Commercial Investment Real Estate September/October 2013 - Page 22

TECHNOLOGY
SOLUTIONS
Is
Video
Worth It?
by Dennis LaMantia
f
So why hasn’t commercial real estate
embraced video? Slashed marketing bud-
gets are partially to blame. Less expensive
options — photos, Google Maps, and text
descriptions — are available, which can
make it tough to justify additional spend-
ing. “If you can price it like a sign we’d be
interested,” was the response Daniel Dug-
gan, deputy managing editor for Crain’s
Detroit Business, got when he pitched his
paper’s commercial property video tour
service to a broker.
More importantly, commercial real estate
is a handshake business, and it’s dif cult to
get chummy with a video viewer. But indus-
try professionals contend that video can
increase handshakes and business.
Video’s Advantages
“We’re really starting to see this shif in the
commercial real estate space where people
are using technology,” says Nick Romito,
whose company, View T e Space, creates
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September | October | 2013
video tours of clients’ commercial property
to generate and track leads.
Romito says one of the challenges his com-
pany faced early on was convincing brokers
that video would not marginalize them but
make their role more important. “Brokers
would tell us ‘there’s no way a video can
sell the space better than I can,’ and we said
you’re absolutely right,” he explains. “We’re
not trying to replace the in-person experi-
ence but improve it.”
In fact, View T e Space clients actually
see more in-person interaction. “We ran
some numbers on spaces with videos and
spaces that don’t,” Romito says. “T e ones
with video have three times the number of
in-person visits.” Although brokers typically
want to spend less time showing space and
more time closing deals, more in-person vis-
its with qualif ed leads could lead to shorter
sales cycles, he adds.
Video also gives more detail than text and
shows spatial relationships, which are dif -
cult to convey in pictures. “Each building has
its own personality, which is what you’re able
to get across on video,” says Kevin O’Reilly,
founder of Buildings On Demand, a video
production company that specializes in com-
mercial real estate. With video, owners or
landlord reps have a controlled medium to
piece a property’s characteristics together to
tell a story, which is dif cult to accomplish
with photos and text.
Unlike print marketing, video can easily
be shared and tracked. “If a sales rep sends
me something in the mail, I can’t rewrap it
and send it to a client,” O’Reilly says. “But if
you create a high-quality video I may for-
ward that in an e-mail to my client.”
Video sharing is now easier for LoopNet
users. T e property listing service recently
added a video upload feature to premium
listings. Users can now supplement the text
and photo descriptions with videos that can
be viewed by the site’s 4 million monthly
visitors.
Commercial Investment Real Estate
From shoes to cars to houses, industries are embracing
product videos. They give consumers a chance to view
before they buy. For businesses, videos provide an opportunity
to control the marketing message, are easily shared, and provide
details beyond pictures and words.