Real estate agents across the country have a problem: Most of us recognize the importance of video marketing, and yet, most of us aren’t very good at it. Why? Because good video marketing is hard. Marketing strategists, conference presenters, and even your broker are quick to tell you why video marketing in real estate is so valuable, but they’re curiously silent when it comes to how to level up your video marketing game.
Parkbench has set out to change all of that. Their new course, Local Leader® Video Marketing Mastery (we like to call it LLVMM, for short), claims it will provide you with the knowledge, skills, strategy, gear, and even the content to smash your video marketing goals. In fact, they guarantee it or your money back.
We’ve taken the Parkbench course, made some videos using LLVMM, and in this review, we’ll share our take on whether Parkbench has actually succeeded.
What Is Parkbench & Why Did They Create the Local Leader Video Marketing Mastery Course?
Parkbench is the creator of the popular Become a Local Leader community website platform. Parkbench offers agents a way to create (virtual) hubs for neighborhoods in their local market using this platform. Using Parkbench’s customizable neighborhood websites that highlight residents and business owners, agents bring people together through the power of community. One of the most important ways this happens is through the use of video.
But Parkbench agents weren’t fulfilling their video potential; a challenge that most agents share. Agents didn’t need the why of video marketing—they needed the how. Thus, the Local Leader Video Marketing Mastery Course was born.
How Much Does the Local Leader Video Marketing Mastery Course Cost?
The Local Leader Video Marketing Mastery Course costs $6,000 for a one-year, all-access pass. This price unlocks everything Parkbench offers in this comprehensive course – no surprise costs for extra features or support.
Though this price may be high relative to other professional development courses you’ve considered, based on everything you’re getting here, this feels pretty fair. Plus, Parkbench is offering a money-back guarantee to anyone who follows the course to the letter and isn’t profitable as a result.
The Close Quick Take
At first glance, this is a product we love. The Parkbench Local Leader Video Marketing Mastery course seems like an absolute winner. It is comprehensive, and the content is digestible and accessible to just about anyone. Everything feels actionable—like we are ready to go and do something with what we learned.
How Is the Parkbench Local Leader Video Marketing Mastery Course Presented?
This ambitious course is a soup-to-nuts education in all things video marketing. The value of this course is delivered in three ways:
- Comprehensive video walk-throughs: This is a video mastery course, a lot of which is taught using thoughtful, well-produced video content that goes into a lot of detail.
- Extensive written support content: Nearly every piece of video content in this course is backed up with a surprising quantity of written content that pulls together the takeaways from each section, plus next steps for how to go further.
- An impressive amount of live interaction and support: Though you can absolutely get value from this course by just consuming the static, prerecorded content, the real level-up is in the interaction and feedback you get with instructors, marketers, video production specialists, the private Facebook group, and more.
What’s Included in the Parkbench Video Course?
We did a deep dive into the course itself, consuming nearly every piece of content they had available. Here’s what you’ll get when you purchase this course:
- Thorough Pretraining to Get You Started
- Weekly Live + Archived Webinars
- Video “Recipes”
- Personalized, Expert Support
- Money-back Guarantee
Thorough Pretraining to Get You Started
What’s Inside:
- 13 video lessons
- PDF checklists
- Supporting guides
- More!
To get the most out of this course, participants need to “speak the language” the course is written in. If you’re brand-new to video and have no idea how to be on camera, much less what b-roll or a stabilizing gimbal is, it will be difficult to get full value from the course’s instruction.
The pretraining portion of this course brings everyone up to speed, making sure that all students of the course have the requisite knowledge and understanding of the concepts, gear, and components of video marketing plus production in order to get the most out of their time with LLVMM.
What We Love About This Section: This might be the best “video marketing 101” course we’ve ever seen. Parkbench covers absolutely everything you need to get started with video production. This section is worth the cost of the course on its own.
Our favorite chapter was “How to Create Your Video Set.” In it, you get all the information you need to position yourself correctly in the frame, tips on setting the camera height and placement, using natural versus artificial light, and more.
What We Wish Was Different About This Section: The content here is top-notch, but some of the video chapters are lonnnnnng. We found ourselves having to consume a few of the longer videos (over 30 minutes) in chunks rather than in one sitting, which made the experience of these sections a little disjointed.
