Video Tour Providers Are Failing To Make Compelling Arguments To Win The Market Over

As most of you know, I'm a video tour tour provider. I'm also in support of just about anything that drives adoption of real estate video in the marketplace..whether from our company or not. But our industry needs a bit of some "tough love" around the product that we have because we definitely get it from a technology standpoint..but we are completely lost when it comes to making the case in the marketplace for the advantages of video tours over virtual tours.

For instance,  I've read a number of blog posts with interest recently around the differences of video vs. virtual tours. In most cases, the video tour providers argue points such as the following: (these are each actual examples)

- you can't see the dog's tail wagging or tree leaves blowing in the wind.

- You can't see the shooter and camera moving... and then turning back towards the entrance

I've never seen a virtual tour respond to *any* of these blog posts or even really to any of the arguments made; one or two probably have somewhere but more likely they simply don't need to respond.  Video tour providers simply have not made a compelling case to date.  I have visual images of certin unnamed virtual tour providers all enjoying belly laughs each time one of these posts is uploaded.  Like Beta vs. VHS, the best technology doesnt always win the marketplace.

Have We Lost Sight Of What Makes A Sale Because Of The Technology?

Proponents of video have said a million times that video is "better" than photos.  Usually, the argument is around the types of arguments above or how things are sold on TV. But the hard question for our industry is have we been effective in broadly making the case for video? For example, do we:

1) Correlate Advantages To Sales or Factors That Likely Contribute To Sales: For the life of me I cant see the correlation between leaves blowing on trees and the sale of a property. Either I have not yet made the connection because the example is not supported by enough documentation or there simply is not any correlation in the anecdotal sense or based on data.  If we cant make the the correlation ourselves, how can we expect customers to flesh out the advantages based on examples like the above?

2) Remember That Success Ultimately Drives Pricing: TV has hard and very specific metrics that drive pricing. Shows that don't have traffic don't last very long...shows that have lots of eyeballs charge a pricing premium. Virtual tour pricing continues to fall due to the relatively low barrier to entry for the technology and outsourcing while video tour pricing remains generally some multiple of VT pricing. Common sense tells us that people will generally make choices on pricing if faced with two similar choices that have no easily discernable difference in results. Until we as video providers can directly relate the increased cost of a video tour to some tangible advantage in terms of hard metrics relating to sales, cusomers will not broadly conclude that price difference is worth it.   Personally, I think that sellers would pay thousands of dollars for something close to a "sure thing" if a given video tour could reproduce sales results on a consistent basis. Note: the one-off sale after 5 years in business based on 6 video views does NOT count as a consistent value proposition.

3) Mistakenly Compare Our Technology To The Experience of Watching TV When We Dont Have A Comparable Level of Service: Last I checked, TV programs that I watch don't buffer, have long pauses, tiny video, or poor audio. 'Nuff said.

4) Step Away From The Keyboard And Get To Know Real People: If you approach your market as a technologist and all of the assumptions that come with technologists, then we'll continue to not be able to make broad connections in the marketplace. 99% of people don't give a rat's ass about technology - they want something that just works. You need to understand your marketplace and apply it to your technology.  This type of understanding of the mrket is why guys like Fred Light and Jeff Turner rule their respective roosts and have large followings.  It isnt about the player functionality or the codecs, its about making the technology simple and accessible. Sounds esy...but apparently it isn't.

5) Wrongly Expect Customers To Be Experts in Marketing Videos: We should have methods in place that consistently get a customer's video watched...over and over.  Again, people will immediately value in results not in a video product...as a video provider, you should be doing the lion's share of the work to get them those results.

By focusing on any or all of the above issues would go a long way to making a case for REALTORS to adopt a video strategy versus alternatives.

What Are We Doing At Vidlisting.com To Address The Above Issues?

We don't have all of the answers.  We likely fail just as much as others do.  But we have had some measure of success as well in the 9 months or so that we have been live online. Our videos are actually watched (60,000 to 75,000 videos watched each month and growing) and we have had a number of properties sold as a result of our videos.  We think that many elements of the same formula that has been so successful in our international investment and second home markets will also bring solid results as we expand into the US residential and commercial market. We offer:  

- Large Video That Doesn't Buffer: We have large videos that dont buffer....vistors click and the videos start and play all of the way through. While fine for rollercoasters and entermainment video, nothing kills the online buying decision making experience more than a 10-20 second delay in a property video.  We also dont know of any other real estate video provider currently providing 640 pixel wide video (most have 400...or less).

- Sustained Distribution Agreements With Established Portals:  Vidlisting.com is negotiating long term video distribution agreements with some of the largest real estate portals in the world. We dont all have A-List Real Estate bloggers willing to hawk our videos by cutting and pasting it into a given page to give it exposure. Our philosphy is "stupid simple":  quality distribution should be included for ALL customers. No uploading or cutting and pasting is required to take advantage of this distribution. 

- Affordable Video In Multiple Languages: Our standard package includes professional narration in English, Spanish, and Portuguese in order to meet the demands of the changes in demographics within the US and the needs of international investors with strong currencies. Our video pricing rivals pricing for higher end virtual tour services in most US markets.  Unlike many providers, we completely control our vertical from filming to editing to hosting, so we can take advantage of the best pricing at each stage of the production process.

- Eyeballs From Prospective Buyers: Our focus is on the critical first two weeks after a video is posted followed closely by the metrics for the first month. Those time periods are when you'll have the highest mix of prospective buyers. Getting hundreds or thousands of video views for a property in the first weeks of posting is routine for us now with only a few months in the business.  We expect to grow those numbers sharply as we sign more distribution deals.

- User Behavior: We are data "sponges" and use hard data about visitor behavior from our 60,000 to 75,000 monthly video views to drive much of our decision-making. We also look at user behavior on other video sites (whether real estate related or not). Each analysis is fed back into our production or infrastructure process.  This lets us focus on the right things that actually affect user behavior. 

- Ways To Manage Videos In Volume:  As a broker or agent with a large number of listings, are you really going to cut and paste large numbrs of video players into single page? How will you manage searching and browsing for a number of videos?  These questions are not easily answered with standard cut and paste video players or approaches. Here are some samples of how we can help manage video content in volume while mintining look nd feel of websites (http://activerain.com/blogsview/160733/Real-Estate-Video-Maintaining)

Currently, our US service areas for filming are South Florida, San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Virginia, NC, and NYC. Internationally, we are in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico, Spain, UK, Italy, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil. We are constantly growing our production capability.

Please include your thoughts and let me know if you feel that we are on base or off-base with the point of this article.

Tony

Site: http://vidlisting.com    Daily blog: http://forsalebylocals.wordpress.com