youtube

April 9, 2013

Rental marketing video

Following on from our previous video blog on creating your Letting Agency Video Channel, here we can see how to publish a property marketing video on your YouTube station. (by Rentviewsoftware)

Process for editing your rental marketing video

Here is 5 steps in uploading your rental marketing video to YouTube. You will need to create an account as outlined in the above link.

Step 1. Upload the video from your computer or device. If you are using a smart phone or tablet you can easily upload the video by just clicking the upload facility.

Step 2. Start to place SEO information relating to your rental marketing video. It is important to use keywords which you hope to rank with in the Title, Description and tags. For example if your property is located on Manchester Ave you may want the title as “Manchester Ave Apartment to rent” this should also appear in the description.

Step 2a. Include the text to appear in your Facebook or Twitter Feed if you have social media connected with your channel.

Step 3. Advanced settings, will allow you enter details such as location and options to include recording date etc.

Step 4. Once you have everything completed press save and now you edit some of the rental makreting video to include on screen texts and links etc.

Step 5. Promote your rental marketing video in order for you to generate traffic and views. The obvious places of promotion are all your social media channels but also on the description of your rental property.

Why agencies use rental marketing video

The strategy of using a rental marketing video by letting agents to attract tenants allows them to qualify the tenants to the highest level possible. By offering a rental marketing video any potential tenant viewing your property knows that location, price, layout & interior match their expectations.

By using rental marketing videos you are offering more in your marketing services to landlords. With increased competition within the lettings industry having more USP’s will certainly help you attract more listings.

Read more on Strategy in marketing a rental property – which discusses letting agents’ different marketing strategies.

by Andreas Riha

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

March 22, 2013

Why use YouTube for marketing your letting agency

Why use YouTube for Marketing

Answer – If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India,” YouTube said in a blogpost announcing that it now has a billion unique visitors every month. “Nearly 1 out of every 2 people on the internet visits YouTube.

3 Benefits of using property video marketing

Qualified tenants – As discussed in our previous blog on Strategy in marketing a rental property using video marketing will result in a higher qualification of viewing tenants. This means that the tenants that view your property tour and request a viewing actually like the property, location, price, interior and layout. This in turn will reduce showing unqualified tenants and wasting your time.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)– A great way for your letting agency to rank higher in search terms and to return possible results in video on a search. Currently, I am sure you are competing strongly for the term “letting agent in YOUR AREA” on a search engine. Why not type this into YouTube to see what your competition in your area is. For the more advanced on SEO you can use title tags, meta description and keywords to allow your potential customers find you easily.

It promotes your letting agency

All letting agencies list on a wide variety of property portals and ‘To Let’ boards but the majority do not provide video marketing of properties. By offering this, it adds another string to your property marketing bow.

Don’t worry, it’s probably not going to cost you anything and you do not have to be a professional cameraman to make property video tours.

This is a really nice video outlining Video Marketing and how it is becoming the most powerful sales and marketing tool for small and large businesses.

In the next blog I will show how to make and publish a property video tour. If you use Property Video Marketing what results have you seen for your agency? We would love to hear.

So the next time you are asked the question “Why use YouTube for marketing” you know the answer.

You may now be interested to watch Creating your youtube channel

by Andreas Riha

March 20, 2013

How to market rental property

What is your strategy in “How To Market rental property”?

Learning how to market rental property successfully is vital for letting agents and landlords. This skill is even more important than ever before, as the highest amount of tenants ever are looking for private rental property, and the internet is the most common place for them to look.

What strategy do you use to market rental property?

Most letting agents use a strategy to market rental property. I have outlined 3 strategies below that agents use to market to tenants. Each strategy attracts a lead quality.

Property listed with no photos or only an external photo

From my experience, this strategy is often used to market rental property that is not in great condition or below the listed value. Personally, I would feel that by doing this you could be wasting a lot of time in showing the property as people coming to view the property may not be interested in the property at all, but came to view of it because of its location. I think the main strategy behind this is playing “the number game” by getting enough tenants in to view it will eventually interest somebody. The benefit here is the potential to attract a large volume of tenants, depending on price. The negative here is that time is money and you can end up doing multiple showings to a lot of tenants.

Tenant Qualification – The tenant is happy with the location and price.

Property listed with ample photos

This strategy is favoured by most agents who list the property with photos of every or nearly every room. The potential tenants who come to view are qualified* and whilst the volume of tenants may not be as high, they are interested in seeing more than just the interior photos. This is when you market rental property as it saves you a significant amount of time.

Tenant Qualification* –The tenant is happy with the location, price, property and interior.

Property listed with a walk through video

This is a very targeted strategy. It brings SEO benefits to your letting agency brand if done correctly. This may take longer for you as a letting agent to advertise, but it really is a great way to list and market rental property. Any potential tenant who has viewed the marketing video and arranged a viewing are as qualified as they come.

Tenant Qualification –The tenant is happy with the location, price, property, interior and layout.

It does not require you to have professional recording equipment and in fact most smart phones now with a 5 mega pixel + camera providing excellent footage. They can be quickly uploaded directly from your smart phone to a YouTube or Vimeo account through their app. In our next blog we will look at creating your youtube channel.

You may also be interested in reading Why use youtube for marketing?

In a previous blog on Marketing to landlords in 5 steps I discussed how important it is to always market a property as professionally as possible. One of the reasons being is that it is a great way to market to landlords looking for an agent who has property in the same area as their own rental unit.

Here are a couple of links of different marketing strategies used by a estate and a letting agent:

Using humour in your marketing to attract viewers “Up tight Tribute to Honest Agent”

I am not sure if this letting agency was having a bad day when they decided to market this rental property or if the letting agent is a PR genius. I am sure that if they are reading they will go with the latter after all they got mentioned in national press, social media and even on our blog ha ha!

how-to-market-a-rental-property-example

I would love to hear your feedback on the strategy you find best and or perhaps a strategy that I have not mentioned.

by Andreas Riha

October 22, 2012

Letting Agency Marketing Tools

Today we are going to look at 3 free tools on the web available to letting agents throughout the world online to market their services on. The digital age is in full swing, and the way people communicate and digest information is completely different to those of the same age five years ago.

So my top 3 tools for Letting Agency Marketing are:

letting-agency-marketing

#1 Vimeo or YouTube Video blogs

Ever started reading something and then realised it’s so long that by the time you have gotten to the end you forgot what the hell it was about? Well in my opinion, long-winded product or service descriptions are becoming more and more outdated and people want to be shown or told visually rather than textually. So take the first step and start recording some videos to release to your landlords and tenants. We prefer to use the vimeo service due to the quality of the video.

You can also watch our video on how to set up a letting agency video channel.

#2 Pinterest Picture Sharing

As I mentioned before, the days of everything being described or sold in text are long gone. Images rule nowadays. Why not get creative with some original imagery to go along with your marketing messages? We do it a lot on our Facebook page and it is a nice break from the usual content people would expect. We are slowly building our Pinterest page with a wide range of photos from the team out on the field, business events, funny viral images and more. Check the page out here.

#3 Facebook and Twitter Pages

I am presuming that many letting agents and estate agents will have already got this far with their marketing, but many do it wrong or see now value in using social media Facebook and Twitter for business. Social media is important these days, whether you like it or not.

Have realistic expectations, though. I don’t follow an agency to find out every single listing they have available, likewise I don’t like a Facebook page to constantly hear what’s on offer from the agency. Use it as a customer development tool and start running some competitions or posting some interesting and funny relevant content to get a buzz going about your agency.

by Rentview