Four Advantages of A Virtual Tour On Your Website & Social Media Sites
Did you know that social networking is expected to continue impacting lives and businesses with an estimated 1.8 billion users by the end of the year? A recent in-depth student by the Radicati Group suggests that this number will grow to 2.5 billion by the end of 2019. No matter what industry you belong to, social media is here to stay, and if you hope to survive the growing global competition, it absolutely must be fully integrated with your business.
With a Google+ growth rate of 33% each year, as well as enhanced properties like YouTube comments and Gmail, it’s time to consider working more seriously and intimately with Google. A great example of how successful a business can be with virtual tours is Hilton Worldwide. According to Hilton, they are now offering virtual tours on 78 of their properties and the response with higher booking has been incredible! The company is now able to showcase the best of their hotels including renovations, new amenities, and exciting offers. Other chains of hotels are now doing the same, especially since virtual tours appear on Google+, Google Maps, and even in simple Google searches.
Need more convincing? Here are even more advantages of creating, using, and embedding virtual tours on your website and social media accounts.
Advantage 1: Ensuring a great first impression
The virtual tour is a peek into your business – the product you want to promote and sell. You control the creation of the virtual tour and as long as it shows online users what they can expect by buying into the offer, you are almost 100% guaranteed great first impressions. You have the advantage of being able to choose the best time, angle, and lighting to perfectly enhance your product. Be careful to make sure that your virtual tour can be replicated by actual product experience!
Advantage 2: Zooming in on the finer details
You know your product inside out and you also know and appreciate the finer details of your product. Still images can’t do it do justice because they are one dimensional! Doesn’t it make more sense to showcase your product and feature the details that would make consumers appreciate it the way you do?
Advantage 3: Fantastic entertainment value
The majority of online users are fascinated with virtual tours. Given the choice of viewing a virtual tour or still images – or worse yet, reading about the product – most would choose the virtual tour. Statistically, people who use Google Maps or Google Street View end up searching for familiar places as well. Your virtual tour introduces them to these free Google features and by doing so, you not only give them added entertainment value, you give them new experiences.
Advantage 4: Virtual tours are effective
With virtual tours, you get to give your current and prospective customers a 360 degree image of your product. Like many companies that have embedded virtual tours in their websites, interest in your product is likely to increase by as much as 20% in 12 months.
However, it must be said that a virtual tour is not the same as video content recorded with a digital camera. It must be done professionally by a Google certified photographer because there are many ways that a virtual tour can fail. For example, the tour might take too long to upload or it might not have the correct script.
Fortunately, investing in the production of a virtual tour has been proven to work extremely well no matter what your business product is. Visual marketing is fun, entertaining, and cost effective. Most importantly, it sells better than any text-based content or still images, and the interactive nature of virtual tours makes it easy to solicit positive feedback.