Just like real estate photography, video in real estate varies widely in terms of quality. There are plenty of videos out there that could make even the most settled of home owners wonder whether they should consider moving, and plenty more that probably have even the most dedicated home hunter reaching for the pause button.

So which factors make the difference between a video that enhances a listing and one that does it no favours? Is it the vast amount of money spent on a professional video service? Not if you follow these easy tips:

1. Stabilise the camera if at all possible. Even if you don’t have a tripod available, using something to steady your arm as you pan through each room will go a long way towards reducing that seasick feeling in your audience.

2. Practice filming as often as you can and learn from the results. Are you standing too close to your subject? Are you moving the camera around too quickly? Of course, constructive criticism from others is another excellent way to get the answers to these questions.

3. Edit if at all possible. In the interest of getting a video online quickly, many agents forgo the editing process and simply upload as soon as they finish filming. The problem is that these videos would almost always have looked more professional with even a few dissolves between shots or a quick fade-to-black at the end.

4. Explain what we’re looking at. Another trend in real estate videos are those silent videos that simply show the exterior or interior of a property without any explanation. There’s no need to chat the whole way through, but a few details here and there will go a long way towards connecting your viewers with the property.

5. Enhance where you can. Music is an obvious but extremely effective addition to any real estate video as long as it’s kept subtle and unobtrusive. On the topic of sound, if you’re not keen on having your own voice in the video, try highlighting the property’s features by adding subtitles at appropriate points.

For Mac users, a simple program to edit and enhance your videos is iMovie, while PC users can get started with Movie Maker.

Once you’ve mastered the art of the perfect video listing, your next challenge will be video SEO, which you can read more about here.

Avid followers of online trends will already be familiar with Foursquare, the wildly popular location-focused social network that lets its users earn points and unlock “badges” when they visit certain locations and “check in”.

Whether you’re a Foursquare convert or have never heard of location-based mobile social networking before, chances are you’ll be interested in CEO Dennis Crowley’s tips on how to grow a small business.

Crowley, an ex-Google employee, shared his marketing insights with openforum.com, revealing just how effective an informal approach to marketing can be.

Crowley explained that Foursquare leans heavily on Twitter to communicate almost everything the company does. “Keeping users in the know doesn’t take any more than a few seconds and your most loyal users will spread the word via [retweets],” he said.

Foursquare also uses Twitter to find people who are having problems with their service and tries to solve the issue publicly.

“Making yourself part of the conversation shows users you’re listening and care about the issues they have,” Crowley said.

Overall, Foursquare’s approach is open, friendly, and focused on people rather than product. It’s certainly working for them – could this strategy have the same effect on your real estate business?

In Part 1, we wrote about how more and more website providers are offering realtors a mobile presence. In Part 2, we looked at the continued existence of video and virtual tours and discussed the relative merits of using them. In this article, we will look at the low cost websites being offered to realtors in the US and discuss whether they are worth the investment.

All realtors (agents, brokers and offices) should have their own websites. The website should be simple to use, have a clear call to action (i.e. get a lead from a visitor), and most importantly be optimised for SEO – after all this is free traffic. Finally, the web address (URL) for your site should also be simple and easy to remember.

When I look at realtor sites around the web, many of them extol the virtues of the realtor rather than the realtor’s listings. The home page has pictures of the smiling realtor and some text about why the realtor is great. However, if you look at why someone would contact a realtor, it is usually to buy or sell a house. Therefore, it is important that the realtor use the listings to entice the customers and then factually talk about their performance and why the customer should use the realtor.

In the US, there is the MLS – a market place where buyer’s agents and seller’s agents meet to match buyers with sellers. Therefore, if you are an agent in the US, your website can automatically have all the listings in an area even if you are not the seller’s agent or you don’t have any listings at all. Therefore a realtor’s website is very important as it can, in theory, compete with zillow.com, realtor.com and trulia.com in your local market.

At the NAR Conference there were many different website providers offering fully customisable websites with all the latest gadgets from as little as $29 per month. These sites provide a good range of choice for the agent and even come with a mobile site.

This seems to be an incredibly good deal until you look beneath the covers. Firstly, the providers often offer a limited range of templates. This means that there is a chance that another realtor in your area will have a similar site. Secondly, you are limited to the functionality offered by the provider and adding new customised functionality on top of what is already offered may be a little costly. Finally, and most importantly, the quality of the SEO applied to the site is limited to the same quality applied to all sites by the same provider.

Taking all these concerns into account, for most realtors these template driven solutions are often the best. They allow the realtor to create a web presence quickly and easily and most importantly at a low cost.

The exception to this rule is obviously propertyindex.com as it has been operating under a similar pay-per-lead model in the UK since late 2008.

zoopla.co.uk now offers 300,000 properties for sale and to rent and says the new pay-per-lead model aligns the interests of the agent and the portal in a true partnership.

The company says it is uniquely positioned to provide agents with not just buyer leads but also much sought-after vendor leads via its user base of property owners and exclusive AskAnAgent feature. zoopla.co.uk also argues it has the most active property community with over one million user contributions to the website already.

Alex Chesterman, founder and CEO of zoopla.co.uk, commented:

“Our model is all about bringing efficiency to the marketplace. By charging only for results, we plan to change the game for agents in terms of the efficiency of their marketing spend and their ability to track performance. During these challenging times, it has never been more important to understand and measure the results of every pound spent and zoopla.co.uk is leading the charge in enabling agents to slash their marketing spend and pay only for the results they get.”

zoopla.co.uk claims to be the UK’s fastest growing property website and according to some metrics is now the 5th most visited property website in the UK. Over the last 12 months zoopla.co.uk has announced its highest ever monthly user figures, recording just short of a million website visits in January 2009 – a total of 972,802. This is a month-on-month increase of over 50 per cent. The website began the year by securing £3.75 million in new funding, listing a record breaking 15 million sold house price records, and revealing Malcolm McCallion’s appointment as Sales Director.

