The Importance of Video in Email and Social Media Communications

You may have heard about the growing importance of video in marketing and social media these days. If you haven’t hopped on the bandwagon yet, it’s not too late to incorporate it into your marketing strategy for your brokerage or your agents.   Here are a few ideas to help you use these marketing tools more effectively.

• Community videos: These are videos that work at the broadest level of the sales funnel, where potential buyers are researching different towns and cities to understand what their best options are. According to the 2013 Google/NAR study, “The Digital House Hunt”, over 86% of homebuyers choose video as the best way to research new communities they may want to relocate to. Posting different videos about the areas in which your brokerage operates and sharing them over email and social media is a highly effective way of marketing your brokerage. Think about seasonal events in your area, schools, colleges, parks and other amenities that your buyers will be attracted to. This is known as evergreen content because it can be reused repeatedly in different formats, making it a great investment for your local business and a great real estate agent marketing tool.
• Listing videos: These form the second part of the sales funnel, where homebuyers have picked a community they like and now want to see what is available for their money in the area. In fact, 70% of homebuyers actively search for and use video to tour homes, This type of content can be effective in promoting open houses and can be linked from emails and over social media to attract potential buyers to market listings.
• Real Estate 101 videos: Being successful in this market is all about standing out and offering value to your clients. Real estate can be a confusing and scary territory for lots of people. However, recording videos on basic real estate topics or that answer common questions can help potential clients get to know you, as well help position you as a knowledgeable, helpful resource that they’ll want to do business with.

Still Not Convinced? Take a Look at These Statistics

Video has a strong impact on retail sales and conversion numbers, but does this really apply to real estate? In one word: Yes. Recent surveys by Google and the National Association of Realtors have shown that in the USA:

• 85% of buyers and sellers want to work with brokerages and real estate agents that use video marketing.
• According to a study by Domain.com, videos in real estate marketing emails double the click-through rate (viewers who click on links to then browse your advertised content, listings, etc.) while reducing the opt-out rate by 75% (viewers who would unsubscribe from your marketing emails).
• Inquiries on listed homes marketed using video content is up to 4 times higher than on homes that do not have video content.
• Videos offer a chance to communicate with far more intensity over a much shorter amount of time. One minute of video is the opportunity for 1.8 million words, and that’s without the impact of visual imagery to accompany it. In fact, this is such an effective communication tool that the Online Publishers Association reports that 80% of viewers remember what they see in online videos, which is much higher than in text-and-image-only formats.

And yet only 15% of real estate agents are actively using video to market listings!
Video is just one of the many real estate agent marketing tools out there. It can be tough to keep up with the best tools and techniques and how to use them. You can easily spend a lot of time chasing down and researching this for your brokerage and your agents. When you join a franchise like Weichert, you benefit from our team’s broad-reaching resources and knowledge as well the guidance, coaching, access to training and vendors who can help. That means more time for you to spend growing your business.

Want to hear more? Check out our Weichert Franchise Video’s!

For more information visit www.weichertfranchise.com.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/importance-video-email-social-media-communications/

How to Develop Managers in your Brokerage

A broker recently told us about his first ever performance review as a manager. “I remember my boss telling me that though I was very smart and energetic I had to learn to ‘let go of the bench’. It is a lesson I took to heart when I became a real estate broker.” This is great advice for all brokers and something we stress to the many brokers we speak to on a regular basis. And it’s not hard to see why.

For many brokers, such as yourself, the decision to open your own business simply made sense – after all, you’re experienced in the industry, have a great track record and know how a brokerage runs, so taking on the business side of things is just one more task. Except sometimes, it’s surprising just how much time it really takes. Running your own brokerage means recruiting your own real estate agents, real estate marketing, and managing it financially and administratively. When you are dedicated to seeing your business succeed, this often means you try to take on everything yourself. And if you don’t–or can’t–get something done, it doesn’t happen – and that doesn’t help your business. This is where learning to “let go of the bench” comes in.

Developing the ability to delegate managerial and sales work properly is one of the keys to successfully running any business, but is especially true for brokers because so much of your time is spent is spent on essential, but non-sales related tasks. There’s no way you can multitask while running an open house, for example. Delegating not only means that you have access to additional people to take on certain tasks, it also means having access to people that you can trust to do those tasks properly. This is an essential part of the process of taking yourself from real estate agent, to effective leader of a brokerage, and having the time and resources to be able to put in place the plans, processes and support needed to build and grow your business. Without it, you risk being overworked and overwhelmed, and your business has trouble moving forward.

How to Delegate Effectively and Turn Employees into Managers

• Learn to let go: Dedication is the name of the game, but overseeing your own business means focusing on the big picture and letting go of other tasks. Start small and build up to bigger tasks as you get to know and learn to trust your team. Reward good results with more responsible tasks.
• Prioritize: No two tasks are made equal, so sit down and develop a strategic plan that prioritizes tasks in different categories from those needing the highest skill level to those needing the lowest. This will help you decide who should be capable of taking on what.
• Strengths and weaknesses: Everybody has them and your team is no different. Spend time getting to know them so that you can play to their strengths and match up tasks with the individuals with the most relevant skills and experience.
• Instruct and teach: You are likely to have the most managerial experience of anyone on your team, but that means that your role is more effective for some tasks as a teacher rather than actively working on the task. Transferring those skills so that you can focus on growing your brokerage may take some time in the short term, but it will pay off soon.
• Trust, verify and feedback: Don’t micromanage your team leaders while they work or else you won’t benefit from letting go of these tasks. Give them a certain amount of time and step in casually on occasion to ask how they are progressing. As you learn to trust your managers and as their skills increase, you can rely more on them. Feedback is very important at this stage, both in terms of correcting errors constructively and in praising work well done.

At the end of the day “Letting go of the bench” is easier said than done. To do it properly you need a plan, a strategy for the cultivation and motivation of team leaders in your brokerage. You need discipline and a plan for managing at a different level and finally focusing on the things you need to. You need to have a system and a set of activities that if properly executed, will help you consistently meet your growth targets. It’s this type of process and tools that the Weichert System for Growth and our real estate coaching program provides.

For more information visit https://www.weichertfranchise.com.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/real-estate-agent-marketing/develop-managers-brokerage/