Extreme Marketing Makeover | New RTV Employees

This month RTV is very pleased to welcome Jill Sill onto the RTV Marketing team. Jill will be in charge of creating our Inner Circle marketing pieces on a monthly basis as well as writing our 'done for you' newsletters. Jill will be using her skills as a prior teacher and her passion for graphic arts to further RTV's mission. After graduating from Hope College, Jill spent 5 years in Homer, Alaska teaching high School to at risk youth and running the Carl E. Wynn Nature Center.

Look forward to exciting new marketing pieces each month...Yes I said EACH MONTH! And best of all your 'done for you' newsletter will now be delivered to you in a timely fashion. Remember, if you would like to have a custom marketing piece made and are an Inner Circle member, simply fill out our suggestion box and we will add your unique marketing piece to our list.

New Marketing LIVE Chat

You have asked and we have listened! RTV has now setup live marketing support for you to access from TMS. For a limited time our live marketing support will be available for both Inner Circle Members and non Inner Circle Members. RTV is happy to have partnered with team Frugal Marketing U to bring you this premium service.

You can now log into your TMS and click on the Live Marketing Support icon (just like the sales support one on our homepage) Click the button to engage in the live chat. You will even be able to contact a live person over the phone depending on your needs. Yes, you certainly heard us correctly! We are actually letting you talk with members of our marketing team this time around. WHOOT WHOOT!!!

Frugal Marketing U is very familiar with the virtual tour business and has over 8 years of expertise in building a virtual tour company producing over 200 virtual tours a month, search engine optimization, email campaigns, blogging, agent and business to business presentations, web site marketing, cold calling, flyer marketing and yes...even belly to belly sales.

No matter what your budget, no matter how much time you have to spend in a day, they will have a solution tailored to your unique situation. A special thanks to all of you out there in RTV land for your continued support and urging us to make some very necessary changes with our marketing program. Without your support and comments to us this unique partnership and changes would have never happened.

New RTV Employees

In June the Tour Track team welcomed Brandi Neumann. Brandi has been a great asset to our team so far and we are so excited to have her!

Brandi graduated from Hope College in Holland, Mi. After that she moved to Chicago where she spent 4 years working in the restaurant business. After having her daughter, Ella, she stayed home full time to enjoy motherhood. During this time, she developed and created her small business, My Hip Chick, selling hair accessories for young girls. She now maintains her website, and will be working full-time for RTV as Jacque's right-hand assistant with Tour Track. She is thrilled to be honing her skills as a photo editor, and keeping Tour Track orders processed and delivered on time.

Good Luck Out There!
RTV, INC
http://www.realtourvision.com
Virtual Tour Software

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Social Ignition System Now Live

Are you ready to completely dominate the search engines? Would you like to be the #1 ranking virtual tour company or real estate site in your market? If you answered yes to either of those questions then you are ready for the all NEW RTV SOCIAL IGNITION SYSTEM! We have been very busy testing this system out over the past twelve weeks with BlueLaVaMedia and we are now officially ready to release it to any Full Service or In House provider of RTV technology!

Over the last year while Jim Blue has been in and out of several hundred homes here in Northern Michigan, I have been busy working on something truly unique, that is so powerful, and yet incredibly easy to learn. In fact, every time I show someone what I am about to show you they always wonder why they have not been doing it all along.

I must admit that I used to plug my ears anytime someone mentioned Digg, Delicious, Furl, Facebook, Technorati, Backflip, or Twitter to me. But that was before I realized the sheer potential for literally ANYONE...in ANY business...anywhere in the World to maximize their online exposure. So yes, this does mean YOU!

Like you, I used to hear these new buzz phrases and ignore them.

I used to see little symbols like popping up all over the web and, yes, I simply looked the other way. Do you remember when email was the same way? Back when you could still run your business without a website? Times are quickly changing and once again you need to do the same.

Don't worry because once you learn a few of the basics this will be just as easy for you to do as it is to send an email. I promise! If you would like to find out how you can start to leverage the power of social networking and bookmarking I highly encourage you log into your virtual tour manager RIGHT NOW and sign up per the instructions of our July Newsletter. The course is a 12 week course that you will be able to take from the comfort of your home via the web.

The only thing that our program will require of you is a bit of your time and willingness to make some small changes in the way your conduct business online.

Are you ready for Social Ignition?

Sign up now by logging into your virtual tour management system and find the instructions in our latest E-Newsletter! Once you sign up for our free social networking, blogging, SEO, and back link building course you will receive one email every week for the next 12 weeks. This FREE course is open to all RTV dealers!

