The Importance of Selling the Experience
Rather than bombarding consumers with push marketing which can cause marketing fatigue, companies are beginning to recognize the power of the customer. Let me tell you about the importance of selling the experience and a new (virtual) way to look at it.
All about us: what happened to the customer?
I hate it. Every day, I get alienated with push marketing the moment I wake up right until I go to sleep. Despite the fact that marketing blogs are yelling about customer experience, merely a few companies seem to actually put this buzz word into practice.
If any organization is still the starting point of all of its activities, it might as well get ready for its own demise. Companies such as Uber and InstaCart have already managed to integrate customer service into their own platforms. I think it’s even safe to say that the customer IS in fact the service.
Needless to say, technology plays an important — although entirely different role — in all of this. Companies like Oracle, Apple and Google have built their business on technology. In the age of the customer, companies are being built with technology simply as an enabler for growth and disruption.
The power of Virtual Reality
As Steve Jobs once said “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology — not the other way around” I believe in the undeniable power of virtual reality technology. But we have reached a point where it’s no longer just about the technology anymore, but rather about delivering an immersive experience in which the user can perform tasks using real-world actions.
Yes, virtual reality which has gained new popularity over the past few years — is now forever changing the way we consume content. We’re not just looking at a computer screen anymore; we’re actually interacting with it. To put it simply: the internet allows us to view and to scan information with our eyes. But virtual reality (VR) lets us experience it all, which is a valuable tool for companies to grab their audience’s attention.
Critics often claim that VR will make all of us anti-social, and ultimately cause us to not be able to deal with the real world anymore. That is a rather pessimistic view, and arguably VR will add value by transporting people to different places, and allowing them to have experiences they could not otherwise afford. This will enable people to relive shared experiences that they would not have bonded over were it not for VR.
VR in travel: a true experience
The travel sector is one of the industries jumping on the VR bandwagon as an exquisite marketing tool. By transporting potential customers to anywhere in the world, travel companies can significantly speed up the decision-making process. Imagine having them take a stroll around New York city and going up the Empire State Building to get some stunning views. Sounds amazing, right?
Connections, Belgium’s leading agency for USA travels, has been doing so: sending customers on a virtual trip to New York City to take a bite of the Big Apple, reportedly resulting in a 40% increase in sales. This once again proves that consumers don’t need a nifty bilingual brochure. Give them the VR experience instead.
