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Digital Marketing, Industry News

Can Virtual Reality Help Your Business and Sales?

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Virtual Reality Group

Technology has changed how customers find and interact with businesses. The internet has made it incredibly easy for people to search for and find products they are looking for. This gives customers the opportunity to look for things on their terms. They get to be in control.

If you want your business to be found, you have had to change how you advertise and market. As a business owner, you know full well the work that went into developing a website, creating content, and then making sure that content was search engine optimized. You no doubt have social media pages and interact with customers using those platforms.

You know how to use technology to your advantage, and you may feel pretty confident in your marketing plan and tactics. However, just when you are starting to get comfortable, the game is going to change—and once again, technology is going to play a role. This time, you’ll need to figure out how to use virtual reality to connect with customers.

What Is Virtual Reality?

In essence, virtual reality is the creation of a digital world that can immerse a user. When a person is in this computer-generated world, they can explore and interact with the elements there. This act is usually accomplished with specific hardware and software, such as virtual reality goggles and computer programs.

Virtual reality is often associated with gaming, but other industries have successfully used this technology to interact with people, including museums, education, and NASA, among others. The great thing about this technology is that it gets people involved and interacting, and that is how virtual reality will help your business.

How Is Virtual Reality Utilized?

What virtual reality can be used for is only limited by the imagination and the constraints of technology. With the most common application being gaming, this technology is used to create worlds and places that allow the user to explore and interact with the environment, often in an entertaining fashion to achieve an objective—essentially winning the game.

However, in other industries, virtual reality can be used as a training tool. For engineers or mechanics, this technology is a great way to immerse employees in work that will need to be conducted every day at the job site without needing to spend the money to send them to the job site or to create a replica of the workspace.

Law enforcement and military training also rely heavily on virtual reality for their people. This is beneficial because it allows individuals the opportunity to be put into dangerous situations without actually being in trouble. It’s an excellent way for them to figure out how they would react and act in dangerous situations so if they encounter it in real life, they have the necessary skills to be successful.

When it comes to museums, virtual reality allows visitors to check out their collections and displays from the comfort of their own home. People who don’t have the opportunity to fly to Paris (or don’t want to deal with the crowds) still have the ability to see the art that is housed there. This could be a great way for students to experience history and culture without having to leave the classroom.

Virtual Reality and Your Business

When trying to attract new customers, you have to offer them something more than a great brand or products—although this will ensure you’re successful and stay in business. You have to connect with them. You have to relate to them on a personal level, as well as teach them something about your business.

Social media is a great platform for the connection part because it was designed for conversation. If you’re just posting links and ads and hoping that the customers will come, you’re doing it wrong. You have to offer them something they want. You have to engage them in some way.

Virtual reality gives you the opportunity to be engaged with your customers. It gives them a way to interact with your company and be involved. Of course, developing a program that is beneficial to your company and customers might not be as easy as it sounds.

The Limitations of Virtual Reality for Your Business

There is the cost to think about. Virtual reality is gaining in popularity, but it’s still pretty pricey to develop an app and then get customers interested in the app. Your business would have to carefully weigh the cost of development against the prospective return of investment and decide if it’s worth the investment.

In addition, for people to experience virtual reality, they have to have a headset and be connected to a computer. This hardware will add to the cost of developing a virtual reality program, and not everyone has headsets sitting around their house. Supplying it for customers would also add costs to the plan, perhaps making it out of reach for a lot of smaller businesses.

The program that you develop also has to be interesting and attract people. This will probably take some research to discover exactly what things people are interested in and how you can make it work to highlight your brand and products. If you create a long, interactive commercial, it’s doubtful people will find it engaging or exciting. You want your message to be engaging and clear.

As the technology becomes more advanced and headsets evolve (currently, wireless sets are being improved so that wires don’t interfere with the user’s experience), it’s possible that virtual reality will be more widespread and used by more people around the world. This could be beneficial to businesses and the worlds they create for customers to interact with.

