How Real Estate Agents Can Use Live Video and Email Marketing to Increase Leads

Spring is known as a great time for sellers to put their houses on the market and for buyers to spend their weekends house-hunting in their favorite ‘hoods. Therefore, I wanted to share some tips for real estate agents in using the hottest feature in social right now – live video.

Now, before you run away screaming that you absolutely cannot create a live video, let me alleviate some of your fears by dispelling some common myths.

I don’t have the right equipment. The great thing about modern technology is that we actually have some pretty sophisticated kit with us at all times. The cameras on our cell phones have come a long way and are very good quality for live video. It helps that you can see yourself on the live video ‘selfie’ view too so that you can stream directly from your phone to your social feed and make sure that you don’t have any embarrassing spinach-in-teeth situations.

I’ll mess up. Live video is imperfect – it’s live! People understand that things go wrong, you might stumble over your words or spill a bit of your coffee. No one is expecting perfection when you stream live and in fact, many of the best live streamers in the digital marketing space have found that the less ‘produced’ your videos are, the better they perform. Viewers aren’t watching live video to see you in a studio reading from a script. Going live gives you the ability to connect on a ‘real’ level, expressing authenticity.

I’m not good with technology. Going live on Facebook or Instagram is easy! There are other platforms that make it simple too, like Periscope, but I would say your best bet is first two, where you most likely have already begun to build an audience. Streaming directly from your phone or tablet is just a few clicks away and depending on your audience’s settings, they may even be notified when you start streaming, prompting them to tune in. During your live feed, you can ask them to share it with their own followers thus helping you broaden your reach. And because Facebook is going all in on live video right now, it’s a great way to get some organic reach for free.

I don’t want to give away the goods up front. This mentality is a little broken. Sure there is something to be said for getting people through the door and if it’s not this house they love, at least you’re getting in front of them and maybe you can help them find a better fit. However, you also don’t want to waste your time with prospects that aren’t serious, or a potential client’s time with something they wouldn’t even consider.

While you may show a space you don’t feel is done justice on the live video, you can say that while you stream! And you don’t have to show every nook and cranny of the space, you can use your video to discuss some of the features and tease others that you’d ‘just have to see to believe.’ Also, keep reading below to see how you can use your live video replays to keep up the suspense and get curious prospects onto your email list.

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With the recent update allowing users to now save their live Instagram videos, Facebook and Instagram are two of the best places you can stream live to your fans and followers. As I mentioned above, depending on your audience’s settings, these two platforms may notify your followers when you begin a live video.

Live video is a particularly powerful tool for real estate agents in the modern business age. It’s no secret that we’re all busy and seemingly getting busier by the moment. We have less and less time to get out and view potential new homes. If you ask anyone that has recently been looking at what’s on the market, they’re sure to have at least a few stories of inquiring about homes that were long gone, advertised by agents phishing for new clients.

Therefore, one of the greatest benefits of live video, is building trust. If you’re watching an agent stream live from a home, you can be pretty sure that it’s currently on the market and actually contains all of the features claimed in the description.

So what would you actually do once you’re rolling? Below are four ways real estate agents can use live video to grow trust and their email lists.

Home tour

This is pretty cool. Step up your marketing game by allowing prospects to preview the house before stepping inside. Of course this wouldn’t take the place of a home visit by any means but a live home tour can allow customers to, in essence, filter themselves as either serious prospects or just nosey on-lookers. The latter will get their fill from the video and won’t waste your precious time that could be spent with more serious potential clients.

Live video is better than photos in many ways. For one, you can get instant feedback from your viewers so that if a viewer wants to see a room from a different angle, you can accommodate in real time. Viewers get to experience the ‘flow’ of the space and how rooms are connected.

Also, if there are features that you know are undesirable or outdated in a space, you can make suggestions about how to update these in real time and give your viewers peace of mind.

Neighborhood broadcast

Homes don’t exist in a vacuum. Do your homework on the surrounding area, school district, historical points of interest and local hotspots. If you can find a local place of interest quiet enough, broadcast live from there and enlighten people on the benefits of the neighborhood.

Q&A session

Question and answer sessions are always popular because people are naturally curious about what they don’t know.  A Q&A could be about a particular property, neighborhood or about real estate in general. Kick off your own session by having popular questions you’ve been asked before on-hand. Encourage viewers to submit questions live and for those in the replay, invite them to email you their questions and sign up for your email list. Let them know that questions will be rounded up at the end of the day, week, etc. and you will email your list with all of the answers.

This could even be something you feature during all of your live videos. For example, maybe at the end of each live video you answer one viewer question.

Discuss specific features

If you find many homes in your area have a specific feature, start a live video discussing the history, use, care or updates of that feature. This is a great way to establish authority in your area and demonstrate your expertise and depth of knowledge.

So how does this ultimately grow your client base? For one, live video allows you to engage with more targeted leads. These potential clients already have a feel for a space and/or for your personality and have deemed it a good enough fit to pursue further conversation. Second, Facebook and Instagram both allow you to save your live videos. This means, for those viewers who tune in live, they get to see the goods for free. For those viewers who weren’t on live, you can take your video, edit highlights into a teaser video, and encourage them to sign up to your email list to have the full video emailed to them directly, again, encouraging highly interested leads.

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Wish your real estate agent could have been so forward-thinking with their marketing? Know someone who just started in real estate? Send them a link to this post!