Craig Veroni is a real estate agent in Vancouver, British Columbia, covering North Vancouver, West Vancouver, and the city itself. Before working in real estate, he spent more than a decade training and working as a professional film and television actor.

The moment he started applying that craft to his marketing, video became one of the biggest drivers of his business. Educational YouTube videos and cinematic property tours helped buyers understand local neighbourhoods and the housing market.

But when a fire and flood in the unit above him affected his home and forced his family out for nearly a year, his video production came to a halt.

"We'd been out of our house for about nine months," he said. "I couldn't produce any content. I didn't have any gear."

Growing his presence without growing the workload

For most of his career, Craig built trust by working open homes, meeting people in person, and turning a YouTube channel into his primary lead source, eventually drawing around 75 per cent of his business from it.

But that content was demanding to produce. His best-performing neighbourhood tours meant scripting every segment, filming on camera across several neighbourhoods, and editing it all together, a process that could take more than a week for a single video.

Getting back in front of his audience meant rebuilding the engine that had powered his business. The turning point came when he saw fellow agents using HeyGen to grow completely new social channels with AI avatars.

"I thought, 'This sounds a bit wild and maybe too good to be true,'" he said.

Curious, he joined a small training group. Over three days, Craig built his digital twin, refined his content workflow, and published his first Instagram Reel.

"I was really thrown because I'm known for my video," he said. "I thought people were going to hate this."

Building a digital twin buyers can trust

Craig believes the twin worked because it was built from his own high-quality material. Rather than starting from scratch, he trained his avatar on the library of footage he had already filmed, capturing his real appearance and mannerisms across different settings.

He paired it with professionally recorded voice models, refined into an indoor voice for studio-style clips and an outdoor voice that sounds natural on location. He uses the latest avatar model and upgrades every time a better one is released.

Craig uses the digital twin to keep his audience informed about local news and market developments, rather than chasing trends or making novelty clips.

"The twin exists to keep people informed about what's happening locally, the news, and to provide them with information," Craig said.

Accuracy is non-negotiable. He writes, reviews and fact-checks every script against carefully sourced local market data before generating a video, and he labels every Reel as AI so he is never misleading anyone.

"Everything has to be very, very accurate," he said. "The moment I lose trust with my audience, it's all over."

Turning followers into a trusted local presence

Within the first week, Craig noticed something equally exciting and humbling.

"Every single post that I'd made had outperformed anything that I did personally," he said.

What mattered more to him was that the connection lasted. Some viewers asked whether the videos were AI, while others had no idea and were surprised to learn the truth. Then the validation came in person.

"On three separate occasions, complete strangers stopped me," Craig said. "One bloke pulled over while I was walking my dog and said, 'I'm a subscriber. I love what you do. Thanks for doing it.'"

The viewer had no idea the person he’d just spoken to wasn’t the same version he watched online. For Craig, that was the point.

"The connection was working," he said. It was the kind of recognition that pushed him towards a bigger goal, becoming what he calls the "digital mayor" of his city.

Turning consistency into reach and recognition

With the twin handling his news content, Craig went from one video a week to two Reels a day, a pace that would have been impossible with traditional filming. The reach followed.

Over roughly ten months, his Instagram following quadrupled, growing from around 1,500 to nearly 6,000. His content now reaches more than 770,000 accounts in a typical month and generates 60,000 to 70,000 interactions, with individual Reels regularly passing 100,000 views.

Just as valuable is what the twin frees him to do. The time it saves goes back into one-on-one work with clients, including personalised video follow-ups, an approach that has helped him re-engage past clients and close significant business.

"The digital twin helps free me up to do more one-on-one work with my clients," he said.

When asked to sum up the platform, he didn’t hesitate.

"HeyGen is the single best and most effective platform to scale my video content," he said. "I haven't found another platform that rivals it."

Today, Craig sees his digital twin not as a replacement for himself, but as an extension of his expertise.

"If you want to be seen and heard and provide value," he said, "HeyGen is a highly effective tool to do that."