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How To Introduce & Promote The Use Of Virtual Tours In Your Business

Do you want to level up your business by having virtual tours? Read these tips on introducing & promoting virtual tours for a better customer experience.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the tourism industry, traveling, nature vlogging, and sightseeing were rampant. Social media platforms are flooded with images and videos of people wandering in different parts of the country, if not the world, and sharing beautiful creations.

But despite the cessation that happened, the hospitality sector found a way to carry on with the operations. Digital and creative teams have stepped up their game by creating virtual tours, which are becoming a trend nowadays. What’s exciting about this is that it creates an immersive encounter for its users and makes them feel they are in the actual location or activity.

With virtual tours, your prospective customers can glimpse what your business offers. Although 2D images can suffice, showing a 360 degree and ultra-high-definition illustration intensifies the viewing experience.

Do you want to level up your business by having virtual tours? Below are some tips on introducing and promoting virtual tours for a better customer experience.

1. Create Branding

Get your customers to distinguish your edge from your competitors by having your own unique story. Your brand serves as your business’ unique and distinct DNA. You can use it as leverage and your selling point to promote your business using virtual tours.

Establish a connection to your customer using your branding and story by creating an unforgettable impression on your audience. It helps build relationships among your customers and use that connection to turn them into paying and loyal patrons. And don’t ignore the power of referral. Satisfied customers are more likely to spread the news and recommend your business once they are happy with their experience.

2. Use Exceptional and High-Quality Images and Videos

360 virtual tours are a compilation of panoramic images shot in different angles and put up in a seamless view for viewing of the entire angle. The user can navigate the picture, zoom in and out and rotate the image. They can also switch the view from one location to another via hotspots or thumbnails.

To create these high-definition images, professional equipment is used such as DSLR cameras and lenses or 360 cameras to take shots and utilize technology to develop a superior optical experience for the viewers. Business owners can also use a smartphone to capture images for virtual tours provided there is good lighting and a little knowledge in photography skills for good angles.

3. Ensure That It Works Well with Any Device

Keep your customer engaged by ensuring that your virtual tour is responsive to any device and not only good at your computer screen. People who are out and always on the go can still browse and enjoy the virtual tours wherever they are. So, make sure that high-resolution images and videos do not cause lagging even on smaller screens.

Since not every potential customer has access to their computer most of the time, they often use their tablet or, most likely, their smartphones to navigate your business’ virtual tours and snapshots.

4. Promote across Social Media Platforms

Social media is a dynamic marketing tool because of its broader range of market presence, and people worldwide have access to it. Companies and businesses should utilize social media platforms to increase brand awareness, drive web traffic, and convert them to sales. Capture the users’ interest by posting attractive videos and images with compelling captions to engage with your customers.

5. Determine Functionality

There are several virtual tour benefits. It could be to give your customers a walkthrough of what is inside your hotel, how comfortable the bed is and how spacious the bathroom. Restaurants can provide a glimpse of what’s behind their kitchen operations and how enticing the food and the ambiance are.

Theme parks and tourist destinations can allure visitors by giving them a peek of the attractions inside the park. The options on how to elucidate the use of virtual tours to the business are endless. It catches the interest of potential customers by making them feel that they are physically there while they are actually inside their vehicle or comfortably sitting on their sofa.

For investors, it can be a helpful tool in buying the business or simply visiting the premises. It helps them scrutinize every part of the establishment without personalizing the visit to the store or the shop. It saves time, money, effort and promotes safety protocols, especially amidst this pandemic. Although 360 virtual tours are an excellent tool for business ventures such as this, investors can take advantage of using video conferencing software solutions to discuss further the details about getting the business done.

6. Call to Action

No matter how compelling and captivating your marketing strategies are, it can be futile without a “what’s next” plan. Encompass your visitors right away by having a Call to Action and give them a little push to take immediate action. Encourage them to book a visit, purchase a ticket, order your product, or whatever conversion you want as a response.

