Can Video In Real Estate Marketing Boost CX?

Video in real estate marketing is one of the most important tools to engage with potential homebuyers and sellers across the customer journey. It’s a great way to show off your property. Marketing videos make you stand out from other brands and agents. At the same time, customers are constantly evolving and demand a personalized approach to the way brands interact with them.

However, the real estate industry is slowly catching up with other industries in terms of digital marketing. Likewise, customer experience (CX) has more digital customer touchpoints.

Can the use of different types of videos in real estate marketing help realtors improve CX? Yes, research by The American Marketing Association proves that videos increase CX when used to sell products online, for instance, properties. The report explains that sensory experiences like buying or selling products digitally with product videos are 106% stronger than the other dimensions studied by researchers.

In this article, you’ll learn how real estate marketing professionals can use video content to build satisfaction, customer loyalty, and advocacy as part of a solid CX strategy.

I’ll also share tips to create video scripts with the four CX dimensions in mind. Why? While creativity is important, these dimensions determine the content and type of videos buyers and sellers need to have a positive brand experience.

Why Making Videos Improves Digital CX in Real Estate Marketing?

Properties are tangible products related to sensory experiences. This is one of the four dimensions associated with the online customer experience. The sensory component of the customer experience includes aspects that stimulate sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch.

Nevertheless, the number of buyers and sellers starting and completing transactions through digital channels is increasing. Because of this, more C-level executives are paying attention to customer experience management (CXM) through video content in real estate.

Brands in the real estate industry improve CX when they use videos because studies show that sensory appeal can affect perceptions of product performance (Weathers, Sharma, and Wood 2007) and purchase intentions (Schlosser 2003).

Thus, product videos increase a web page’s vividness and create experiences that mimic real products, like a property listing. This ultimately enhances customers’ preferences and willingness to learn more and buy.

With more organizations embracing big data, it is easier to track CX performance. In fact, thanks to modern customer experience and marketing tools, C-level peers can better understand their customers’ situation in regards to their strategies.

Due to the nature of the product, marketing properties online comes with uncertainties. The reason for this is that customers can’t physically see, hear, smell, taste, or touch a property online.

As you’ll see later in this article, offline customer experience offers more dimensions. Then, this becomes one of the key aspects that influence the purchase intent. It is also one of the main challenges the industry faces.

Understanding these dimensions, will not only help you create a strong video marketing strategy for realtors. It will also help you understand the type of videos realtors should create to increase customer engagement through the customer journey.

The 4 Dimensions of Online Customer Experience for Real Estate Video Marketing

There are different types of videos real estate brands can create to enhance CX. For example, social video ads help attract more online leads. Animated videos explain complex information easily. Additionally, personalized videos increase customer engagement. Still, realtors need to be strategic with every marketing video.

As mentioned above, while creativity is key, creators cannot bypass the content and type of videos they make to successfully support CX.

From a marketing perspective, videos used in CX strategies need more than just video views.

These are the 4 dimensions video marketers need to take into account when using video to enhance CX within the real estate industry:

1. Informativeness
2. Entertainment
3. Social Presence
4. Sensory Appeal

Let’s analyze each one of these dimensions. This way, it will help you execute a successful video marketing strategy to support positive customer interactions.

#1 Informativeness

This represents the extent to which a video or website provides consumers with resourceful and helpful information. This cognitive approach involves making a conscious mental process in order to buy a product or service. It is related to problem-solving.

Main characteristics:

1. The information captures the functional aspect and value of the experience to the customer.
2. This approach is generally impersonal, outcome-oriented, and objective.
3. It pertains to the information that remains after interacting with a web page or after watching a video (for example, a detailed video tutorial).

Video Ideas to Apply the Informativeness CX Dimension in Real Estate Marketing

Interactive Video Example with a Web Form

1. Create information-rich videos that help customers solve their questions and concerns without talking to a brand representative.
2. Use an interactive video playerto help buyers discover more about specific topics.
3. Use SEO analysis to identify unanswered questions and create videos for social media platforms.
4. Add videos to articles in your knowledge base.
5. Create playlists that help users easily navigate through different videos to address questions but offer a clear way to contact a human to know more about a topic.

#2 Entertainment

The entertainment dimension relates to how affective content is. It creates a stronger connection around a brand or personality. This is the immediate pleasure experiences offer. In this CX dimension, online shoppers try to have fun and to experience the process as a spectacle.

