These tips will help you market your 360-tour business without straining your budget or resources. The first step of marketing is getting the word out there. The more people who know about your 360-tour business, the better off it will be in the long run. When you are just starting out or times are tough, it can be difficult to find the resources to spend on various marketing strategies.
Fortunately, there are several ways that you can market your 360 tour services without pumping hundreds (or thousands) of dollars into paid advertisements (i.e., Google Ads, Facebook ads, sponsored Instagram posts, etc.). The following five methods won’t cost a dime and will help boost your business exposure.
1.0 Use Google My Business
The first step to marketing your 360-tour business for free is to make sure that you’re using Google My Business. Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to add your business listing in the search results so that people can easily find you when they search for certain keywords related to your business. For example, if someone wants a virtual tour of their home, they might type “Virtual Tours” into Google Search and see all of the businesses near their location offering these services.
Google My Business also allows users who have added their business listing through GMB (again, this is free) access to additional features like enhanced listings and reviews from customers who may have used your service already.
2.0 Optimize your business website
Your website is one of the most important assets you have in marketing your business. Make sure it has a clean and simple design that prominently features the 360 tours you have available.
It’s also important that your website be easy to navigate because customers will want to be able to
find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. A responsive design makes it possible for users on any device—desktop computer, tablet or smartphone—to access your site with ease. This means your website will look good no matter where or how customers use it.
- Make sure it’s mobile-friendly.
- Make sure it’s optimized for search engines.
- Submit your URL to all the popular search engines (i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Ask.com and DuckDuckGo.
- Ensure you have at least one CTA (call to action) button on each page. An example of a CTA is having a ‘Book Now’ button on each page (or on the header and/or footer) that links to the contact page.
There are hundreds of YouTube videos available to learn how to optimise your website for free so you don’t have to hire a web developer.
3.0 Share your 360 tours on social media.
To make sure your 360 tours are shared on social media, you’ll need to use at least Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
You can use hashtags to help people find your work – at least five or six different hashtags in each post so that people can search for them easily. Try “#360tour” for example or “#virtualtour” if you prefer something more unique. It also helps to add a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of each post that directs people back to where they can book a tour with you directly: “Book yours now! (link)”.
4.0 List your business on HauzPhotographers.com
HauzPhotographers.com connects the real estate industry with real estate photographers and other service providers to assist with providing marketing materials (i.e., virtual tours) for their property listings. You can submit a Basic listing for free here.
5.0 Use Landing Pages
You can optimize conversions by using a landing page linked to your website to provide users with a summary of your most important information (i.e., business description, services), and some of your best virtual tour examples, followed by at least one or two CTAs on the same page.
You can also create additional conversion opportunities by creating landing pages specifically designed around each product listed inside categories such as “Virtual Tours for Real Estate”, Virtual Tours for Cars” or “Virtual Tours for Hotels & Resorts”. You can assign the links for each market segment to the relevant landing page in different social media posts and blog posts.
6.0 Use Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms give you the powerful ability to connect with existing and potential customers, share your work, and boost business exposure globally. They also provide an opportunity for you to create a backlink to your website from a quality website for free and provide the chance to organically increase your search ranking organically.
The following are examples of the social media platforms worth signing up for even if you only display a few of them (i.e. Instagram, twitter and Google+) on your business website.
- Google My Business
- YouTube
- Tik Tok
- Tumblr
- Medium
7.0 Create a blog
When it comes to blogging, you should write about what you know. So, your blog should be about virtual tours, the benefits, your target industry, and other topics that will add value to your target market.
Make sure you use key words relevant to your target market and the service you are providing to organically improve your website ranking. For example, if your target market is searching ‘virtual tours for real estate’, you could publish an article with this as the title (and focus key phrase) and then sell the benefits of virtual tours for real estate throughout the article.
You can also reach out to other business and industry blogs to offer ‘guest posts’ in exchange for a backlink to your website or a specific landing page.
For more information on the business of real estate photography and virtual tours, please visit the Real Estate Photographer Club.
Looking for even more inspiration? Read our article on “How to get more real estate leads through your virtual tour”
