How Luxury Real Estate Marketing Helps Agents Win Bigger Listings

John Howard (00:00)
Well, if you market a two to $300,000 house like you’re marketing a million dollar house.

Right. You’re going to I would imagine people are going to see how you market that two to three hundred thousand dollar house and you can go to the seven hundred thousand dollar house and be like hey see what I’m willing to do for the lower end house. You’re more than likely going to have a better chance of winning that higher dollar listing.

Dylan Silver (01:56)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, John Howard, provides high-end marketing media for real estate professionals, including photography, video, drone, and 360 tours to help them grow their business and stand out in competitive markets. He operates in central Iowa, delivering visual assets that drive attention, engagement, and deal flow. John, thanks for joining us today.

John Howard (02:20)
Absolutely, Dylan. Thanks a lot.

Dylan Silver (02:23)
What’s the biggest mistake that you see agents make when it comes to their marketing?

John Howard (02:29)
Well, a lot of them don’t like being on camera and when they are on camera, they don’t want to be on camera very long. Well, unfortunately, you build your base and you let people know who you are by being on camera. And when they’re doing listings, it’s usually a real quick, hey, here’s my listing, let me show you inside, when really they should be taking time to…

expand where they’re doing the time they’re on camera and really introducing what the neighborhood, what the town, what the general area, what the lifestyle is going to look like and therefore not killing that video once the listing sells. But because they’re talking about the town, the community, those sort of things, that video lasts a lifetime until that community is no longer, which probably not going to happen.

Dylan Silver (03:21)
One of the things that I’ve noticed as a realtor myself in Texas is this seems to be a distinct skillset. Someone who is adept at real estate media and then someone who may be a great producer, but they might not be putting themselves out there to the degree that they could and should be if they were wanting to grow their business.

John Howard (03:43)
Absolutely. There are a number of top producers and the producers that the top producers that have been in the industry for a long time, they have their book of business, those sort of things. ⁓ But the new producers that are coming in, I think can really set themselves apart by doing the right thing. The only issue is, is it costs money to do that. Right. And if they’re still building their business, that money isn’t necessarily there yet.

Dylan Silver (04:11)
Let’s talk about that. So for folks who are building their business and they don’t have high quality video and they don’t have necessarily the resources to do a lot of these things, which may make them look the most polished possible, but they’ve got, you know, a phone and maybe some type of camera set up. What things can they do to set themselves apart?

John Howard (04:33)
⁓ Get yourself like an Osmo Gimbal. They’re on a couple hundred bucks, something like that. Stick it out. Stick the selfie mode out on it and do the tour yourself. ⁓ You can get a cheap tripod because those things have, you know, tracking on them. So it will turn with you as you’re doing stuff. So I’ve even done a whole home tour by myself.

with my phone in selfie mode, you know, just out in front of me and carrying the Gimbal just to prove that it could be done.

Dylan Silver (05:54)
I’ve heard from one of my Realtor friends out here that these shorter reels, like 30 second content, where you have many short clips clipped together, where there’s some level of motion, right? You’re moving into the room, there’s a spinning fan, that this somehow captivates people. Have you seen this to be true as well?

John Howard (06:09)
Mm-hmm.

The stuff the style of content right now is very Short clips and it’s very fast cuts and fancy cuts and those sort of things I tend to stay away from that full style I’m still using some of the the quick transitions and stuff, but It should be a

tour through the house, right? It shouldn’t be so fast that people aren’t even getting a good idea of what the home is. It needs to go beyond entertainment and it needs to provide some information for, you know, somebody to get to that front door because that’s my goal. My goal is to get people to that front door.

Dylan Silver (07:02)
Now, one thing that I’ve noticed, and I don’t know if this will change here soon, is that when I see homes on some of the big platforms, it’s mostly photos that I’m seeing, and I’m not seeing video. But that’s almost counterintuitive because a video like you just described would make it feel like I’m in the home. Do you think that we’ll start to see maybe more video, or is there just a level of complexity involved in video where photos are always gonna be the main thing?