Other Technologies That Could Be Used

Pokemon App on Phone

In addition to virtual reality, augmented reality is also a technology that is used to interact with customers. Unlike virtual reality, this technology does not require the person to be connected to a computer or use a headset. In most cases, all they need is their phone.

Augmented reality superimposes digital information onto the real world. Again, the most common use of this technology is for gaming, but it could be adopted and modified for your business.

Like virtual reality, developing an augmented reality campaign would require coming up with something that customers would want to interact with that still gets your message across. The goal is to connect and create lasting relationships with people who are or could be customers and finding the right way to do that has its challenges.

Virtual Reality Is Worth a Shot

Virtual reality may have some limitations at the moment, but no marketing plan is perfect. There is the potential that any ad campaign, blog post or social media post could fail and not attract or interact with customers the way it was intended to. That doesn’t mean you should give up on any of these ideas.

Kid with VR headset

If a lot of businesses aren’t currently using this technology to interact with customers, then the frontier is wide open. You could lead the way and develop ideas and worlds that no one else has seen before and push your business and brand to the front of the pack with your innovation. Is it risky? Maybe a little, but the results and sales could be beyond imagination.

At Glint Advertising, we have the expertise and professionals who can help you with these needs. Contact us today at 817-616-0320 or sales@glintadv.com to see how we can develop a virtual reality campaign to increase your business and sales.

Digital Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Traditional Advertising, Uncategorized

Creative Messaging Is Key To Success

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Creative Success Messaging Graphic

When it comes to marketing in the online space, it can be easy to get lost in a pile. Think of the digital environment as a community of brick and mortar stores, not unlike what you see outside in the real world every day. In fact, the online shopping industry alone is growing 3x faster than traditional storefronts. Unsurprising, now that about 51% of the population prefer to shop online over visiting a store in-person.

This means we can apply a lot of the same tactics to both areas. A key difference to keep in mind though is that there is a lot more business in the digital community of stores then there are on a street and it is a lot harder to see all the business available in an online environment. This serves as a strong reminder that your competition is a lot larger than may you perceive when you just think of your local competition.

What tends to be the biggest factor of change when moving from physical to digital is not how we engage, but where. This is why you can find so many digital marketing agencies focused on things like behavioral targeting, banner ads, and automation. What most fail to take into account is that these companies are only providing you with where you’ll be shouting your message from, but if your message isn’t engaging, it won’t matter how many places you are displaying it.

The success of your marketing efforts, be it traditional or digital, will come down mostly to the strength of your message, creatives, and content.

Credit Card Computer Screen

Your Key Message and Why It’s So Important
Your key message is one of the most important aspects to consider. The first question you should be asking yourself is what your key message is. Organizations of all types have key messages intended to help them get across why you should use their product or service. While you likely could form a pretty long list around this, it’s best to whittle it down to one key message you want to use to define your business.

Essentially, your key message is what you want to be known for, and this message needs to be consistent across all your marketing materials and brand.

This will provide a certain level of control over how people talk about you, as we give them one simple thing to focus on. Having control of the conversation about your products or services can be invaluable if you push forward a clear and effective message about what you provide.

Tone and Style
As part of a consistent brand and key message, we need to make sure we have established a consistent tone and style. Your tone and style should fit in closely with your key message.

Writing is arguably the most shared form of content. Even if you are running image-heavy campaigns, you will likely find yourself in need of some written work for captions and social media posts. Whether you are writing for your company blog or just updating Twitter, you need to be sure you have the same style and tone all throughout.

Contrary to popular belief, tone and style are not the same things. A style is best applied to short, catchy sentences, great for social media posts. A tone conveys authority, it’s the vibe you give off and the feeling you get when you read something written by someone who knows their stuff. These two things intertwine and will eventually end up creating what we call your voice.