With two rapidly growing portals, zoopla.co.uk and propertyindex.com, now operating on a pay-per-lead basis it will be interesting to see what kind of challenge this model issues to the Big 4 in the UK.

The decision came as a result of some research propertyindex.com undertook, which revealed that many customers preferred to speak to an agent as soon as possible, rather than wait. The company has set up a unique telephone number for each agent in the hope that it would increase the opportunity for agents to convert enquiries into viewings and valuations.

The company says it is offering every client the opportunity to receive these free leads via an 03 number directed to a specified landline or mobile number of their choice. With 03 local rate numbers, enquirers will incur no additional charges. The free telephone leads offer extends from now until the end of March and the company says it could be worth in excess of £50,000.

“Agents will be alerted by a voice message when they answer the phone telling them the lead has been generated by propertyindex.com. From 1st April telephone leads will be charged at the usual £1 per unique, as-per email leads,” a statement from propertyindex.com reveals.

Unanswered calls will divert back to propertyindex.com’s call centre which will capture the details and forward the enquiry to the agent by email.

Chief Executive Lee Bramzell explained further:

“This is a great opportunity to demonstrate the volume and quality of the leads propertyindex.com can generate. Agents should be capturing callers’ name, telephone number and email at an absolute minimum and work to organise appointments.”

Agents can track calls online and will also be sent a monthly report detailing each telephone lead. From the end of March, agents will have seven days to dispute any leads before payment is debited from agents’ accounts.

Here’s propertyadguru.com‘s tips for Marketing on a Budget:

1. Use online media more effectively. This really is key to marketing both yourselves and your properties in tough times. Online media is still much more cost effective than offline (tv, radio, newspapers, magazines) and gives you more control over targeting and measuring your outcomes. Consider your entire marketing mix at this time and reshuffle some funds towards online. 

2. Use online display advertising to promote your business rather than newspapers or magazines. Forego the glossy print ad just for a couple of months and try using banners on a portal website to promote your business in the areas that you operate. By doing this, you are directly reaching your target audience for a cheaper cost; the ads will also last much longer.

3. Provide great content in return for ad space. If you are determined to still appear in print, try submitting an article about the local market filled with facts and figures (and some opinion) and see if you can do a contra deal with the publication – editorial in return for an advertisement. If you are unable to secure a dedicated ad, make sure you can clearly brand the editorial – this in itself works well as an advertisement.

4. Beef up your email newsletters. If you were in the habit of sending out a newsletter somewhat haphazardly, now is the time to ramp up the writing and frequency. E-newsletters are a cheap way of communicating your message and your brand (and hopefully some really useful content) to an audience who are interested in what you have to say. If you have done the work to build your database then now is the time to talk more frequently to your customers and reassure them you are still around in the tough times.

5. Local sponsorships. Schools, churches, sporting clubs are always looking for helping hands. And whilst now might not be the time to offer a $1m sponsorship deal, you could start a new relationship that gives your brand some new visibility (through signboards, co-branded newsletters, banners at sports grounds etc) in return for event promotion through your own networks, help at working bees and cash donations down the track. In tough times small businesses need to get creative and help each other out.

6. Network network network. When the deals aren’t walking through your door anymore it’s time to return to old-fashioned networking. Go to as many networking events as possible and talk positively about what you do and how business is going. Don’t be a pushy card-toting salesman though! And be mindful of not talking about how tough times are. People like to do business with positive successful people.

7. Try new-age networking. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace have added a new dimension to business networking in the noughties. Try connecting with old associates, friends and colleagues and letting them know what you do now. Join industry groups or create ones of your own. Getting connected via these sites can open up a whole new avenue of promotion for yourself and your business. And it’s free!

8. Present a real estate information session. If times are tough for you then chances are they’re tough for many others in your community. Why not hold a free information session about the local property market for residents in your local area. Most people love to hear about where the market’s going, how to capitalise on investment properties, what’s happening in the rental arena etc. As professionals in your field you can offer this kind of information without having to sell anything, and you will generate goodwill towards your brand. You could create a cheap flyer in-house, hold the event at your office or local church/school (maybe one you are in partnership with?) and the entire event need only cost you a few cups of coffee. 

9. Make it easy for past customers to refer you. The best business is referred business so make it easy to do so. After every complete transaction, follow up with an email (to both buyer and seller) that your customers can then send on to anyone interested in selling their property. It should be short and succinct but contain your credentials. A simple reward scheme for referrals is always helpful in generating advocates.

10. Don’t be afraid to have fun! Perhaps now is the time to let the frustrated actor out of the closet. Create a video about yourself – what you do, why you do it and how – and post it to YouTube. Send the link to everyone you know (without spamming!) and get people talking. Have some fun with it so people will want to forward it on, but make sure you include a way for potential customers to contact you. It’s a free and easy way to do something a bit different that might just entice someone to give you their business.

It’s never as easy to market your business on a budget as it is with limitless dollars. But then success is rarely easy! Tough economic times call for tough measures and you can’t simply stop marketing because the budgets are tight. So think a bit laterally – and also a bit obscurely! – and have some fun generating business in a new way.