As customers demand more engaging and useful face-to-face experiences, they need three levels of interaction:
1. Sensory – seeing, touching, hearing, etc.
2. Intellectual – learning useful information
3. Emotional – making some sort of a connection with the story, the solution, or the company
Effective deployment vehicles for these kinds of engagement applications include mobile devices (tablets and phones) and larger, interactive touch-screen systems (for example, a 46-inch touch system at a trade show or executive briefing center). These applications involve prospects and customers directly rather than passively watching a video or presentation. Their active participation results in memorable experiences that lead to more successful buying decisions.
Marketing with augmented reality
With augmented reality and virtual reality, marketers now have the ability to drive even more engaging experiences because of the immersive nature of these kinds of applications.
Augmented reality (AR) is the ability to take a real-time camera view of a physical space (say, from a mobile/tablet device) and superimpose digital objects within that space virtually. In true, or 3D AR, the digital object fits perfectly into the physical world because the product is scaled correctly and it knows where it is relative to other objects in the spatial layout of the camera view.
Marketing applications using AR include the ability for prospects to place a virtual representation of the company’s products inside the customer’s actual space. The AR device shows what their physical space would look like with the proposed products inside the space. For example, a lab manager can see how a new instrument would save space, and how it would be located in their lab to result in more useable floor space with improved workflow.
Marketers can leverage these use-cases at venues such as trade shows and product launches to generate interest in the new products and to provide useful information to customers. Salespeople can use these applications at customer venues to create an emotional (exciting) and memorable experience.
Marketing with virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is the ability to place a person inside a virtual space, allowing them to move around and interact with that space as if it were the real, physical world. The key here is that we have to immerse the user in that digital world. That is why VR experiences include the use of a headset, which blocks out any peripheral view of the physical world and creates the cognitive effect of the user feeling part of this digital experience.
VR marketing applications can deliver virtual representations of a customer’s buildings, showing how the marketer’s solutions can be used directly in the existing facilities. Walking through the customer’s own space and seeing the vendor’s products and solutions in action (while being immersed in the experience with VR goggles) creates a level of understanding and appreciation that is difficult to create otherwise. Even when prospects participate in onsite visits to see how other companies are using the vendor’s products, it does not have the same impact or create the same emotional connection that they experience when seeing the products in their own space virtually.
Delivering relevant marketing and sales touchpoints
In the Web-enabled B2B world, customers are doing much more of their data gathering themselves. This results in significantly more concentrated and limited face-to-face marketing. As such, marketers and salespeople must do everything they can to make face-to-face meetings as effective as possible — transferring as much relevant information as possible in the most engaging manner.
AR and VR offer the opportunity to dramatically increase the significance of customer meetings through immersive experiences that result in a better understanding of the company’s competitive differentiated value.
Gavin Finn is president and CEO of Kaon Interactive, a provider of interactive 3D marketing applications that help B2B marketers and salespeople consistently demonstrate and differentiate products anywhere, anytime, on any device.
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