Leverage Virtual Marketing to Win Real Estate Listings and Home Buyers

By Kayla O’BrienRISMEDIA, Feb. 13, 2008-At a time when home buyers and sellers are taking to the Web, an agent’s online toolkit has become essential in competing in the real estate realm. Fully aware of consumer expectations, Intero Real Estate has equipped its agents with a valuable set of tools that enables them to leverage professional virtual marketing, capturing both print and online syndication to win listings and buyers.

“I had an agent using TourFactory and when she brought the statistics to me and showed me the information she was getting on the backend-that was the kicker,” explains Derek Overbey, vice president of marketing for Intero. “[TourFactory] provides the kind of information our agents really need for promoting their listings. People want to know who’s seeing the listing, how we’re syndicating listings-so this was in tune with our marketing initiatives.”
After already having virtual tour relationships with other vendors, Overbey and Intero felt TourFactory was the right company to help open its network and give agents further options.

“A lot of agents were already using TourFactory and were very, very happy with their tour layout. Then, when they got into syndication, agents could get more exposure to their listings,” says Overbey.

TourFactory’s virtual tours provide the ability for visitors to view photos and get information about a listing. Because consumers are becoming more wired (and not to mention, wireless) by the day, virtual tours have proven to be convenient add-ons for Realtors to better serve their clients. Buyers can access information and photos of the prospective home; sellers can gain feedback about their home’s virtual tour; and agents are the key to providing both parties with those details. And, Overbey also says that the power of virtual tours starts from the listing meeting.

“I think if agents can show a tour they’ve done for another listing, it stands apart from other tours that are out there,” says Overbey.

“It’s really utilizing the power of the Internet in a much broader, inclusive way to make the agent’s life a little easier,” he says. “The agent, in real time, can see exactly how many people have come to the listing-what photos they look at the most-and it can even help rearrange photos if one’s being viewed more, etc. In times like this, if there’s a site that’s overpriced, they can tell their client that it’s been viewed ‘x’ amount of times over the past month, and maybe we should consider a reduction.”

According to Overbey, in addition to the convenient training and online support, when it comes to implementing a TourFactory virtual tour, the ordering process is also simple. Agents can go to the site and pick a photographer or the agent can choose to take the photographs themselves. Once a virtual tour has been created, agents can also order CDs of the tour to use as an offline marketing tool. These CDs interlink to the Web so prospects can find out more about the property-including school data and demographics, all tied to the listing.

“With other companies, we had issues where maybe a property was out of reach for the photographer or the quality was sometimes sub par,” says Overbey. “I can say we haven’t had any photo issues with TourFactory.”
“The agents can do as little or as much as they want, depending on cost structure,” adds Overbey. “For our top agents, it’s great because those guys are too busy-and they want to have the end product. It fits every level.”

What’s more, other companies charge on a per-tour basis; agents with a lot of volume find it costly to maintain as they obtain more listings. So with TourFactory’s packages, ranging from two active virtual tours to unlimited virtual tours, it’s something for everyone, especially with days on market extending.

“Agents can have a lot of listings and not have them selling right now. And to have that same marketing support for every listing without having to pay any more money per month is important to agents,” says Overbey.

Moving forward, with TourFactory’s recent launch of video tours in December, Intero plans to take the next step, utilizing this technology as well.

“Video is going to be the total evolution of the virtual tour,” says Overbey. “I think these guys have found a great way to integrate both stills and video into the tour. It’s great to have a relationship with companies with great tools like this because I look like the hero.”

For more information, visit www.tourfactory.com.