One of the reasons why I was so drawn to the 3D VR technology was its ability to be used in a number of industries; not just #realestate but also, #retail, #service, #medicaloffice, #construction, and #insuranceadjusting. With its ability to service all of those industries, I was convinced that I could help business owners with this service. With my blog posts I hope to bolster that conviction, destroy some myths and enhance the way we engage customers, with more updated methodologies and technologies.
“Not poking the bear” is a mindset within a lot of businesses built on sales.
Know when to shut up
If your points are valid you don’t have to over-sell them
Don’t over-engage your customer
Out of sight, out of mind. Don’t spark buyer’s remorse. .
In my years, and across the few industries I’ve worked in, I have seen this mindset deployed as: don’t contact a customer right after they’ve purchased from you, for fear that you may kick-start their buyer’s remorse. Or, give the customer “enough” information on your website, lest you remove their curiosity and then they won’t visit your location. What many don’t realize is that by doing this today, it’s at the expense of what could be powerful potential customer engagement.
What I have seen recently however, is a divergence from this mindset, with many industries adopting a slightly more aggressive customer engagement strategy. I have experienced this “changing of the guard” myself as I’m sure you may have as well, so as successful business owners we must learn how to adapt the newer methodology or risk being left behind.
In this post I want to touch on a concern that was brought up to me recently, by a business owner. His reasoning for never using a #3Dtour on his website before was; people don’t “get” his business unless they see it in person. If as part of your business’s marketing strategy, you focus efforts on driving visitors from your website to your business location, you know that successfully transitioning a website-visit to a customer is a numbers game and if you engage in this marketing strategy, you know that those numbers need to be BIG, and often times, the conversion rates for website views to “brick and mortar” sales, are in the low single digits. So it is important to offer something compelling online, and if you do, they will WANT to visit your brick and mortar location.
Show all of your goods We all already know that before you even prepare to successfully engage a consumer, you must have a provocative product or service, at a reasonable price, or with a compelling offer. So, if you’re doing all of that right, people WILL want to come. “Showing your goods” on your website shouldn’t keep a customer away rather it should secure their decision to visit your location even more! But unless you’re the only person offering your type of product or service, be ready to quickly and easily get compared to your direct competitors. Keep in mind, while back in the day when you went to a store to buy an item you usually ended up buying it there. However, with today’s powerful handheld technology it’s easier than ever for customers to shop and compare, with that in mind one could argue that it makes sense to throw everything you’ve got at your online visitor - while they’re engaging!
So in situation like this, we would recommend adding “Want to see more, right now? Click HERE!” perhaps in the “ABOUT” section of the site. Now, when the customer clicks through, they are offered a “limited access” 3D “Virtual” Tour by completing the pretty basic customer information form. Once they complete the contact form they have access to view your 3D Tour. They can now view your location with a fully immersive walk-thru of your location, just like they were actually there. More importantly however, you now have all of your visitor’s contact information; which is powerful stuff!
Think about this: for each visitor to your site that saw enough information to make an appointment, there are SEVERAL more that WON’T. Deploying your 3D tour as described above will CAPTURE these customers’ contact information, allowing your sales people the opportunity to market DIRECTLY to them. Why go through all of this trouble when you know that your customer really needs to visit your location to in order to “Get it”? While these efforts are also a “numbers game”, the numbers are far greater than those from the simple “wide net” of your website. Contacting customers that have already expressed interest in your business is more effective than your website alone, no matter how slick. Now, if you are willing to engage this customer with a compelling offer on top of that, they will be far more likely to agree to an appointment. Then once they’re there, you can work your magic as you always do!
So, this strategy won’t actually take away from potential brick and mortar site visits, but rather it will help you to generate visits from viewers that may never have made that visit in the first place.
- Happy to Help