Increase the probability of attracting potential customers and conversion by having a clear CTA. Create a link to your website to show visitors how to book a reservation, order, or speak with customer support if they have further inquiries, which explains why the next tip is significant.

7. Include a Virtual Tour in Your Website

Adding a video to your website is one way to improve your website. Although still images are already fascinating, 3D rotating panoramic images bring about a virtual reality interactive experience for your customers. It gives your customers the ability to see beyond two-dimensional photos. These images and virtual tours directly affect the customers’ buying decisions.

Virtual tours in websites create an impression that a website is a high quality, especially if the videos and photos get viewers’ attention. It will signal the search engines, increasing your website’s position in web ranking. And making your way to the top of the web search means more chances of getting noticed, thus driving traffic to your website.

There are online tutorials on how to embed virtual tours on your website, which can be essential to your blog posts and landing pages as you share information about your business.

Importance of Virtual Tours in a Business

Businesses have found innovative ways to operate despite the limitations imposed due to unprecedented events like the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtual tours are one of the modern strategies for marketing the business without breaking the protocols.

Holographic imaging has been an exceptional instrument in catching the interest of your prospective customers and propelling visitors to take a deeper look at your business website. It has several benefits that prove that it’s worth investing in.

Make your potential customers feel enthralled and excited about what they are looking at and look forward to seeing those things in actuality. Give your marketing strategies a boost and provide a remarkable interactive customer experience by creating a virtual tour that includes the tips mentioned above.

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5 Reasons Why Realtors Should Turn To Virtual Tours

The creation and adoption of the internet caused a paradigm shift in the way people live their lives and consume different kinds of products and services.

The creation and adoption of the internet caused a paradigm shift in the way people live their lives and consume different kinds of products and services.

For this reason, a lot of businesses had to change with the times to be able to keep up with the evolving business environment. The real estate business is no different.

Vendors, agents and potential buyers have resorted to using the internet as a platform where they can interact with ease.

This resulted in the creation of virtual tours.

The following are some of the benefits that all three parties have enjoyed from this innovation

Cost Effective

Virtual tours have taken a lot of time and money out of the process of viewing a property.

It has been a welcome addition to the real estate market because agents and vendors can get a listing in front of a potential buyer by sending an email.

People no longer have to set aside time and money to go from one place to another when they need to find a suitable property.

All they need to have is a stable internet connection and a few minutes to spare.

Time Efficient

The real estate market previously involved hefty amounts of travel, going from one place to another to view different properties before finally deciding.

Agents and vendors needed to exercise an immense amount of patience while repeatedly showing clients various properties before making a sale.

On the other hand, clients had to keep moving from one property to the next before finding what suits them.

This is not the case anymore.

Virtual tours have allowed real estate agents and vendors to reach a wider market by providing the full viewing experience with the click of a button.

The potential buyers in this case have also benefited because they can view tens, or maybe even hundreds of properties from the comfort of their own homes.

Improved Communication

When creating a virtual tour for a listing, agents and vendors have enough freedom to get into as much detail as they want to.

They do not have to rush over the details because of time and other constraints.

Here, they can fully express themselves and expound on the key features of the listing in question.

This is also beneficial for the potential buyers because they can have a closer look at each listing as many times as they want before deciding.

Generates Better Leads

Before virtual tours were created, real estate dealers had to go through numerous clients before finding any serious buyers.

This process was very time consuming and expensive because they had to take each and every client through the listing, most of which will end up deciding the property was not for them or it wasn’t worth the price.

Now these listings are mainly viewed online, therefore by the time a client reaches out to them, they are very interested in the property.

Competitive Advantage

In any business, being able to stand out is one of the major driving factors behind dominating the market.

Virtual tours have allowed dealers in the real estate market to effectively reach potential buyers and demonstrate what they have in store for them.

It also allows the potential buyers to have a clearer picture of the actual layout of the property before they decide.