Experts look at this dimension as achievement-oriented in terms of how people purchase a product or service online.

Main characteristics:

1. It can reduce the stress caused by making an important decision.
2. It is trigger arousal. The perfect dimension to build emotional connections.
3. Even if it is achievement-oriented, it is not task-oriented.

Video Ideas to Apply the Entertainment CX Dimension in Real Estate Marketing

1. This dimension works really well with the social dimension. Use real people in real and ideal situations.
2. Make sure to match the experience shown in the videos with the target buyer persona. Otherwise, it can cause frustration.
3. Social media platforms are good amplifiers for entertainment video content.
4. Use curiosity to increase the video click-through rate.
5. Use this dimension with caution in regard to the buyer’s journey. For example, don’t use it to build trust but use it to explain information that is hard to digest with a wider audience through social media channels.

#3 Social Presence

The effects of social presence on the CX dimension can be as relevant as those of the informativeness dimension. An illustration of this is the power customer testimonials have in the buying decision process.

Social presence describes the sense of connection and warmth that a video conveys. Similar to webpages and other forms of content, videos with a high social presence are engaging. They provide viewers with a feeling of human contact.

Main characteristics:

1. It can increase perceived tangibility and feelings of psychological closeness to a property.
2. It builds trust. This is key to standing out from competitors and accelerating the sales process.
3. Social presence is more vital in products buyers can experience. Informativeness is likely to be more relevant in property marketing.

5 Video Ideas to Apply the Social Presence CX Dimension in Marketing Campaigns

1. Gather customer testimonials from your customer base. Customize your videos with testimonials towards specific buyer personas.
2. Create short videos with testimonials. Adapt the video format, tone, and rhythm to the social channel that is a better fit.
3. Take into account the customer profile. For example, if you are selling many properties in the same residential area, young parents with children will probably value a house with a school nearby. Interviewing other parents in the area and using this information in the videos will help you achieve your marketing goal.
4. Use expert endorsements in your videos. Make sure that the values of the influencer are aligned with the values of your brand. Otherwise, your brand will be damaged.
5. Create webinars where customers can ask questions. Use these questions to create new marketing collateral and to improve the knowledge base platform.

#4 Sensory Appeal

It is “the representational richness of a mediated environment as defined by its formal features” (Steuer 1992, p. 81). To keep it simple, the sensory appeal in video marketing is the way a video stimulates the senses.

With this, sensory appeal has an impact on the perceptions of product performance. At the same time, this moves potential buyers into the sales funnel.

In real estate videography, this relates to the perception of beauty. This is, audio + visual (hears and eyes) stimulation that helps your audience perceive a property and its potential.

Main characteristics:

• In video production, you are limited to the use of audio and visual content.
• The use of audio with studio-recorded human voices or text-to-speech (TTS, automated voices) is increasing. It influences perceptions and builds personal connections between the brand, agent, and customer.
• Customer star ratings, expert endorsements, comparison matrices are strong audiovisual tools.

5 Creative Ideas to emphasize the Sensory Appeal in Your Videos

Use marketing automation and personalized videos to engage with real estate leads

1. If your organization does agent marketing, give agents the opportunity to be in front of the camera. Either with their smartphones or with the help of a video production company, the main goal is to build a personal connection even before an in-person meeting or a video call takes place.
2. Use personalized videos to automate the interaction process. Marketing automation and personalized videos work extremely well together. This idea is a perfect match for the previous one. It combines the personal touch of an agent in the camera with the opportunity video automation gives to realtors.
3. Use video tours and 3D videos to help potential customers virtually experience a property. In our digital world, the use of virtual tours is increasing. In terms of conversion rates, businesses that offer virtual tours enjoy increased bookings and look-to-book conversion ratios by 16% to 67%.
4. Give your videos a natural touch. Even better, add content personalization to the equation. For example, in terms of video production, a young family with kids will feel at home if they hear in the video the sound of other kids in the neighborhood (stock audio; audio effect).
5. Keep your branding consistent. Make it easy for your audience to recognize your brand identity and image. The rule of thumb: No matter the target audience or type of content, everyone, always, should be able to tell the brand behind the creative masterpiece even if they don’t see a logo.

When to Use the Dimensions of CX in Real Estate Video Marketing

As you can see, marketing and branding professionals can use the dimensions of CX in different distribution platforms, channels, and funnel stages.

