Last year, we took our first look at Terradatum and VScreen’s collaboration: MarketVideos.com. This month, we had the opportunity to revisit this exciting product, as well as their Market Videos for brokers, and take a look at real estate professionals that have been successful using the service.

To refresh your memory, the basic concept behind MarketVideos.com is to offer market data for a specific region in an appealing video format. The data shared in the videos includes median listing price in the region, days on market, and other key metrics. Data comes directly from the local MLS; Terradatum has agreements with many MLSs and will work with you if your MLS does not yet have an agreement in place.

The videos are aesthetically appealing, include a pleasant voiceover as well as music, and fit a great deal of useful information into a short format. They are updated automatically every month (on the 6th of the month). This means that you won’t need to remove an embedded video on your website and embed a new video each month. Rather, you can set it and forget it.

Why Video?

Stephen Schweickart is a video expert. Prior to getting down to the nuts and bolts of Market Videos, the VScreen CEO shared some helpful facts about real estate videos:

• The most popular type of real estate-related content on YouTube is community-based information. Think “neighborhood tour” and “local market statistics.” This makes sense when you consider that, before they even start looking at specific properties, people need to decide where they want to live.
• Agent profiles are the least popular type of real estate-related content on YouTube. Yet, they seem to be the type of videos that most agents create. What you may not realize is that people care very little about your backstory – all they care about is themselves and what you can do for them.
• A properly site-mapped and indexed video html page is more likely to rank on the first page of Google’s organic universal search results.
• Web visitors are 40% more likely to click on a video thumbnail than on any other type of content on a search results page.
• A site visitor will stay approximately 3 times longer if they engage with a video.

Schweickart pulls together this data by concluding that most real estate professionals are doing video all wrong (if they’re doing it at all). He then zooms out to a broader view of real estate marketing as a whole – not just video. “Considering that the average American buys a home every seven to nine years, it’s a mistake to send everyone in your sphere of influence the same email message of listed properties regardless of where they are within the buying cycle,” he says. “You’ll just annoy them and cause them to unsubscribe.”

Does this mean that agents shouldn’t create a drip marketing campaign for past clients? Absolutely not. “Over 70% of homebuyers forget the name of their real estate agent within a year after buying their home,” Schweickart continues. “In a business that relies on repeat clients and referrals, this is bad news. Our videos are an excellent solution to this problem – allowing you to stay top-of-mind with your clients. That’s because our videos provide relevant information to homeowners, from average home prices and number of houses on the market in their area, to consumer topics like kitchen design trends and understanding your credit score. These topics are ones they seek out even if they will not buy or sell a home in the immediate future.”

Market Videos for Agents

Market Videos are automated and dynamically generated in real time. This means that, when an agent or broker wants to create a new video, the data, visuals, and audio are compiled in moments. All you need to do is select the geographical region you’d like to focus on. Geographical regions can be selected by zip code, county, city or MLS area. The ratings system in MarketVideos.com will tell you what quality of data is available for your selected region. Data quality is based on density, basically the number of transactions in the past month. If there weren’t many homes sold in an area, the data will be skewed and the videos won’t be compelling. In that case, you can expand your region.

Also included with MarketVideos.com are educational videos. These are consumer-focused videos that discuss the “how-to’s” of home ownership and real estate transactions. They can be sent to your clients as an effective drip marketing campaign. Like the market data videos, these educational videos are switched-out automatically every month.

On the 6th of each month, the embedded video on the agent or broker’s website is automatically updated to reflect the past month’s market data. The agent/broker is also sent an email newsletter that includes the video. Then, a variety of things can happen:

• This newsletter can be forwarded to clients and contacts.
• You can grab the HTML code for the newsletter, which will come in handy if you use an email marketing service like Mail Chimp or BombBomb.
• You can download the video and upload it to YouTube.
• You can share the video on social media.

Although the majority of leads generated by MarketVideos.com will come through your website’s contact form or from replies to your email newsletter, there is a “contact me” button on each video. Leads that come in through this button average about a 6% capture rate and are displayed in the administrative panel of MarketVideos.com for easy access. You can also have them pushed to another lead management system (like Trulia, for example).

Here’s an example of an agent’s video created with MarketVideos.com:

Next Steps

• Agents, visit MarketVideos.com for more information.
• Brokers, contact Terradatum directly.
• Read articles about video.
• Learn more about your options for video tools in our product directory.