This goes a long way in providing top notch customer service which will enable you to increase your profit margin and client base while reducing your overhead costs.

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Everything you Need to Know About 360 Virtual Tours

A virtual tour is any digital solution that lets you walk around/explore a location or area without visiting it in person.

A virtual tour is a digital simulation of a physical location produced using a sequence of videos and images. Floor plans, music, sound effects, and other multimedia elements may also be incorporated to create a realistic representation and present a viable alternative to a physical visit to the location being shown in the tour.

How Is A Virtual Tour Made?

A virtual tour is made from a collection of panoramic rotating images stitched together to give a full 360-degree view of a physical location. Special lenses, cameras, and advanced techniques are typically used to create the tour for a complete and detailed visual experience for viewers. A typical virtual tour package would consist of high-resolution photos (also called “spins”) of multiple locations in a site, joined together to form a complete virtual tour package.

What Is Virtual Tour Software?

A virtual tour software is a tool used by tour operators to create virtual visualizations of a specific location to give viewers a panoramic 360-degree view of that location. With virtual tour software, viewers can visit a location and get a good feel and perspective of how it looks without being physically present there.

Who Uses Virtual Tour Software?

Virtual tour software is used as a marketing tool by businesses in different industries.

• Travel Agencies
It is often used in the tourism industry by travel agencies to create a 360-degree visualization of various destinations for prospective tourists.

• Real Estate Agencies
The software is also used in the real estate industry as a tool for marketing properties that are on sale. When integrated with other dedicated tools for creating real estate tours, a virtual tour creator creates a more immersive experience for prospective buyers who would like to inspect a property they intend to buy when they cannot be physically present.

• Hotel Marketing Teams
The marketing teams of hotels and other small businesses use a virtual tour software to promote their products. It may be incorporated as part of a brand’s promotional efforts into websites and social media pages.

• Schools/Academic Environments
When used in classrooms and other academic environments, students can take virtual visits to museums and other historic locations or incorporated into the learning curriculum for a more exciting and immersive learning experience. Nowadays, many universities and colleges are starting to offer virtual campus tours to their future students.

Why Use Virtual Tour Software?

Virtual tour software is a versatile marketing tool that can help bring more clients and customers to your business. It makes it possible for prospective customers to get a virtual view of your business and create a feeling that they are right there at your location even though they aren’t. This is the best way to show them what your business has to offer accurately. A virtual tour gives a more detailed and accurate picture of your business than still photography or ordinary videos would.

Benefits of Using Virtual Tour Software

Location Transparency: by getting a more realistic and up-close view of your business location, viewers will be able to get a sense of transparency from your business. Even when they cannot visit you in person, viewers can be sure that what you are offering is exactly as you claim. This makes it easier to build trust in your business thanks to the immense detailing that virtual tours offer.

Marketing & Sales: Virtual tours can be used as a sales and marketing tool. Typically, people research businesses or locations before they make a buying decision. More often than not, whether they decide to buy or not depends on the information they can gather during their research.

A virtual tour may sometimes help bump users in the direction you want them to go. This is because a virtual tour usually gives prospective clients or customers more confidence in your business as they can already see how things work. Naturally, this makes them more likely to patronize you. The conversion rate of products advertised with 360-degree virtual tours is often higher than those advertised with regular 2-dimensional photos.

What You Can Do with Virtual Tour Software

Virtual tour software is used to create a virtual tour either from images taken with omnidirectional cameras or by combining photos through image stitching. Virtual tours are produced in a way that gives users full control over what they want to see. They can zoom in or out or enhance a specific scene for more detailing.

It is also possible to incorporate descriptive texts and interactive hotspots containing external links, annotations, and other elements to provide more information and give viewers a more immersive tour experience. In addition to making it easier to capture and create virtual tours, virtual tour software is also a tool to easily upload, share or publish a virtual tour you have created.

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