Our company started out as an IT support company. One of our biggest clients is the local C-21 office. We have a great relationship with these people and have actually become friends with most of them. One day, one of the agents asked us if we knew anything about virtual tours. I think I can honestly say that I had never heard of them, however, I bill myself as the computer guru so I did some research to give my client a good answer. The answer I ended up giving him was “when would you like us to do your first virtual tour?”
In my research I landed (via Google I am sure) on Real Tour Vision site. The quality of the virtual tours knocked me out! Though they were the only virtual tours I had ever seen, I knew that the combination of quick loading, portability, and super high quality were important to me. What Real Tour Vision offers is hands down the best at all of these criteria!
To date, we are coming up on our hundredth virtual tour this month, and it just keeps getting bigger. The virtual tour marketing is a great foot in the door to market our other services. It used to be the other way around, we would go in trying to sell support and web-site services and then sell a virtual tour or two, now we market the tours up front, and mention our other services. We are preparing a marketing campaign into another market, and Virtual tours will be our flagship.
A few weeks after launching our virtual tour division, I received many frantic emails from a couple of our clients. It seems a competing virtual tour company had joined one of the local MLS organizations and had gotten a marketing blurb in the regular Monday newsletter. I shuddered a bit seeing the competition get such a leg up, until I actually clicked on the link to check out their demo tour.
I was on the phone with the broker at C-21 while I clicked on it, and he was following along. While we waited for the “other tour” to launch, I directed him to load one of our first tours. It was a whopping 30 scene tour that we had done the week before. Our tour launched and was into the living room before the “other tour” even launched. When it finally did launch, it was one scene…..ONE SCENE!!!! and they were selling that “tour” for the same price we were selling 6 scene tours for!
I immediately raised our prices. My broker/friend who I think was hoping to negotiate better prices from me because of the newly found “competition” bought 5 more tours before we got off the phone, and he bought them at the prices that I had just raised 50%. He stated. ” I want to by more of your tours now, before you realize that you are still way under priced!”
Sometime, in the last couple months, we stopped hearing from the competition, they actually tried to hire one of my photographers away but she told them she was only interested in doing the high quality tours that our virtual tour software offers.
I don’t worry about the competition anymore. as a matter of fact, I have found that they are wonderful for my marketing strategy. As soon as potential customers see the quality and features of our virtual tours, the competition is soon forgotten.
Kurt Steiner
www.dwalaska.net