Putting Your Listings to Work

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By Maria Patterson

RISMEDIA, Nov. 6, 2008-In a crowded field where players come and go, Pompano Beach, Florida-based VisualTour has demonstrated tremendous staying power in the virtual tour business. Twelve years and 100,000 agent clients later, VisualTour stands as a leading virtual tour choice for many real estate professionals looking for an integrated, turnkey solution. The key to their success? Helping agents and brokers succeed by maximizing the return on their virtual tour investment.

There from the Start

In its early days in 1991, the company now known as VisualTour was developing software for construction companies when the digital camera first hit the market. The potential for real estate use was obvious.

“For agents to be able to use digital photos when marketing a property was huge. A few years later, virtual tours became a big industry and we knew we’d need to have a lot of staying power,” says J.L. Winn, vice president of marketing and business development for VisualTour. “So we made a tremendous commitment to product development.”

It is this commitment to innovation that allows VisualTour to change with the times, a must for any company in the virtual tour business, a business rife with new concepts, companies and technologies hitting the market seemingly every day. Today, VisualTour creates software and Internet backend services that enable some 100,000 real estate professionals to create their own virtual tours. But VisualTour has taken things a big step further.

“The technology part is not so hard,” explains Winn. “That’s why you’re seeing so many new entrants into the virtual tour business. A stronger competitive advantage we offer is in making sure real estate agents and brokers understand how powerful this tool is for marketing themselves and their properties. The innovation is in making the virtual tour an all-in-one medium that showcases the property as completely and uniquely as possible.”

“Virtual tours aren’t just cool pictures or video on the Internet,” adds Winn. “It is essential marketing at a compelling price point. It’s exactly what agents need today to reduce expenses and gain leads and exposure with today’s consumer.”

VisualTour believes it has been able to stay innovative over the years by working closely with its customers. “It’s all about knowing your audience,” says VisualTour Vice President of Sales Raul DuQue.

“VisualTour has a very strong, fundamental understanding of who our customers are,” says DuQue. “A lot of players come into the market who can write software, but they don’t understand who they’re writing it for. Very early on, VisualTour understood the agent mentality and how they operate. Back in 1996, we made a strong commitment to customer service; we went even further in 2002 and repositioned VisualTour as not just a product used to advertise homes but a product for real estate professionals to market themselves on the Internet.”

This commitment to its customers and to innovation is central to VisualTour’s success. “We have 50 percent of the market share of all virtual tour companies in terms of viewership,” says DuQue. “Our philosophy is that we succeed by helping others succeed. With our history of delivering value and results, it’s very easy for an agent to look at our track record and choose us over any other virtual tour product.”

Falling Market, Rising Need

While today’s market reality has certainly led to widespread cost cutting in the real estate community, VisualTour actually reports a slight spike in usage. The cause is somewhat obvious-with more listing inventory on the market, the need to get your listings noticed over others is paramount.

“Any time you have a slow down or bubble or the interest rate goes up, historically it has helped us grow as agents look for ways to differentiate themselves as the market tightens,” DuQue explains. “Agents are definitely looking for ways to increase market share.”

Winn agrees. “In thousands of brokerages each year, we educate agents to evolve and welcome market changes,” he offers. “This makes it easier for them to embrace new technologies and the ways in which they can use the Internet as a marketing tool. This will help them become more successful in their own niche, whether that’s first-time home buyers, seniors or the multicultural market.”

VisualTour also touts the cost-effectiveness of its programs-a requisite for most agents in today’s economy. What’s more, whenever improvements are made to the VisualTour product, customers receive the upgrades for free.

Engaging Consumers

No truly integrated marketing approach is complete, of course, without factoring in the consumer. That’s why VisualTour has rounded out its marketing plan by reaching out directly to the consumer on the agent’s behalf. Most recently, in fact, VisualTour rolled out a series of 30-second TV advertisements airing on HGTV, Fine Living and DIY networks featuring their highbrow spokesperson “Kingsley Philmore.” Kingsley is a character who humorously leads consumers through some common mistakes they make when marketing homes on their own and then directs them to the VisualTour website to seek professional Realtors for guidance.

Connecting with consumers at this level is critical, says Winn, as they become increasingly savvy in terms of their expectations from real estate agents.

“Sellers, for the first time, are demanding services like virtual tours from their agents,” explains Winn. “Consumers who bought a home a few years ago had the benefit of using virtual tours to select their home. Now, when they step into the role of selling their home, they expect their agent to offer that essential service. We are trying to educate consumers that they need the service of real estate professionals. Searching on VisualTour.com, those agents featured there are the ones who are using the product actively. Consumers can view the tours from our website and then contact the agent who can help the consumer achieve their needs more professionally.”

Advanced expectations from consumers also necessitate that agents focus on quality when creating their virtual tours. “Use your creative selling skills,” advises Winn. “It’s easy to create a high-quality VisualTour that the consumer will find appealing. Take photos of every room unless the room doesn’t belong in a marketing piece. Include moving panoramas and add a voice narration. Practice on your own home. We have several training tools built into the software and we offer live phone training.”

While these steps may sound daunting to some, VisualTour has gone to great lengths to make sure that it is anything but. “The key to it all has been to design software exclusively for the real estate trade,” says DuQue. “We made it very simple to use so agents don’t have to go through a steep learning curve.”

By displaying its clients’ virtual tours through VisualTour.com, Winn has created an integrated approach to gain as much exposure as possible for his clients’ listings. “Our customers can create unlimited tours with our product for a low monthly fee,” he explains. “It’s all about being proactive with Internet marketing. Even agents who have no listings can use VisualTour actively to create community or buyer tours.”

According to Winn, VisualTour has the largest distribution syndication for virtual tours, making them available on many franchise brand websites, Realtor.com, Yahoo!, Zillow, Trulia, Google and FrontDoor.com to name a few. “This widespread distribution makes it very easy and compelling for a consumer to contact an agent. You can send a text to an agent’s phone when you’re interested in a house you’ve seen in a VisualTour.”

VisualTour takes things a step further by providing all of its clients with a professional listing presentation CD packet that can be utilized when meeting with homeowners. The multimedia presentation includes NAR stats regarding the increasing numbers of consumers shopping for homes on the Internet, and the strong impact of virtual tours.

“The CD presentation reinforces important features and facts that an agent would want to share with a potential home seller,” says DuQue. “This tool makes the agent look extremely professional and savvy; it shows that the agent has a very clear understanding of how homes are bought and sold.”

What’s more, says DuQue, many consumers have come to expect such richer levels of information regarding an agent’s marketing plan for their home. “Sellers are looking for that much more these days,” adds DuQue. “They want to know where the agent is going to advertise their home on the Internet for maximum exposure to today’s buyers.”

Continuing to Be Innovative

As marketing and technology evolve almost daily, Winn and DuQue know that VisualTour must as well.

At press time, for example, video distribution of its virtual tours via YouTube was expected to launch soon. VisualTour will convert their clients’ virtual tours to a video format that could be used in a variety of places. “While video isn’t new, it hasn’t been widely used in real estate marketing,” says Winn. “We’re making this option easy and cost effective for additional advertising exposure.”

“As a company, VisualTour is strongly committed to the industry it serves,” says DuQue. “We are constantly upgrading our product to make sure it provides the value and competitive advantage agents need in an evolving market.”

For more information, please visit www.visualtour.com.

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