EqSim

There is clearly a big movement underway to make advertising and marketing more content rich, as opposed to more sales-y, I imagine.  Over at Top Rank Online Marketing Blog, they made a short blog post (CLICK HERE) about Aaron Goldman, author of “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google.”

In Aaron’s “Googley Lessons Blog Tour” (for TopRank), his message is to make ads that are valuable by making ads that “act like content.”  In other words, “there’s value in the content and the ad,” and make “ads that are valuable, relevant content.”

I get a funny feeling when I hear these types of statements because it feels to me that they presume the marketer is trying to fool the viewers, that the marketer is being disingenuous.  In other words, here’s the latest way to package your product message, almost like we’re trying to fool the viewer into subconscious submission.  Of course I believe that the best kind of ads do educate, so maybe I’m being overly harsh inferring intent.

In my more procrastinatively-inspired moments, I reflect on the online business management tools I currently use and whether there are any all-encompassing tools that can help me reduce overall expenses.  Maybe someone out there will have a suggestion.  So here goes my list:

• Project management: Basecamp – the interface feels natural and customers love it
• Organizing daily schedules and tasks: SmartSheet – Draws just the right features from Excel and then adds in collaboration, attachments, reminders, etc.
• Sales leads: Zoho CRM
• Email marketing: iContact
• Webinars: DimDim and sometimes Adobe Connect
• Keeping up with news via RSS Feeds: Google Reader – Fantastic, and that’s all I have to say about that
• Conference bridge: Simple Toll-Free – 800 number, $0.06/min, pinch me, I’m dreaming.  Great service and quality
• Toll-Free Phone System: Grasshopper.  Outstanding product for small businesses looking to become big businesses.
• Web Hosts: eBoundHost, MediaTemple, WebHost4Life, and LFCHosting.  I know, why four.  I’ve had great experiences with each, even with service calls (some better than others) and sometimes it’s easier to leave things be than to squeeze every nickel out of things.

What do you use?

I’ve been plowing through Joe Pulizzi’s Get Content, Get Customers (through my Droid’s Nook application, a bit tedious for books longer than about 80 pages), and I came across a statement that really knocked me out:

Businesses create specific content so that customers react in a very specific way.  Without a clear understanding of the customer’s information needs, any reaction that is close to the end goal is pure dumb luck.

I like the conciseness of what he expressed.  One of his core messages is that all marketing materials, such as custom content, must be designed to evoke an action, an action consistent with organizational goals.  I talk a lot about product simulations as if there is almost a single type.  The kind I’ve seen mostly around are product orientations, walkarounds, and the like (a lot of 3D spinning products), and they do have a place.  However, it is all about recognizing what that place is, and what informational need that serves for the buyer or customer.  Here are some initial thoughts on phases of the product marketing/sales process I can see relevant in focusing a sim (or really any content) to drive viewer behavior along the sales process.  In each phase, customer’s/prospect’s will likely have different information needs:

1. Attraction/Awareness
2. Garnering Interest
3. Engagement
4. Conversion
5. Buy / Recommend
6. Reinforce
7. Support

Especially in B2B markets, but also in consumer purchases that take some time to occur, we often do not factor in sufficiently how our content relates to where the prospect is in the buying cycle.

It is probably obvious, but something that works in attracting interest may not be sufficient to convert the interest into the sale.  Just as we want to design our marketing materials to give the viewer a “purpose-driven activity” (Game-Based Marketing, Gabe Zichermann and Joselin Linder), we also need to apply content in our marketing strategy to keep moving the prospect along our sales process.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how product simulations fit into the emerging trend of custom content marketing.  Where is the line between content (focused on presenting issues and providing solutions) and product promotional material?

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In BtoB Magazine‘s most recent issue (Aug 16, 2010), there are three articles by Sean Callahan on the B2B marketing trend of developing custom content: (a) “Commited to custom”, (b) “Custom programs getting larger portions of budgets”, and (c) “Makino retools marketing program with custom content”.

The gist of ‘custom content’ seems to mean information for industry professionals that is expected to be vendor-neutral, information about news or techniques that are outside of traditional sales materials that promote a company’s products.  However, in the third article, Makino clearly demonstrates that there may not be a clear line between custom content and promotional material:

We’re using content to drive engagement and develop discussions with our customers and prospects, and we’re doing that in a way that shows how our premium products and high technology can help drive their business’ success, performance, and profitability,” [Mark] Rentschler [Markino's marketing manager] said.

