5 Reasons Why Virtual Tours Are a Must for Your Marketing Plan

Until December 2019, you might have been one of the most successful agents in your area and had the best marketing campaigns ever. There was no need for any improvement -- or was there?

Then COVID hit and the whole real estate industry had to change overnight. Due to social distancing, travel restrictions or fear of catching the bug, your open houses and weekend walkthroughs and in-person meetings with buyers or tenants finished forever.

Thousands of agents and property managers were taken by surprise and couldn't sell or rent anything anymore. The business model you were running was gone forever. The only new way of making it all possible are 360° virtual tours that allow anyone to inspect the property wherever and whenever they want.

When the pandemic hit, Virtual Tours Creator (VTC) was already in the top five international virtual tours providers and our current customers were calmly selling or renting sight unseen. They didn't have to change anything as they were ready. They had already digitized their offer. Imagine showing your customers a tour like this when your competition couldn't even leave their home!

Here are five reasons why virtual tours are a must for your marketing plan in real estate this year:

1. 360° virtual tours make it safe for you, your team and your customers during the global pandemic

For many agents—and, more importantly, for buyers—open houses are a waste of time spent traveling back and forth to properties that buyers are not really interested in. Virtual reality (VR) tours help save time for both parties and allow agents to get more qualified buyers.

They eliminate face-to-face contact when presenting a home. Agents can conduct virtual inspections with customers on any device in the comfort of their own home without the need to travel. This brought safety to both parties in the face of 2020's global pandemic and allowed many businesses to thrive when a total lockdown was enforced. Our customers were selling properties sight unseen all across the world. Keep your staff and customers safe by avoiding face-to-face contact.

2. VR tours help your brand stand out in the digital world and win new listings!

How many times do you ask yourself how to outrun your competition? 360° virtual tours make you stand out from the crowd—every landlord or seller will choose you rather than you competitor who offers the old-fashioned photos-only package.

Having a virtual tour made can cost between $150-$600, and it may take up to seven days before the VR provider can turn up to create the tour. Not many agents have the budgets to use such technology at such cost, nor the time to wait for a photographer to turn up.

Being able to offer a VR tour in the listing presentation is a huge advantage over any competitor. Moreover, being able to impress vendors and do the tour on-the-spot can, in many cases, win the listing for an agent.

VTC allows the creation of 360° tours by an agent without the need to outsource it to expensive photographers with lengthy delivery times. Do not be dependent on anyone; create the tours yourself when and where you want.

Did you know that, according to REA, listings with VR tours have 487% more engagement than the ones with only photos? This says it all!

3. 360° VR tours allow you to save time by pre-qualifying buyers and tenants

There are many tenants on the market that often look only for opportunities and therefore are not really committed. You can weed them out by presenting the virtual tours of properties online before you plan an open house. That way, you won't have to worry about tire kickers and next door neighbours. During COVID, tenants tended to rent or even buy properties site unseen.

4. Tours allow you to have a 24/7 open house

How many people can you run through an open house over the weekend? Twenty, 30 or 60 people? During COVID, you might have had zero. Our customers track their VR tour visits and will tell you that they had 400 people looking at the tour in three days—where else can you do that ?

Agents get more qualified buyers before they even come to the open house. Every buyer is able to make informed decisions on buying a property from the comfort of their own home where and when they want. You can have an open house 24/7 available to anyone and anywhere.

ONLY a virtual tour allows you to work when you are not working. Even better, clients can view it whenever they want without bothering you.

5. Virtual tours help your business restructure and give sales agents or property managers the time back to do what they should be doing in the first place

No matter how you operate, prepping properties for advertisement can be time consuming. From when you first launch a new property, to finding the right buyer or tenant to work with, it is very common to be inundated with inquiries. A virtual tour can help you segregate the serious clients from the curious.

What else can a virtual tour be used on?

By using a 360° camera, you can cover every corner of a house and it should only take about 15 minutes to shoot—plus an additional five minutes to set up using Virtual Tours Creator's system.

Here at Virtual Tours Creator, we will hold your hand in the process of learning how to take 360° photos and creating an interactive 360° virtual tour. We will teach you how to create perfect 360° tours in one day!

You can also use virtual tours for:

• assisting sales agents with generating appraisals,
• assisting suppliers with quoting for repairs,
• as a tool in your entry and exit process.

Keep in mind that these are just some of the benefits virtual touring can bring to your business.

Virtual Tours Creator has made creating 360° virtual tours easy, fast and affordable. You can create a three-bedroom house 360° tour as fast as 15 minutes for as little as $2 per property. To learn more, visit virtualtourscreator.com.au.

To view the original article, visit the Virtual Tours Creator blog.