Why do Real-estate Agents need virtual tours?
Truth, everyone may not click on virtual tours, but those that click on virtual tours are ones who are likely to buy a home. They are viewing virtual tours and using this information as part of their process to buy. It’s important to get it right.
Everything is going mobile today, and that means virtual tours need to be at the forefront of any mobile strategy. Fully integrated into your social media forums. Is it a given in real estate marketing that an agent has a virtual tour to promote every listing?
“Right” Reasons why agents should use virtual tours to promote every listing.
These reasons are interdependent on each other. You can’t have a completely successful property tour without all of them:
Opportunity
Research from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) defines the opportunity that property tours, done correctly, can provide in helping buyers decide to purchase a property.
According to NAR, baby boomers find virtual tours more useful than Millennials (45 percent to 36 percent) with 40 percent of all buyers ranking them as “very useful,” more than information on agents, contract status, recently sold properties and pending sales.
People are clicking on virtual tours. The ones who are likely to buy a home are viewing and using the information as part of their process. It’s important to get it right.
Automation with narration
Technology innovation now allows for listing data to be pulled to automatically create and post to YouTube a fully narrated virtual tour in conversational English (or Spanish) — using a real human voice — automatically from your listing data.
These tours allow consumers to choose their preferred language, and because they are posted on YouTube, closed captioning is available. To test your current YouTube videos, simply turn on the closed caption option on one of your video tours. Located on the side panel of the YouTube frame.
The benefit for the buyer is an improved experience. The benefit for the agent is the future of indexing your tours on Google, which owns YouTube, it’s likely to be determined by the quality of the narration.
For example: “This four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath ranch is located in Drummonds, TN. It includes a mother-in-law suite and a swimming pool…” If Google/YouTube can understand your narration, it stands to reason your tours will index better, improving the search.
Integrating Virtual Tours with social media and curbside marketing efforts
The opportunity to reach homebuyers by creating well-designed and well-produced virtual tours also require integration with social media and your curbside marketing.
Everything is going mobile today in real estate, and that means virtual tours need to be at the forefront of any mobile strategy.
Remember: potential buyers almost never download mobile apps at the curb. Downloading an app at the curb takes too long and uses too much precious data. Buyers want property info quickly — not your app.
You should have integration with Facebook, Twitter, and Google-plus at a minimum.
Think about every time you get a new listing, change a price or hold open houses. These are events within your listing data. That means they can automatically post to an agent’s social media accounts without the agent having to post the event manually.
Integrating property tours into the buyer process
Imagine using narrated virtual tours at the curb combined with automated call and text capture technology. Many successful agents, teams, and brokerages have been using curbside technology for years as it generally delivers the highest quality leads, complete with name, phone number and their actual location — at the curb of one of your listings.
With one edit, agents can apply narration or images to their virtual tours, YouTube videos and curbside audio marketing all at once.
The bottom line is whenever and wherever buyers need to access property information, an agent’s tour needs to be front and center.
For property tours to work, they must be integrated: an agent should be able to track a buyer who is viewing a certain property video so when the buyer calls, the agent answers the phone knowing the buyer is calling from the curb in front of that property just viewed on his or her mobile phone.
Having these same tours connected to social media as well is the key to having a property tour seen by even more buyers. This approach can deliver a centralized marketing solution built around virtual tours will help agents sell more homes