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I had been collecting links and interesting posts about experiential marketing as it relates to product simulation, as I think about developing an e-book or white paper about product simulation advertising/product simulation marketing.  I figured I would post the links and stuff I’ve collected, to get feedback and keep the info in a central place.  My overall point is how well product simulations can fit into traditional (and new!) forms of experiential marketing.

So this post is a series of a few fragments. continue reading…

I just saw a great post from Lee Odden at the Online Marketing Blog, entitled “Why Do So Many Companies Suck at Social Media?“.

Essentially, my take on it is that he feels companies jump on the social media/technology bandwagon, i.e., try to adopt the latest tools and technology of social media, without really thinking about their own relationship with their customers and prospects.  It’s the classic ‘get a technology before I figure out what the problem is.’  If you try to be like someone else, you can’t really have a meaningful conversation with your own customers and those you want to attract. continue reading…

I am in the process of thinking how to collect into an e-book or something what I’ve been observing regarding product simulations in advertising.

I’m not thrilled with the term ‘degrees of closeness’, but the idea is to have some measure to evaluate a product demonstration or exposition with respect to a real experience with the product.  Today, there seem to be a number of product advertising sites that simulate the experience in a somewhat static way, stitching together product photos (or 3D recreations) with selections such as color.  For example, I came across the 2011 Ford Explorer’s site, which, in the 3D view, lets one navigate from position-to-position, and change the exterior and interior colors.  Done in a professional way, it doesn’t give any interaction with the car.  Maybe the ‘degrees of closeness’ would have various categories, two for example, might be functionality and physical presence (the Ford example being closer in the physical presence category).

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Rick Braddy’s post about storytelling for product launches, “Psychology of Social Product Launches — Part 3, Storytelling” is a quick and interesting read about using stories as part of presenting a product, rather than the typical verbiage we develop.  The article immediately made me think about the power of case studies for marketing, which seems to me to be a more acceptable formal term than a “story.”  I made a post a few months ago about using product simulations to enable viewers to participate in their own success story.  As Rick highlights, “Crafted properly, stories don’t sell – they simply tell and teach by example.” I would take this a step further with an interactive simulation woven into a story by saying that they can tell and guide by example.

Another key sentence in his post is as follows:

By allowing people to make up their own minds (instead of coercing them through slick offers and time-limited deals that everyone knows are lies concocted by marketers to get them to buy), people are much more willing to listen to what you have to say when conveyed as an interesting story.

What better way to help them make up their own minds than by evoking them to interact to solve their problem(s)?

I’m a bit late to read this post, but author Alan Moore of “Communities Dominate Brands” makes an observation in early 2007 in his post entitled “Gaming the New Marketing?“.

His point is that games represent a new way to communicate with an audience, in an immersive, engaging way.  He dismisses “branded entertainment” and “product placement”, which I agree, are indirect at best.  Then he states “where the content is the advertising and the advertising is the content”.

This is exactly the point of product simulation advertising or marketing, namely making the advertisement the content and the content the advertising (or vice versa).  I agree with his point that games are an important new form of marketing to the gaming demographic, but I would argue that a more direct interactive simulation, focused on competitive features of the product solving real-world problems, is a more compelling incentive — after all, the advertiser wants the viewer to see how the product solves the viewer’s problems, not just walk away with a good feeling about the product (a nice side effect, of course).

In other words, games are a good manifestation of interesting interaction (to the viewer), but not the most direct.  The most direct would be interaction with the product itself.  So have I just invented a “degree of closeness” measure, namely, that games are typically second or higher degrees of closeness compared with direct product experience (being 0 degrees, and 1 degree being some type of product simulation)?  Of course games can have direct product experiences, or authentic product experiences, but games that don’t wholly focus on the product experience would earn farther degrees of separation.

I would say that Alan’s use of the word “game” may be fairly general, judging from his other comments in the post, but I think adding the word “gaming” unnecessarily shifts the perspective away from the core that the content is the advertising and the advertising is the content.