9 Reasons Why Video is Vital for Home Builder Marketing Success

Today, video makes up the vast majority of content that is consumed and shared online. This makes it a vital component of a successful home builder digital marketing strategy. Buyers typically expect and strongly desire this engaging content format from brands they are considering for products or services. Studies show that 72% of customers said they would rather learn about a brand’s offerings through video.

Videos even have the power to significantly influence consumer buying behavior as 64% of consumers are more likely to purchase from companies that share videos. Reaching and engaging buyers with video content is an essential strategy for drawing in leads and establishing connections with new homebuyers.

Not long ago, showcasing or displaying a picture was enough to entice buyers. While images enhance customer communication, videos have much more powerful effects due to our media-driven culture. Brands are often flooding consumers with never-ending information, which makes their time even more valuable – they can’t read/view it all, so they’ll choose only the most alluring content!

Videos often deliver more compelling insights and overviews of the benefits of a product or service. For home builder marketing, video can bring their homes and communities to life! The more visual content you deliver, the easier it is for buyers to feel like they are there and envision the location’s lifestyle opportunity.

Consumers also find it more convenient to watch a video while trying to accomplish other tasks. Creating videos that conveniently share information in a compelling format often proves to be a highly effective marketing technique.

Below is a list of the reasons why video is an essential online marketing strategy for home builders:

Increased Customer Conversions

The number one reason for using video is that it converts more customers. Recent research shows that 71% of marketers say video conversion rates outperform other marketing content. Adding videos to your home builder landing page can even increase conversions by as much as 80 percent.

While it has been proven that video content has increased conversion rates, the videos must deliver strong quality and appealing concepts to have the desired impact. Poor production quality may have the reverse effect on a consumer and drive away prospective business. As with all marketing techniques, quality should always be a top priority.

Stronger Emotional Connections

Video is one of the most powerful ways to convey your company or community’s brand and evoke emotions through digital marketing. That’s because video offers several attributes that traditional content can’t deliver including tone of voice, facial expressions, movement and music, to name a few.

Consumers already love pictures featuring faces and beautiful homes and communities, and they engage even more with video content that delivers greater access to the people leading the brand. Home builders can showcase the human side of their brand by featuring employee interviews and office highlights. These videos can help your company form stronger relationships with potential homebuyers and substantially boost engagement.

Due to the emotional response videos evoke, this content also possesses greater opportunities for wider reach and showcasing lifestyles and brand promises offered by your company and communities. Often, consumers will share content they enjoy with others, allowing brands to receive free exposure to the viewer’s friends, family and followers.

Stronger Consumer Attention

Videos demand more consumer attention than any other medium. Consumers currently experience content overload, which makes gaining their attention over competing sources incredibly important for engagement rates.

“The attention economy is not growing, which means we have to grab the attention that someone else has today.” – Brent Leary, Co-Founder, CRM Essentials

Videos are easy to consume and a fantastic way to quickly draw in viewers. When a video successfully attracts viewers, 60% of consumers will spend at least 2 minutes watching a video if it educates them about a product or service they plan on purchasing.

Not only does this content draw more attention to your brand, but it’s also capable of cultivating leads, building customer loyalty, expanding online audiences, and increasing market share.

Higher Engagement

Strong, compelling visual content has always been the key to great engagement. Video inevitably increases engagement due to the addition of movement and sound. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then one minute of video is worth 1.8 million, according to Forrester Research.

Even if this measurement isn’t technically accurate, the point is that the power of videos is inherently greater than standard print or static images. Videos deliver a compelling method for sharing brand stories, ideas and values. This intimate glimpse at a brand encourages consumers to emotionally invest in a company and thus, become more likely to regularly engage with its content.

Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

There are several ways that utilizing video can improve a home builder website’s SEO. Here’s how:

• Improved SERP Rank (Search Engine Results Pages) – Increasing online visibility is a top priority for SEO optimization. Pages with an optimized video are 53x more likely to be on the first page of Google search results.
• Higher CTR (Click Through Rate) – If your videos drive your site to the first page of search results, it’s also more likely to be visited and consumed by consumers. Studies show that search results with video have a 41% higher click-through rate than plain text.
• Lower Bounce Rates – The placement of embedded videos on each website is one of the best ways to improve visit quality metrics including time on site and page depth which in turn enhance SEO. Low bounce rates are a key metric for improving a website’s quality score with Google. Video increases time spent on your website as visitors stop to consume this content for longer periods. The more time spent on site, the lower your bounce rate will be overall. Studies also reveal that visitors who view video stay two minutes longer and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors.
• Quality Backlinks – Video builds backlinks, communicates useful information quickly and allows people a chance to sample content before committing to lengthy articles. Quality video with a specific marketing goal creates great backlinks to your website. Incorporating video into your website, compared to only text, can nearly triple the average number of linking domains.

Greater Optimization Opportunities

Video offers powerful feedback loop opportunities. Video allows marketers to measure click-through rates, completion rates, number of times watched, length of time watched, etc., depending on the desired goal.

It boils down to this: the feedback loop for videos means we know what’s working and what is not. Videos offer insightful key performance indicators (KPIs) that enable home builders to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the content for future adjustments.

Greater Reach

When it comes to potential reach, video is unrivaled.

• YouTube receives more than one billion unique visitors every month – that's more than any other channel, apart from Facebook.
• Video offers countless placement opportunities which include contextual targeting, behavioral targeting, channel targeting and retargeting. 
• To engage with individuals who stream video content through an OTT device (eg a Roku, AppleTV, etc), brisk video ads can run as a viewable, non-skippable TV commercial at a fraction of the cost of traditional broadcast TV.
• Video ads are also 12 times more likely to be shared through social media outlets versus text-based information – 92% of mobile video consumers share videos with others.
• It’s estimated that somewhere close to 75% of business professionals watch promotional videos at least once a week for relevant products and services. Of those that watch this content, about half continue to engage by visiting the promoted company's website.

Mobile-Favored Content

Mobile device users often favor video content. The smaller the screen, the less likely consumers are to read lengthy text. Instead, video content delivers information quickly and succinctly in a format that is easily consumable no matter the device. Mobile video consumption rises 100% every year according to YouTube insight.

Better Email CTRs

Video serves as a powerful addition to home builder email marketing. As 81% of consumers prefer to open emails on their smartphones and video is highly favored by mobile users, emails and videos are a strategic combination.

The use of video in emails has been shown to double click-through rates.  Offering an email recipient a call to action to view a video has proven to increase CTRs by up to 300% and help drive higher levels of engagement. Statistics show that using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19%, clicks-through rates by 65%, and reduces unsubscribes by 26 percent.

Start Incorporating Video Content into Your Home Builder Marketing Strategy

Video content is a top performance-driving tactic that’s proving to be a crucial part of successful home builder marketing. From quickly capturing attention to generating high engagement, improving SEO, increasing conversion rates and more, video marketing brings powerful advantages.

Get in touch with our team today to learn how we can visually showcase your home builder brand with creative, compelling video content!