Real estate investors should always focus on effective marketing. Marketing to find motivated sellers, marketing to find great tenants, marketing to build a wholesale buyers list, marketing for private lenders, and marketing to sell houses.
Your marketing effort needs to focus like a laser, deliver a strong message for the audience, and reach a lot of people.
Here’s how you can deliver “millions of words” through video…
YouTube has only been around since May of 2005 . On their anniversary, they announced these amazing statistics:
- 72 Hours of video are uploaded every minute
- 3 Billion hours of video are watched every month
- Over 1 Trillion views in 2011
- 500 Years of video are watched everyday on Facebook
- 700 Videos shared on Twitter every minute
Wow! What an opportunity for real estate investors to market. YouTube marketing potential is massive. Marketing efforts need to be planned and marketing to YouTube is no exception. Here are 3 ways real estate investors can use YouTube.
1. Create a YouTube Channel
It is fast and easy to create a personal channel. You can customize your channel with your own selections of colors, promotional text, and the videos you choose to upload. These channels need to focus like a laser, so you may want multiple channels for multiple purposes. For example, you may want a channel for reaching out to wholesale buyers, one for building credibility with private lenders, and yet another separate channel for renting your houses.
2. Deliver Your Message
Now that you have a marketing plan for YouTube channels, what content can you provide? Nearly all cameras now have built in video capabilities, and there are a lot of ways to easily edit the video and get it uploaded to your new YouTube channel.
Show your property: Take a short video of the home you are renting or selling to a wholesale buyer or a retail buyer. Be sure to show the outside of the property, the inside, the neighborhood, and the local amenities and features to give the viewer a full look at the property and a snapshot of the local area.
You can begin by shooting the video on a nice day. Turn the lights on and let the home show itself. No two homes are the same, so make sure you include all the areas that are relevant to home buyers. Shoot video towards the corner of the room. Be sure to show natural light coming in as well as the nice features of the home.
If you wish to speak behind the background, make sure you keep it short, direct, and to the point. Don’t forget to put your name and contact number at the end of the clip. Give viewers the option to visit your site for additional information.
If you want to establish credibility, consider using videos that show your before and after renovations on the houses you buy. This will help show potential partners and private lenders that have the experience necessary to invest.
If you are reaching out to motivated sellers, use a short video describing your services and include some testimonials from people you have bought houses from. That will allow future sellers to see your whole program in action and how you can help them.
3. Promote your message
Now that you have established a YouTube presence with channels and great video content, you can promote your videos with some easy steps.
Title, Description, Text Content: When uploading your video use a good video description and add as much content as possible into the description field provided. Also add relevant tags. Tags became popular with web 2.0 and allow browsers and search engines to find your content. Use tags that are appropriate to your video content. Use tags that feature the address, features of the home, describe the video, etc.
Annotations: Annotations in YouTube can be added to your video that allow you to speak directly to the viewer while watching the video. Your text annotations can describe what the video is showing, promote your websites and provide your contact information so the viewer can call you about the house they are watching.
Links: If you are selling or renting property and using Craigslist to market your property, be sure to insert your YouTube video link directly into your Craigslist postings. Use a promotional line like this one, “To see YouTube video of this home, follow this link: <insert your YouTube link>. You can generate a lot of traffic to your videos directly from Craigslist.
Never stop marketing! It is a key element to every real estate investor’s overall plan. YouTube is a huge opportunity for marketing. It is easy to incorporate with no costs and an effective way for you to connect with buyers, sellers, and tenants.
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Let me know your thoughts, challenges, and experiences using YouTube by leaving comments for me.