Top 8 Industries That Need A Virtual Tour

Welcome back to another Momentum 360 Blog!

In this week’s blog, learn about the TOP 8 Industries that need a virtual tour! If your industry is listed, please consider it, you don’t want to miss out on the gigantic traffic and rankings boost. Let’s dive in!

We squandered the internet to find the “Top 8 Industries That Need A Virtual Tour.”

Here’s our list in order from highest necessity to least:

Real Estate

Was this really a surprise?

Real estate is the industry that invented what we now know as virtual tours.

RE claims the top spot simply because of the amazing benefits and value that it’s given sellers for their homes. Sellers are now getting an all-time high sales price on their house, mostly due to these virtual tours. Not only do these show off the homes in an exquisite manner, but now more people can see home for sale, anytime from any place. This can be incredibly helpful when viewing multiple places to save time and money.

For example, if a potential home buyer lives in Germany but wants to live in Philadelphia, they can just simply check out the virtual tour of the place! This way, sellers can attract more people that want their home, and can raise the buying price from all of the competition. Now that’s a great reason why this industry needs a virtual tour. Here are some quick stats on real estate that shows off the value that these tours provide:

• 41% of home buyers found interactive maps very useful, while 40% felt the same about virtual tours
• Visitors to their website spend 3x – 6x more time engaging with property listings that offer a Matterport immersive 3D experience.
• Properties with Matterport tours receive 49% more qualified leads.
• Homes sell an average of 10 days faster and for $50,100 more than comparable homes thanks to Matterport 3D walkthroughs, advanced presentation technology, and great customer service

You can’t argue with those stats. The world is becoming more and more digital everyday, so this is why virtual tours are crushing in this space. As we talk about other industries later on in the blog, you’ll see that real estate is the most saturated industry.

This is a good thing!

It means that there is a lot of potential for other industries to benefit from the same product. After all, industries in the virtual tour space are pretty much “real estate” if you think about it. Every one of our clients has a physical location, regardless if it’s commercial, retail or any other form of real estate.

Nonetheless, virtual tours are a gigantic need for real estate. If you’re a broker or agent in the Philadelphia area, consider getting a virtual tour for your property.

Retail

Whether it’s a Brick and mortar, shopping mall, or just your local boutique, retail is an exceptional industry for virtual tours to shine!

Since more stores are on social media and rely heavily on their Google My Business profile, it’s imperative that you show off your place anyway you can.

Not only for your customers’ viewing pleasure and social presence, but for Google to help rank you better!

Let’s say you’re a local boutique in Philadelphia trying to rank for the keyword “boutique in Philadelphia.” Your competitor and you are neck and neck in the rankings. You both post to social media three times a day, write a weekly blog, and send out an updated website catalog to your email subs! What more can you do to stand out?

A virtual tour! This is especially important in retail.

You will have effectively:

• Given potential customers a unique way to view your business
• Given Google a valuable piece of content to help increase your ranking
• Offered customers another cool medium to buy clothes from!

Wait a few weeks, and you should notice that since more people are checking out your virtual tour and business, you’ll be ahead of your competitors!

Many small retail businesses experience the problem of not standing out from their competition. If you’re in the retail space, consider getting a tour of your shop. Your past, present, and future customers will love it, and so will Google!

Restaurants

Next up, we have the glorious industry of restaurants! Did you hear that? Sorry…it was just our stomachs growling.

If you’ve ever tried to look up a restaurant in your area on Google, more than likely you’ll be sent to their Google My Business profile. From there, you can check out their reviews, pictures, and other features.

But what if you have a large party? Could they accommodate you? Will your large group be comfortable at your table? All these questions can be answered with virtual tours.

How cool would it be to look inside the restaurant itself directly from your smartphone. You could check out the seating and choose your ideal table! You wouldn’t even have to call the restaurant beforehand. It’s seamless…. And virtual tours make this possible. Also, with the help from our trusted virtual tour partner Matterport, we can post your virtual tour straight to your Google My Business account!

