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26
Why We Shouldn't Forget Some of the Pandemic's Biggest Lessons
COVID is over! Well, maybe not completely over, but I went to the grocery store without wearing a mask the other day, so we must be getting close. At least close enough that it's time for us to start thinking about life after COVID and what that means for marketing our listings.
It's tempting to see all of this as "getting back to normal" and immediately go back to handling things the way you did in 2019 — as if the whole pandemic amounted to nothing more than a year and a half hiatus. Avoid that impulse. Because, despite all of the hardships, we really learned a lot too.
Speaking from a real estate marketing perspective, some of the technological solutions built out in response to the pandemic — like virtual showing request functionality and virtual open house presentations — continue to be valuable tools even when there aren't any mandates keeping us at home. It always made sense to adopt these kinds of solutions. The pandemic just acted as the catalyst to get them developed right away. Likewise, it was a catalyst for us to learn about new ways of using streaming video and remote conferencing technology to meet with clients we couldn't talk to in person.
There are still plenty of valid-use cases for being able to handle virtual showing requests. Keeping those options available post-pandemic allows you to provide remote personal showings for clients whose schedules may be too busy to accommodate an in-person showing. Especially in a market where homes are selling so quickly, you can hardly wait for schedules to align. There's also a use case for clients that are interested in relocating or buying a second home. For someone moving from Chicago to New York, for example, it might be much more convenient for both of you if you walk them through some properties using Zoom or FaceTime instead of them flying out to see it in person. It just makes sense to continue to allow them to request that you show them the property that way.
Virtual Open Houses still have a place as well. As it stands now, real estate agents can record themselves walking through and presenting one of their listings to the unseen guests on the other side of the camera. They can then define a date and time that that video will become available and present that information, and a link to the video, on the listing detail pages on their website. It may have been the pandemic that drove the need for us to add that functionality to the DeltaNET®, but the idea of creating a video like that and presenting it to prospective buyers on your
website was nothing new. Even though we can perform traditional, in-person open houses again, there can still be a lot of benefits to recording a video like this, setting up a time for it to premiere on Facebook or YouTube, then promoting that premiere on your website and through social media. Anyone unable to make it to a physical open house can still benefit from your walk-through video. Even if there's nobody there to watch the video when it goes live, you have one more piece of marketing material you can use to promote that listing. It doesn't hurt that viewers can sign up on your website to attend the virtual open house, either, allowing you to capture their contact information as a lead as well.
Another thing the pandemic got us used to was live-streaming and virtual conferencing. Those two things aren't really the same, but they more or less serve the same purpose when it comes to promoting a listing. It's all about a live presentation of the listing through a medium in which you can interact with your viewers in real-time. When the pandemic started, there were a number of agents out there already using this kind of technology with some real success. It's particularly nice when presenting listings for second homes or vacation homes, as those buyers tend not to be local, but there's a place for it when promoting any listing. For example, maybe I'm really interested in your listing, so I'd like to attend an open house and ask you some questions about it before thinking about a personal showing, but I'm not able to attend an open house in person. If you're live-streaming a virtual open house of that property, I can "attend" it on your website, ask my questions, and get live answers in real-time. It's just another way to extend your reach to those that might not have otherwise been able to be present and extend that listing to as many potential buyers as possible.
Live streaming and pre-recorded videos can also have the added benefit of building out content on a YouTube channel. That's just another social media channel for you to build a presence to ultimately build your brand and your business. Besides, what better way to find out if your true calling is that of a YouTube content creator? You could be internet famous before you know it. Even if that doesn't work out, at least you're driving more traffic to your website and your listings in the meantime.
This last piece of technology didn't seem to get as much of a push during the pandemic as I would have expected, but I still feel like it deserves an honorable mention. That would be 360 photos and video. It came to the forefront for some because a potential buyer with a VR headset could use it to view one of these photos or videos as if they're actually standing in the property and looking around. Even those without a VR headset can still use their phone or tablet to "look around" within one of these photos or videos. This is the closest thing we have now to actually putting a potential buyer in a property when they can't physically be there. What's more, as the adoption of VR continues to grow, this will only get more and more important. So the more you can learn about using it now, the better.
COVID has taught us a lot. We learned that it's nearly impossible to wear a surgical mask for any significant length of time without your glasses fogging up. We learned that we don't wash our hands often enough, or for long enough. We learned interesting and unexpected things about the availability of toilet paper in a crisis. More importantly, we learned how to run a Zoom meeting, host a Facebook Live video, and present a property to a potential buyer via FaceTime. Now, let's try not to forget.
