Virtual tours are not a novelty nowadays; they are rather a widely-spread marketing strategy. Their character underwent significant changes over time: in the beginning, they used to be impressive and fancy, whereas nowadays they are tactical, immersive, and essential for any business. While the pandemic substantially restricts the freedom of movement and forces people to stay in their homes, virtual tours offer a unique opportunity to explore different spaces before visiting or buying them. A great example of this is VR house tour by VisEngine. For businesses that use virtual tours, conversion rates grew by 16% and reached 67%. Various companies such as hotels, real estate agencies, restaurants, educational organizations, and event halls utilize virtual tours to reach out for their target audience. If as a company you are interested in developing a virtual tour, you have perhaps a lot of questions. To help you with elaborating a successful virtual tour, we collected principal components that define virtual tour`s success. Here you can find 6 features that would endorse your marketing with a successful virtual tour.
- It highlights your brand story
Virtual walks are not just about impressing the viewers and attracting them. Keep in mind that you should also mention what makes your brand stand out and what is your story. That’s why storytelling is a great way to pull all the threads together and bring all the crucial elements – company’s vision, values, and special selling points in a coherent virtual tour.
Basically, your story is something that makes your firm special and sets you apart from the competitors. Besides, it can also create an emotional link with the audience and express the enterprise`s character and uniqueness.
- It speaks to your audience
Your target audience should be at the heart of your virtual tour. Ask yourself what are the key interests of your audience and what does it want to learn about?
As a property developer, you might use a virtual tour to show the spaces in detail to your customers. As an educational institution, your organization can inform the prospective students and their parents about ins and outs of the campus life, manifold courses, school or university culture. In such a way, enquiries coming in through the virtual tours have high chances to be converted. Hotels and event halls also use virtuals walks to demonstrate unique venues and their characteristics.?
- It is geared towards reaching your targets?
Before launching any virtual tour, consider what goals should it meet and what is its main target. Virtual walkthrough is not only about being nice-looking. It should also be functional, interactive, and be aligned with your company’s goals.
Aside from an all-encompassing walkthrough on the location, a virtual tour can incorporate the following elements: videos, audio fragments, photos, and files with key facts. The customers are not interested in the look of a certain space; they would like to know more details on what they see. For instance, a virtual tour in a restaurant can be complemented by a well-thought photo gallery of the food and a video from the kitchen showing how the dishes are prepared.
The overall impression made by the virtual tours largely depends on the little details they use. To make a tour meaningful and hence to improve the sales potential, you can use 3D imagery or lead generation forms for data collection.
- It includes interactive visuals of excellent quality
Of course, one of the paragraphs mentioned that virtual tours are not limited to the stunning pictures but having fancy imagery is an extra asset for the wow-effect. High-quality professional photos play an important role in the marketing and sales, and this holds true for 360? exposures too.
Needless to say that virtual tour`s beauty lies in its captivating and authentic imagery. Thanks to this, the users can experience the location`s atmosphere and see the venue from the different positions. In essence, the ideal virtual tour will create a breathtaking firth impression so that the visitors look at the space in awe.
- It boosts presence of your business online
Any successful virtual walkthrough would definitely endorse your presence online including web traffic, interaction, and engagement. Thanks to the high-quality images, comprehensive descriptions, immersive media components, and guided tour compounds, the tour would keep the visitors interested and engaged.
A great idea to improve your local search and ranking is the use of the virtual tour providers that have Google Street View certification. They can help you uploading 360? into Google.
- It calls to action
For an effective marketing strategy, you`ve got to think about what happens next. Once you attract the visitors and guide them through the virtual tour, you have to encourage them for the next step. It can be contacting your firm for a visit, call, reservation, or purchase. For this reason, you can foresee different contact buttons according to the conversion plan. This can be links to the company’s web page, buttons for call, signing-up or reservation.
An amazing experience online is one of the major components of an interactive and outstanding customer experience. So if you plan on empowering your marketing efforts with a virtual tour, include the key elements we have described.
The bottom line
A good and dynamic virtual tour can enhance your company’s marketing strategy. It combines impressive imagery, high-quality photos and panoramas, audio and video fragments into a unique walkthrough. This renders your brand’s character and contributes to the unique consumer`s experience.
