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How to Use VR/AR to Unlock your Brand’s Potential

What comes to your mind when you think of a Virtual Reality Experience? In truth, there is no single answer — A Virtual Reality Experience (or a 360° Experience) can be anything from a Virtual Tour of a house to a self-guided 3D Walk-through of a manufacturing unit.

During Covid, most businesses got in touch with the concept of Virtual Reality (and Augmented Reality) while also learning the fact that it could be used in areas other than Gaming and Entertainment.

For retail, VR/AR has become an alternative to 2D brochures and images, while in manufacturing, it has replaced the traditional ways of prototyping and collaboration. And it’s no longer a nice-to-have feature on your business website. It’s much of a necessity for retaining customers online.

If you’re looking for creating your own Virtual & Augmented Reality experiences for your brand, maybe you should ask yourself — What makes a good VR/AR experience?

Here are some VR/AR content ideas that can help your marketing strategy generate greater revenue.

Use Virtual Reality for Immersive Storytelling

Storytelling is by far the most important part of your brand — whether online or offline. It defines your brand vision. It shows your audiences how your product differs from your competitors. And it enforces customer loyalty — something which is especially rare in the virtual age.

But using ordinary images on an ordinary website is just not enough when you’re dying for everyone’s attention on social media.

Creating a Virtual Tour for your business can do the work for you. People love seeing the behind-the-scenes of your company — the people, the tech, the offices, and the locations. The only key here is to keep your audience at the center of your Virtual Tour. For real estate agents, this could be a profound way of showing what their properties look like. For property developers, it could be an immersive walk-through of their project — whether old or new. Architects and Interior designers can use it to showcase their in-construction buildings.

An excellent example of this is Casa Rivera — Gujarat’s Tallest Residential Building With All River View Flats. The project was still under construction when this 360° virtual tour was made. However, you can see the realism VR brought to their design. Rendered and developed using kalaa.melzo.com (a DIY virtual tour software), the virtual tour was created stitching 3D renders and 360° photographs (with aerial views captured using a drone camera).

Take a look at the balcony. The scenery that overviews from here was photographed but the balcony itself wasn’t built at the time.

That’s the magic of virtual reality. It can help you market properties even before they’re built.

For schools and colleges, a customized virtual experience will help you present your school’s unique facilities, whether it’s an architectural feature or a landmark on campus that is proof of your college’s history. Moreover, it allows users to explore your campuses and educational facilities as if they’re physically there in real-time, giving them a unique insight into your environments first hand.

For tourism agencies, a 360º Virtual Walk-through helps you bring out the beauty of your hotels & the city itself. Take a look this virtual tour of Courtyard Marriott, Surat: https://mlz.gg/cym-talkbot

Their signature poolside Indian barbeque restaurant, Charcoal has an interactive live kitchen that serves delectable grills of superior quality meat & seafood in harmony with their vegetarian counterparts.

Use 3D Virtual Events to reach a bigger audience.

According to statistics, the event industry lost approximately $30 Billion last year alone, and it seems like it’ll need years to get on its feet again. And that’s where virtual events came into picture.

Since the pandemic, virtual events have been the life-saving alternative for all. When meetings were getting delayed, expos were getting cancelled, and business summits, concerts, workshops, events — everything had to be second guessed, going virtual felt like the only option to survive.

Between 2019 to 2021, we’ve helped organizations like Credai, SalesMax, Auro University, Pinclick, Three Sixty Events (UAE), Being Exporter, Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) India and many more host large scale multinational events and expos.

And they weren’t just live broadcasts or presentations. They were fun, interactive, and able to support the company’s business goals.

It also managed to replicate the experience of a physical event, online — everything from the venue, big screens, sponsor booths, expo stalls, auditoriums, to food courts.

Never intended to replace an in-person event though, I mean what are the chances? Well, consider these results — 48,389 Visitors with 60 Exhibitors in a total of 8 days at Credai Surat Virtual Property Exhibition 2021.

