A time comes in a startup’s life where it has figured out its messaging, nailed down its business model and it’s ready to shout the news from the rooftops.
That time has come for AgentPair, a startup that hit the real estate scene last year with a plan to sell leads to the highest agent bidder. The firm has since pivoted and narrowed its focus: It gives homebuyers the power to request an on-demand home showing from the pool of agents in AgentPair’s network or, in a new offering, just the agents of a single brokerage with the firm’s new white-labeled mobile app.
“We have all the pieces on the table,” AgentPair founder and CEO Clark Giguiere told Inman. With that, the Southern California-based firm invested in a professional, scripted, 90-second video ad, featuring Hollywood talent, that cleverly illustrates the app’s value prop.
Giguiere hopes the video will rope in clients and, for the first time, outside investors, in the form of angels or venture capitals.
“We wanted to do something unique, memorable,” Giguiere said of the ad.
“We get asked all the time, ‘How are you going to reach the consumer?'” Giguiere said. The video is the firm’s clear answer.
Clark Giguiere
Producing a video can be a bold, expensive move for a startup. On paper, this one wasn’t cheap. It took a weekend of filming in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills with a full film crew: director, cinematographer, editor, visual effects pro, voice-over pro, stagehand and three actors. Giguiere wrote the script, and thanks to a “bro” deal through a connection ended up paying under $10,000 for the finished product.
Unlike the industry’s heavyweights, AgentPair doesn’t have the funds to get this on TV, regional or national, but it plans to execute the bootstrap marketing play of featuring it on its website, through partners, and through targeted ads on social media, including Facebook and Twitter.
AgentPair competes with a flock of other “uber of” real estate apps aiming to give homebuyers on-demand access to the homes they want to tour now, including Curb Call and HouseCall.
Across the country, nearly 4,000 agents are currently using AgentPair, Giguiere said.
The firm’s new branded feature allows firms to completely brand the app for a setup fee of $149 and $19 per month per agent.