Many brokers require their agents to do virtual tours on all their listings. Some agents do them because they believe they should, although they may not really understand how to use them.

One virtual tour service provider says he can see a lot of room for improvement.

"Not only am I a Realtor, but I also own a virtual tour company in Charleston, SC.," explains J. Warren Sloane. "We currently do more tours than any other company in our area. One thing that always perplexes me is that agents order the tours and then do nothing with them. We review real estate magazines (advertising mags) in our area, and we see agents using our pictures but they never mention their virtual tour. With consumers looking for Internet information, it amazes me that agents do not "cross advertise."

Sloane's point is that advertising rarely stands alone, but works synergistically with other marketing efforts. "Just because you are advertising in a newspaper or magazine, it does not mean you should not provide links that would ultimately drive traffic to your site," he reasons.

His company not only takes the pictures for the tours, but he also helps his agent clients with a little marketing. "Our company is the only one in Charleston that does email marketing to agents from agents," says Sloane. "Every single one of our tours go to every single agent. As a Realtor I have always felt that advertising to agents was often just as important if not more important that marketing to buyers, but that doesn't mean agents should stop there."

Savvy agents know how to use virtual tours to full advantage, making them into a tool that distinguishes their marketing from their competitors.

They understand that a real estate website is a lot like a blank page. It has to be filled with content that is interesting and relevant to homebuyers and sellers. They know the website has to be marketed, too. People won't go on the Internet and automatically find a website or its virtual tours without some advertising effort on the agent's part. That's why they put their websites on their business cards, and virtual tour sign riders on their yard signs.

That's cross-marketing at its best.

Think about the importance of a business card. It wouldn't do any good to keep them boxed. Cards only bring business back in when they are given out by the agent to as many people as possible.

Yet agents spend thousands every day on websites that few consumers see. They don't market the website, so they conclude that websites don't work. Therefore, virtual tours won't work either.

Virtual tours can fail as business generators if they aren't marketed properly. If they aren't put on websites and passed around in emails, they won't be seen by consumers. But if agents make an active effort to market them, there's a lot they can do with a virtual tour.

If a virtual tour is a tool, and the purpose of the tool is to help advertise the listing, then it stands to reason that broadcasting the virtual tour is the best way to use it.

Some of the most effective ways to use virtual tours are as:

• email alerts - to inform prospects and other Realtors of new listings

• email signature lines where correspondents can sign off with "See my new listing!"

• content for the agent's website(s) - "See my listings"

• content for the agent's newsletter, or market conditions reports
• content for listing presentations that illustrate what the agent can do to market the home online and to show where the home will be marketed online: Realtor.com, franchise websites, personal websites, newspaper and other media websites, and more

• content to help convince sellers of the importance of staging, decluttering, remodeling, lighting, and more

• a competitive edge - that all the agent's listings get a virtual tour regardless of the home's price

• sign riders to invite drive-by consumers to the agent's website to learn more

• an accounting tool for the agent to see if a certain advertising site is pulling in prospects or not

• a reporting tool to inform the seller to help determine if the listing is priced properly in the current market

It's a matter of making it a habit to use virtual tours as a means to an end. Virtual tours, like any advertising tool that you use to distinguish your marketing from other agents, have to be cross-marketed in many places.

That means the Realtor should be cross-marketing all their tools in many places.