YouTube Can Drive Website Traffic

by Kris Cone | Sep 18, 2014 | Real Estate Info, Technology, Tour Updates, What's New

Here is a great new article from RealtorMag about a study conducted by the WAV Group and Victor Lund that talks about how the portal sites like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com are not driving traffic back to broker’s websites….and that YouTube is one of the top referring sites, thanks to Google.  See the full post from the WAV Group here.  He further states there should be a driving force to get virtual tours on every listing.

Luckily, as a FloorPlanOnline customer, we generate a free YouTube video for each listing, and we can post it either to our YouTube channel or yours.  Just set it up under your Linking Profile.  The video is all automatic, based on your settings under the Edit Photo/Video tab.  You can even add text or video clips.  Some of the other guys charge you $25, and it is a manual process.  Plus, we are working on a cool new video update this winter…so stay tuned for that update.  A preview of what it might look like is in this post.

This study highlights the importance of a new tool we have been working on for the last month, called our Call2Action Photo.  The goal of the Call2Action Photo is to get more users to the virtual tour, where lead capture and engagement can happen.  The photo is a composite image of the floor plan, a video screen shot and several other images, with the virtual tour link prominently displayed and text that says Get Exclusive Content.  So now, leverage the traffic on Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Craigslist or other websites  and create an incentive for people to get the exclusive content, like floor plans, on the virtual tour!

When you think about it, the virtual tour is the ONLY piece of content that can live on all of these websites (as well as your competitor sites) and drive traffic back to the listing.  If your tour features floor plans, the #2 requested item from buyers, and if you do not upload the floor plans as images with other photos (we think this is very important not to do), then the only place people will be able to see the floorplans is via the tour. This creates an opportunity for the potential buyer to find your tour, and you!

You get More Traffic, More Leads and More Results

But wait…it gets better!  Introducing a new option for corporate accounts where we can actually rebrand our virtual tour link with your domain name. So, Zillow can actually drive traffic to the tour which is now considered your website!  This means more visitors, more visits and more time on site, thanks to Zillow’s traffic!   This custom tour rebranding can be easily done with a sub domain, like tours.kw.com/xxxxxx, or with a little work on the IT side, like kw.com/tours/xxxxxx  where xxxxxx is our virtual tour ID.  This feature is exclusive to corporate account customers.  Please use the contact from below to discuss adding this feature to your account/sub accounts.

The bottom line, you need to provide something different than the same photos and text a user will find on Zillow, Realtor.com or your company website.  The FloorPlanOnline virtual tour does that, with the clickable floor plans, the RoomPlanner tool, flyer and other marketing tools we provide exclusive to the listing.  Buyers want to see floor plans….the virtual tour is the bait that will let you set the hook!  Plus, we can embed it on your website and further keep the user engaged.