Do creative listing videos actually work?

Welcome to What Is MAVEN, the podcast about real estate and whatever we want to talk about. And today, we are in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and we are just talking about what was the conversation we were having?

So, it's something we've seen obviously. It's like the whole thing about making a creative listing video, which I love the creativity and I think it's really fun. My knee looks fucking huge.

But I—

Well, I don't think we're posting the video of this, but we might.

Oh, maybe, but if you watch the video, look at my knee. But, something we've seen is that people are posting a lot of creative listing videos, which is totally fine and it's super fun. I just question if that actually is helpful to the seller.

'Cause if somebody's looking through Instagram, a lot of the creative videos kind of get lost in the sauce with the creativity, and then they don't even focus on the actual house and showing it. I don't know. I just don't know if people who are buying a house give a fuck about your creativity, to be fully honest.

So, let me clip this on here.

'Cause like I If I was buying something, I just want the facts. I don't need your creativity. I purely want to know all the details for the home, and I honestly could give a fuck less if you had a very creative listing video, just personally.

That's just for me. But also, as someone who makes videos for a living, I just want like facts. I need to know what the house is, I need to know how much it sold for and why I should buy this house, not, "Oh, in a galaxy far away, Mindy—" or Mindy, just a random name.

I'm not calling out a Mindy. I just, that was what was at the front of my head because I love Mindy. Both Mindys, all the Mindys.

Anyway, but it's just like I don't need that like creativity to it. I just want all the facts because it's a very big purchase, and I'm not buying it based off of how creative you are, personally.

Well, yeah. And like there's the whole throw a like train wreck car crash meme at the front, and then all of a sudden say, "Look at this home," and it's, what is that doing? Now, actually though, so what are some reasons someone would do that maybe could benefit them?

'Cause I feel like that's what the conversation is, like, okay, like how do we explore this? Can we find times in—

Is there a benefit to the videos?

Yeah, basically. Like why would someone do it, why would certain people do it and actually be benefiting that maybe other people are emulating and not realizing the reasons?

I don't know, 'cause like I Okay, so I do understand that you would actually have people watch it because it will make you stop versus a traditional video, which is like, "Eh, whatever. Like I don't care. Pretty drone footage, pretty footage." Let's just talk to each other.

Well yeah, I would get because it's like prettier footage and it's like drone footage and it's just like, "Eh, like I don't really care." It's not going to be remarkable enough to make you stop, which is something that we always talk about. Like is it remarkable enough, or are you remarkable enough? So, I get that aspect of it.

So, you're saying doing the creative ones are more remarkable.

Yes, but I don't know if I don't know if that's successful, though, overall, 'cause like I would want to know I would almost want to do a side-by-side, like how MrBeast does where he tests his thumbnails, or like any sort of creator tests their creative product and see which is more which works best.

Yeah, and that's called an A/B test, if anyone doesn't know, so you have your A version and your B version.

Yeah. A B C D E F G. So, I would just be curious overall if that actually is helpful or and like no shade, but is it more so making the creative listing videos to be able to get called out from stage by certain people and like being highlighted, which that does feel good, but is that overall why you're making the listing video or to get accolades by fellow realtor like real estate professionals?

Or is it really to be able to sell the home? 'Cause like, frankly, I don't think it does what it's supposed to do, just from my perspective. And I could totally fucking be wrong and that would be amazing because I want to learn and know, but I just don't think they do what they're supposed to do.

Well, and "supposed to do" is the question, I think, because we talk about this a lot, is who you're emulating matters. So, if you're emulating someone who is selling houses through these videos and you want to sell houses, that's perfect. But if you're emulating someone who is selling realtors on the on the image that they are very successful and they can learn from you If I'm Joe Realtor and I sell my Joe Realtor 101 course, and I make videos that show real estate agents, "Look how amazing I am." That's a very different product and something that someone who's trying to show buyers or sellers what they can do, that's a product that they shouldn't be emulating.

Right. And I was just even thinking, going a step further, do listing videos even work? Like do they do anything?

But then I could counter that you get to see the realtor's personality in it, which is something we're very big on, or establishing your brand or just something like that. —

Why personality?

Well, personality's huge because that's what you're buying at the end of the day. 'Cause it's like, "Well, why would I pick Sally over Suzy?" Well, Sally, I know she has three wiener dogs, she loves coffee, and we love the same music. Then I'd be like, "Oh my god, like we could talk forever and be besties." Whereas Suzy hates music, she lives in a hole, and she only drinks water.

And it's like, "Eh, she kind of sucks. She's not my vibe." So, you need to know somebody like letting people know your personality is half the battle, and then that's what can sell you because that's what makes you unique, is who you are. Like, obviously, duh.

We're all little snowflakes. Like, in the positive way. It's like you are like a little unique snowflake and people need to know how awesome you are.

