How to market a virtual tour service, and also Google Street View questions

Q&A about the latest versions
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mikeb
Posts: 55
Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 12:58 pm
Location: Melbourne, Florida USA

I have a question that I have not really seen discussed on these forums previously, but I am not sure where else to ask my question(s)… Up to this point I have used Pano2VR and created virtual tours for either my own personal enjoyment or as volunteer work for various organizations. For example, here is a virtual tour of a cathedral I created some time ago (requires Flash…and now retired since the cathedral was renovated last year): http://peoriacathedral.allaround360.com ... glish.html

Now I am in a situation where I would like to try to sell this service as a business, along with various other types of photography. For example, I am also attempting to peddle my services as a real estate photographer. The problem is that, for the idea of creating 360 virtual tours for businesses, churches, schools, hospitals, hotels, etc., I have no idea how to approach marketing. For real estate I came across videos made by successful real estate photographers who recommend stopping by all of the area real estate agency offices and striking up conversations with selling agents and passing out postcards with pictures of interiors I have taken along with my contact information. So, that may work for that type of photography…
However, I am probably not going to target Realtors for the virtual tour business, but rather, all of those other groups I mentioned above, and maybe others. So, for example, if I wanted to try to sell my services to a hotel, what is the best way to go about this? Go there in person? And If so, ask for whom? Or, for a hospital, whom would I try to contact, and how should I contact them? Also, is there a particular type of ‘marketing piece’ I should create for these various groups, or maybe different types of marketing pieces? For example, in the case of the real estate agents my primary ‘marketing piece’ is the postcard I hand out to them when I visit their offices.

Bottom line: I would really love to sell virtual tours as a business, or a large part of a business, and I am not sure where to go to get direction on how to market this. Any information anyone could provide would be appreciated!! And, I would love to hear the stories of how you got started…what worked and did not work.

Also, I did communicate with Hopki on this, and he mentioned I might want to consider becoming a Google Trusted Photographer, which sounded like a pretty good idea, although I would hope to create virtual tours apart from Google as well. It looks like I would first have to upload 50 360 panos to Google Street View. So, for example, can I just go around my local area and randomy shoot individual panos in various public places? Or, must I shoot them in such a way that they are really close by one another and can be linked together for Google Street View purposes? And, can one become ‘trusted’ within a matter of a few weeks by cranking out several 360 panos for them pretty quickly? And, if these images have to be linked together, is that something I would be responsible to do using something like the latest version of Pano2VR with the new Google Earth output? And once one becomes trusted, does Google really provide a lot of leads to make it all worthwhile? If anyone knows anything more about all of this and could share, that would be wonderful.

Thanks for your time!
Regards,
Mikeb
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360Texas
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Hmmm I have not read any Google VR work marketing articles. Of course I have not been looking either.

I suspect you have a VR business plan in place. You have completed your local competition internet search for going fair rate for market pricing.
I trust you already setup your business website to display sample of your work. You have your account for state sales and use tax collection. Have business accounts with YouTube, Facebook and other media. Your work products should works properly across smartphones, tablets and desktops that use a variety of current and not so current browsers.

Your products should be HTML5 or newer design. Flash and older languages should be avoided. I did read the other day that Adobe is teaming up with Microsoft. I did notice on my last computer update that Win10 did update our Flash module. So Flash is not entirely dead.

Your future clients will probably want for their websites: Short 1-2 minute 360 Movies, 360 panoramas suitable for use on YouTube, Facebook and other media.

Suggest you market your products to medium to large business. Your contacts should be with people that control the purse string and can make financial company decisions. That means property managers. Avoid folks that do not control the company money.

Your tours should have an active life span of say 5 years. Hotels only renovate 5 to 10 years. So repeat hotel business would be would be a 5 year life cycle.

Sources companies:
Advertising and marketing companies. They probably have many client accounts that you would not directly interface with daily.
Chain Hotel property managers. They are at the corporate level and manage many hotels and have advertising budgets.
Art and Webpage developers. They too have many clients.

Real estate folks that are marketing a property $500,000 to $1m. Property that has an suitable advertising budget and make decisions about using flat images OR interactive imaging that engage ->their clients to make a sale.
AVOID the one off agent that only sells homes. They have a small newspaper budget and ALWAYS seems be excited about your work, but wants your product tomorrow and will not pay you until the property is actually sold. My experience is that they want $35 each single pano. For you too many homes, short development production time and costs probably will exceed income revenue. AND your product useful time is a short 30 days or until the property is sold.

Shopping Mall management companies. They use panoramas for attracting new mall stores. They will send imaging of the mall interior showing mall floor space to prospective clients. They sent a flash drive with a mall tour to their clients saving the client flight and onsite travel expenses.

Hospital tours are not for future patients. They are for showing prospective Doctors and Nursing staff where they would work after they were hired. We working with a Dallas advertising agency whose client was a Hospital Property Management company. They had 4 hospitals that needed to hire doctors and nurses. 3 Hospital's are in the DFW metroplex area. 1 Hospital was in California. But my client - the Ad agency was my client so sales tax % was local.

Apartment condominium complexes. The owners display new owners where they would be living without having to fly/drive for a site visit.

Storage/ warehouse building tours. Gives the potential owner or renter the floor space and facilities.

YOUR tours are a "Preview" of your clients product being sold to a buyer. It allows people or companies to see your clients product. SO your work is classified as an ADDED VALUE (read an indirect overhead expense) as your imaging is not directly being sold to the buyer. Imaging is a cost of doing business.

So what do you take imaging of on behalf of your client. You need to understand what your client wants their buyers to see and understand. We always take a company rep with us... they show us where to setup and what is most important for them in the image. Say, their point of interest is hotel fountain in the lobby. Its up to you then to select best vantage point, lighting and camera elevation.

