Why 360 VR Makes Big Sense for Small Businesses

Online marketing trends get more innovative by the day, and the latest buzz in town is around 360 Degree Virtual Reality for Local Businesses! With this unique form of complete video experience, audience engagement is much higher, with viewers watching the video for 44% longer. And that’s not all. Not only are viewers taking longer on the page, but they are buying into the deal too! Studies have found that conversion rates are twice as high as with traditional videos, and click-to-purchase rates are up to 14 times as high. People like the power of being able to interact with the camera and move around without limits, controlling what they can see.

360-degree panoramic images and Google Street View Virtual tours have helped many small businesses to grow their in-store traffic exponentially. Here’s how:

Impact of 360 Views on Local SEO

360 degree VR Impacts your local SEO standing in a meaningful manner. When you implement your 360 tours on Google Street View, local search engines can point to your business very quickly, and this will help customers to locate your business and find you easily.

Most small businesses are not aware of just how much impact local SEO can have on the online visibility of their business. The results of a good SEO strategy often do not show up till a good three months into the campaign, and since the impact is not felt at once, people often believe that they have invested in a venture that is not paying. If you use a good analytics tracking device like Google My Business (GMB), though, you can track your online traffic, and when you do so, you will find that 360 VR adds a lot of indirect value to your local SEO ratings.

How so? Well, a little known fact is that a mapping application like Google Maps drives 44 % of business searches. When your search visitors land on the 360 views of your store online, they will get to see what’s in store for them and will make a beeline for your business!

Gain Local Visibility

To illustrate this, try searching for Real estate agents near me. Google maps show a square with a 360 arrow. If you have a virtual tour integrated with your location, then visitors will get directed to an inside view of your business, one of the best advertisements you could ever have online!

Increase your online bookings with no extra effort

Add a reservation button to your GMB, and your potential customers are going to book a tour with you with just a click. Sounds good?

Add to your Social Presence

Basically, To create a more visible online presence, Google search must be able to find you easily. You can help it along by publishing on Google Street View, which automatically connects to the Google+ business page. Add some pictures and testimonials to your business page, and you have instant advertising!

360 degree YouTube videos can also be posted to your GMB page, and you can optimize this by using the geo-localization tag. Voila! You will find that your brand is the toast of the town, all of a sudden!

Facebook now allows 360-degree pictures and street view tours to be embedded on the business page. Boost your post, and you can extend your global reach, getting valuable high interactions, engagements, and conversions.

Increase positive Customer Interactions and User Experiences

Content marketing is one of the ways businesses increase their online presence. This can take many forms; through a website, onsite and offsite blogs, videos, audio clips, photo images, and so on. You can publicize your content on various social media channels, like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and so on, and increase online visibility. Your content must be engaging, informative, and useful if you want to have an interested audience who keep coming back for more. By adding chatbots to your website, you can increase audience engagement and get a higher page rank on online search engines.

In all these forms of online media, 360-degree pictures are still a novelty for most people, and if you add a 360 VR Video or image, you will get an edge over your competition. Go against the grain, stand out and get noticed. Adding a 360 virtual tour will let your visitors have control over what they are seeing, and they would be more likely to spend more time viewing details of your business.

Increase your Organic Reach

Organic reach is the audience you can get without any paid distribution. This includes those who see your social media posts, follow you on Facebook and Instagram, and visit your website blogs or other online posts. If you are using 360 VR, with just one single photoshoot, and absolutely no other investment, your organic reach is going to go up exponentially and will continue to go up with no extra effort on your part. In other words, you are not required to do daily posting campaigns, email campaigns, or any other form of online marketing that needs additional money or effort.

For instance, if you are choosing to post your video on Facebook, the total potential Facebook viewing audience is a staggering 1.71 billion monthly active users. Imagine the traction your video could garner for your business if even a tiny fraction of them get to see your page!

A case study was undertaken by Montreal 360, a 360VR business in Australia showed that with just one interactive video, they were able to generate a total of 4.9 million views on street view for its client in a short span of 9 months. The reach generated by this simple video is staggering, considering the minuscule cost of implementing it.

As they have calculated, considering the average views their clients make on Google Street View, a single virtual tour would be worth 103$ of Facebook advertisement, month on month, absolutely no other extra effort at all, just one photoshoot. Wouldn’t you say that was worth it?

Connect with Rayvat Rendering Studio at engineering@rayvat.com or call us at +1-(888)-863-4445 today to see how you can make 360 Degree Virtual Tours happen!