Posted in Some of your colleagues use them, and likely boast about it during your weekly meetings, but are video tours on listings really worth doing?
Video tours are expensive
A video tour for one listing starts at around $300.00 and goes up from there. You could also be on the hook for additional hosting and renewal costs depending on which provider you use.
Spending at least $300.00 on marketing a listing is definitely a good idea, but your money is better spent on things other than video tours:
- Google Adwords Campaign
- Neighborhood flyering
- Home staging
Video tours are too slow
A video tour forces a website visitor to sit through an entire property exposé like it’s a painful family slide show. Show your website visitors some respect and give them control to scroll through photos or virtual tours at their own pace.
Video tours aren’t flattering
Video tours rely heavily on good lighting and camera angles to make a property look good and unless you’re hiring a Hollywood crew to stage each shot, your listing could look washed out and cheap. Also remember that if it’s raining on the day the cameraman is comes to take the shot, you’ll either need to reschedule or not showcase anything outside.
Video tours take time
For each video tour you’ll need to:
- Schedule the appointment
- Make sure the property is clean
- Meet the cameraman
- Wait for good lighting
- Shoot several takes of each room
- Create the tour script
- Wait several days for the editing to be completed
Does this sound like a good use of your time? I don’t think so.
So are video tours worth it?
No – we certainly don’t think so. Buying a good digital camera costs roughly the same amount as ONE video tour and will allow you to take unlimited photos of each of your listings. With a simple digital camera you’ll be able to shoot the photos yourself and upload them to your website in a fraction of the time it’d take a video tour company to accomplish the same.
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You can do your own virtual tours with REAL BIRD and then you can use these tours to submit your listing to Kijiji, and Craigs List sites and others as well. All listings submitted on Real Bird are syndicated and you and add to your facebook page, linked-in page and so on and so on.