Or how about, 2,44,250 visitors and 160 exhibitors at Credai MCHI’s Virtual Property Expo. Seems pretty powerful if you ask me.

Leverage the Power of AR for a Better Customer Experience.

Gone are the days when 3D brochures were just about looking fancy. After Covid, many retail businesses had to permanently close their factory outlets and stores. Brands were forced to rethink their online strategies and selling perspectives.

That’s where AR proved to be the game changer. Companies who were already on this bandwagon saw a 40% higher conversion rate with AR. If you don’t understand how, let me break it down to you.

The reason why Live Augmented Reality Try-Ons work is that they’re realistic and captivating — visually and literally. Offering Virtual Try-ons for Jewelry, Shoes, Clothes, and other accessories, or AR try-ons for retail (furniture, decor items, bicycles & automobiles, etc.) can help you dig into the untapped revenue from your online engagement.

With such an AR experience, you can also add lead generation forms to collect data, run marketing campaigns, and use 3D designs to increase the potential sale of a specific product. Check out noor.melzo.com and udyog.melzo.com to see how that works.

Create Virtual & Augmented Reality Content to Enhance Your Marketing Strategy with Melzo.

If you’re someone who wants to explore VR/AR for your business, we can help. melzo.com is made up of business-minded tech people and tech-minded business people who can help you integrate such 360° experiences for your business — from VR tours, virtual events & expos, to augmented reality try-ons, 3D model visualization and more.

#virtualreality #virtualtours #virtual real estate #virtualevents #virtualexhibition #augmented reality #businessstrategy #marketingtips

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5 Pro Tips for Crafting a Profitable Virtual Tour

The first impression customers get of your company will always be visual. And even though you can help them better understand your brand through brochures and videos, I can guarantee the impact of a superior quality 360° virtual tour is nowhere close to that of ordinary images.

Almost anyone who has ever heard of Virtual Tours knows they’re most popular in the Real Estate Business. People think the concept of virtual property visits and virtual open house tours came into picture just so that real estate agencies can finally make use of their staged photos and 3D renders for their listings in more ways than one.

That’s not unusual. Just unfortunate. Because a virtual tour is way more than just a 360° view of an apartment.

It’s Immersion, Interaction, and Indulgence all in a single experience.

But here’s the thing right. Since its introduction in 1994, Virtual Tours have come a long way.

In today’s age, all businesses - old or new, are using virtual tours to establish their brand.

Here’s the breakdown.

1. Property Developers

Property developers were primarily the first to adopt virtual tours. From architects and  interior designers to real estate brokers, this industry relies on 3D Virtual Tours to attract, market, and sell - Online or Offline. Offering a real-time virtual visit of your properties to clients works wonders, specially in the post covid era, since one does not have to leave their house in order to close deals.

And you can see the results first hand. According to a Profile of Home Staging report by the National Association of Realtors, 77% of real estate agents say staging a virtual tour helps buyers associate a property with their future home.

2. Business Owners

For business owners, virtual tours are a great way to offer real-life training to employees before they start on the field. Whether it’s manufacturing, retail, or other industries, a fully interactive 3D tour is useful for giving the new recruits an immersive insight into the company’s past and present, as well as the workflow especially while working from home.

By digitally simulating the production processes, it’s possible to identify dangerous maneuvers in advance. Automotive giant Ford, for example, has already reduced employees’ injuries by 70 percent thanks to VR.

3. Tourism agencies

For Tourism agencies, it’s pretty straightforward. What better way is there to promote a destination than to take your potential clients to the place virtually?

A 360° virtual tour does just that. It offers a virtual preview of a trip that audiences just can’t ignore. Since it’s the ultimate try before you buy experience for customers, they’re more likely to book a future vacation to a location.