Why pay for training like this when RTV gives it to your for FREE

If you're an Inner Circle member you can log into our marketing center and download ALL 12 weeks right away and won't have to wait for them. Why would you want all 12 weeks at once? Because you can do just what Jim and Jason over at BlueLaVaMedia did and that's build an opt in email list incredibly fast! Simply let your current prospects and customers know that you now offer a free course that will teach them how to better use social media sites, build up back links to their site, and teach them the basics of blogging. This is working so well that the Traverse Area Association of Realtors has even asked team BlueLaVa to speak in August to a group of agents on the basics of the course.

Not using aweber yet? Well sign up now at http://www.aweber.com and you can drop our ready to go course in and setup a form on your site! This is a tested and very easy weekly course jam packed with SEO tips, social networking tips, and blogging tips. What a great way to be more than just a virtual tour provider or just an average real estate professional in your local market.

Either way know this: You will NEVER have to pay for this material because we have it all right here for you for FREE! To sign up now join the RTV network or if you are an existing provider of our technology simply login and read our latest newsletter for detailed instructions.

Watch this video below and see Social Ignition first hand:



Thanks and good luck out there!
RTV Marketing
http://www.realtourvision.com
Property Marketing That Works!

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Goodbye to Google Rank

The days of Googling your keywords to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy are coming to an end. According to Bruce Clay of PubCon, there are big changes in ranking. In the name of Top Shelp Organic SEO, Google is tuning into the specific behaviors of individual users to serve up more customized results.

What this means to the end-user is better results and less spam.

What does this mean to SEO professionals?

Well, for the good ones it means more business. For those that have been concentrating on ranking without any reference to traffic, bounce rates and conversions it means a serious reality check.

At the end of the day, this is a change for the better. More individualized search results means higher conversion rates for companies that have a well built website. This does not mean that SEO is no longer important; it actually makes it more important! Tracking your marketing efforts will definitely require more diligence.

Q: What should you do?

A: Nothing that you should not have already been doing.

The most important part of a website is the ends result; attracting more leads and increasing business. To get there you have to attract website visitors, keep them interested in your website long enough to stay past the first page and finally get them to convert. By convert, I mean to get them to perform a specific action like sign up for a newsletter or request additional information. Conversions vary by website. A conversion for you may be a request for information about one of your listings while a conversion for amazon.com could be the sale of a bestselling novel.

I, for one, think this is a great lead by Google. It forces website owners and SEO professionals to take a closer look of what traffic is actually DOING when it gets to your website. It puts the emphasis on website content, navigation and functionality.

Sending people to your website and getting XXXXX visitors is one thing, conversion rates are a completely different (and more important) aspect. I mean, you can send all the traffic (paid or otherwise) in the world to a dilapidated home, but if they never get out of the car and go inside... it's not going to sell.

It's time to get your website to do what it's supposed to: SELL!

Go Google!

RTV Marketing
http://www.realtourvision.com/image

RTV offers full service national virtual tours

866-947-8687 Order a virtual tour today!

_____

My comments:

First off, I would like to say that this is a blog that my marketing department for http://www.realtourvision.com released at the end of last year. If you watch Bruce’s entire video he states that we will see these changes begin to take hold in the first six months of 2009 so this was a perfect time to push this out there again. This is indeed old news but it is happening right now I can assure you that. For the last ten years I have been actively working side by side with my SEO team to make sure both RTV and our national network of virtual tour photographers websites rank well.

To see this change firsthand, you can run a test on your own. It is quite simple to perform. For the next week google your business or real estate website using what I call you “Geo Key-Words” such as ‘Traverse City Real Estate’ or ‘Traverse City Virtual Tours’. If you continually run this search, and click on your site (not necessarily on the PPC ads you might be running) you will see that your results begin to change after a few days or so.

Your site will begin rising to the top of the SERPS. Is your site ranking better? The answer is yes and no. Yes, your site will be ranking better on YOUR computer and yours alone. You will quickly see that a clearing of your private data, cookies and temp files instantly returns your search to your actual google positioning. I try to clear out my temp files at least every day so I can run clean searches and view actual results. You should make habit of doing this too if you take an interest in your sites true google positioning.

At the end of the day, the people who don’t clear out their private data often, will certainly have unnatural search results. What can you do? Do what you have been doing all along and run a light PPC ad campaign, build strong back links to your site (this brings the spiders and the google juice), make sure that the architecture of your site is laid out properly, optimize EACH page of your site for a new keyword, and drive traffic and people to your site by blogging. Finally you should run tools on your site for fine tuning such as http://www.websitegrader.com.