So, does it all matter? Absolutely. We are trying to convey a consistent message and to do that we need a consistent style, tone, and voice as well. They key to a great brand voice is first and foremost consistency, but being creative and different is key to standing out amongst the competition.

Search on Mobile

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
If you take a moment to consider what actually makes you click an article, pick a video game, or buy a certain food item, you’ll likely come up with two answers, convincing written copy, like an article headline or catchy phrase that sticks with you, or the visual content associated with it.

Visual content accounts for so much of what your customers will perceive that it is arguably more important than your written content. Having the two work seamlessly together is the makings of a great piece of content.

To do this, we need to keep our images in line with the rest of our message. This means it should match our style, tone, voice and key message. This is going to require us to get pretty creative with our message and find ways to convey it visually.

The key to producing great image content is to focus on these key aspects while keeping your overall brand in mind at all times.

● Capturing the Viewers Attention: Before we can start to convey our message to our target, we need to have their attention. Strong, eye-catching visuals that scream your message are perfect for drawing people into your other content. Afterall, 93% of communication between people is visual and 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual.

● Claiming a Spot in Their Memory: What do you want people to walk away with? If I’ve viewed your ad, what types of things should invoke me to think about it again? The answer to both these questions is found in your key message and brand voice, as we want them to walk away with that being the takeaway point. Creative imagery can be far more effective than body copy for achieving this, as people tend to remember visuals more clearly.

Why Creativity is So Important
Being creative with your brand voice and key message is key to success. In a world where it gets harder and harder to compete and get noticed, you need something to make you stand out. A common mistake is to check out competitors and copy what they are doing, and while this can prove to be valuable, it can also hurt your overall exposure. Being unique is key to standing out amongst the crowd. If you plan your key message creatively, the rest should follow suit much more easily, setting you up to emerge at the end with a truly unique and creative brand that will stand out amongst your competitors, both online and offline. If you can achieve that, you’ll be well on your way to overall success.

None of This Changes Between Digital and Physical
The takeaway here is that no matter where your advertising is operating from, your campaign and business will benefit from creative messaging. We are trying to create a consistent voice and message for our brand, which means it needs to extend to both the online and offline spaces. It doesn’t really matter how targeted your ad is if your brand message is speaking to an entirely different group then you are targeting.

It’s important to distinguish that while digital and physical spaces require different strategies on a whole, your message should remain in use and unchanged. This makes implementing creative messaging into your materials a universal approach for both markets. In short, your message doesn’t change depending on whether you’re online or not, what does change is how you get that message delivered.

If adding a layer of support to your branding, advertising, or marketing would be beneficial, we would love to talk with you. Email us at agency@glintadv.com or better yet, give us a call at 817-616-0320.

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Digital Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Traditional Advertising, Uncategorized

How Traditional Advertising Fits In A Digital World

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Digital Advertising

Ways to Incorporate TV and Print Media into Technology Based Advertising.

When it comes to advertising, maybe you have an antiquated perspective. Don’t be abashed; you invest most of your marketing dollars into traditional forms of advertising like TV commercials, print ads, direct mail, radio spots, and brochures. That’s great, especially if all of these marketing efforts are garnering customers. But like many businesses, traditional advertising may not be as effective as it was for you when you first launched your business. We understand; more than likely you’re not getting as much of a response from your audience as you used to, which may mean that you need to expand your efforts and explore the digital world.

So, you remember a time when people would see your product on TV or in the newspaper and respond to your sales promos immediately. You knew how to get their attention with a powerful image, a catchy slogan and an offer that they couldn’t refuse. That was all it took to draw customers to your product or service. Those were the days when marketing was straightforward and uncomplicated. Now, digital marketing is the medium that businesses are using to catapult them onto a platform where they can be more successful in the marketing world. And if you want to achieve this type of success, you should make it an essential component of your marketing plan; your competition probably most certainly has.

