The photographer sends the tour link on Tuesday, and by Friday it is sitting in the MLS and nowhere else.
Getting a tour in front of buyers is routine work an assistant can own: posting the link, adding it to emails and social posts, putting a QR code on the flyer and reporting what the views look like. Your part is to approve what goes out and to answer anything about price, offers or terms, which stays with you.
What is a Virtual Tour?
A virtual tour lets a buyer look through a home online, on a phone or a computer, without going there. Tours come in three common forms: a set of linked 360-degree photos, a 3D model of the home that the viewer walks through, and a narrated video that follows the path you filmed.
The first two, the 360-degree photos and the 3D model, let the viewer decide where to look. The video does not.
Benefits of Using Virtual Tours for Marketing
A tour helps a buyer judge the layout before spending an afternoon on a showing, and it gives the listing something to share that a still photo cannot. For a seller, it also shows the home at its best to people who may never visit.
Increased Engagement and Conversion Rates
A tour shows how rooms connect and how big the yard is, which photos leave to guesswork. In this setting a conversion is a viewer who takes a next step: asks for a showing, requests details or signs up for alerts.
How many more of those a tour brings depends on the listing, the price range and the market, and a percentage from another agent's listing will not tell you. Measure your own. Compare the inquiries and showing requests on listings with a tour against similar listings without one, and let those numbers decide how much to spend.
Types of Virtual Tours
Most tours you will be offered are a 360-degree tour, an interactive tour or a mix of the two. The choice mostly comes down to how much upkeep you want.
360-Degree Tours vs. Interactive Tours
A 360-degree tour is a set of panoramic photos taken at fixed spots. The viewer looks around from each spot and jumps to the next one.
An interactive tour adds things to click: room labels, a floor plan, a video or a link to the listing page. For instance, a buyer can tap the kitchen, read the appliance list and watch a short clip of the backyard.
Many tours combine the two, so the better question is how much interactivity you are willing to maintain. A label or a link that goes out of date misleads viewers, and a plain 360-degree tour has none to go stale. The tour will also outlive the price and the status of the listing, so keep both off the tour itself and put them on the page around it. NAR's Standard of Practice 12-8 asks members to use reasonable efforts to keep website information current and to correct it promptly when it is not.
Creating an Effective Virtual Tour
Whoever makes the tour, the home has to be ready before the camera arrives. A short checklist sent to the seller a few days ahead goes a long way.
Tips and Techniques for a High-Quality Tour
- Prepare the home. Lights on, blinds open, counters cleared and toilet lids down. Put away mail, photos, prescriptions and keys, and move cars off the driveway.
- Plan the path. Start at the front door and follow the order a buyer would walk the rooms, finishing outdoors. Name every room so viewers can jump straight to the one they want.
- Stay out of the shot. Mirrors and glass doors show the camera and whoever stands behind it, so check the finished 360-degree tour for a reflection or a stray foot.
- Test it on a phone. Some viewers will open the link on one, so tap through the whole tour and note anything that loads slowly or cannot be tapped.
- Label virtual staging. A tour that includes digitally staged rooms should say so, in the same way the listing photos do.
- Redo it when the home changes. If the seller removes furniture or finishes a renovation, order a new tour, since a buyer who finds a different house at the showing may remember it.
Integrating Virtual Tours into Your Marketing Strategy
If you have a tour, it should appear everywhere the listing does, and your assistant should keep track of each place.
Ways to Incorporate Virtual Tours into Your Campaigns
Four places carry most of the weight:
- The MLS. Add the link to the tour field. An MLS may restrict branding or contact details in a tour link, so read its rules before anyone pastes one in.
- Your listing page. Put the tour near the top of the page, above the long description.
- Email. A "just listed" email can show a picture of the tour with a link, because the tour itself will not run inside an email. Follow the CAN-SPAM basics, and describe the home and its features without saying who should buy it.
- Flyers and signs. A QR code lets a passerby open the tour on a phone.
The same link can drive a virtual open house, a social post with a short clip from the tour or a mention in your monthly newsletter. Keep one master link, so that when the tour is replaced your assistant changes it everywhere in one pass.
If a viewer replies with a question about price or terms, your assistant passes it to you the same day.
Measuring the Success of Your Virtual Tour Marketing
Find out what your tour host reports before you promise anyone a report. Views are generally the starting point, and some hosts also show how long visitors stayed and which rooms they opened.
Key Metrics to Track and Analyze
Four numbers cover most of what an agent needs. Your assistant can log them in a sheet with one row per listing:
- Views and unique visitors, from the tour host.
- Where the visitors came from, using a separate link for email and social posts if your link tool allows it.
- Inquiries and showing requests in the first week after the tour went live.
- Days on market, filled in when the listing sells or expires.
Read them together. If views are low, check where the link sits. If views are high and inquiries are low, the photos, the price or the next step on the page may be the problem. If you want to know whether tours pay for themselves, wait until you have a handful of listings in the sheet, since one listing proves nothing.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Virtual Tour Marketing
Most of the mistakes come from treating the tour as a finished product the day it arrives.
Pitfalls and How to Overcome Them
- A link in one place. If the tour only appears in the MLS, add it to the places in the section above.
- A tour that expires. If the tour sits on a paid account, make sure the account stays active until the listing closes, and keep the original files.
- No next step. A viewer who finishes the tour should see how to book a showing or ask a question. Put your contact line on the page around the tour.
- An old tour. If the home changes, the tour changes with it.
- Nobody watching the numbers. Check the sheet once a week for the first month of a listing.
Open a sheet with one row per listing and one column per place its tour link appears, and ask your assistant to fill it in and keep it current.