Real Estate Virtual Tour Statistics 2023: A Game Change for Your Business
If you want to optimize your sales by adding Real Estate Virtual Tour to your marketing toolbox, congratulations! You have found the right place to make it happen. We are experts at creating customized virtual tour solutions for businesses of all sizes and across various industries. So today, we decided to share some of our experiences regarding virtual tours.
Real Estate Virtual Tour is the superpower that will give your brand the exposure it deserves. But here’s the catch: not everyone knows how to use this superpower. Creating virtual tours for any business involves a series of complex processes. First, you should understand what you want to present, how you want to present it, and what audience you are targeting.
Moreover, there is a lot of misinformation about Real Estate Virtual Tours. So it’s easy to get confused and discouraged. But worry not! We are here to help you understand the prospect and potential of using virtual tours through a data-backed discussion. Without further ado, let’s begin:
Real Estate Virtual Tour Statistics
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
What Is a Virtual Tour of a Real Estate Property?
Virtual tours, 3D tours, or 3D walkthroughs are simulations of a property, usually composed of a sequence of videos, still images, or 360-degree images. Virtual tours are designed to help customers digitally visit the home they intend to purchase. Virtual tours often incorporate various multimedia components such as videos, photos, audio, etc.
A Real Estate Virtual Tour is designed with maximum compatibility to be displayed on all sorts of devices and screen sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and even smartphones. Virtual tours are essentially advanced versions of video tours that allow viewers to explore the property with panoramic views and in great detail.
According to a study about housing trends in 2020, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, real estate virtual tours skyrocketed at an exceptional rate of 750% in the month after the official announcement of national lockdowns in the U.S. But ending the quarantine didn’t impact the significance of this new marketing tool.
Virtual tours are widely used across the country, almost twice as high as the previous year even after the time when COVID stay-home orders went into effect. Why? Another study shows that home listings that included virtual tours enjoyed approximately 90 percent more online exposure than listings without tours.
Moreover, virtual tours have improved brands’ online interactions by 600%, and per-agent calls by 200%. This shows the importance of creating an online environment where buyers can easily search for homes and find all the necessary information they need.
In short, virtual tours are excellent tools for real estate companies to stand out in the competition and increase their chances of making successful sales. Keep in mind that 3D tours are by far the most convenient way for home buyers, especially millennials and multigenerational households to utilize interactive tools and enjoy a hassle-free purchasing experience.
Real Estate Virtual Tour Statistics
Photo by Kindel Media from Pexels
What Do the Latest Real Estate Virtual Tour Statistics Tell Us?
To understand how Real Estate Virtual Tour can enhance your conversions, let’s explore some of the recent statistics:
- Redfin survey of around 2000 home buyers across 32 major real estate markets revealed that 63% of participants take on an offer on a house that they haven’t visited in person.
- According to another study, almost a quarter of homeowners reported that they prefer to work with a real estate agent that includes videos and virtual tours on their websites to market their houses.
- Detailed real estate market research showed that using interactive videos and virtual tours has increased brands’ sales by 20%.
- Google’s survey also showed that most people prefer to use virtual tours to visit a property before seeing it in person. 67% of surveyed participants reported that they prefer real estate listings that include a virtual tour.
Get A Free Marketing Audit
10 Benefits Of Using Virtual Tours In The Real Estate Business
As you can guess, there are many advantages to offering a virtual or 3D tour in your property listing. While adding photos and videos can deliver some of the benefits of a virtual tour, more often than not, people find photos and videos insufficient or misleading.
On the other hand, virtual tours for real estate can provide home buyers with a more accurate feel of how the property looks before attending a showing. So, let’s break down some of the benefits you can expect from offering a virtual tour:
#1 Make Buyers Feel at Home
The first benefit of using a virtual tour to market a home is that it allows prospective leads to visit the property at their own pace and connect with the look and feel of the house on a deeper level. Notice that interactive features, panoramic videos, and 3D tours can cover properties’ entire surroundings, from close-by public transportation networks to amenities, and more.
This is especially a great way to reduce the trouble of scheduling, staging, and staying on-site and offer maximum availability for each property. In other words, by adding a virtual tour to your listing, you are offering a 24/7 customer support service where prospective clients can view their intended property at any time and anywhere in the country.
#2 Leverage Social Media Engagement
It’s no secret that social media has been a prominent player in marketing campaigns. Pretty much every brand and business aspires to establish a strong social media presence and receive more interaction and engagement from its supporting community online. And real estate agencies are no exception.
While there are many different ways to gain social media attention, virtual tours offer an unparalleled opportunity to establish yourself as a leading brand in a niche. Many platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter provide users with different tools to create videos, attract more visitors, and generate more leads.
