APPLES & ORANGES - EVALUATING PROPERTY VIDEO TECHNOLOGY

The number of competing Property Marketing and Video Technologies is vast, with highly diverse products that for Agents can feel a bit like comparing apples and oranges and leave the head spinning. Although many of these products ultimately achieve different results, unfortunately they tend to come out of the same budget bucket being property marketing. These technologies vary from standard video, interactive video, video slideshows, 3D renders, property walkthroughs (real and virtual) etc.

Given tight margins, usually it is a “one or the other” decision and typically the products available aren’t a silver bullet or a one size fits all application given varying budgets, price ranges for properties, vendor expectations, leasing vs sales marketing etc etc. There are also a range of stakeholders and subsequent objectives driving overall sales or leasing process some of which include:

+ The Agent - trying to showcase their properties, their brand and to streamline the sales / leasing process.
+ The Vendor - wanting to get maximum exposure, differentiation, bang for buck and showcase their specific property features.
+ The Potential Buyer / Tenant - seeking efficiencies in browsing properties and being able to easily access property information / features and contact Agents.

In considering all of the above, the highest level of due diligence would include evaluating each technology’s analytical data to determine key aspects; Such as how well it engages with the user and to what extent, how many enquiries and clicks to agents occur, how it enhances the over user journey and how property features are promoted. At the very least it is worth considering each of the stakeholders through the marketing and sale process and how well the technology engages them respectively, showcases key features or streamlines the overall process to determine what kind of return on investment can be achieved on the technology and how well it is aligned to the overall brand.

Full Disclosure - Hopefully you are aware of our brands and product offering; we have developed a range of interactive video products specifically for the Real Estate Industry. We recognise the undeniable nature of video to immerse and engage the user / audience and its ability to accurately showcase property features. Coupled with direct access to property features and incentivised actions to contact and interact with the Agent we find the medium to be the most scalable, affordable and engaging ranging from slideshow videos integrating property photos through to high budget property videos integrating interactive elements to further immerse the potential buyer.

Contact us to find out more to get help in weighing up your technology options or rolling out scalable video that provides solid ROI.

Incentivising Audiences to Boost Content Engagement

Customers and audiences have increasingly shorter attention spans and content quality and relevance is critical for them to find the signal within the saturation of noise and engage with your content. 

To better engage with audiences and stakeholders, incentivisation is critical in encouraging viewers to become more involved with the content and the online community.  This should be mutually beneficial in leveraging their involvement and providing them with direct access to the support and calls to action they require. A key question to ask in creating and posting content is: 

Why would my audience (internal and/or external) want to watch, engage or interact with this content?  What’s in it for them?

Aside from access, incentives also include rewarding desired behaviours and encouraging audience member and stakeholders to contribute to the community or group. This is applicable to stand alone content, integrated campaigns and social platforms.
  To provide some structure to incentivising engagement, the “SAPS” model is a handy approach to identifying the predominant incentive structures used to motivate and direct behaviours of a respective audience. SAPS involves the following incentive categories: 

Ultimately, the objective of both formal and inform incentives is to deploy them to move audiences up the “Engagement Ladder” by incentivising audiences to move from an observer to a contributor.  This is not bound only to social media, as the means of incentivising individuals to contribute is universal across all elements of input.  

Look to compile a list of calls to action that the respective audience is going to respond to and seek to deploy these throughout the content to provide easy and direct access and to create a user friendly experience.  Where appropriate, encourage structured input from your audience as an opportunity to interact.  Remember too that formal incentives involving tangible giveaways don’t have to be crass “free stuff”, but can be used in alignment with education, training, professional development or the like or in the case of internal audiences and stakeholders, as an overall initiative to reward and recognise the collective achievement.  

Interactive Taxonomies + Audience Engagement

Building a digital content taxonomy has become an increasingly important component of broader integrated digital marketing strategies as businesses look to not only produce ongoing original content but also seek to more effectively leverage [existing or historical content].  With an ever widening array of stakeholders, audiences and customers to engage with, there is a growing need for effective content life cycle management. 