Chances are many of your ideal customers are engaged in the digital age like the rest of the online consumers you’re trying to attract. They’re glued to their mobile phones, tablets and anything with blinking lights, which makes it easier for businesses to attract them on the digital scope.

These days tons of ads are seen via smartphone, facebook, google, digital displays, website banners, viral videos, blogs, and articles, just to name a few. If you want to extend your reach to the infinite amount of customers online that will never see the billboard you just put up, you’ve got to become more connected with digital marketing. We’re not trying to be discouraging; you can continue your traditional marketing campaigns, but be open to merging it with the digital world. If it’s working for you, keep going.

If you’re still a little dubious about the sheer power and influence of digital advertising, you should know that more and more businesses are turning to digital marketing every year. In fact, according to Reuters, marketers spent $72.5 billion on digital advertising in 2016, which is an increase of 22 percent from 2015. Social media platforms like Google and Facebook account for the majority of revenue from digital advertising, and they don’t seem to be slowing down.

Google and Facebook are responsible for the surge in growth of digital advertising, which has digital companies scrambling for the advertising dollars that businesses are willing to spend in the digital world.

For companies that are making the transition from traditional advertising to digital advertising, video is a medium that most use to convey their message. If you notice, the next time you look at a YouTube video, you may have to watch a commercial at the beginning of the video or at intermittent times while the video is playing. What a way to combine traditional with digital!

Now, just because businesses are using digital platforms to display their advertisements doesn’t mean that they’re acquiring customers at record speed. An interesting ad may catch their eye for a few seconds, but if no emotional connection is made, a sale is probably not likely

Digital marketing has shifted the way people perceive advertisements. They’re familiar with the antics that advertisers used on the unassuming customer decades ago. So, you can’t be too blunt, phony, too provocative or sneaky by recycling an old campaign you thought no one would remember. Ads have to draw potential customers in based on what that customer is likely to purchase. If businesses are willing to engage with people, the business will have a better way of understanding what the customer wants and how they are likely to respond.

That’s what’s so amazing about the digital universe; you can measure your impact on your audience by the immediate responses you may get to your advertisements, videos, and posts. Getting feedback and questions about your product will give you a better idea of what will prompt them to buy. Beware of those comments though; they can be brutal. Just be level headed about it. You’ll recover. The main thing is that you don’t give up and that you keep improving.

Remember, every day the consumer is overloaded with brand advertisements that want them to buy their products. So, get ready for the challenge; the competition is fierce! Your objective is to use the digital world to get into their minds, so you’ll know how to convert them into customers.

The traditional advertising that you do through broadcast and print media can now be used with digital ads and content that you create and put online. By doing this, the consumer can find you through organic and paid searches or even stumble across an article you wrote. Keep your social media engaging, and they’ll find you on the popular social networks.

Once they understand your brand, a trust can develop and who knows! Perhaps then, this prospect will make a purchase. For more information on integrating your brand with traditional and digital, visit us at www.glintadv.com or give us a call at 817-616-0320.

 

 

Case Studies

Kaner Medical Group

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Holiday Invitation

KMG wanted to stand out in the mail and attain an early commitment for their holiday party. They were looking for an engagement piece that would entice recipients to interact with their invitation, get excited about their event, and RSVP their intention for attendance. Glint determined a dimensional piece with multiple layers and sound would be the best approach for aligning with a roaring 20’s theme. Conceptualized from and old radio tuner the invitation asked recipients to “Tune In.”

As invitees opened the mailer, multiple layers of rigid translucent material were shown stacked, revealing a top message while enticing the recipient to continue digging deeper. For instant gratification, at the bottom of the invite were headphones wrapped in the shape of a Christmas tree to align with the “Tune In” messaging. The invite also provided a URL landing page that allowed the invitees to respond with their attendance, their number of guests and favorite holiday song. Also, the landing page provided a countdown timer to the event and played a roaring twenties song to bring more life to the experience.