#3 Generate High-Quality Leads
Perhaps the most important asset available to a real estate agent is high-quality leads. Quality leads will significantly improve the chances of closing a deal which translates into a higher conversion rate. So, it’s not a surprise that every agency tries to reduce the time spent on people who are not qualified to purchase a home.
Offering a real estate virtual tour can make your job much easier in processing and interacting with prospective customers. A well-crafted 3D tour not only filters people who are not interested in purchase but also identifies target audiences with the highest chances of conversion. This way, you can focus your marketing campaign on more effective channels.
#4 Offer Customized Experience
Customers’ experience throughout their home buying process is integral for developing deeper and more personalized connections between realtors and home buyers. While many agents struggle to create such a relationship, you can leverage virtual tours to show off your properties with customized photos, videos, and panoramic tours.
Having a virtual tour on your website enables you to highlight the selling points and key features of each property and help customers find all the information they require about the property, floor plans, pricing, and benefits. This way, not only do prospective leads have a better chance at making informed decisions, but also you’ll gain credibility for offering a tailored experience.
Real Estate Virtual Tour Statistics
Photo by David McBee from Pexels
#5 Use Advanced Targeting Capabilities
Target marketing allows real estate companies to access small groups of individuals and offer them the most desirable listing that meets their needs. Accurate targeting can save you tons of time and money while improving your chances of success. Audience targeting is always based on tools that identify segments that are most likely to respond positively.
And what better tool than virtual tours? Once you collected sufficient information on audience groups with the highest chances of conversion, you can easily customize your virtual tours to target those groups and demographics. Make sure that you highlight key features and benefits of a property that plays a determining role in converting prospective buyers.
#6 Increase ROI
At the end of the day, every marketing effort aims to increase your return on investment which enables you to determine what marketing tactics are working and what areas can be improved. One of the best ways to increase your ROI is to grow your sales and generate more revenue and gradually push your ROI ratio higher.
This is precisely what a Real Estate Virtual Tour does for you. Virtual tours enhance buyers’ experiences, improve your social media engagement rate, and increase your targeting capabilities. All of these benefits will increase the overall return on your marketing investments.
#7 Drive More Traffic to Your Website
People love new things! Especially the younger generation appreciates the use of new technological innovations when they are meant to provide them with a more satisfying experience. Virtual tours not only attract more people to your website but also increase the chance of building brand loyalty and creating repeat users and clients.
Keep in mind that higher user interaction on your website requires well-crafted, diversified content, including text-based content, videos, infographics, photos, and virtual tours. The more users interact with your website, the higher you will rank in search engines’ result pages which will bring even more traffic to your website.
Notice that by adding Real Estate Virtual Tour to your marketing arsenal, you are also solidifying your SEO efforts. When you rank high on SERPs, people can easily find your property listing online and search for their dream homes. This will also reduce the bounce rate on your website because each virtual tour takes at least a minute.
#8 Outshine the Competition
We can all agree that the competition in the real estate industry is quite fierce and standing out as a credible brand takes a lot of time, effort, and strategic planning. One of the best solutions to improve your online visibility and stand out among the crowd is offering virtual tours for each property to keep visitors entertained and increase your website traffic.
Virtual tours have exceptional versatility that can be used to match your brand’s unique communication methods. You can offer tours in different qualities and categories, adjusted to be displayed on every device with the highest possible resolution. You can also set up an alert system so that prospective buyers receive notifications as soon as a new tour is on the website.
Real Estate Virtual Tour Statistics
Photo by Kindel Media from Pexels
#9 Get Quality Backlinks
High-quality backlinks can increase your ranking on search engines and improve visibility in search which brings more leads to your website. When your website receives multiple quality backlinks from relevant and authoritative sources, search engines will identify your website as an authoritative source as well.
Each time a viewer shares one of your virtual tours with friends or colleagues, your website gains a backlink. Over time, multiple backlinks translate into high exposure and help you rank higher on search engine result pages.
#10 Make a Long-Lasting Impression
Last but not least, virtual tours help you make an unforgettable impression on viewers. While it takes only 13 milliseconds for the human brain to process an image, 65 percent of the visual information will last up to 3 days in memory. Not to mention that the interactive nature of 3D tours can further enhance data retention.
Bottom Line
Offering Real Estate Virtual Tour to interested home buyers is a win-win situation. As a real estate agency, you can enjoy a considerable increase in quality leads and establish yourself as a leading brand in a niche. And customers can reap the benefits of virtual tours by saving time and collecting all the information they require to make their purchases.
But you need a well-trained, professional team who can help you get the job done immediately and effectively. That’s exactly what we do at Momentum 360. We offer a broad array of multi-media solutions to optimize your online exposure.
Don’t hesitate any further. Contact us today and enjoy the exceptional quality of our services provided by a team of dedicated professionals.
