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Smart TV Marketing is a service that provides agents and brokerages an app for viewing on smart TVs.
Platforms: Smart TV
Ideal for: All sizes of real estate offices and teams; progressive agents looking for a new marketing vehicle
Top selling points
- Quick rollout
- Perpetual consumer-facing marketing presence
- Offers unique listing presentation experience
- Variety of content opportunities
Top concerns
Support and rollout. As a new, small company, offering ongoing support could be an issue as agents sign-on after launch.
What you should know
Kayla Jane and David Bramante, agents with Keller Williams Beverly Hills, are first to market with an automated agent app-builder for smart televisions. They call it Smart TV Marketing.
(The name might not sound Silicon Valley-witty, but it sure will win the Google war when competitors emerge. Think, “Kleenex” and “Xerox.”)
There is tremendous potential for agents in this marketing space. Real estate, after all, is consistently one of the most popular topics on cable reality programming. There’s no reason to even cite actual numbers — people are crazy for it. It drives industry trends.
And now, in essence, you can make your own reality show.
Jane and Bramante’s service is primarily designed to showcase listings, but there’s no reason a user can’t leverage it to interview local business partners or even create a video listing presentation for those instances when a prospect has an appropriate device.
For those perhaps not familiar: Smart TVs are internet-connected televisions used primarily for streaming services through apps such as Netflix and HBO GO (and to dupe cable-cutters into thinking they’re beating the system).
An agent’s “channel” can appear alongside Netflix or Hulu as well as every other major media company with a smart TV presence. The channel card will display a headshot, logo and description, just like any other option in the scroll.
Uploading content is as easy as dropping .MOV files (videos) into a designated Dropbox folder. Within two to four days, Smart TV Marketing will have your video in your channel ready to be viewed.
Bramante and Jane have partnered with the appropriate back-end technologies to make the process as close to as hands-off as one can get, outside the content creation.
In our demo, they mentioned they have experimented with VAI (voice activated internet) and other forms of contemporary outreach. With the launch of their product last week, they plan to take a step back from regular sales duties. Bramante has been referring most of his leads lately, he told Inman. Ironically enough, Bramante said door-knocking and cold calling have always been his most effective methods of lead generation.
Onboarding requires completing a couple of short data input forms and uploading visual assets, like a logo and headshot.
I’m certain brokers are going to want to have some sort of say in how the brokerage is represented, so make sure content is approved and board compliant. It would be cool to see the service create major brand-themed templates or connect with MLSs for instant market reports. Then again, the savvy agent would do that through the video.
Users can push their channel out through newsletters, their website and other typical outreach platforms. A lead needs only look for the name in the smart TV provider’s search function, as they would for any other channel. Voice-controlled systems can work, too.
Once the app is downloaded, it remains in their list of channels until manually deleted.
As long as you’re consistent with content creation, the $99 a month (no setup fees) could offer a tremendous return, and it’s my opinion the price will not stay that low for long.
I envision MLSs partnering with Smart TV Marketing to offer channels for their members, as well as with omnichannel marketing vendors. Given the team’s capability with APIs, there’s really no shortage of software partnerships they can form or places they can take their service.
It should be noted that Zillow has a smart TV app. It’s not loved. Granted, the intent of a property portal is different than the individual agent’s effort to augment branding and offer local insight.
This is a unique, fun and affordable marketing avenue to build brand and impress listing leads. It can also help users separate from cluttered Facebook video feeds, if so desired. At the very least, it looks to be a great way to amp up any investments being made in video marketing.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
