3 Timeless Techniques to Make Listing Videos Stand Out

Picture this: I'm a prospective home buyer. On a daily basis, I read scores of listing descriptions and examine every photo. I scour websites and search Facebook and I watch all the listing videos I can find.

As a shopper, I want to see something special. Something that stirs my imagination. Something makes me stop what I'm doing, pick up the phone and contact the listing agent because I want that place right now. But everything I read and see is so similar. I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Listing videos are a tremendous opportunity to give buyers like me something different. Videos are visual, engaging: easier to consume than text and more interactive than photos. And yet, so many listing videos do nothing to stand out.

The problem with these videos is not what is being shown. The problem is what is missing.

Here are a few simple techniques that you can use in all of your business' listing videos. These are timeless techniques employed by Hollywood for decades. Techniques that, for whatever reason, have been excluded from virtually every online listing video. They will never get old, never go out of style. Once they're implemented, the quality of your listing videos will skyrocket and they will finally connect with your prospective home buyers.

1. SFX (sound effects)

How many times have you gone to the theater after a long day, burdened by some inane problem at work or at home, only to completely forget your troubles when the show starts? How does this happen? Why can't you mimic this distraction at home?

Here's a secret about cinema: it's not the big screen or the darkness that distracts you. It's the sound. It is through the complex arrangement of music, dialogue, and sound effects that you are transported from your reality into the manufactured reality of the movie. Take a look at the two clips below. One is silent while the other has sound effects. Which one do you feel is real?

Listing videos typically have music or dialogue/voiceover but they rarely have sound effects. With listing videos, you're missing a golden opportunity to imbue your videos with feeling and immerse your viewers in the listing—without them having to be there.

Some ideas for sound effects: feet walking in the grass in the backyard, tires on pavement as a car pulls into the driveway, water running in a nearby creek, neighborhood kids playing on the sidewalk.