John Howard (07:29)
Are you referring to the sites that pull from the MLSs and post those photos online? Yeah. OK. So at least here in central Iowa, there are rules in regard to the MLS and the information that you can put on there. Now, you could put a video on there where it is just text and type and those sort of things, no self-promotion. You can’t be in that video.

Dylan Silver (07:34)
Yeah.

John Howard (07:56)
at least here in central Iowa. I think that I think that has hindered that a little bit. But it is starting to happen because I know we can do video here. But then again, 152 bucks for photos, three to $700 for video.

You know, and those agents are protecting their commission, or at least a lot of them are. Now I’ve worked with a couple of ⁓ agents that have dove fully into the video and the high end marketing and those sort of things, and they have seen their business grow even though they’re outlaying more per listing.

Dylan Silver (08:19)
Right.

Let’s get into that. how does having better media directly translate into more listings or higher commissions? How does that translate?

John Howard (08:51)
Well, if you market a two to $300,000 house like you’re marketing a million dollar house.

Right. You’re going to I would imagine people are going to see how you market that two to three hundred thousand dollar house and you can go to the seven hundred thousand dollar house and be like hey see what I’m willing to do for the lower end house. You’re more than likely going to have a better chance of winning that higher dollar listing.

And I think just the trajectory over time is going to increase in your listing value.

Dylan Silver (09:22)
Now for

folks who may be on, this is a big thing that comes up I think right now as people are having so many options, they’re looking for a real estate team or a broker. Are you aware of brokers investing more money into this for their agents so that the agent themself doesn’t necessarily have to make a big cash outlay because the broker is handling.

John Howard (09:46)
The only way I see that happening is if they are specifically hiring somebody like me to do the work for their entire team. Most realtors, teams, individuals have their guy. And ⁓ the other thing is, is are they willing to invest in?

somebody that can create that high end media, or invest in somebody who is young, and willing to grow themselves into that higher end media so that that upfront cost isn’t a lot. Because I know if somebody if a team was looking to hire me, and essentially take what I do off the market from everybody else, I would have to take into consideration, what am I missing out on?

Dylan Silver (11:08)
Yeah, that’s a key factor. And I think, you know, there’s two models there. There’s the, we’re to have this person be in house or hey, the broker is going to cover it. That way, you know, someone who’s newer isn’t having to put up, you know, hundreds of dollars or more in high end video. I would like to pivot here though, John, and ask you, you know, I’m sure you’ve had many deals where folks have come to you and have said, hey, what can you do with this property? How much of this

in your line of work is consulting versus folks coming to you and saying, this is exactly what I want. know, round peg and round hole square peg and square.

John Howard (11:49)
Your standard listing media is your slow transitions, your nice curves around a corner, and that’s your generic media. When you get into some of the trending video, I had a realtor ask me the other day, sent me a video, said, hey, can you put me out in front of this house and make me get hit by a car?

You know, most likely using AI, don’t think I’m going to have somebody driving the car and actually hit the realtor. But I get the opportunity to put that video together coming up here actually this week.

Dylan Silver (12:27)
Now, when you’re doing some of these more creative projects, what all goes into it without giving away all of the gold, but maybe a gold nugget, what goes into some of those visual effects?

John Howard (12:41)
I mean, a lot of it is just getting the right footage on site. Because if you have crappy footage on site, you can’t make crappy footage look good. ⁓ If it’s not stable, if it’s not smooth on site, you can’t do a lot of these good effects after the fact, unless you’re completely using AI to generate video.

Dylan Silver (13:08)
Now, one of the mistakes that I see people making, mentioned stable footage, ⁓ is not having the ability to not have a shaky frame, right? With something you mentioned earlier, like a Gimbal, if you have a Gimbal that you spent a couple hundred dollars on and you spend some time taking ⁓ video, could then you take that footage and plug it into a software tool to piece things together and have some of these effects be made? Or do you need more

John Howard (13:19)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (13:38)
know, expensive equipment in order to do some of these special effects.

