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?
Browsing Posts in product simulation advertising
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).
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.
I came across this interesting blog post on Monday Note entitled “The lethal self-complacency of advertising“, later posted on the Washington Post as “Why is digital advertising so lousy? Industry is too smug to innovate“, but Frédéric Filloux. I agree with his conclusion that online ads are not innovative in the capacity that they could be, and I think product simulation advertising (or marketing) is the kind of innovation which would deliver much better results (as I’ve seen with my own informal work).
The author’s prognosis is on the basis of digital media not delivering results, stating that an “electronic reader brings 15 to 20 times less in advertising revenue than a print reader does.” I can believe it, but I don’t know exactly where to put the blame. Fortunately, he posits some thoughts as to why he believes that digital advertising is getting poor results.
Number 1. Poor design. Essentially, he bemoans the lack of creative talent in the current crop of ads–banners, skyscrapers, sliders, pop-up’s, etc. They act as reader-repellants and fodder for ad-blockers. I don’t think we can do a lot for the containers, though perhaps there is some room — ads have to be placed somewhere, and there has to be standardization for sizing, just like in print ads. I think if you ask about the creativity of the content within the ad, I think the point is valid–we need to get beyond the ‘in-your-face’ style of text, flashing things, etc.
Ultimately, in our search-driven online world, I think that the best type of advertising is one that engages the viewer with relevant content. After all, isn’t the best time to present your product or service when someone is looking for it or something like it? It’s no wonder that search advertising is so strong in the online world. I don’t mean all advertising has to be focused on the specific product, but I think if advertising were designed around where the products or services are being used, in other words, scenario based, and if the advertising delivered some useful content, then the advertisements would not be so repelling to viewers because the viewers want to see or use that content.
Therefore, I hypothesize that content-based advertising, or in the case of products that can be simulated, ‘product simulation advertising’, will be a potent and effective form of advertising that takes unique advantage of the medium both in terms of interactivity and measurement (of course the latter is all-important in a marketing world).
[Update 6/17/2010]
I was reading some comments from Frederic’s post, and a response from “Matt” caught my eye. He responded that we ought to point a finger at the container problem, not the digital ad problem. In other words, it is the business model of “ads in a container” that is likely the root of the issue Frederic complains about. I agree with Matt — my observation was a roundabout way of seeing that. The problem is that we have generally taken the ad model from print — ads on the fringes of reading materials — and stuck that in a digital world that is not constrained by those boundaries.
I just saw this interesting post that excerpts “Stories that Sell”, but Casey Hibbard, or “The Power of Success Story Marketing.” The gist of this excerpt is that “[w]e [customers] trust what others say much more than what a business itself says,” and that presenting customer experiences as case studies is a more effective marketing tool than almost anything the company writes about itself. While “most of us don’t truly believe the benefits espoused by companies–unless they are verified by other trusted sources,” the author continues with the zippy line “[j]ust about everyone else is more credible than the business itself.”
I would agree that good customer stories provide compelling evidence that the the product or service has been delivered successfully to meet the needs of similar buyers. However, it can be difficult to get good customer stories that align completely with what the company presents. Buyers buy products and services to solve their own need–the buyer may accept a vendor’s argument about solving a peripheral issue for the buyer, but they buyer may not be willing in terms of cost or time to help the vendor prove it.
I believe that context-appropriate simulations can be similar to a case study when it shows how a mock customer, in this case, the viewer, can solve a problem that we hope is relevant to the customer. If we can align our presented problems (contexts) with the problems that viewers face, we in effect put viewers into their own case studies.
“Products don’t function on their own”
I love this quotation because it zeroes in on the problem I have with most types of advertising on the web — show a picture, write some specs, maybe even a short video. While the latter is getting to the idea that demonstrating function is important, I think that simulations presented in real-world contexts show the interaction between the operator and the product. Allowing the viewer to drive the operation further puts the product ‘in the prospect’s hands’, which all good salespeople know is the ultimate sales pitch. Directly following this quote is another gem: “People encounter challenges to overcome, become heroes, find solutions, and ultimately triumph.” What better way than to show how the prospects themselves can solve that burning issue.
In a section entitled “Education: Show, Don’t Tell”, the author identifies that “as much as [marketers and business owners] detail how their products and services work for users, there’s often a gap between those descriptions and readers’ understanding of how they will actually work in their environments–all the more so when the products or services are complex.” The conclusion? Another point for the right kind of simulation: “you have to show readers what you’re talking about, descriptively and in context, rather than just telling them that your product or service accomplishes this or that.”