It’s the perfect addition to your current Google My Business strategy. Momentum 360 posts a new photo to our account everyday, and you should too. If you have a virtual tour to boot, this will slowly but surely snowball and start piling up views!

 

According to Google, “90% of customers are more likely to visit a business that has added photos or videos to their Google listing.”

So, if you’re a restaurant, why wouldn’t you want to show off your fine establishment? If your argument is that you “already have pictures and videos of your business”, then you’re missing our point.

Virtual tours for restaurants are new pieces of technology that literally no one is tapping into yet for this niche. If you get there first for your type of restaurant and location, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise when new business comes flocking your way.

Hospitality

Wedding crashers season? Well, maybe.

If you’ve ever thrown an event, chances are you want a pretty sweet venue to hold it in rather than your corner bar that was built in 1850, right?

Similarly to restaurants using virtual tour technology, hospitality is popular as well.

Say you are throwing a wedding that you want to make sure no one crashes. You’ll even have security there. You’d want to check out the place and make sure there aren’t that many places to enter right?

Well with these virtual tours, you can make that happen! Matterport also has these neat little tags called “mattertags” that allow you to label certain areas of your space. If you’re thinking of your consumer, you could label the entrances in your place and say something like, “Perfect for security purposes to make sure no one crashes your big day.”

How awesome is that?? This ensures your safety and makes you warm and fuzzy with the event venue. You trust them without even having to pick up the phone and speak to their event coordinator.

Regardless of what type of events you host, it’s essential to grab a virtual tour for your space to label it and make your future guests comfortable with your place.

According to our hospitality clients:

• 90% stated that Matterport helps them build a stronger brand in the marketplace.
• 83% are more competitive because of Matterport.
• 74% win more business because of Matterport.

What are you waiting for? You know it’s a necessity for hospitality, so make sure you get a virtual tour as soon as possible.

Healthcare

Some of you might be surprised by this, but yes, healthcare is another essential industry to have a virtual tour. Let us grab our stethoscope for this one.

From the previous stats we just shared, we know that it’s important to stand out from the competition and make your future customers comfortable with your place.

So why doesn’t your local hospital/doctor’s office/medical home have one?

If you’re putting a family member in a home, wouldn’t you want to see exactly what the place looks like, in and out? Of course you would. You want the best for them and only the best. Anything less in unacceptable.

So then a virtual tour makes perfect sense. You can choose which room they’re in, if they have a pool and gym, you can even see the weekly board meal to find out what they’ll be eating!

Chicken Masala on Thursdays? Hell, I’d move in too!

It’s all about the experience. The same goes for doctor’s offices … do you want your kids going to some shady office with no reviews, or would you rather go to a doctor’s office with a good review and a virtual tour showing you the large waiting room (great magazine selection too), and all other patient rooms as well? We think you’d pick the latter.

So to all those in healthcare, no matter the size of your office, your patients care about what your place looks like. Get a virtual tour and make us feel more comfortable. That’s just what the doctor ordered.

Automotive

Need to replace your lemon? Great! A virtual tour will ensure you pick the car you need.

How you might ask?

Think of the cars you’ve bought in the past. You probably researched a ton before you came into a dealership. You were also considering between this model or that. After many hours of research, you’ve finally found your car of choice. It’s time to select a dealership that offers that car.

Now if you were a consumer, which dealership would you go with?

Dealership A

• Doesn’t have many reviews on Google
• Doesn’t have many pictures of their dealership
• Only has boring stock photos of the car you want

Dealership B

• Has multiple 5-star reviews
• Offers a virtual tour that shows you the car you want in glistening 4K resolution
• Offers insightful information on the car via Mattertags

It’s a no brainer, Dealership B gets the business.

You see your ideal car in a lovely 360 view, you can check out every single feature that you read about. You could even go ahead and say, “Hey, yeah that red one from your virtual tour, I’ll take that one.” Again, without ever having to talk to any sales rep! These cars sell themselves practically with a virtual tour. There’s no limit to what these virtual tours can do.

If you’re in the automotive space, consider getting one for your dealership. Here’s a KIA dealership we shot in Allentown, check it out!