4. Educational Institutes

When it comes to virtual learning, nothing gets more real than Virtual Walkthroughs that bring subjects to life and lets students ‘be there and be them’ in real-time.

Immersive Virtual Tours are a great way to help learn subjects like geography, history, and science.

5. Hotels & Restaurants

Rather than reading advertising descriptions and 2D images, virtual tours offer customers a chance to experience things for themselves before deciding which places they should visit. With an Interactive 360° Walkthrough of a suite, a particular room, or the hotel as a whole, you can increase your online bookings.

Now that you know the possibilities of a virtual tour, the question is - How do you create virtual tours that can deliver a killer impact?

Well, Here’s some pro tips on creating the best 360° Virtual Tour:

1. Use 3D renders & 360° panoramas that put your brand in the best light, literally.

One thing’s obvious - if you want to recreate tours that can eliminate the need to visit your property physically, you would want to use visuals that justify the real-life scenario.

Your renders have to be superior-quality if you want to convert your clients. Here are a few examples of remarkable 3D renders that will inspire you for your next project:

Here the design happens to set a darker tone of lighting for the dining area, so we used reflective surfaces and furniture touches to reflect the light within the room and give an illuminating effect to compliment the design.

Opposite to the first example, this one had a different approach. This render incorporated different textures for various objects that compliment the pastel feels of the design.

You can also use the same render for day and night views or with white and yellow light settings like this.

You should adjust bump, transparency, ambient color, diffuse color, specular color, glossiness, self-illumination, opacity, reflection and more - depending on your design. Since every material requires different adjustment, every imported and adjusted texture contributes to how realistic the rendering can be.

This one uses Corona renderer to provide natural lighting effects to the design.

2. Put your theme in the center.

For a truly customized experience, use your company theme and branding guidelines to craft your virtual tour. You can add logos, brochures, and your brand vision and mission to support your business goals.

3. One size does not fit all.

Make sure you use equirectangular images with dimensions of 4000x8000 or 3000x6000 for creating a smooth experience. Or putting it this way, use images with an aspect ratio of 2:1 (that is, the width must be exactly twice the height).

Another key point is to remember this - make sure your panoramas are less than 25 Mb in size. Larger than that and your virtual tour may take forever to upload.

4. Don’t overdo it.

The devil’s in the details. Editing a virtual tour with a lot of information, gifs, videos, images, etc. can also ruin the experience. So you want to make sure that your 3D tour is informative while also having immersive visuals, high-quality media, captivating descriptions, and even guided navigation elements that can keep your viewers engaged.

5. When adding images or videos, make sure they’re Goldilock Potential.

While embedding images and videos, adjust the depth according to the angle of your renders/panoramas.

This is especially important when you want to experience the tour in VR mode, using a VR headset. Since you’re in a virtual space, real-time, you want to make sure all images and videos are in ‘perspective’.

Do it too much, and important parts of your content will get cropped out. Too little, and your images will look stretched and pixelated. You need to have adjustments with Goldilocks potential, something that’s just right.

And that’s pretty much it. But, before we leave, the biggest pro-tip shall be this - Instead of outsourcing, use a DIY Virtual Tour Software to Create, Edit and Share your virtual tour so you don’t need to be dependent on anyone for customizing and designing it your way.

And just your luck, melzo.com has a free tool to help you do just that! kalaa.melzo.com lets you create a fully interactive 360° virtual tour in minutes, use it for free to create your own virtual tour on the go. You can also use udyog.melzo.com to visualize and collaborate on 3D models of your designs to embed it in your virtual tours.

Also check out noor.melzo.com for Jewellery Manufacturers, Wholesalers, retailers to create and offer AR Try-ons and udyog.melzo.com for 3D Model Collaboration in AR, VR and Hologram and finally mela.melzo.com for hosting all kinds of Virtual/Online events.

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This blog was originally published on melzo.com

#virtualreality #virtual real estate #virtualtours #augmented reality #real estate #technology #vrvr #360 video