platform to deliver a single source for new leads, client relationship management, and client retention tools for agents, teams and brokerages. Elevate from Elm Street Technologies is the single solution that real estate professionals need to handle the marketing while brokers and agents handle the business, including high end IDX websites, lead generation tools, powerful CRM and incubation tools, mobile app, social media management and blogging, and client retention tools. For more information, call 1-866-353-3456.

About This Old House Ventures, LLC

This Old House Ventures, LLC is the number one multi-platform home enthusiast brand, serving over 62 million consumers each month with trusted information and expert advice through its award-winning television shows, "This Old House" and "Ask This Old House," its highly regarded This Old House magazine and its inspiration and information-driven digital properties including thisoldhouse.com. "This Old House" and "Ask This Old House" are produced by This Old House Ventures, LLC and are presented on PBS by WGBH Boston. National underwriting for "This Old House" television is provided by GMC, The Home Depot, State Farm Insurance Company, Lumber Liquidators, and Gorilla Glue. Established as This Old House Ventures, LLC, the company is headquartered in Stamford, CT, with offices in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Concord, MA.

Know of a Great 'Freebie' We Should Feature?

Did you find a great freebie (a free or trial version of a product, free guide, etc.) that you think your colleagues should know about? We'd love to hear more about it and possibly feature it as a Friday Freebie! Contact Kelly Phelan at kelly[at]retechnology.com to learn more.