7 Ways to Get Traction From Your 360-Degree FAM Tour

How To Get Traction on Your VR Videos

When your 360-degree video is ready to launch, you’re excited and full of anticipation for all of the interest and activity that it’s going to generate. You know you’ve got a competitive edge because you’re being innovative, and you understand the power of 360-degree video and Virtual Reality (VR) to make your message stick. Your excitement can easily turn to disappointment, however, if you don’t implement a marketing strategy that will push your video out to the people who are looking for a place just like yours.

Your 360-degree video is a tool in your marketing toolbox. It’s nice by itself, but it’s still just a tool unless you use it to build something. That’s where marketing strategy comes in. Marketing creates opportunities for people to discover and engage with your organization online so they can get to know you and what you have to offer.

A marketing strategy will help you make the best use of your marketing tools by targeting your efforts. Start by getting an understanding of who you want to reach so that you can figure out how best to connect with them. Then create a plan with a mix of marketing tactics so that you can consistently engage with your audience online.

Here are some tactics that you can use to put your 360-Degree FAM Tour to work:

1. Upload to YouTube

If you don’t have your own YouTube channel, this is the time to start one. YouTube is the second largest search engine, second only to Google, and Google is looking for videos to put into search engine results pages. Optimize the title and description of your video with words that people might be searching for. Take advantage of all the places on your YouTube channel to spread your brand and your message from your profile picture, to your “About” text, and to your video descriptions.

2. Embed on Your Website

Once you have your video uploaded to YouTube, you can take the code snippet and embed it on a web page so that your visitors can watch the video without leaving your website. You can also upload it to other video streaming services like Vimeo or Wistia and embed it from there. You might have to pay for an account but the experience for your website visitors is a lot cleaner and it may increase your chances of keeping a prospect on your website if they’re not presented with a bunch of other videos when they get to the end of yours as they are on YouTube.

You can have your video on more than one page. Just have the text surrounding the video provide context for the visitor whether they’re looking for industrial land or a place to visit or relocate their family.

3. Promote with Social Media

Definitely plan to promote your FAM Tour on social media. Depending on your file specs, you may even be able to upload directly to the channel and your video will remain accessible with the other graphics, photos, and videos you’ve uploaded.

The message in your social posts is important. You might at first announce that you’ve launched your video, but the most compelling posts are going to tie an invitation to view the video to a message that talks about how your community is going to meet your prospects’ needs for affordability, quality of life, available land – whatever it is. Think about touching on one key point in each post and keep up a consistent posting schedule.

4. Utilize Social Media Advertising

It may not cost anything to create a Facebook or LinkedIn page for your organization but your reach is limited unless you use social advertising. Will people see your posts if you don’t advertise? Some will. But you can reach an even greater, more targeted audience with social media advertising.

Keep in mind that even without advertising, your social posts are still places where you can publish content about your organization. Prospects will go to your social channels as part of their research and your advocates and ambassadors who follow you will also be able to share your posts. Give social media advertising a try and you’re going to find that it’s actually quite affordable, and a must if you want to use social media to attract new people who have never heard of you before.

5. Share with Local Businesses

Your 360-degree FAM Tour shouldn’t just be a tool for your marketing toolbox, it should be a tool for your local businesses too. In fact, they can use just about all of the tactics listed here to pursue their own goals for recruiting people and new business while promoting your FAM Tour. 

Companies that need to recruit for competitive and hard-to-fill positions can use your video to help candidates get to know your community. If you’re still in the planning stages for your 360-degree video, it can be worth your while to drum up interest from local companies to add their own video to your initiative. This can help to spread the cost and future promotion as well as excitement for the project.

6. Send Email to Your List

If you’re not already communicating with the people you know by email, you should be. The most effective way to get people to subscribe and to read your email is to only send them exactly what they’re interested in. For example, investors are probably not interested in when your swimming pool is open for the season, but they’d like to know that your internet provider just laid fiber to your industrial park. 

Your FAM Tour might not be the main purpose of your email message, but providing a call-to-action that leads to it can take your prospect closer to deciding to plan a visit or pick up the phone and call your economic development office.

7. Offer a Virtual Meeting

Our last tactic, while part of Sales and Marketing, is really designed for outreach and is what all of your other tactics are leading to. That is – getting the meeting.

If your goal is to connect with site selectors and investors, you’ve got to have an outreach strategy, and offering to meet in a virtual environment makes that even easier because it’s not a big investment of time or cost. You can simply ship a set of Virtual Reality goggles to your prospect and with a little facilitation, meet with them in the middle of your 360-degree scenes.

Put Wheels on Your FAM Tour

Whether you do it yourself, or you outsource it, your FAM Tour is going to do its best work for you when you plan to distribute and promote it. These marketing tactics, organized into a plan that you consistently implement, will drive your FAM Tour out into the world to be the magnet your community needs.

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