Is Professional Real Estate Photography a Brand Builder?
Learn how the brain processes information, see how visuals greatly influence marketing channels and understand how professional real estate photography can help build your brand
Download Visual Marketing Presentation
Why Visuals Matter
Did you know that the human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text? It should be no surprise that more than half of the population are visual learners as 90% of the information we receive is visual. On top of that, 40% of all nerve fibers connected to the brain link to the retina.
And when it comes to retaining information, people recall only 10% of what they hear, but when paired with relevant images, recall rate is at 65%. Furthermore, studies show that online users spend more time looking at an image or video than they spend reading the text on the page.
Channels For Visual Marketing
A majority of the information is viewed and shared online now through different mediums and channels. Fortunately for real estate agents, this allows content to be shared fluidly across multiple channels, which drastically increases your reach and networking potential. And when your content contains visuals, it sees higher engagement and share rates than text-only content.
According to Regalix, blogging and social media are the two most successful marketing tactics – which benefit greatly from well-placed visual elements. Let’s not forget how powerful email marketing is, though. Email remains the number one channel when it comes to sharing content.
Using Visuals in Blog Publications
Blogs are a fantastic way to position yourself as a thought leader in the industry and offer continuing education for your followers. They also are a great tool to boost your website’s SEO (search engine optimization) in order to help you rank higher on Google, Bing, etc.
Visual marketing strategies go hand-in-hand with blogs.
Studies show that blogs with visual content receive 94% more views. Even more impressive, videos embedded into blogs can increase organic search results by up to 157%. We recommend photo-heavy blog posts when announcing a new listing. This will increase engagement and social media shares by double.
Visuals in Social Media
The number of users on social media channels increases drastically each year. Before the end of 2017, the number of social media users hit 3 billion worldwide.
Facebook alone adds 500,000 new users daily.
A majority of users are millennials. Real estate agents can rejoice with this statistic as one-third of homebuyers are also millennials. So, how do you use social media as part of your marketing strategy? With visuals, of course!
When it comes to Facebook, having one image on your post will lead to 43% more social shares. And posts that include images have 650% higher engagement. Without a doubt, using visuals on social media posts increases engagement, click through rates and share rates. It’s almost necessary to add either a video or image to any social post.
Using Visuals in Email Marketing
Email continues to be the most effective platform for sharing content and tracking conversion rates. An effective email marketing strategy should include a mix of visual HTML formatted emails as well as plain-text email.
Readers are more likely to engage in email newsletters that include a video or link to a video. Likewise, adding videos to your email can boost click rates by 300%. However, emails should also be in plain-text with links to visual content. One study by HubSpot found that open rates were higher for plain-text emails even though their survey found that readers prefer emails with visuals.
A great way to market a new listing is by embedding or linking a virtual tour video!
Increase Engagement with Professional Photography
Add some extra oomph to your visual marketing strategy by using professional photography for your listings. Professional photography is proven to increase your listing’s engagement rate. Virtuance Real Estate Photography gathered data from their clients and found incredible results.
Agents who use Virtuance report more showings of their properties (92%). They also report 45% faster sales.
Not only does professional photography help agents sell their listings, it also helps them win more listings. 88% report winning more listings, thus continuing to grow their business.
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