How to Schedule More Virtual Tours with Prospects

While transitioning to virtual leasing amidst Coronavirus, many real estate businesses have invested in tools such as virtual tours in order to maintain regular operations.

Due to the fact that prospects that tour a property are more likely to end up renting, scheduling a guided virtual tour and creating a personal connection is a huge catalyst to filling vacancies.

Interested in getting more prospects to schedule your virtual tour? Read below for some best practices and quick wins.

Put virtual tours front and center: 7 ways to schedule virtual tours

It may seem obvious, but strategizing placement of your virtual tour will be the first step in getting more requests.

Our team has seen many creative ways of doing this with our very own Panoskin virtual tours—below are a few that are easy and guarantee to get more eyes on your tour.

Add to your Google My Business listing

A simple yet effective way for users to immediately schedule a guided tour? Place it on your business listing.

Oftentimes your listing is the first thing renters see during their search, so placing tours at the forefront of your listing with actionable messaging is the perfect way to maximize requests.

The good news: we always upload virtual tour content from Panoskin to each Google listing.

Embed tours to an ILS

ILS - or internet listing service - are great tools for adding extra visibility as well as streamlining the renting process.

By linking or embedding virtual tours to various ILS systems, you’re taking those benefits one step further by immersing renters with visual content accompanied by other informative content—all in one place.

Below are a list of ILS systems integrated with Panoskin virtual tours:

• Apartments.com
• LoopNet
• ROOM8
• Zumper

These are just a few examples of ILS systems that provide virtual tours.

So if you're considering integrating with one or multiple, be sure they are compatible with some virtual tour provider to schedule more virtual tours.

Create a pop-up when users enter your website

It’s hard to ignore pop-ups when entering a website—which makes this strategy perfect for immediately building awareness.

Make sure your tour doesn’t go unseen by leveraging website pop-ups hyperlinked to your virtual tour or to a landing page for scheduling a guided tour.

These can live on your homepage, within your gallery, or in any content related to your virtual property tour—the best part is that they can be used multiple times on a website.

However, don’t exhaust this tool by having it pop up on every webpage. This could irritate viewers, or even desensitize them to their purpose.

Remember to be strategic, and leverage this strategy combined with a few others on this list for the best results.

Play with web design to highlight your virtual tour

Another popular way to strategize placement to receive more guided tour requests is to play with the design of your website's homepage to maximize visibility.

A common way web designers and marketers do this is by adding a virtual tour call to action at the top of the page so that visitors can’t miss it, or even a “360” CTA to direct users as soon as they enter your site.

| Related: 5 Things You Can Do With a Virtual Tour from LCP360

Embed or link to your tour in your website’s chatbot

With the transition to virtual leasing practices over the past few months, an increase in online communication and AI assistants have made a huge impact thanks to the 24/7 customer support they provide.

The amazing benefit of these digital tools is their ability to generate and maintain leads with their many links and web forms.

In recent news, we’ve noticed an increase in multifamily websites actually integrating their virtual tours within chatbots—streamlining the viewing and scheduling process for renters and on-site leasing agents.

In fact, companies such as ACE™, a virtual leasing assistant, takes chatbots and optimizes them for lead generation as well as nurturing leads—a helpful new addition being Panoskin virtual tours.

The idea is to provide 24/7 assistance so that you never miss a lead.

Adding your virtual tour to a chatbot encourages prospects to engage and communicate immediately with your brand, learn quick info and schedule virtual tours instantly.

Take marketing efforts even further with website optimization companies such as PERQ.

LCP360 has recently partnered with PERQ, whose software solutions work to maximize online tools within a website.

By leveraging their resources multifamily marketers can drive apartment tours, easily schedule multiple tour types, and automatically nurture prospects while collecting essential data.

Leverage out of home marketing

The only thing worse than prospects not knowing they can schedule a guided tour, is them not knowing you have a virtual tour at all.

And although the internet is typically the first resource used during a property search, that doesn’t mean it should be the only resource.

Out of home marketing tactics during the ongoing pandemic have actually maintained popularity, becoming a marketing staple for multifamily and commercial spaces

By leveraging signage outside your property, handing out pamphlets, or even renting a billboard stating you have virtual tours available, can increase visibility and awareness on a local level.

OOH marketing is especially beneficial during these uncertain times when consumers may not know if a property is conducting in-person tours or not—if potential prospects are touring outside local areas as opposed to online, this will help bring awareness as well as more eyes to your virtual tour.

Share via direct marketing

Looking for an easy and direct way to let prospects know you have guided tours available to schedule? Consider email marketing.

Even if your contact list may have already viewed your virtual tour, sending a friendly reminder that you’re there and you do offer guided tours will only increase your chances of getting more requests.

The best way to do this is super simple: let renters know you have a virtual tour via email, then provide a CTA to a form for scheduling a tour.

Even if they don’t click on it or inquire further, they now have the resources available to share your virtual tour with others, ultimately increasing the odds of possible scheduling.

Find a virtual tour provider with QR codes

QR codes are huge right now.

Most notably seen in restaurants for added precaution during the ongoing pandemic, these codes allow consumers to hold their mobile phones over using their camera and the code directs them to a provided link.

However, some virtual tour companies - including LCP360 - are utilizing QR codes to seamlessly direct renters to a virtual tour.

These codes are not only easy to use as well as safe, but can be used virtually anywhere. A few common areas include tabletop signs, leasing office desks, or even door decals when a building may be closed.

QR codes are an easy way to get more eyes on your virtual tour, and therefore increase the chances of scheduling more tours.

Virtual tours won’t schedule themselves

What a lot of real estate businesses are missing when they first invest in a virtual tour is leveraging it within their marketing strategy.

Unfortunately, as functional and capable as virtual tours are, they won’t schedule themselves. So strategizing placement, messaging, technical and digital tactics, etc., will be the difference in whether or not renters schedule your guided tour.

Learn more about multifamily solutions.