A real paying project. Client needs and agrees to 5 panoramas.
Written purchase order (PO) for services type contract. PO should include product type, quantity, unit cost (build in: direct cost, indirect cost /overhead and profit), total project price. And add on the applicable state sales tax % for the company location. Sales tax value varies between cities. Should be able to locate tax charts online.
The PO should state the shipping method like FTP, handcarry, Fedex and USPS overnight. Final payment will be made concurrently with written transfer of copyright OR a limited use transfer like a 1 year license usage fee. Always state 'who owns the final project images and be sure to mention that the 'work in progress' +original camera images are for processing only and not for sale.

Should offer a unit price for desired extra panoramas say the 6, 7th etc images at an enticing unit price. Got to a site took 5 and client asked for 2 more as long as I was already on site. So I extended the unit price offer by modifying in writing the PO (got them to initial off on the scope work to now read 7 final panoramas). The modified unit price was same less some variable indirect expense. [probably not car costs] Car (gas, maintenance, insurance costs can be accounted for in your Federal Tax /Company income. One year I could write off 53 cents a mile. From an accounting aspect double recovery of transportation expenses is not allowable. 1 time through project cost proposal price and 2nd time through tax.
Retakes at clients request were treated as same as just an additional panorama. Retakes due to my error were free.

We required 50% project price up front non refundable fee before starting work.
Require a start and finish date. Establish a need by date for the company web page developer.

In the past we have taken a 10 panorama image group. Actually they need only 5 (+2 at client request). Processed them and posted them on OUR website a 30 day demo page for the clients selection and approval (written approval). The client gets company members agreement that only 7 of the 10 will be approved for use on their website.

Be sure to email them when you are substantially complete, which means all image are posted to the 30 day demo page and are administratively waiting for them to to approve the 7 of the 10. After you receive the written approval then moving the panoramas to a zip and post the zip to your website hard drive and creating a download link your client then can get busy incorporating your work into their webpage. We also have a 30 minute conversation with the web page folks to explain how the tour works, how to setup the project on their server. Then when they are ready do a test drive to make sure all your links, popups, videos work properly with several popular web browsers. Do not want to give them the project and then it will not work properly.

Alternate technique might be to zip them onto a flash drive. (note to self, include the cost of the zip drive and Fedex overnight expense into image unit price)

Major point to make: Don't sell your self short by selling your products on the cheap. Like the home realtor projects, you will exhaust your self creating their work and have little money to show for it. Setup a high quality demo page on your website. See if you can migrate the content to social media. Check your competitions we site for a pricing page. You will be surprised that great looking website is really operated by only 1 or 2 people. LOLLL 1 website developer and 1 photographer.

I can say I have been there, done that and even have my own company shirt complete with company logo to prove it.

Questions? certainly. We use Skype contact iam360texas . You can find us online at http://360Texas.com We are available Monday through Friday from 8am to 4pm Central Texas Time (UTC -6).

Sorry about the long winded conversation. But there really is a lot of information to know about the business side.

I see you are located in Melbourne Florida. We might have spoken in the past.

Dave
Dave
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mikeb
Posts: 55
Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 12:58 pm
Location: Melbourne, Florida USA

Thank you for all the very useful information Dave! So, with which groups do you find you have the most luck peddling virtual tours? Advertising agencies? How do you approach your prospective customers exactly, and apart from a website, what other marketing materials do you use in the process?

Yes, I think you and I have chatted on this forum a few times before. Until recently I lived in central Illinois.

Thanks again!

Regards,
Mike B.
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360Texas
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I had our website designed with samples of our work.

Local DFW Advertising agencies ! They had several clients that needed our panorama products.
They liked our work and then called us on the phone and asked if I would be interested in working with them.

Hospital management company 5 hospitals (1 California hospital). Looking for a technique for hiring Doctors and Nursing staff.
Referral to another ad agency who paid us to take a Demo panorama project for a land developer in Austin.
Referral to a Dallas photographer who subcontracted a portion of his work to us because he didn't have time or inclination to learn Pano work.
Shopping mall property management company who needed panorama work of their mall as a sales tool to solicit new businesses mall space.
Dallas Photographer who could take the pano image set but could not figure out how to make a tour type project.
British Virgin Islands Photographer had some property panorama images but needed stitching and Tour help.

For a year or two we belonged to large local Camera Club. We were guest speaker one evening. We spoke about how to take a multi image ( 3 and 4) and publish a panorama using Pano2vr. It was a rather glossed over the real details by talking generalities. The Club was associated with the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. Seasonally the club would go to the gardens to take static images for which they would share with the Gardens web master. Yes, I spoke with their project manager about a panorama series for the business side of the gardens web site. They have a small auditorium and several 50 people capacity business rooms for rental. Took panoramas of the major business/ garden features.

Found a Cancun Travel Agency website that looked like they needed help in marketing their 4 or 5 hotels. Found web manager email address so sent them an introduction email asking if we could help them. They took care of our flight and hotel expenses. Work was done over 2 years as a couple of their hotels were under storm damage repairs.

1 local web site developer for a condominium/ apartment complex. Needed apartments type (1,2,3 bedroom) panoramas + Pool and play grounds.
1 local web site developer had 4 or 5 hotel/ Motels needing panoramas; 1 hotel chain owner in Santa Fe NM need panoramas of hotel.
Did a joint photographer VR tour for University of Central Florida in Orlando.

Coached 3 or 4 (out of state and competitive area) what gear to buy, technique for taking pano image sets and creating Pano2vr tours.

And the list goes on. But thats how we got started.

Earned enough to pay off all of our camera equipment + several software upgrades.

With each these projects I gained copyright authorization for 1 or 2 samples to post to our commercial website.
Dave
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