Episode 376: Tips and Advice on Producing Effective and Great Photos and Videos in 2023

Episode Timeline

On the 376th episode of Mail-Right Show, Robert Newnan and Jonathan Denwood invited Devon Higgins to discuss photo and video editing that you can use for real estate marketing and your website as a realtor. Devon Higgins is a realtor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and CMO at Photoup who deals with real estate marketing and digital marketing for real estate agents and media professionals in the real estate industry. Robert Newman is the founder of Inbound REM, an inbound marketing agency, and a real estate SEO specialist with over 14 years of experience. On the other hand, Jonathan Denwood is the founder and CEO of Mail Right, a company that combines multiple digital tools into a single, simple-to-use package. This episode will walk you through tips on how you can have high-quality real estate photos and videos that are being utilized by many in marketing.

Photography, in general, is the launching point or sometimes the landing point for real estate marketing. There are so many different tools for real estate marketing, such as video, virtual tours, and virtual staging. But still, the photos are the key point of getting anybody interested in a listing.

There are many ways to take photos. You could take pictures from your phone or on a point-and-shoot camera. You could hire a professional to shoot with their DSLR at a certain level. You can also hire more of an architectural photographer to set up different lighting techniques and spend a day or two at a property or space shooting very high-end, beautiful photos. There are varying levels and degrees in the quality you might be looking for based on any space you’re trying to shoot. But at the end of the day, photography will be the gateway into any real estate listing a realtor might have.

Common Things Realtors Edit In The Property Photo They Take

Standard editing for editing a real estate photo varies. For Photoup, for example, their standard editing includes correcting the verticals in a room, adding a TV image to a blank TV screen, removing any cords, and adding a fire into a fireplace that’s in a room. If the fire wasn’t on, to begin with, they have editors that can throw a nice-looking fire into that. They also do the exterior side by doing things like greening the grass. If the photo is shot at the beginning of spring, the grass is mushy or mucky and brown; they make it look nice and bright and green. If the home was shot on a day where it was overcast or you maybe even had some rain outside, they can change the gray sky to a nice bright blue one with nice puffy white clouds. There’s also premiere photo editing, where they can convert a daytime shot into a dusk or a twilight shot that looks like it was taken at the twilight hour. They do object removals, like removing cars from driveways, realtor signs, and garbage cans, even from the sides of homes. If a house is empty, they can also add virtual staging. So virtually placing furniture into a room to make it look as if it was staged physically, but have it all be done digitally, saving you time and money in the long run.

When you’re on a website and using photos, you can use photos to tell stories. Often, there are little things you can take pictures of and sort through, like a photo carousel on a website of local amenities, images of the gate, the code box, and things that people don’t think of that affect the living or the lifestyle elements of the area that you’re specifically talking about. Taking pictures tells a story. And you can do that with videos and the written word too.

And telling a story can change whether the picture was taken during the day or at night. Tell the story about the home, about the lifestyle connected to the house. For example, if sunset life is part of the lifestyle, you can take a photo of the sunset and use photo editing services to change the time of day that pictures appear to have been taken.

Trends on how photography and video are being utilized

During the pandemic, there was a huge push into video, virtual tours, and virtual staging because people couldn’t go into homes during those COVID times, and that trend continues. People genuinely like browsing listings on their phones or computer in the convenience of their homes and getting much more information than just pictures. However, you can get more information by watching a video or taking a virtual tour of a few virtually staged rooms with varying types of furniture so the buyers can get a feel of whether or not it would be worth their time and effort to look at a house. And going through 5, 10, 15, and 20 different homes can help the buyer to decide to put in an offer.

There’s also a lot more story that can be told via video. 70% of homeowners now say they’re more likely to list with an agent that does video for their listing. 403% more inquiries are driven from listings, with videos coming directly from NAR, and these trends are not going away; they’re increasing.

From an agent’s perspective, video can be daunting, and a service provider can help you with that. But, if you are trying to keep it under a budget, you have a ton of power in your pocket. You can utilize a lot of the video you can shoot right from your iPhone or Android, sending that content over to anyone who provides video editing services, like Photoup, and they can put it together in a nice-looking walkthrough. You can get much value from just walking through your home with the phone you have in your pocket and then getting that video edited by a professional team. Realtors should go out there and empower themselves to be some of the media professionals and work with the professionals who can provide you with a high-quality service. But then, every listing doesn’t demand that. But to give good quality marketing for your clients, which you need to do for every listing, regardless of the price point, is to provide an extra level of media that will catch people’s attention and get people to come and walk through that house.

Common questions and comments about Photoup video editing services

Photoup looks at video editing threefold. First, a standard clean video with an excellent address title, the home’s amenities, excellent clean cuts, start to finish, has an intro and an outro of a realtor logo. Second, a premiere or premium video edit that is going to do things like motion graphics engaging the viewer to draw them into the listing, having a lot smoother and nicer transitions, having a better range of music in the background, having maybe a realtor give an intro and an outro of the property, physically being on camera, talking about the listing. The third tier is if you do not only video for every listing, but you want to do an agent video, a brokerage video, and videos of all the other things and services you provided as an agent. Their pricing ranges from $1,295 to $ 1695 a month, depending on the contract term.