You think of Zillow as a place you buy leads, so the only lever you can see is how much you spend. There is a field in the free profile that routes consumers to you by the language they want to be spoken to in, and almost nobody fills it in.
A guest on a YouTube-for-agents channel is explaining how one video changed his business. He is half Korean, he lived in Korea for five years after college, and he settled in Duluth, Georgia because, as he puts it, "It's the second most populated Korean community in the country." He made a walking tour video of the Korean shopping district. "I would introduce myself in Korean and then the rest was in English." It went viral and he says of the business it produced, "I'd say 50% of my business from YouTube from that."
Then he stops the story to hand over the part that costs nothing. "And here's a key if people are listening in, you can add your languages on Zillow." He explains what happens next: "So, if you don't just speak English, like say you speak Korean, add that as a language and Zillow sometimes there'll be Korean clients that want a Korean speaking agent to list their home, rent their home, or buy a home. And then they'll assign me that."
He is explicit that this is not a paid program. "And no, this is not Zillow Premier Agent. This is not Zillow Flex. This is an organic lead request through Zillow simply because of the language." He had taken one of those calls immediately before the interview, from a buyer in North Carolina who then realized he was also the guy from the videos.
“And here's a key if people are listening in, you can add your languages on Zillow.”
What this costs you now is nothing you can see, which is why it stays broken. A profile field you skipped four years ago is quietly deciding which requests you are eligible for, and there is no report anywhere that tells you what you did not get shown. If you or anyone on your team speaks a second language, you are sitting outside a routing pool with almost no competition in it, and the smaller the language community in your market, the smaller that competition gets.
The change is a fifteen-minute edit, and then a decision about whether to back it up. His story is really two things stacked: the field got him assigned, and the videos are why the caller trusted him once he looked. If you have the language and no content in it, fill in the field anyway. One short video introducing yourself in that language is enough to make you look like a person rather than a name in a list.