John Howard (13:44)
I’ve never tried using ⁓ like Canva or what’s the other one? CapCut. I haven’t tried, I know that CapCut has some transition ability and stuff like that, but really having professional editing software really helps, which.

I think you can get Premiere for like 20 bucks a month. Maybe it’s 30 bucks a month now. And if you have a little bit of editing knowledge on that and there’s tons of YouTube videos on how to do these transitions and people that are definitely willing to educate. ⁓ If you’re willing to put in the work, then you can get these fancy transients and stuff like that. Just is it going to be that money making

task, right? A realtor doesn’t make money off of doing video. They make money getting in front of people. But then again, we’re talking about the money, right?

Dylan Silver (15:26)
For folks who are trying to upgrade their value of not just their brand, but also properties that they’re listing potentially, or even potential clients that they’re marketing to, again, brand related, what’s one thing that they could do that maybe instantly improves their perceived value?

John Howard (15:46)
Oooh… their ability to market on different channels. So, if all you’re doing is delivering photos to the MLS, going out in Zillow, and Realtor.com, and all those sort of things, you’re only catching the eyes of one set of buyer. If you’re putting stuff out on the MLS, on Youtube, on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook, on all those different platforms, you’re not only capturing more eyes, but you are also capturing different generations.

Dylan Silver (16:27)
Yeah, it’s huge. If folks maybe feel overwhelmed is two or three platforms better than one if they’re just doing Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, is that going to help them or should they really think, hey, if we’re doing three, what is another three more YouTube, X, and some other platforms?

John Howard (16:48)
The biggest thing is how can you do it efficiently, right? Is there software out there that will post to multiple sites all at once. And there is. It just, you know, takes a little bit of investment in that, and they will take podcasts and stuff like that, cut up the footage and give you little clips, and those sort of things. I have then able to use that. They use a little bit of AI to give different descriptions of the videos but I have been able to schedule a lot of months of posts from, or two weeks of posts from podcast, just a little clips here and a little clips there. Podcast coming, podcast coming. To generally drive anticipation of what the podcast its going to be on 3-4 different platforms at all once.

Dylan Silver (17:49)
How steep is the learning curve for those types of schedule platforms? Have you found them to be buggy and how do they work seamlessly?

John Howard (17:57)
I never had any issues from what I have experienced, now sometimes the clips that they clip together is like low. Was that really the intention of what I was saying there? So i tried to watch the clip before I post it. But, uhm I haven’t seen too many box.

Dylan Silver (15:26)
We are coming up on time here, John, but I do want to ask you a bonus question here. You’re doing drone footage as well. This seems to have really taken off. Anytime even I see a drone footage, I’m like, ooh, what’s going on here? ⁓ Is there a best use case for drone footage?

John Howard (18:19)
I mean, when you have properties, and you know, properties took a lot of plan, right? Showing that, doing the lot outlines, so people can really see, you know, where that lot starts and stops. But then, you can also get some unique footage of like, rooflines, and, you know, the architectural designs and stuffs like that, when it comes to putting it to the videos wrong.

Dylan Silver (19:03)
We are coming up on time here. Any new projects that you’re working on and then as well, what’s the best way for folks to reach out to you?

John Howard (19:09)
I am on social media @michaelandryley, on almost every platform, and I just came out with a budget-friendly, single exposure. I wanna be in another house, but in the Central Iowa Metro market. As long as the house is unoccupied during the day, whether it’s 100% vacant or folks are off as at work. 75 bucks, in about 10 – 15 minutes. You know, they’re gonna get up to 15 photos, 5 basic photos, but for either somebody who’s money conscious, those sort of things, or it’s the investor that they has a property that they don’t wanna spend a lot on, you know, maybe a little bit rundown, something like that.

Just using that to really help fill up my camera and give me stops as I drive across the metro because I get to choose when I show up. So, very budget-friendly resource for listing photos across the metro, if that’s something you need.