In the following table, I’ve summarized where I recommend video marketers to use the four dimensions of CX in the funnel to improve CX with the help of video marketing:

What to Include in Videos in Real Estate Marketing to Support Digital CX Activities?

• Videos including human voices can serve as cues for human characteristics and influence perceptions of social presence and sensory appeal (Moon 2000; Roggeveen et al. 2015).
• Use interactive videos not only to increase click-through rates but also to make people react.
• The customer’s context. For example, apply marketing individualization where possible. In brief, with individualization, you adapt and translate customer data to the shopper’s particular context.
• Nowadays, professional human voice-overs are quite accessible. If the budget or time is not there, use text-to-speech to add voice-over to your videos. This is especially important when you use the informativeness dimension, but also for one-to-one marketing where videos are usually played in personalized landing pages.
• If you follow the personalization path, make sure your video production team or agency are on the same page. Yet, data-driven video design is totally different. To be effective, it requires teams to think about the specific viewer’s context.

Curious about how to use interactive videos with personalization? Here is an example:

How to Define Your Goals for CX Video in Marketing

Organizations in the industry can increase client trust and satisfaction with video if they are specific about their goals and identify the needs their clients have. This will consequently help them measure video ROI as they see a key performance indicator (KPI) meeting the conversion rate they expect.

This seems obvious, but let’s see how it is not.

First, let’s cover how to define the goals of CX videos in marketing. Brands can follow these steps:

1. Understand how all current and potential customers interact with the brand and its representatives.
2. Find the different interaction requirements the target audiences have.
3. Analyze how these needs align with the company’s KPI to achieve customer success, sales, retention, and advocacy.

Focusing on the Right Target Audience to Enhance CX with Realtor Video Marketing

Companies can apply these goals in different ways and funnel stages. For this, it is crucial to determine the target audience. This way, a CX project with video marketing will be more than just video production. You will make the right marketing segments react.

Real estate organizations have, in general, two types of customers:

• Internal customers: These are generally sales associates. When marketing real estate agents to build their branding, organizations allocate specific resources to help them succeed in the market. These internal clients also have CX expectations. As an example, they require training, sales, and marketing tools like CRM, and branded content.
• External customers: These are property buyers and sellers.

It is crucial to focus on the needs of internal and external customers appropriately.

For example, when a brand embraces personalized video marketing, segmentation is one of the key aspects that makes this type of video highly effective.

Take the internal customers as an example. More specifically, when brands do real estate agent marketing with video to build agents’ branding. As you can see, the benefits of video marketing for realtors go far beyond branding.

To illustrate, buying or selling a property, especially for the first time, can be time-consuming and stressful. Now, imagine agents using marketing automation workflows to share timely how-to videos with customers by email or SMS.

If agents take into account the funnel stage, not only brand awareness improves. Customer satisfaction increases because agents are able to anticipate clients’ concerns. Hence, real estate brands can manage this on behalf of agents with marketing automation and CX tools.

Here you have a few marketing segmentation techniques you can apply today in real estate marketing with marketing automation:

In Conclusion: Online Video Improves CX in Real Estate Marketing

Videos in real estate marketing can do much more when you use them strategically to build a personal connection. In the end, this is what CX is about.

Videos help brands build a personal connection with potential buyers and sellers. They create an emotional bond that makes people more likely to do business with your company.

When you use the four dimensions of CX and apply them to video marketing in the industry, you can produce better videos.

Indeed, highly effective real estate videos use a mix of emotion and information.

They might show a property from different angles, highlight its features, or give a tour. At the same time, videos make viewers feel something—happiness, excitement, or inspiration.

In the final analysis, video marketers must consider the stage in the marketing funnel and customer journey to invest in the type of video that will support them to create a better CX strategy with the type of content we all love.

At Pirsonal, we help brands like yours fight against customer saturation. Saturated audiences don’t engage. If they don’t engage, as a result, they don’t buy.

But this doesn’t have to be like this.

Pirsonal provides flexible personalized video marketing software, interactive video tools, and dynamic landing pages that help marketers engage with saturated audiences at scale, in a cost-effective way, no matter the workflow.

Contact us now to know more about Pirsonal’s self-service video personalization platform or our Professional Services. We help realtors use video personalization at scale to make their audience react.