Blog often on sites that give back link power. Active rain no loger does this unless you purchase a rain maker account. Take advantage of using social bookmarking sites. Big site linking to smaller site is good. Install the google toolbar if you don't already have it.

Google juice is now split by both traffic and spiders so you want BOTH coming to your site. The key with traffic is to get them to stay on your site and that is where the term bounce rate comes in. Your bounce rate increases when people come to your site and are not satisfied by their search results so the simply hit the back button. That is a bounce.

If you’re not already running google analytics on your site DO THIS NOW! This will show you your bounce rate and you can start working on it from there. The lower the number the better. My local RTV dealership for the Traverse City Market has a 50% bounce rate which I am pretty happy with. It does not sound good that 50% of my visitors are leaving but a lot of that comes from the thousands of back links that I have established out there. See what your bounce rate is and try to lower it by using some of Bruce’s subtle suggestions.

For example, at http://www.bluelavamedia.com we push nearly all of our virtual tour listings onto craigslist. I also include a small ad on this craigslist posting that goes to a special page on my site. This page educates the home shopper on the value of using online property marketing tools that work such as interactive virtual tours, single property websites, top notch photography and so on. You can’t get to this page unless you come in directly from one of these craigslist ads that I have posted. Here is a link to one of my pages off of craigslist:

http://www.bluelavamedia.com/traverse-virtual-tours.html

You can see that I have video on this page. I use the video to keep people on the page longer and get them to dive into my site more thus reducing bounce rate. Make sense? Finally, YES, content is still king but also you must make sure that the content is relevant to your website. Do you need to have videos all over your site? I don’t think, so but it does not hurt to have a few here and there. Video testimonials are great and so are power point presentations. You can turn all of your power points into video very easily using Tech Smith’s software found here:

http://www.camtasia.com

Finally, at RTV we offer free photography, blogging, social networking, and social bookmarking training courses for both real estate professionals and full service virtual tour providers who use our virtual tour system. Check it out and we would love to talk to you more about your property marketing program. Thanks everyone!

Jason LaVanture

Vice President / Founder

RTV, INC

http://www.realtourvision.com

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Pimp My Tour | SOLD

While Jim and I are swamped here at work this summer, we still take some time out once in awhile to think of really cool things that we can do to PIMP our virtual tours. The latest really cool thing is to continually make the best use of the agent virtual tour gallery and showcase SOLD properties as well as current listings. Over the last two years Jim and I have not been deleting virtual tours unless specifically requested by our customers. This happens every once in awhile, but for the most part all of our customers LOVE…yes LOVE showcasing SOLD properties in their virtual tour gallery.

Let’s also not forget that RTV virtual tours outrank any other virtual tour on the market due in part to our new SpiderLink™ technology. Simply put, the more tours that we have out there ranking organically in the SERPS the better that is for BlueLaVaMedia and the agent that sold the property.

To further highlight sold properties in the virtual tour galleries, Jim and I are making use of the “AFFILIATE” feature that is built into RTV virtual tours. The affiliate field allows you to select many advertisers to display on your virtual tour, only in this case we will be using a SOLD button. Like so:

If you would like to use this on your RTV tours simply save the above image to your hard drive and upload as an affiliate. It's really that simple! Judy Levin a Traverse City real estate agent uses our virtual tour gallery on her home page here: http://www.JudyLevin.com and here is a sample tour with our new SOLD Affiliate in place:

http://rtvpix.com/RE-5279-E7HUY5-01

Don't forget that when you save a virtual tour it will automatically push that tour to the TOP of the virtual tour gallery. This happens because as pricing and tour changes occur it will be important for those virtual tours to bounce back to the top of the list.

Have fun pimping your tours!

Team BlueLaVaMedia
Traverse City Virtual Tours
http://www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order a virtual tour - 877-941-TOUR (8687)

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Hot Springs Village TRUE Virtual Tours

Challenging Designs Inc, a Hot Springs Village Virtual Tour Company is up for ANY Challenge!

Residential and Commercial Real Estate - a virtual tour is not just a slide show and it is not just a few panoramas thrown together. At Challenging Designs Inc., we go beyond the mundane and offer true virtual tours which include multiple panorama views as well as still photos, flyers, descriptions, links, information and a way to contact the Realtor to request additional information. Additional options available are also CDI Living Photos(TM), personalized website, personalized highlight sheet master, virtual tours can be added to a business card CD's and much more. Challenging Designs also offers graphic design and web design as well to show off your property.

