- Johnny Grant, who operates a team in Nashville, was encouraged by the popularity of his Facebook Live videos to branch out to musical listing videos.
- The two videos produced so far have accumulated more than 30,000 views apiece.
- He's used current Top 40 hits but plans to also cover '90s and '00s songs that are popular with millennials.
You can essentially blame strangers at an open house in Nashville, Tennessee, for Johnny Grant’s musical listing videos.
The team leader has created two parodies of popular songs (“Body Like A Back Road” by Sam Hunt and “That’s What I Like” by Bruno Mars) to help sell real estate listings — and one house went under contract the day after the video went live, so something is working for him.
And it started when people he didn’t know found his Facebook Live showcase of an open house about three weeks ago and dropped in for a visit; it had been shared by his friends and fans around the social network. “They said, ‘Those videos were really good — we felt like we connected with you, so we wanted to come and see this house.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, I’m getting results from strangers — what if I could really dial it up and just be myself?'”
A not-so-secret ‘superpower’
“I can whip up lyrics to a song quick and easy, and it’s something I do with friends and family,” Grant explained. “It’s like my superpower.”
So far, he’s done two videos, both produced in the last couple of weeks. He released the first one on July 18.
And the second one just this past Sunday, July 23.
“I figured I didn’t really have anything to lose by trying music videos,” Grant said. “So I reached out to a video guy and wrote a couple of songs and tapped the shoulders of a couple of friends to be in the videos.”
Grant says he wanted to find “relevant” music that would resonate with his target audience. “I’m Googling Top 40 songs, and these have been a big hit with millennials,” he noted. “This week I’m going to do another song that’s not necessarily Top 40 today, but a song from the ’90s or ’00s that was popular when we were growing up.”
Why music videos?
Grant’s been selling real estate since October 2014, and today he runs a team of eight agents. “My niche is coaching and training them,” he explained. “The team name is The Forward Movement — we’re big on forward thinking, paying it forward and moving households forward.”
The team also puts a big emphasis on social media and internet marketing, as well as new construction, which Grant says are the sources of the bulk of their business. So it makes sense to invest in videos.
“Most real estate professionals are very stuffy and we don’t do anything new when it comes to marketing,” he said, “but I found that when I’m able to be myself and connect some sort of positive human emotion to my real estate marketing, I get exponentially higher results. So if there’s no point in me trying to shield this humorous part of myself, then it’s fine to be a little bit funny because people connect with people. Through these videos, people feel like they know me and know more about me. They’ve seen my face and a little bit of my personality.”
Gearing up to go live
Grant says he doesn’t like karaoke because “I feel like I’m exposing myself, and I’m a terrible singer.” So how does he transcend that aversion for these videos?
“I think what it boils down to is what the potential homebuyer would engage with,” he explained. “And that’s part of the humor of it: I am a terrible singer. So for me, being able to understand that a) that’s part of the magic of it — that I can’t sing — and b) that might make people engage with it even more and get it even more views, it sets me up in a position to sell the house, which is ultimately what I’m here to do.”
Grant also had to learn some new skills, like editing video and putting it all together in GarageBand. (But he says there’s “no Auto-Tune in my future.”)
He says that he’s always “pretty nervous — making those videos are pretty nerve-wracking, I think because of the fear that people are going to make fun of me or give me a hard time or whatever.
“But at the end of the day, I was pretty sure it’d get a lot of views, a lot of shares and help sell the house.”
He adds that the house in Sunday’s video had been on the market for three weeks and was under contract on Monday.
“Don’t be afraid to be yourself,” he advised. “At the end of the day, there are a lot more people who are going to resonate with your message, your marketing and your brand when it’s truly who you are — and you work with clients who you enjoy working with.”