. Yeah, and there's that line because we don't want to just have personality and not any substance. So, like that's what we try to showcase, is the expertise and the personality.

I think I'm talking myself through that listing videos do work, but not how you think it works, where it could showcase your personality, but I don't know if it necessarily I just I don't know because, honestly, I'm not a fucking realtor, but I do make videos. So, but the videos we make are so different, so— Let me pop on the wind muff 'cause I have a feeling we're just pop, pop, popping in this mic, but anyway.

You know me. Pop, pop, pop. Papa Smurf.

But, yeah, I don't know. So, I guess if you're listening to this, if we even post this, let me know, do you actually find if your listing videos, A, work, just in general, and then two, B 'Cause I do numbers or letters, fuck. B, if you do creative listing videos, does that help sell your home?

And how do you measure that metric? 'Cause that's what That's what's difficult for what we do is it's like it's purely just marketing brand awareness. That is it.

That is all we can promise, is that you have a higher visibility in your community and in spheres where people will find you on social media. That's all we can promise.

Unless we do our little definition. So, marketing is what you do to get attention, so we sell marketing. Sales is what you do with the attention.

So, that's once you have attention, once you do the marketing, what do you do with the attention, with the with the inbound leads, with the DMs, with everything else. And then just as the other piece, brand is what people say and think about you when you're not around. So, brand and marketing go hand in hand, like that is actually I have a brand agency, MAVEN is a marketing agency.

There's two different agencies for a reason, but they also go hand in hand. And I've been doing brand and marketing for 15 years. And so that's why all this stuff works, we know this side, but we can't then we can't guarantee you get three new sales this month.

Like meaning listings or buyers because we can only get people to you, but we can't control what happens after they get to you.

Exactly. Marketing is just one piece of the puzzle. We purely just let people know that you exist, you're an awesome person, and this is why they need to work with you because you're an expert in real estate.

You know your shit backwards and forwards. Like we literally just had somebody get three new clients from their social media because it was like, "You know more than this fucking idiot, so I'm going to work with you. And you're adorable, and I love you, and I love your personality.

Like I know you're going to get shit done and I actually like to talk to you." Like that is exactly what we do with our content that we create for people and like that's the point. So, that's all we can promise. So—

And I want I want to jump on that real quick is timeline, because that timeline for that was exactly three filming sessions. It was nine months, and the crazy part is the person said the person who is now working with the realtor told her when asked, when asked, "How did you find me?" she was like, "I found you January, February on Instagram and I've followed you ever since." And that is exactly when we started filming and posting.

So, the and the interesting part of it, it isn't that like, "Oh, it's day one of filming and posting." The interesting part is the realtor had no idea this person was even following. They didn't engage with anything, they didn't comment, they didn't like anything. They were just watching.

And that's what most of us do, is we're not engaging. We are consuming. Most people consume social media, they consume the media side of it.

They don't do the social side. So, it's really hard to measure if you're actually getting results because your results are not on a fixed timeline. It's not going to be a month, a week, two months, three It's going to be the moment when that person who's been loving what you do is like, "Oh, it's time I need someone.

Oh, I remember XYZ person who does this. I've I've followed her forever, him forever. Now I'm going to reach out." So, that's why this compounds as well, is you do a month of content, three months, nine months, 18 months, 96 months of content.

Just think about how many more people discover you, how many more people have loved the journey of following you, and how many more people are telling their friends because of all of this.

And now the way that we film, too, is so different than when we started, because now we're doing more out-and-about content, which like we still Yeah, we still do the talking head stuff, which I find so valuable because you need to show your expertise and prove that you know your stuff, otherwise you're just some fucking idiot going around town.

Like, no shade to anybody, but just purely you need to show that you know your stuff. Like, why else would they trust you? Like, people work with people that they know, like, and trust.

So, if they don't if you don't show your expertise, why would I trust you to know what you're talking about?

And it's hard if you only go around town and you're like, "Look at this, look at this, look at this." How do I know you're a realtor? That's something that we see happen, and that's why we're very deliberate in combining the two.

Yes, so alternating between the two. So, we have our talking head content. We have a little bit less of that for shorts, which are 60-second vertical videos or less 60 seconds or less vertical videos.

And then we also do out-and-about shorts, so those vertical videos. But we have people going to businesses, going to community centers, go to parks, go within their community. They get to not only be seen out in public with two people who are filming them, so you're like, "Who the fuck is that?" But then also, you get to talk to community members.

Like we have had so many people drum up more business also because they're talking to people in their community, and not only just shop owners and people who own all these businesses, but literally just people hanging out, like if we're in a coffee shop. Someone's like, "Oh my god, what are you? You're a realtor?

Oh, my cousin's looking for a place."

Well, and that's the meta of it, is us filming together creates conversations. So, it's not It's like weird because like when we actually talk about what we're selling, what we're selling versus what people think they're buying is always very different. Like we're selling a holistic experience which makes people seen as little local celebrities, and not famous, but local celebrities, meaning people know who you are.