Weekly Live + Archived Webinars
What’s Inside:
- 29 recorded webinars
- New live webinars every week
- Slide decks
- Detailed instructions for processes discussed
- More!
If the pretraining section of this course was “video marketing 101,” the webinars are the 200-level sections of your real estate marketing degree. At The Close, we’d call these deep-dives—long-form presentations and discussions on topics like:
- Everything You Need to Know About Microphones (27 minutes)
- How to Improve Your Camera Presence (30 minutes)
- How to Create a Branded YouTube Banner (31 minutes)
- How to Get Started on TikTok (26 minutes)
What We Loved About This Section: Parkbench really demonstrates its expertise and authority in this section. You can tell that their presenters are not tourists in this space; they are authorities who know not just how to execute these initiatives, but also how to teach others to do it too.
What We Wish Was Different About This Section: These deep-dives are almost exclusively focused on production with a little bit of focus on platform-specific execution. For example: “How to Post Video Content on Instagram.” There’s not much on here about how to use video across your entire marketing strategy, creating coordination across your efforts.
This course section does a great job of going deeper into the how of your video marketing. It would be great to see an answer to some of the “and-then” questions.
Video ‘Recipes’
What’s Inside:
- 41+ “recipes”
- Step-by-step instructions for how to create specific real estate marketing videos
- Behind-the-scenes video extras
- Editing & post-production tutorials for each one
- Script templates
- More!
We’ll be honest—each of the previous sections of this course were ones we smiled at and thought, “Oh nice, that’s helpful,” or “I know agents that would find that useful.” But when we got this portion, we audibly said, “Wow, this is very cool.”
After this section, literally no one who wants to do better video marketing could say, “but how?” The offerings in this section are seriously impressive.
What We Loved About This Section: Hard to know where to start on this, honestly. This is brilliant. Each recipe has everything you need to execute a solid real estate video. And, if you spent time going through the first part of the course, doing the pretraining, and diving deeper on some of the webinars, this is going to be a lot of fun.
What We Wish Was Different About This Section: Nothing. Parkbench nailed this.
Personalized, Expert Support
What’s Inside: This isn’t a specific section of the course, but rather, a collection of available resources. You’ll get community support from a private Facebook Group, plus one-to-one support from video production experts, marketing experts, and real estate marketing experts via email, Facebook, and the phone.
What We Loved About This Section: Honestly, the support you get from Parkbench and the rest of the community is, in our opinion, why this course is worth the higher price tag. When you have access to live marketing, video, tech, and real estate experts to help you get your content across the finish line, you’ve got a much higher chance of success—full stop.
What We Wish Was Different About This Section: We know it would be difficult to scale, but it would be nice to have an “account manager” from Parkbench—someone who I knew would always be my first point of contact if I have questions. It’s great to have lots of experts available to help, but it’s nice to have one person you know is watching for your email.
Money-back Guarantee
Parkbench’s exact words on this are “If you do the work, we guarantee an ROI of at least $25,000 or we will give you 100% of your money back.”
What We Loved About This Section: This is, without a doubt, the most aggressive guarantee we’ve ever seen in the real estate marketing space. Actually, in the real estate space at large. To promise a 5x return on your investment is the sort of brazen confidence that we can get behind.
What We Wish Was Different About This Section: Nothing. This is awesome.
Putting LLVMM to the Test: Video Walk-through
To determine if the Local Leader Video Marketing Mastery Course is worth the time, effort, and money, we put the course to the test. Here’s how it worked:
Assuming the role of a new real estate agent who needs help with video marketing, I dug into the LLVMM course from top to bottom. I watched pretraining videos, filled out worksheets, attended webinars, and combed my way through video receipts. Want to see what I found? Check out the video below.
The Close Verdict: Is LLVMM Worth It?
Yes. If you’re willing to put the time in and commit to the Parkbench Local Leader Video Marketing Mastery system, we can confidently say that this is a great investment for anyone looking to get into or improve their real estate video marketing. Just about everyone, from video novices who need a complete education to agents and brokers with some experience that just need some help getting organized, there’s a ton of value here.
That being said, this course shouldn’t be taken lightly. This is going to require weekly time, regular effort, and a commitment to create and share content, then interact with people consistently afterward. If you can say YES to the process, you should say YES to this course.
And, with a positive return on investment (ROI) guaranteed by Parkbench or your money back, this seems like a no-brainer.
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