Why estate agents should consider using property video tours

Looking back to 2005, the launch of YouTube made online video an everyday experience. After just a year, explosive growth meant that the site was delivering 100 million videos per day - growth that has continued ever since. The majority of this and other online video is, of course, social traffic, but business use is becoming more and more common.

Estate agency as an industry has been a little slower to make use of video, but interest really started to take off last year. An increasing number of agents are using 'about us' videos on their home page to quickly sell their company and USP, and a small but growing number are beginning to adopt property videos - virtual viewings - as part of their marketing packages. The use of films to educate web visitors about an agent's local area is also growing.

Sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are now massive sources of search traffic - exposure to that new audience alone may be a good enough reason for your company to get involved.

One industry supplier, Estate Agents on Film, only launched officially a few months ago, but has booked a stand to show off their services at the Property Professional Show (where they will also be running a raffle to win a year's worth of the HD TV Portal service and the production of some local films). They offer both property (from £150) and location videos (from £300) in HD and are seeing some very positive results.

MD David Varley told me that they are equally popular with vendors at the lower end of the market, with agents upselling the service as an additional income stream. One of their customers HousesEtc is selling 5-10 videos each month to their local market where the average property price is just £110k. Their quote was "one buyer bought because she fell in love with it online".

The content produced by their network of freelance cameramen and women is certainly impressive enough to understand this. They bring a professionally trained eye - a "TV advert viewpoint" in David's words - to the work. Take a look at this example. It's also possible to add video links to your Rightmove adverts.

What a great way to stand out from the crowd.

Animoto is another site worth considering. It allows you to put videos, photos, voice and text to a soundtrack to produce enticing and professional animations quickly and easily. Evolution Business Services also offer a quick and interesting way to use the Wordle style keyword cloud graphics I have mentioned previously.

The common theme is that online video is still growing, however you use it:

• A succinct way of explaining your company's personality
• An exciting way of marketing properties
• A differentiator to your competition
• A new revenue stream
• A way of generating traffic
• A way of providing interesting and educational local area content on your website

The only note of caution I would sound is to ensure that content isn't only available on the video - for the moment you should still offer a textual version for those that prefer it.

Online aside, you could also consider using the videos in digital window displays.