And that's something very different than I think what a lot of people realize going in. But it takes a little bit, and you start to feel that, 'cause just yesterday, we had so many conversations with people who had no had never met the person we were filming with, but long, great conversations about what she does and how long she's been in town and like who she knows in real estate.

'Cause like, "Oh, my friend's so-and-so. Do you know her?" And it's like, "Oh, I don't, but we have this connection," and things that then bring you into a fold that you wouldn’t otherwise be in.

Yeah, it's all that bonding that really makes you an integral part of the community. And like we work with lovely people, so it's like we don't work with shit bags. So, having them be able to bond with people within the community, too, is like that is absolutely priceless.

I forgot why I even started talking about that, but that's just that's another way, a new way that we're filming now that I've found to be very successful, and then you combine both pieces of content together, and then that's perfect. Like, we needed to reformulate how we were doing things because it was like, okay, how can we find people?

So, what we were doing before was we also had longs that we were which are YouTube videos, videos that are horizontal over 60 seconds, so like a couple minutes at least, like 3 to 8 or 8 to 10, whatever, whatever sort of amount. But people we were doing out-and-about versions of that, so they were very long and then making short clips.

But what we were noticing is that on YouTube, what do most people consume? It's educational sort of content, which you still do the neighborhood sort of things.

At least in real estate, we find the educational longs as talking heads to be the most valuable through our Okay, again, so how many videos approximately now have you edited in 2024? We're filming this recording this in October, the beginning of October 2024.

So, at this point now, it's probably closer to 1,500 videos so far this year, and I still have a shit ton more to edit, so I'm probably going to be close to about 2,000 videos, plus or minus our content. So, probably closer to like 2,200 by the end of the year.

Yeah, so it's not that we It's The reason we're changing and growing and adapting is you think about sort of the one guy, the 10,000 hours, who's the guy that wrote that? I'm blanking on it right now. But sort of the 10,000 hours rule.

I know the guy, New York, big curly hair. He wrote The Tipping Point, all of those. Anyway, it doesn't matter, but basically every year we're getting these in essence 10,000 hours because we're putting in so many reps with so many people with such varying degrees of like following a follower base.

Like we have people who are starting at zero, people who are starting at 4,000 followers. It's like and everything in between and beyond, honestly. But like it's just interesting because we're constantly changing.

I've done this. I've done content marketing for 15 years and built businesses that are built around hundreds of millions of impressions on content. So, none of this is new.

We're not We're not throwing things at the wall to see what sticks with MAVEN. We're using everything that we know that works, and now refining to tailor it to real estate specifically because real estate, like every industry, has its own nuances.

Yep.

All right, so that's all. So, we like yeah.

Definitely, though, seriously let me know wherever you find this, message me, DM me, comment, tweet, X, whatever the fuck. What do you do on X now? You X on X?

Oh, boo. All my exes live on Xs. No.

So, But, seriously, if you find this and you're a real estate professional and you do listing videos, seriously let me know if the creative works for you or if your actual listing videos work for you, like just traditional ones. Seriously let me know what works best because I'm dying to know.

Well, and if you do creative ones, why? Yeah. So, is there someone that's that's guiding you?

Did you see Jimmy, whoever, do it, Joe, whatever? Like no one in particular, like is there someone that you're like, "Oh, they do it. They do well"?

Do they tell you they do well that they see results? Is it sort of a they appear to do well? Like so what type of data points do you have, too?

'Cause that's really important. Or is it just a trend?

Yeah, yeah, is it a trend? So, yeah, we'd like to know. I know this is our these are our thoughts for today, like—

We're literally just sitting here drinking, and he's like, or drinking tea and Pellegrino, mind you. But, yeah, just literally sitting here chatting, and he's like, "We should actually just talk about this." And I was like, I don't know, I might sound like an asshole, but I'm I'm genuinely curious if it works.

Well, and like we were just talking about how we don't like them. Yeah. We don't think they do what people are hoping to do.

But, yeah, so just more of these conversations is the plan on this podcast because this is these are the conversations we have just sort of off mic. And right now, we're just waiting for maybe another half hour before we head to the Philly airport to head home from West Chester, Pennsylvania. It's been another great trip.

We had two more Top Bananas here. If you're a real estate agent and you want to film in your market, go to whatismaven.com, become a Top Banana, we fly to you every third month, and we do absolutely everything. You All you have to do is show up.

We have a couple days with a handful of hours in each day. We film We come up with all the concepts, the ideas, the content ideas, film all the videos. You get to go back to your life, do what you do best, sell real estate, and we take care of all of the rest—the editing, posting, absolutely everything.

Thumbnails, descriptions, captions, literally everything.

So, yeah, if you're interested, go to whatismaven.com, and we'll see you there. Bye!

I love you!