Courtesy of Bernards

Sports

If you’ve ever been to a professional sporting event, you know that the venue makes all the difference. It’s a totally different experience if you’re at your local stadium that looks like it’s going to collapse any second, or at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Totally different experience, no matter how good your team is. If you have something worth showing off, then you want to show it off. Fortunately, old sporting venues are pretty much updated to 2019, so they all look fairly decent.

Similarly to the restaurant example, how cool would it be to take a virtual tour of a sporting venue and pick the exact seats you want?? You even have the option to click on the section and buy your preferred seats right then and there. Now that’s customer experience!

Although hardly any sporting venues have capitalized on a virtual tour yet, we believe this will be prevalent in the future and just like real estate, every venue will have them.

The reason why most stadiums don’t have a tour yet is simply a time issue. These virtual tours take about 1-2 hours to shoot a 2,000 square foot property. Imagine shooting Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia which is 1.15 million square feet! If you divide that by 2,000, that’s roughly 575 hours that it’ll take to complete the virtual tour. Which if you math whizzes out there are already calculating it, that’s just under 24 days. Although Rome wasn’t built in a day, so this isn’t that much time.

As technology comes along, we’re sure that there will be a way to cut down on the amount of time it takes for these virtual tours to be shot.

But hey, Momentum 360 is willing to shoot, so why wait?

Courtesy of Penn State

Education

Remember when you were a senior in highschool and looking for a college to attend?

*Cue the nostalgia*

We do too!

But do you also remember how much of an annoyance it was to walk the entire campus? Some schools make you take their shuttle bus just because of how big the campus is. Even more, some people drove hours upon hours to see the campus.

What we’re saying is, it’s a big hassle when it doesn’t need to be. What if you could take a virtual tour of the campus from your home, even check out the buildings where you would have class? That would be so helpful! I wish that my school had that.

It would change the way people check out colleges. Pretty soon, if you don’t have a virtual tour of your college, you’re considered “out of touch with technology” or “stuck in the past.”

Unfortunately, just like professional sporting events, these virtual tours would take as much if not more time to shoot.

Regardless of the time, here are some key stats we found out about colleges and virtual tours:

• Students are 60% more likely to email a college that includes a Matterport 3D Showcase.
• Students are 95% more likely to call a school that includes a Matterport 3D Showcase.

These are some incredible numbers! Without a virtual tour, your college could become obsolete. So make sure you make some room in your budget for one later down the road.

This ends our list of the Top 8 industries that need a virtual tour! Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoyed this blog, comment and share it on social media! Share buttons. We’d love to start a conversation with you.

Our competitors RealTView start their tour at $450, and ultimately it’ll go up from there. We start charging at $300, so you’ll automatically save at least $150 by going with us!

So…Why Go With Us?

Regardless of the industry, we have your back. We have experience in every single industry and customize your virtual tour to beat your competitors and enhance your customer experience. It’s our pleasure to make a virtual tour that suits your business only. We never use a cookie cutter system. Everything is individually customized to meet your needs.

Momentum 360 has been the leading-virtual tour provider in Philadelphia since our inception. Why? Because we deliver a top-quality product at a reasonable price. We take pride in helping small-businesses rise and get more traction. We lived through the struggle that most business owners go through on a daily basis, that’s why we get along with them so well.

If you’re looking to grow your online presence with a quality virtual tour, look no further.

You can schedule a call with Sean or Mac and always get more information on our website!

Our owners Mac Frederick and Sean Boyle have over 20+ years of digital marketing experience and are ready to help take your business to the next level! Our team members have also worked at Google and Facebook before, so we have the most up-to-date knowledge in the business. All to help your business rank at the top of Google and kickstart your journey to be a future lead generation machine!

You can email us or check out our website for more information!

We hope this blog informed you on how to correctly publish your tour to Google Street View and the neat features that comes along with this!

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If you have any questions or concerns, leave them in the comments below! From everyone at Momentum 360, thanks for the love and until next time, build Momentum!