How to market a virtual tour service, and also Google Street View questions
Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:24 am
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
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