Have you been playing with the idea of using video on your website? Nowadays, prospects are looking for much more information online to get a better understanding of your property before they even drop you a line. It’s almost a given that you will provide local information about your community and neighborhood, and some standard pictures, but a high-quality video tour of your building and floor plans can score you a new resident over your comps.
Virtual Tours Are Valuable for Prospects
One of the toughest factors for renters is figuring out if their stuff can fit in another space for the right price in the right place. Spatial measurements can definitely help, but videos within a floor plan can show the true dimensions more visually and include corners or walls that could cause issues with larger furniture (that may not have been apparent from pictures). Even a rendering (as long as it is high-quality) can show a renter how much space they are working with. Most often, new builds and lease-ups will use renderings to show residents what the space will look like.
On the other hand, your building is beautiful, and we are sure you want to show it off. Have a spacious gym or a giant library in your community room? Show em off in a video to your future residents! It’s nice for renters to see a space before even walking in the front door to make sure that their standards are met (or better yet, exceeded).
You Can Integrate Video Both On & Off-Site
No need to stretch your dollar, a good one-time investment can buy you a video that you can place both on and off-site.
On-site, you can embed your video on the homepage, floor plan, or a dedicated “virtual tour” page to show users what they’re working with. Just make sure to autoplay the video or make sure a play button shows so users know it’s a video they can click on.
Off-site, you can add videos to your social channels, to a Google My Business post, or to ILS’ (with some branding additions from them). Videos are additional nuggets of gold on these channels since they are so image-heavy – and a video can be a refreshing difference for someone looking at their 10th apartment in a row.
A High-Quality Video Can Be A Differentiator
There are a ton of sites that don’t include videos – at least from what we’ve seen. We see the usual pages on-site within our client base:
- Homepage – we’ve seen a few sites include video on the homepage – this is a great way to immediately show renters what you’re offering.
- Floor Plans – Nada – usually this is just an image that shows dimensions. BIG opportunity here!
- Neighborhood/Location – Nope.
- Amenities – Zero, zilch.
- Gallery – Some folks are trying it out here, and some have a separate video page that next to this page.
- Contact – Not usually, but not necessarily applicable.
From what we’ve seen, a video can be a big differentiator for a renter – it can show your space for a future resident to better visualize – which can lead to a phone call for a tour. Imagine a prospect seeing 5 apartments online – 4 with images of the building and floor plans, 1 with the addition of video. It’s a different form of content to aid them in their final decision, and to ensure their needs are being met.
Want to include video on your site and other channels for your future residents? We can lend a hand!
