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With many brands moving online together with the increasing rise in e-commerce stores, brick-and-mortar businesses seem to be at a disadvantage. In this pandemic, the digital world is dominating society while physical stores are declining in popularity. However, not all businesses can survive digitally such as event venues, hotels and real estate. These industries rely on face-to-face interaction and are still needed and sought after despite the current situation. For businesses that still require patrons to visit their space, sourcing and marketing digitally have become the new normal to keep afloat. Besides turning to social media channels, a digital technology that these businesses can utilise is a virtual tour.
Virtual tours are able to capture the entirety of a space in a 360 format with panoramic views. This tour is then uploaded online where digital visitors will be able to view your space before making a visit in person. Virtual tours have proven to increase bookings and reservations as well as gain traction on your site. To create a virtual tour, it is best to outsource the work to a trusted agency that specialises in creating these tours. However, it is important to note there is a distinction between a virtual tour that can convert online users to customers and virtual tours that don’t bring in any profits. In order to create a virtual tour that sells, you and your trusted agency must be familiar with the features that make a good virtual tour. Here is a list of digital marketing tips that can make your virtual tour stand out.
The first step to digital marketing is knowing what your audience needs and then presenting your brand as the solution. If you’re selling your space, it’s important to understand what your target audience is looking out for when they make a booking with you. If you’re a hotel, your customers may be looking for luxurious amenities or a good view in their room. If you’re an educational institution, your audience may be looking for state-of-the-art learning facilities. Once you understand what your audience wants, you can present those features when you create a virtual tour and even add in extra video content to showcase those specific selling points.
No matter what content you put online for your business, it must always tell your brand story and deliver a clear and strong representation of your company. A virtual tour is no different. When setting up a 360 tour, your brand image has to take centre stage with consistent branding throughout the tour. With a custom virtual tour, you can insert your brand logo and colours to create a personalised UI/UX design. By maintaining a clear brand image, it also instils professionalism and confidence into your business. Moreover, virtual tours can also create a header or welcome page that features your brand’s values and vision, allowing your audience a better understanding of your business.
With our technological advancements in today’s era, visuals and images are key to impressing and attracting an audience. Having poor quality visuals can deter customers from trusting your brand. Therefore, it is important to hire an agency that can create a virtual tour using the best equipment and software to capture crisp and clear shots of your space. Your venue should also be well decorated and decked as good aesthetics can easily wow and buy over a customer.
Depending on your space and its complexities, 360 virtual tours come with various customisation features that can enhance your space and make the navigation experience for your audience a smooth one. The various types of features available are navigation menus, hotspots, infoboxes and floorplans, just to name a few. Before you decide on the feature to use, identify the areas of your space that need further explanation or information that your audience may want to know. For example, if you’re presenting a property, floorplans are essential information to your audience. Navigation menus are used for spaces that have various rooms so that viewers can move seamlessly from one room to another. Infoboxes are extremely useful if extra information is needed about a feature in the venue as texts, images and videos can be embedded into them.
A huge advantage of a virtual tour is the ability to increase the number of online visitors to your site and eventually your physical space. Virtual tours have proven to improve SEO especially if your tour is created as a Google Virtual Tour. These tours are different to the 360 tours on your site as they are uploaded onto a Google My Business account where anyone can view your virtual tour with just a search of your business on the Google search engine. The Google algorithm favours businesses with virtual tours to increase local search ranking. It also prolongs engagement spent on the site, further improving SEO and web traffic. Therefore, consider uploading a Google Virtual Tour to increase visitors to your physical space.
Every digital content needs to include the next steps for interested buyers to get in contact with you to make a booking. Without a clear buyer’s journey, you could risk losing prospects and profits. When you hire an agency to create a virtual tour, is it important to add call-to-action buttons such as redirecting your audience to a contact page, a booking calendar or even a chatbox. Custom virtual tours have all these options where your visitors can immediately book an appointment on the tour interface itself or get in contact with customer service through a chat function.
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A 360 virtual tour is a valuable marketing tool that is able to target a large digital audience and pull them towards a physical space. However, understanding marketing strategies and your audience’s needs are also needed to create a virtual tour. It is important to hire an agency that has both the technical skills as well as the vision to create a tour that speaks to your target audience. Get in touch with us and sit back while we digitise your space for your prospects.
