Low cost but powerful method to boost you real estate business
1. Introduction
To rock in real estate industry, you need to build up your credibility and influence. Getting people to know you is the first step to succeed.
The more people see you, the more they trust you.
Sustainably exposing yourself to the public or among your community is a great way to build up your credibility. A traditional way is door knocking. Meeting people one by one is a good way to build relationships. Yet the method is slow and not scalable, we use social media network.
YouTube has 2 billion users worldwide (Statista, 2019). Statista gives us information about the most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2019 and the number of active users they have on a monthly basis. The only social network that has more monthly active users than YouTube is Facebook.
Unlike Facebook, the only media YouTube accepts is video. Video is way more engaging media than text or still images, yet it is more expensive to produce.
Today, we will introduce some low cost but effective method for real estate agents to build their influence across the network.
2. Lead generation on YouTube by organic reach
Storyline
When you build a channel that people want to subscribe to, your videos need to be:
a. informational
b. interesting
c. instructional
Below is a list of topics you could start with your brainstorming.
Gear to use
It’s always a good idea to start in a lean way. You don’t need fancy and high end shooting equipment. You can begin to shoot your videos by using your smartphone or iPad.
Karin at YouTubeforAgents.com suggested a list of gears, but she said “I started with the $20 microphone, my iPad and a 20-year-old tripod, and a set of cheap lights. I upped my game over time – and as I closed deals!”
Video Editing
Once you have the video footage, you need to trim and add a special effect or transition animation. If you are not good at video editing, you could consider hiring a professional on Fiverr.com.
Before posting your video onto your own YouTube channel, make sure you follow the tips below:
- Make videos about topics people are searching for
- Rank your videos on Google
- Boost your click-through rate with a compelling title
- Create an eye-catching thumbnail
- Write an enticing description
- Get more suggested views by leveraging series playlists
- Embed your videos on forums that get traffic
- Embed your videos in relevant blog posts
- Use end screens and cards
- Grab “key moments” in Google by adding timestamps
- Publish videos at the best time for your audience
- Add relevant YouTube tags
3. Faster ways to gain traction from your targeted audience – placing YouTube ads
Apart from organic ways to reach people, we can use YouTube ads to target a specific audience. In YouTube, you could target by:
- Affinity audience
- Similar audience
- In-market audience
- Custom intent
- Topics
- Keywords
- Video & channel placements
- Website & video remarketing
You could use Facebook to advertise to people’s interests while you can advertise on YouTube by people’s intent.
People visit YouTube because they want:
- To Know
- To Do
- To Buy
So, when you are planning a video on YouTube ads, you need a shorter video with a clear objective to match the audience’s intent.
As YouTube is the world’s 2nd largest search engine, the YouTube search bar is a very useful tool for brainstorming keywords and video topics idea.
First, you need to brainstorm the following keywords:
- Want to know keywords
- Want to do keywords
- Want to buy keywords
Type in the brainstorm results in the search bar, the auto-suggest function of the search bar would produce relevant search results by other searchers. Write down the most relevant topic idea.
a. Ads formats
In YouTube, there are 3 main types of ads: TrueView, Preroll, and Bumpers.
“True View” video ad
Advertisers only pay when a user watches the ad for at least 30 seconds or until the end of the video or if the viewer takes an action, such as clicking on a call-to-action. YouTube requires that skippable TrueView ads be between 12 seconds and 6 minutes in length and that non-skippable TrueView ads be 15-20 seconds in length.
There are two types of TrueView ads: Discovery ads and in-stream ads.
Discovery ads show up on the YouTube homepage, search results pages, and as related videos on YouTube video watch pages.
These ads appeared after performing a YouTube search:
This display ad appears as a related video on the right-hand video sidebar:
Once a user clicks on the ad, the destination video page features a spot on the right-hand column where a companion banner display ad will appear.
In-stream ads
TrueView in-stream ads play before someone watches the video they’ve selected on YouTube. Viewers sometimes have the option to skip the ad after watching it for five seconds.
Preroll ads
Some in-stream ads are non-skippable and can play before, mid-roll, or after the main video. These are called Preroll ads, and they can be 15 to 20 seconds in duration.
Here’s an example of a non-skippable video ad before the main content on YouTube:
Bumpers
Bumpers are the third and shortest type of YouTube video ad available to you. At just six seconds per bumper, these ad spots play before a viewer’s chosen video.
b. Ads Video Creation
Tom breeze from viewability suggests a model for YouTube ads video creation.
7 step script formula – ADUCATE
- Aim – connect to viewers aim
- Difficulty – describing difficulty for people
- Understand – build a bond with you because you understand customer
- Credibility – build up credibility to position yourself as a credible source
- Action plan – A within 3 steps manageable plan
- Teach – value and demonstrating really good value
- Exit – Call to action
c. Building ads campaign
Once you finish your video ads editing, you could then set up your ads in Google Ads platform.
Build a video campaign by:
- Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.
- Select Video as format
- Select Custom video campaign / ad sequence
- In Networks setting, turn off YouTube search results and video partners on the Display Network
- For Bidding strategy, use Maximum CPV
- For Frequency capping, set cap impression frequency to 3 per week or 1 per day
– Add ad groups
Granularity is good for us to measure the performance of individual keywords. We could separate the ad groups as follows:
- Naming different Ads by the brainstormed keyword – 1 keyword per ad group
- Set Bidding cap to about $0.05 CPV (cost per view)
- Set preferred Demographic of your targeted audience
- In Keywords section, add your related keywords
– Add video ad
Here is the place we upload our creative. We prefer:
- In-stream ad
- Adding proper Call to action
- Upload image as thumbnails 300 x 60 (design the thumbnails on Canva)
- Name the ads for better measurement later, e.g. intro, video ad 1, video ad 2
4. Conclusion
Most of the real estate advertisement is still in the form of text and still images. Though photos are taken by professional photographer, the impact is limited.
The best way Real estate agents connecting customers is to use video. By exposing yourself in front of the customers, your image is being built from time to time.
Starting from 0 budget, you could gain experience on video advertising. When you feel confident, you could film better ads and invest on YouTube Ads.
https://cxl.com/institute/online-course/youtube-ads/
5. Reference for real estate agents to build useful video contents:
11 Real Estate Videos Smart Agents Are Using + Examples
https://theclose.com/real-estate-videos/
Real estate video marketing for realtors & estate agents
https://biteable.com/blog/real-estate-video-marketing-for-realtors-estate-agents/
The Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Video Marketing
https://placester.com/real-estate-marketing-academy/real-estate-videos-worth-creating-marketing/
Why real estate video marketing is essential in 2020
https://www.brafton.com/blog/video-marketing/real-estate-video/
14 Proven Ways to Get More Views on YouTube