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Can a Virtual Tour Actually Drive Enrollment?
When you hear the words virtual tour, what comes to mind?
For many school leaders, it is probably a professionally produced video, a collection of campus photos, a digital viewbook, or perhaps a 360-degree experience that allows prospective families to look around classrooms and other areas of the campus.
All of those can be valuable marketing tools. But recently, I have been thinking about a different question: What if a virtual tour could do more than simply show prospective families your campus? What if it could actually help you identify prospective families, generate leads, and move those families further into your enrollment process?
That was the focus of a recent webinar I hosted with Rob Carroll, Co-Founder and CEO of CampusReel. Rob and I first connected when we were both presenting at the Enrollment Management Association’s virtual recruitment conference, and I became intrigued by the way he thinks about virtual tours.
I’m always looking for new strategies and tools that can make a measurable difference in a school’s enrollment and marketing efforts. I’m not interested in technology simply because it is new or impressive. I want to know whether it can help a school generate more prospective families, improve conversion, strengthen the enrollment experience, or ultimately enroll more students.
As I learned more about Rob’s approach, I realized that he wasn’t really talking about virtual tours in the way I had traditionally thought about them. He was talking about using a virtual tour as part of a school’s enrollment funnel.
That distinction is important.
What Should a Virtual Tour Actually Accomplish?
During our webinar, Rob described an effective virtual-tour strategy with three words: Engage. Capture. Act.
First, the experience needs to be compelling enough that a prospective family actually wants to explore it. Second, it should provide an opportunity to turn some of those anonymous visitors into identifiable prospective families. Finally, the information gathered through that engagement should help the admissions team take the next step with the family.
Rob summarized the larger challenge this way:
“Traffic is only half the battle.”
I think this is an important point for schools to consider because we spend a lot of time talking about generating website traffic. Schools invest in digital advertising, social media, search, directories, content, and other strategies designed to get prospective families to their websites.
Generating traffic certainly matters, particularly for schools that need more families entering the top of their enrollment funnel. But getting someone to your website is only the beginning. If thousands of people visit your site and almost all of them leave without identifying themselves or taking another step, you still have an enrollment challenge.
The question isn’t simply, “How do we get more people to our website?”
We also need to ask, “What happens once they get there?”
Why Aren’t Traditional Virtual Tours Doing More Enrollment Work?
One of the most interesting parts of my conversation with Rob was looking at the different ways schools currently provide virtual experiences.
Some schools have beautiful digital viewbooks. Others have invested in professionally produced videos and placed them on YouTube. Some offer collections of photos, while others have created basic 360-degree tours that allow families to look around different areas of the campus.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these approaches. In fact, many schools have invested considerable time and money creating excellent content.
The problem is that the school often knows very little about what happens after someone engages with it.
Rob showed an example during the webinar of a school with a campus video that had received more than 1,300 views. At first glance, that sounds like a good result. But then he raised a much more important enrollment question: Who were those 1,300 people?
Were they prospective parents? Current families? Faculty members? Alumni? People who happened to discover the video through YouTube?
More importantly, did any of those viewers inquire, schedule a visit, apply, or enroll?
Rob referred to numbers like these as “naked view counts.” You have a number, but you don’t necessarily know what that number accomplished for enrollment.
Schools should apply the same scrutiny to all their marketing efforts.
A video received 5,000 views. Great. What happened next?
A social media post reached 20,000 people. Great. What happened next?
Your website traffic increased by 30 percent. That’s encouraging, but what happened next?
Ultimately, our marketing needs to help move prospective families toward enrollment.
Can a Virtual Tour Actually Generate Leads?
This is where my thinking about virtual tours began to change.
A family may be interested enough in your school to explore your campus virtually, but not yet ready to complete a traditional inquiry form. That creates an opportunity to offer valuable content in exchange for a small amount of information.
In marketing, we often refer to this as a lead magnet. You provide something the prospective family values, and they provide enough information for you to begin a relationship with them.
The key is not to ask for too much too soon.
I made this point during the webinar because I see schools make this mistake frequently. If someone simply wants to access a valuable piece of content, don’t make them complete a 24-field inquiry form first. Asking for a name and email address may be enough to begin the relationship.
Rob shared that CampusReel sees a significant percentage of users voluntarily identify themselves while engaging with virtual tours. Once that happens, the tour is no longer simply content that someone viewed. It has helped the school identify a prospective family.
And that creates an entirely different opportunity for admissions.
Why Does Engaging Families Earlier Matter?
This may be the most important part of the conversation.
Prospective parents today have access to an extraordinary amount of information before they ever contact your school. They can explore your website, look at your social media, watch videos, read reviews, compare schools, and increasingly use AI tools to research their options.
Much of that activity happens anonymously.
During the webinar, Rob shared that families may visit a school’s website numerous times before they are finally ready to complete a traditional inquiry form. His point was that families can spend a considerable amount of time forming opinions and narrowing their choices before the admissions team even knows they exist.
Think about the implications.
By the time a parent completes your inquiry form, they may have already decided quite a bit about your school. They may also have spent weeks or months comparing you with several competitors.
What if you could begin that relationship earlier?
That is why I think schools should look beyond the traditional inquiry form when thinking about lead generation. There should be opportunities throughout your website for prospective families to raise their hands in small ways.
