Diffusion of Innovation Part 2
How’s that make you feel?
If technology is embraced at its earliest availability (innovators on the diffusion curve) it’s because the business or consumer decided it made them feel a certain way. At the consumer level, it’s about enjoying an expedient lifestyle. I grew up in a household that embraced technology. You’d think that it was having the first gaming platform or the first TV over 35”, as the reason I am an innovator. It was, in fact, my experience in the financial world; first as a commodity trader then as a banker that anchors my attraction to technology.
Diffusion of innovation
It was there that I came to understand the competitive advantage technology provides businesses. Businesses that embrace technology do so in a logical way but consider the emotional connection that their customers and clients feel by working with them. Business uses technology and innovation to create a more friction-less world for their clients. Financial entities understand that spending money (investment) upfront to serve the client earns more money (ROI) with innovation for a competitive edge. This equals more profits with fewer marketing dollars. Financial businesses understand this, perhaps more than any other sector. It is the emotional connection to having outsmarted the competition that drives business to take this innovative path.
If you were to review how you approach innovation/technology, how do you consider the emotional connection in your decisions? I’d like to know your thoughts about using innovation/technology to achieve your business goals.
OK, you’ve decided to go virtual, now what?
So how does this work? What’s the process?
GREAT! You recognize the value that a virtual 360º experience brings to your customers. You’ve decided to add an immersive digital experience to your marketing strategy as a great way to tell your brand’s story. You are busy and want to be bold on behalf of your brand. However, before you commit, you really want to know what’s involved and hope it’s not too difficult, confusing or time-consuming. You’ll be relieved to learn that publishing an immersive experience is simple, efficient and cost-effective. After we capture your images onsite, we head back to the studio where the images are edited and stitched together to produce HDR high-resolution panoramic photos. The panoramic photos are then connected together into a tour and customized by adding in graphic and branding elements. To ensure quality, the entire process from start to finish is typically 1-2 weeks depending on the size of the tour. Here’s the process:
CONSULT — No worries! VRProPix will consult with you on your shot list, direct your shoot and produce an immersive 360º tour that exceeds your expectations. VRProPix rocks with experienced photographers, graphic and digital designers who have past experience working in corporate marketing departments and with creative agencies.
SHOOT — You choose! Schedule the photography shoot that fits your schedule. Images are captured onsite which typically takes a few hours to a full day depending on the size of the 360º tour. VRProPix will guide you in prepping for the shoot and going over final details to make your tour exceptional.
DELIVERY — This is the exciting part! Integrating your 360º tour online is as simple as adding hyperlinks to wherever you’d like your tours to appear including social media, email signatures, press releases, PDF assets, website and more!
SUPPORT — Relax, we got you covered! Our VPiX technology handles all hosting and platform updates. There’s no effort needed by you or your web team to ensure the best virtual visits are continually delivered across all devices. But, if you’d like a supportive talk, we are local with family-like support to help you with whatever you need regarding support for your 360º tours.
RESULT — Ta-Da! The result is an immersive digital experience that combines great design with an intuitive and engaging interface to guide your visitors through your environment with high-quality 360 photography.
What’s great about this digital tool is that it’s a one-time investment that you’ll be able to use in many creative ways over a long period of time. Virtual reality is proven technology which increases engagement, digital stickiness and reduces the sales cycle. The ROI speaks for itself. Still have questions? We invite your comments below.
VRProPix will make you look brilliant!
Diffusion of Innovation Theory
Or, is this thing most excellent or what?
So this really smart guy, Everett Rogers, wrote a paper in 1962 that still proves true today. It places people into 5 categories for the purpose of understanding how we behave in response to an introduction of new technology. It’s illustrated in many ways but I like this one.
Where are you on this curve?
This curve has been studied and verified by marketers for over half a century and the ones who fully understand how this affects purchasing tend to guide their company to success. They don’t have to be purveyors of the technology; they can be consumers of available, applicable innovations.
Without getting into the weeds about this subject, suffice to say that while someone might be an innovator in their personal life, they could be a laggard in business; or vice versa.
I attended a marketing workshop last week and I could not believe that some of the other attendees were resistant to the idea that people make buying decisions based on emotion. While there’s proof that facts do come into play, it takes a back seat to emotion in decision making. This holds true with both business and consumers.
So where do you think you land on the diffusion of innovation scale? Give that some thought. Come back for more next week.
Control Will Be Relinquished And Given To The Customer
The innovative marketer uses technology to drive opportunity
If you’re the innovative marketer at your company, you may wonder how to use new technology to make you stand out. Peter Drucker has said, “business has only two functions-marketing and innovation”. Thus marketing and innovation are the basis for a company’s success. For this reason, you must consider using innovation within your marketing.
New technology can uncover ideas that lead to new strategy, so let’s use it. The prospect and client are the focus. Your challenge becomes how to align products, services and processes with their needs. Your audience expects to see things that interest them online before they make their buying decision. The digital consumer uses their control to seek a digital landscape that is more immersive and personalized than ever before.
With that in mind, what does the innovative marketer do to answer this demand? Marketers must create content that feels natural, authentic and as interactive as a conversation. If it’s conversational, the content must be shareable. One technology a forward marketer uses is immersive visuals such as a virtual tour. While these tours hit all the marks, not all virtual tours are equal. Not all VR technology is compatible across all social media and digital collateral such as PDFs. The functionality needs be worthy of your brand. For example:
- Can the tour provide opportunity to generate prospects from within the tour?
- Can the tour integrate video, imagery or have voice-over?
- Is the tour branded with your colors and logo?
- And finally, is there local support if you need attention?
Select a VR technology that at least, meets this test. Moreover, does the VR company have marketing and graphic skills beyond photography? When you select VPiX technology, engagement and sales will increase. We’ll make you look brilliant!
Is Virtual Reality Right for My Business?
Most people under 30 have the best understanding of the many types of VR. Businesses that target this demographic make the best uses of the different versions. However, these early adopter businesses are in the minority; most businesses are not even close to climbing the curve to be in the early majority.
This can be best explained because, like all new technologies, it’s hard to conceptualize the need when “we’ve done it like this forever” is repeated. “Or, we’d love to use it, but heard it’s really expensive,” and my personal fav, “we don’t need that”. Can your business model withstand the shift in buying behavior that has touched almost all business?
Perhaps you heard about how e-commerce has affected the closing of traditional brick and mortar retail locations? This is mostly because consumers, not only B2C but B2B, want to find what they need and explore and inspect purchases online at their own pace before they buy. This critical notion is at the heart of that question, “is VR right for my business”. Moreover, these applications DO NOT require a headset!
The early adopters of immersive 360 virtual tours has been variations on real estate; either marketing the property for sale or exposing a location as an attraction. With creative application of this concept, your business can benefit from these VR tours too. Perhaps you have a manufacturing process that sets your product apart or you manufacture capital equipment. Not only can a VR tour shorten your sales cycle, but your prospects can save time and money on their purchasing journey by visiting your facility without the expense of loading key decision-makers onto a plane and into a hotel. Think of how much you’d saved if you didn’t need to go to Houston or Portland to help decide that last purchase you made. You only needed to go to Portland!
It’s our technology that separates us from anything else offered in the Chicago market. If you’re a creative business person who needs a competitive edge, then we’d like to have a conversation with you. We’ll show you the value of being able to integrate your existing marketing assets into our tours. Nobody else can make that claim.