Then the author turns to some important numbers:
A survey by KnowledgeStorm (www.knowledgestorm.com) and MarketingSherpa (www.marketingsherpa.com) shed light on the role of case studies, particularly in IT purchase decisions. The survey, with results published in How Technology Marketers Meet Buyers’ Appetite for Content, asked nearly 4,000 B2B marketers, and technology and business professionals, what buyers want and what marketers deliver. The survey revealed that buyers expect you to educate them. In fact, 84 percent said they want content that educates them and expect vendors to provide it.
Awesome. Now I have to talk with my clients to help me prove my hypothesis completely (won’t that make a great customer case study? 
).
Dave J. posted a blog entry Feb 12th on B2Blog entitled “Proof it’s not about the benefits, but your product“. Of course the title is sarcastic, but he makes several great points in regard to putting the product in front of people.
Citing Anne Holland’s “Which Test Won“, Dave points out that the study showed a higher response rate if the picture of the product was the main element, presumably compared with emphasizing the benefits. While rife with assumptions about what is being advertised and what has preceded the display, he has some very quotable quotations that are directly relevant to product simulation marketing. For example, “while an awareness of the customer’s use of your product is important, repeating what they know…obscures the real information they want.”
I don’t think anyone would say to just stick a picture of the product in the ad without the appropriate context, but clearly when people are interested in a product, they want to see how it looks and how it works. No great leap, especially for expensive, large, or complex equipment.
If I were to take a guess, and I don’t think it takes a great leap to get there, but I would assume that the viewer is already somewhat familiar with the class of products that might appear in that ad. So the context has already been set, to some degree.
I can only imagine what the response rate would be if they advertised that one could “try it out” right there. I would love to be involved with a manufacturer who was savvy enough to recognize how important this kind of testing is. Sadly, I still am looking for one. I think product simulations are still in the state of interest from visionary marketers and early adopters, who don’t see the need to prove it because they are already believers.
Dynamic advertisement delivery strives to serve ads most relevant to the user’s behavior. I feel we can develop more effective call-to-actions in a similar way by helping the user select a relevant context, and then using simulation in that context to refine our sense of what call-to-action is going to appeal to that user. I realized in the process that we have not given this adequate consideration in some recent interactive pieces we’ve produced, but we will be more sensitive to this in the future.
For example, in basic equipment orientation-type of presentations, we always have some means to contact the manufacturer for more information. We have taken a simple-minded, lazy approach in this, which is bad. Not only does it require the user to make an effort to tell us what he feels is relevant (which, for those who do so, should be treated specially because the effort in successfully requesting contact likely means the user is fairly serious about something), but also it ignores any patterns of interest we might have detected in the user’s behavior using the orientation.
I think I more productive approach would be to weave the request for information, or suggested contact, much more into the user’s discovery of the content, unobtrusively, but intentionally. In the title of this post, I mention “simulation contexts.” What I’m thinking is that one can use a user’s selection of different ways in which a product is used (different contexts) to help narrow what type of relevant information the user might want to acquire. It’s not just making a simulation that highlights unique or compelling features–it’s creating contexts that have problems which the product is suited to solve (and hence the user can see how the product saves the day).
If we understand better what context is relevant to the user’s pursuit of information, we can make it easy for the user to request that information in that context, or understand where to go for more details. I believe that the more that the user has to disconnect mentally from content discovery/exploration to go find how to contact the advertiser, the more likely they will not.
I was explaining to a friend today about my ideas regarding “simulation-based marketing,” and he said that in his (IT) line of work, they demonstrate their software to potential customers, using fake data. The question becomes, “is simulation-based marketing” just another term for doing product demos?
I think that at the heart of product sales and marketing is a product demo, since the point is really to tell prospects what the product is and why they should want it. However, simulation-based marketing is a broader concept, encompassing not only the product demo itself, but also the context in which the demo is presented.
For example, he does his demonstrations live (via the Internet, through WebEx or GoToMeeting), as well as at conferences. The kind of simulations I originally thought about were more of the variety where there is no live element to it, i.e., it is self-running. Clearly, though, that is only one possible mode for presenting demonstrations, and our work in the past few years has expanded to build out the other components for online product demonstrations, namely SimTracker (for behavioral metrics), and LiveDrive (our own term, not the online storage site), for synchronous meetings around specific products.
In my head, I’ve always thought about marketing as about generating awareness, where it goes over to sales to do things like conduct product demos and close the sale. However, especially in today’s markets where access to product information is so readily available (people making buying decisions virtually completely on the basis of what they find on the Internet), it makes sense that companies use product demos even as first-exposure to prospects so the prospects are aware of competitive or unique features.
Bottom line is that I think one could tease apart a product demonstration meant for marketing, from one meant for sales. They may have a great deal in common (and also have a lot in common with product demos used for training or customer support, for that matter), but I could see someone making a distinction between a product demo meant to generate awareness of capability, versus a product demo for the actual sale that is more comprehensive.
I would love to hear from marketing people about where this fits into traditional marketing (or sales).
