5 Ways a Virtual Tour Can Shorten Your Senior Living Sales Cycle

From managing communities to preparing for lease-up, senior living providers have a long list of responsibilities. One key area that requires strong attention is increasing occupancy, and ensuring units are filled prior to a community’s grand opening.

Closing pipeline sales quickly can be very rewarding for your sales team. This frees up more time to focus on generating leads, focusing on lease-ups and boosting retention.

Virtual tours, the latest in sales tools for senior housing, offer these kinds of advantages. From enhancing online visibility to closing the time gap for out-of-state prospects, senior living virtual tours can uniquely position communities in front of senior consumers.

1. Virtual tours have a direct impact on SEO

Your website should be your primary sales tool. The more unique content on your website, the more likely seniors and their families will engage and hang around on the site.

Because virtual tours require users to interact with it, having one directly on your website can lead to impactful results for your SEO efforts. Your website visitors will spend more time engaging and clicking on your website.

Why is that so important?

Well, Google’s algorithm is pretty smart. It detects useful content based on engagements and interactions happening on site, and the more users engage with your website, the higher Google will rank your senior living site in search results.

So, that's great - virtual tours can boost Google rankings. How does that impact sales cycle? Increasing visibility online helps prospects discover your community faster and stand out among competition. And while you can embed a community virtual tour on a website, don’t rule out Google virtual tours either. Google virtual tours alone lead to doubled interest in businesses and higher click-throughs to the website.

2. Boost lead nurturing for out-of-state prospects

Typically, prospects who are out of state or unable to easily visit your community will have a much longer sales cycle.

By leveraging a virtual tour of your community, you give those prospects (and their families) the opportunity to tour your grounds, amenities and model units. Not only does this fill a gap in an otherwise challenging situation, it also qualifies your prospects.

Whether it’s a marketing email campaign or sales outreach, sending a virtual tour to your marketing qualified leads helps move along the process by showing you care and offering a unique experience they may not get on competitor websites.

Virtual tours can also help by lowering the stress and demands of scheduling an in-person tour. Seniors and their families can research and explore together whenever they feel comfortable.

3. Give your prospects more confidence in your community

By offering a virtual tour, it shows that your community is transparent and honest about what it offers. Naturally, consumers feel more affinity with a place they visualize than one they simply read or hear about.

Bear in mind that seniors aren’t the only ones making the decision about their senior housing transition. Their children are also likely involved in the process. A virtual tour allows them to explore your community and have full confidence in where their loved ones may be living.

4. Virtual tours make scheduling and applying easier

If you’re considering adding a senior living virtual tour to your sales process, seek out a platform that focuses on conversions. The beauty of a virtual tour is that it’s a pretty powerful conversion engine.

A virtual tour hooks your audience, but you want to make sure you guide that experience to an inquiry, or even a close.

Easy calls to action on your virtual tour will guide prospects to book an in-person tour or even apply for a room on the spot.

5. Spend more time with your prospects

Lastly, virtual tours don’t just have to sit on your website. They can be leveraged in meetings, especially for those out-of-state prospects. Virtual mirroring capabilities allow a sales team to guide prospective residents through the tour on a mobile device or desktop.

Consider what your phone calls sound like with your prospects. What do those conversations sound like? What kinds of questions are they asking? Is it about your dining room? Or perhaps the size of your units? Hosting a virtual meeting offers a unique visual that standard phone calls simply can’t offer, while also allowing you more time with prospects.

Prospective residents are also more likely to ask different questions they may not have asked over the phone, or perhaps open up new conversations about your community.

Allow time to work with you, not against you

Not only does this interactive tool position your community for an easier sale, you're likely to stand out among the rising competition of senior housing developments.

If you're seeking out new ways to shorten your sales cycle, a virtual tour may be the answer. By leveraging this kind of technology, you have more time to focus on generating even more sales and allowing less time for resident drop-off.

To save even more time, click here for more information.