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When Creating a Virtual Tour Is a Bad Idea?
In my last article, I discussed what to consider when considering investing in a virtual tour. I did that to help managers make more rational decisions about this business investment. Today, we will discuss when you should NOT invest in a virtual tour. Why? Well, there are numerous reasons why your company should not invest in a virtual tour from a business standpoint.
So, let’s get started.
Why is creating a virtual tour not a great idea?
It is not easy to decide whether a company should invest in a virtual tour. So, I divided the topic into 5 categories to make it easier to grasp.
These categories are:
1. Market and customers
2. Time management & Cost
3. Unexpected problems
4. Bad Virtual tour creator
5. Marketing consideration
So, now I will go through each of them to help you make a more rational decision.
1. Virtual tour is not suitable for your market or customers
The most important reason why your company should not invest in a virtual tour is that your customers (clients, buyers, employees, partners, visitors, …) will not benefit from a virtual tour.
Do not create a virtual tour if no one will benefit from it. Do not create a virtual tour just because it is cool and interactive. Create a virtual tour only if a virtual tour can solve your or your customers’ problems.
In some markets, innovative technology can be powerful and can even create a comparative advantage for the company. But for other markets such as real estate, it is not a USP (unique selling proposition) anymore, rather a market standard.
A virtual tour is for users to use, so think about whether YOUR customers (potential or regular) will benefit from a virtual tour. And if not, choose an alternative approach with different formats and marketing channels.
PRO TIP: If your company is working with a few repeat clients and you are not looking for more clients. There is no reason to create a virtual tour of the space because your clients have already seen and visited your space in the past.
2. Virtual tours are costly (time and money)
Also, timing is one of the main reasons why getting a virtual tour can be useless. Virtual tour for most businesses is a long-term investment, which means that the company gets benefits for a long period of time.
So, if your company is thinking right now about renovating or leaving the old building and moving to newer. Please do not think about creating a virtual tour. In most cases, you will not get the money’s worth out of it.
PRO TIP: I said that virtual tours are in most cases long-term investment, this of course is not valid for the real estate industry. Where virtual tours are made specifically to sell real estate in a short period of time.
Also creating a virtual tour can be costly, and if your company is in a bad financial situation, we recommend staying out of it and focusing on business core offerings.
PRO TIP: Some virtual tour creators can create self-maintainable virtual tours, which can be really cool and great for new company updates. Nevertheless, when creating these virtual tours, you also need to think about also if it is worth it from the business standpoint because every update takes some time for your employees (time of your employees = company cost).
3. Virtual tour may create unexpected problems
This is one of the topics that no virtual tour creator will tell you about, because they would like to work with you and create a virtual tour for your business … exchange for money of course.
But now you are at a great place, fortunately.
Virtual tours are great at showcasing the space in 360° view, which means that 360° photos can let the user explore every detail of the space. And I mean EVERY detail of the space.
This means that your company can share information about your space that you actually do not want to share.
An example can be revealing sensitive or private information about your company’s layout, procedures, or equipment.
It may create possible security risks (vulnerabilities) such as the layout of the building or camera locations.
PRO TIP: The virtual tour does not need to include every detail of your building. Also, I think it is bad for users too because no one cares what a 30-meter corridor to the hotel rooms looks like, but everyone cares what the rooms look like. Less is sometimes more!
Also, by creating a virtual tour you may create a risk of misrepresentation. Your virtual tour showcases space that actually looks different in reality (it’s renovated, or something has changed over the years). This can damage your brand reputation because visitors will be disappointed when visiting the location in real life.
4. Bad virtual tour creator
Well, hiring a bad virtual tour creator is its own chapter. I can write about it all day. Of course, I’m just kidding, but it’s not that easy to hire someone really good.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong, some aspects you can detect by yourself, and others you can’t even spot. You can for example see that the photo quality is poor, or the colors are not looking great, but you can’t really tell if the virtual tour creator did a good job on the back end of the virtual tour or if it is fully responsive. As you may know, responsive virtual tours are important today when a lot of your customers will be using mobile to interact with the virtual tour.
Moreover, find some creator who use modern technology (currently virtual tours are created with HTML, XML, CSS, JS, and other programming languages). Why? Because if you do not, you will need to redo it in the future which will be more costly.
One of the aspects that you should always look for is trustworthiness and if he/she/agency has proven the skills in past projects.
As I mentioned earlier, there is a lot more to consider and that is why I wrote article 5 important things to consider when choosing a virtual tour creator to help you make more rational decisions.
5. Marketing consideration
Even though I already talked about the market and customers. I would like to emphasize some points here.
Virtual tours should be used by your customers and should help them. Period.
But in some cases, using virtual tours can harm your brand perception. Imagine that you are the marketing manager of a vintage company focusing on heritage and craftsmanship. Creating a virtual tour probably is not a great idea even though it could be a cool and effective way how you can interact with your customers because your whole brand is based on tradition and old technology and that is what virtual tours are really not about. Virtual tours are innovative and interactive marketing and sales tools that are used online (website) or in VR.
So, think about your brand before investing in a virtual tour. Are your brand values and business goals aligned with what virtual tour stands for?
Secondly, in terms of marketing, you should keep in mind that creating a virtual tour will not solve your problems right away. In most cases, it needs time and money which you need to spend on marketing 360° content.
I need to stress this out more … What makes the virtual tour effective is the infrastructure that helps the virtual tour succeed and deliver business results.
So, before investing in a virtual tour, bear in mind that is not just about buying a virtual tour and imbedded on the website. You need to generate traffic and refer it to the website to create leads.
The virtual tour is just one aspect of the sales funnel, not the whole sales funnel.
Virtual tours can be really effective in generating leads, but if no one uses them then it lose its value.