The content taxonomy gets interesting when it’s extended to application within interactive video.  In the case of interactive content, virtually any form of content can be directly linked to the video (eg links, information, videos, images etc). Having a taxonomy of related and high value content for the interactive video (that can be drawn from existing, repurposed or newly created content) allows for great asset utilisation through the connection and deployment of related content within the video.  It allows you to provide a carefully curated journey for the viewer by linking in specific elements and topics that relate directly to the respective video content.  Put simply, it allows you to provide all of the priority information, content and direct actions for the viewer so they don’t need to search for them and you don’t lose them down the rabbit hole on 3rd party platforms. 

What this gives the viewer is a more user friendly experience, it shortens the steps or clicks required and prolongs the engagement with your hosted content, page, account or asset.  By focusing on integrating relevant or repurposed content from your broader digital content taxonomy, you’re ensuring that for your internal and external audiences their requirements are being supported and it’s contributing effectively to them interacting with the content to their benefit. Integrating supporting assets and content from your overall content taxonomy also helps to direct the audience to specific resources that will assist in educating them on the brand and boosting engagement.  You’ve then got the opportunity to review the engagement data to inform how both the content and the overall taxonomy you’ve applied within the interactive video can be modified and improved to boost engagement. 

2018 REAL ESTATE CONTENT DATA INSIGHTS

2018 was a big year for us, seeing extensive application of interactive video and best practice consulting within the Australian Real Estate and Property sector. In accordance with our tradition of publishing annual engagement and behavioural white papers, we decided to produce a report solely focused on the data, engagement and viewer behaviour insights resulting from Property related video content.

There were some exciting highlights from an engagement perspective (refer to the image below) in regards to click through rates, audiences accessing direct calls to action and viewing durations. Given the ability of interactive videos to provide direct access to specific content and property features, potential buyers and viewers are spending more time within the client’s property portal viewing curated information.

For the report itself, data was collected across of applications of HitON, including:
+ WebsiteIntegratedVideos
+ Direct to Buyer SMS
+ DirectMail
+ Newsletters
+ Facebook Posts
+ Linkedin Posts

The types of Real Estate video contributing to data collection include:
+ Property Videos
+ Property Slideshow Videos
+ Agent / Suburb Profile and Marketing Videos

For more information or to get a copy of the report, contact us.

Content Should be Marked “Recycling”, not “General Waste”

In this age of seemingly endless abundance of content, it’s easy to be lured into the fallacy that once produced, content is redundant and destined for general waste.  But a more prudent approach may be to review instead what content assets within a business could be better utilised to enable more consistent communication across broader internal and external channels (targeting both internal and external stakeholders, audiences and customers).  

Content can be used in its existing form or the messaging could be utilised to create additional high value content such as video. Social channels naturally also play a key role in the distribution of this content to specific audience sectors or in a wholesale capacity.  Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as content is recycled and repurposed into higher value content, look to measure engagement and targeting to specific audience members within various stakeholder groups and across social audiences. 

The content analysis or audit may extend across internal and external platforms and marketing channels.  From a cost efficiency and resourcing perspective, historic content can be further leveraged thereby lessening the requirement for continuous production of new content, in turn boosting efficiencies for the resources producing the content.  Through leveraging and utilising existing content assets, the volume and cadence of effective content will be boosted.

In the case of interactive video, content asset utilisation can be maximised through repurposing components of the content or adopting the content in its entirety.  Virtually any form of content can be directly linked to the video within the viewing experience (such as links, information, videos, images and the like).

By reviewing internally what existing content and information can be repurposed into higher value content (Eg written pieces that could become video interviews) or integrated to assist in educating various audiences or providing them with key information or calls to action, the viewer is able to experience a curated journey and there is greater visibility of success and performance through the establishment of content and engagement metrics that can extend to each individual piece of repurposed linked content within the interactive video.