A virtual tour can be one of those opportunities. So can a tuition guide, admissions checklist, parent guide, downloadable viewbook, webinar, or other valuable content.
The goal is to give families a reason to identify themselves before they are ready to make a major commitment.
Once they do, your admissions team has an opportunity to begin building the relationship.
Don’t Bury Your Best Content
Another point from the webinar that caught my attention had less to do with the virtual tour itself and more to do with where schools put it.
Imagine spending thousands of dollars creating an excellent virtual tour and then placing it on one page of your website that very few prospective families ever visit.
Unfortunately, that happens.
Rob showed examples of tours buried several clicks into a website or far down an admissions page. He noted that a very small percentage of website visitors may ever discover a virtual tour when it is treated as a destination rather than integrated throughout the enrollment experience.
This raises a broader marketing question for schools: Are we making prospective families hunt for our best content?
If your virtual tour is valuable, use it throughout the enrollment journey.
Place it prominently on your website and admissions pages. Include it in inquiry follow-up emails. Put it in admissions staff email signatures. Share portions of it through social media. Use QR codes at admission events and school fairs. Send it to families after an open house so they can continue exploring the school at home.
For international families or families relocating to your community, the virtual experience may be even more important because visiting campus immediately may not be possible.
The principle extends beyond virtual tours: If you have content that helps prospective families understand and appreciate your school, don’t hide it.
Put it where families will actually encounter it.
What Happens After a Family Takes the Tour?
This is where the enrollment strategy becomes particularly interesting.
Imagine that a prospective parent spends 30 minutes exploring your virtual tour. They look at the lower school classrooms, athletics facilities, arts program, and several other areas of campus.
Would that information be useful to your admissions team?
Absolutely.
Rather than making a generic follow-up call, the admissions professional now has context for the conversation. If the family spent considerable time exploring athletics, arts, or a particular academic program, that information can help shape the next interaction.
Rob described this kind of engagement information as giving admissions teams more insight into what prospective families actually care about.
Of course, information is only useful if your team can act on it. That’s why integration with your CRM or admissions system matters. You don’t want another platform requiring your admissions team to download spreadsheets, transfer information manually, and create additional work.
The goal should be to capture the prospective family’s interest and move that information into the enrollment process so your team can respond appropriately.
How Should Schools Measure Whether a Virtual Tour Is Working?
This may be my biggest takeaway from the conversation with Rob.
Stop at neither views nor clicks.
The measurement should ultimately look something like this:
Tour Views → Leads/Inquiries → Campus Visits → Applications → Enrollments
CampusReel’s own customer data provides an interesting illustration. During our webinar, Rob shared that 26.5 percent of virtual-tour leads apply and approximately 15 percent enroll. He also shared that virtual-tour leads are substantially more likely to apply than leads who have not taken a tour. These are CampusReel customer results rather than universal benchmarks, but they demonstrate why connecting virtual-tour activity to enrollment outcomes matters.
Rob also shared examples of schools that experienced significant increases in inquiries after implementing this approach, including Stamford American International School and Northfield Mount Hermon.
Those results are interesting, but the bigger principle applies regardless of which virtual-tour solution your school uses.
Your marketing dashboard shouldn’t end with impressions, views, likes, or website visits.
Those numbers tell you something, but they don’t tell you enough.
The questions I want schools asking are: How many prospective families did this generate? How many visited? How many applied? How many enrolled?
That is how we begin connecting marketing investment to enrollment results.
What Caught My Attention About CampusReel
I want to be clear that schools don’t necessarily need to purchase a particular product to begin applying these principles.
In fact, Rob said during our conversation:
“Take these principles, take these best practices, see if you can apply them internally.”
I appreciated that perspective.
At the same time, after learning more about CampusReel and seeing the platform in action, I believe they have developed a compelling solution for schools that want their virtual tour to do more enrollment work.
What caught my attention wasn’t simply the quality of the virtual-tour experience. It was the thinking behind it.
CampusReel is designed to help schools engage prospective families, turn anonymous visitors into identifiable leads, understand what those families are interested in, and connect that information with the school’s enrollment process.
That’s why I invited Rob to share this strategy with my audience. I’m always looking for innovative approaches that can make a measurable difference in enrollment, and I believe this is one worth considering.
The Question I Would Ask Your Team
Whether your school already has a virtual tour or has never considered creating one, I think there is a larger conversation worth having with your admissions and marketing team.
Don’t simply ask: Do we have a virtual tour?
Ask: Is the online experience we’re creating actually helping prospective families take the next step?
If you’ve invested in videos, photography, a digital viewbook, a virtual tour, social media, or other online content, don’t simply ask how many people viewed it.
Ask what happened next.
Did they identify themselves?
Did they inquire?
Did they schedule a visit?
Did they apply?
Did they enroll?
Because ultimately, that is the work our enrollment marketing needs to accomplish.
If you’d like to go deeper into this topic, you can watch my complete conversation with Rob Carroll, Co-Founder and CEO of CampusReel:
For transparency, I have a partnership with CampusReel and may receive a referral fee when I introduce a school that becomes a client. I only recommend products and services that I believe can make a meaningful difference for schools.