Business and Commercial - virtual tours are a great way for the public to see your business from their home. JD Powers has found that over 80% of consumers begin their search on the internet. Showing your facilities off makes a longer "memory" and increases your chances that they will chose to visit your business over someone who just has a phone number and address. It can create a personal connection before they even visit.

Insurance Documentation Services - Our "Vital Records Album(TM)" is great to have around in case of theft or disaster in your home or business. We take individual photographs of your valuables, then a virtual tour of the room where they are housed. We can assist you or do it all and take a written inventory log as we go. Then all the photos and the scanned inventory list is put on a CD or DVD, and you get the original disk as well as the written inventory list. We can also scan other important documents to be added to the disc. We recommend you store these in a fireproof box, or in your safe deposit box. Call us when you update your art collection, or want to update your "Vital Records Album.

Challenging Designs Inc. is your Hot Springs Village full-service design firm, from Virtual Tours, Photography, Graphic Design and Web Design. We take your Challenge and Manage It!
Designs for any Challenge!

Donna Haagenson
Challenging Designs Inc.
Hot Springs Village Virtual Tours
www.ChallengingDesigns.com

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Calgary Virtual Tours on RTV

Dear Barry,

What is your take on RTV and the current virtual tour market?

Sincerely,

Jim



Dear Jim,

There is definitely a need for RTV services. I held a photo seminar at a real estate company last week to show REALTORS that listings presented on MLS have bad photos and, in my city of Calgary, Alberta, there are few multi-media presentations and lots of terrible photos. (I would bet it's the same where you live).

We went live on the Internet to find some examples at random and went through a few with some suggestions on how to improve them. I'm not worried that REALTORS will learn something about photography, but they will regard me as a "expert". Of course, I told them about my company and RTV and got three bookings from the seminar.

I can't stress enough that you have to get your face in front of REALTORS with emphasis on service. To be right up front, Jim, when REALTORS take a beating in the market, you will too, especially if you don't have an alternative plan. RTV has that alternative with Choice Hotels and their national photography service tour track system, so when the market is down in real estate, you can be doing something else, like motels, hotels, resorts, restaurants, etc. I have done six senior citizen homes this spring at rates about five times a real estate listing.

Is the virtual tour business a good business? Absolutely. I have direct contact with Jason LaVanture, the vice-president and founder of RTV for counseling and advice. So would you. The management and new marketing department at RTV is very accessible.

As far as money is concerned, there is no limit. As I mentioned above, seniors home provided five times the revenue of a real estate listing and with baby boomers reaching 65 in a couple of years, the demographics are creating lots of competition in that market.

I can't say enough about RTV, their assistance, virtual tour product, webinars, dealer network and more.

My advice to you: Go for it!

All the best,
Barry Blick
SPINNERMAX, INC. Real Estate Photography
Tel: (403) 850-0801 Fax: (403) 398-1428
Calgary Virtual Tours

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Big Changes in Tallahassee

Tally Tours, a full service RTV dealer and provider of Tallahassee Virtual Tours, has made some major improvements and upgrades over the past month. We have a brand new office located at 308 McDaniel St, a new photographer Amy, and a new office assistant David. Our main phone number will remain the same, 850-491-3909 and will ring directly to David to set up appointments, answer questions, and provide support.

Before we continue with our great news, we want to take this opportunity to thank our loyal customers that had appointments during this transition period and stuck with us as we upgraded.

Until recently, Tally Tours has been a "one man show." A single person did the photography and office work. Keeping up with the workload had become increasingly difficult if not impossible at times for a single person. Our photographer can now focus on what she does best, taking great photos, while our office assistant David will do all of the computer work, scheduling and customer support.

Our valuable customers will soon begin to see major improvements all across the board. We have retrained and retooled to have a more efficient work flow that will provide even better quality end products than ever before!

New Service Packages
When we were operating as a "one man show", a lot of time and effort went into a great product at as low of a cost as possible. With the new employees and office space, we needed to create new packages and prices that keep the business going at this level without sacrificing quality and customer service.

After surveying some of our customers, Tally Tours has come up with four new pricing levels for our residential virtual tour customers (previously there were only three). We’ve also created new marketing services to help our customers beyond just the virtual tour at a new lower cost. We are sure that the majority of our customers will agree with the survey group that the business upgrades warrant these much needed price points.

We would love to hear everyone's input and comments! Good luck out there!

Myles Lasco

Tally Tours Inc
Tallahassee Virtual Tours
www.TallyTours.com
Order a Virtual Tour (850) 491-3909

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