CASE STUDY: Mark Foy's Content Innovation in Real Estate

We have been working with Mark Foy, the Principle of Belle Property Surry Hills to activate and enhance his diverse video content, utilising our interactive video technology HitON. Mark has been executing a successful content strategy to leverage on videos to differentiate from competitors and convey his unique experience and knowledge to his target market. This approach has been increasingly effective as market conditions continue to soften and differentiation from other agents and brands becomes imperative to attracting new vendors.

HitON has been applied to a range of Belle Surry Hills property specific and knowledge based content such as meet the team, market updates (residential and commercial) and other key intelligence regarding leasing, property styling, financials, when to sell etc. This content has allowed Mark to articulate and deploy his knowledge and experience in a digestible manner and engaging format that can be deployed across a range of digital channels.

The interactivity aspect has been widely embraced by the audience, which is reflective in the engagement data we are seeing in regards to viewer interaction with the content. Average click through rates have exceeded 20% with the most engaging calls to action achieving close to 70% Viewing durations have also exceeded the video duration by up to 3.5 times; meaning audiences are deeply engaging with the various activations and calls to action within the content. Audience engagement in regards to calls to action reflect the key trends we are seeing within the Property and Real Estate Industry, such as high interaction with contact information including call, email and SMS, particularly from mobile devices.

Activating Mark’s content over an extended period has allowed us to analyse and interpret the user and engagement data to adjust and enhance both the content and activation accordingly. As such, we have been able to improve the user experience, providing more efficient access to info, links, additional videos and calls to action. Naturally, this has facilitated exponential improvements in viewer engagement and interaction with the content.

Click on the video above to view Mark Foy's "Tips for Buyers" video to see how Mark and Belle Surry Hills have been leveraging their commercial intelligence through engaging interactive video.

VIDEO + INTERACTIVITY. WHY THE FUSS?

If you thought interactive video technology was just a passing fad, you’d be wise to think again.  Whilst the statistics on audience viewing of video as distinct from other mediums are well understood,it is the opportunity to significantly boost engagement and amass valuable content intelligence that is driving the advancement of interactive video as a means of enhancing the value of content produced by businesses.  

At its essence, the advancement interactive video technology is driven by the desire of the end user, audience or consumer for immediate access to relevant and related content to the primary video which could take the form of information, links, additional videos, products, education etc.  This is self evident in a broader application in the use of second and third screens by audiences when viewing content, whether it’s interacting on a social platform while watching television, searching online, watching a separate video or shopping.  

The act of viewing content is no longer linear and single dimensional in its nature and as such, traditional standalone video is becoming a dated model.  The video content itself and the interface that is supporting it need to move with the expectations and attention spans of its audience.  The introduction of interactivity is taking what is considered high value content ie video, to the next level and supporting it being a non-linear experience.  It’s well demonstrated in gaming where the user experience is largely interactive and in the way that children and teens interact with content more broadly – When they’re viewing something their natural reaction is to engage with what they’re viewing – move things around on screen, click on elements, zoom and expand and so on.  It stands to reason then that when it comes to video content in particular, everything should be activated or a pathway to more data, more access, more content and more knowledge.  The audience expectation has shifted and we need to be responsive to this. 

The shift to interactivity in video is also driving improved content utilisation for brands and businesses, given the ability to deploy, recycle, upscale and leverage a wide combination of long and short form content.  In the case of longer form content pieces, these can be broken down and repurposed to feed back to the audience for them to view on their own terms, increasing engagement and leaving them looking at content for longer.  Within the data that we see through the use of [HitON], it’s not uncommon for viewing durations to far exceed the duration of the video when including these additional content elements through the interactivity capability of the video.

What we’re seeing is that interactivity within video provides a whole new level of more meaningful data that for the first time gives insights beyond eyeballs and drop off and bounce rates.  It’s delving into what elements within content and what forms of content the audience genuinely are motivated to interact with. This in turn is giving a whole new layer of insights into what audiences want.  It becomes a two way street where you have the UX and the access, but if brands are using it powerfully and insightfully, then they should be applying this data to position their brand message, content and products more effectively and also respond to their audience desires. This is made even more powerful if it is combined with incentives, gamification and social engagement strategies.