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Virtual Tour Photo

Virtual Tours During COVID

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Virtual tours for businesses have been very compelling well before the COVID pandemic came. They simply let users tour your location to get a good feel and then hopefully visit you.

Some of you are open, some of you are not. COVID still brings a challenge. Potential customers can’t just show up in person beforehand, but you can keep your visual process moving forward. 

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Benefits of Local Business Virtual Tours

Visually showcase your social distancing guidelines
You may have plexiglass at your arrival to separate you from customers or social distancing floor stickers. Showcase these in your virtual tours to help ensure safety for your visitors.

Reach more potential customers with less
By letting people remotely tour your location, you can reach more while keeping face-to-face contact low to help limit the spread.

Increase conversions
At the end of the tour, you can direct users to book a reservation or appointment. It can be as easy as placing a simple form on your respective web page.

Virtual Tour Options

  • Google Street View and virtual tours – show in your Google My Business (maps) profile and it’s highly searchable
  • Custom virtual tours – like the Google Street View tours, and with customized features and branding for your business to embed on your site, social media, and other relevant places
  • Matterport – very popular and a definite leader in the real estate industry

One myth: “Having Google Virtual Tours helps your SEO rankings”. Beware of this claim. This can arguably be indirectly true since the more complete your Google My Business profile is, the better your local SEO rankings are in general. A Google virtual tour will help. With that said, virtual tours do not have a direct impact on your SEO rankings.

We hope this all helps you understand virtual tours and the impact it can make.

LocalMN specializes in virtual tours. See our Google and custom virtual tour page for more information.

Happy 2020! Showcase Your Google Listings with 360 Photos and Virtual Tours

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First of all, Happy New Year! I hope you had a fun and safe New Year, and all the best wishes for you in this new decade. 

In 2010, 360 photos and virtual tours really didn’t exist. In fact, Google My Business (GMB) listings didn’t launch until June, 2014. The Rochester Post-Bulletin even recognized this in a piece written in August, 2017.

Here are a few known findings from Google:

  • When searching for businesses, consumers use mapping products 44% of the time
  • Listings with photos and a virtual tour are twice as likely to generate interest
  • On average, 41% of these place searches result in an on-site visit

A brief overview of Google 360 Street View Trusted Pro Photographers:



Have you used this as a consumer? If so, you may have gotten great visuals of inside a location, implied directions, or compelling photos enticing you to visit their door. Maybe a show at First Avenue?

You can easily bring your location to life, and this is just one part of Google My Business that can help.

Here’s to you! Happy 2020, and all the best in using Google tools to help benefit your business or organization.

Localmn Interactive offers Google Street View Photography services with plenty of knowledge, experience, and local search strategies.