*By Rodrigo Baptista
Eight seconds. On average, that's how long a brand has to grab a customer's attention. Does it seem little? Catching the eye of consumers is even more difficult in the face of information overload and continuous exposure to advertising campaigns.
In this competitive scenario, gaining customer consideration has become an immense challenge for Marketing departments. The goal today is to beat the competition (not only in your own area, but also in relation to other segments of the industry) and understand how to deliver value to customers. What can you do to make those eight seconds truly unforgettable?
This is the starting point in the era of Experience Marketing, a movement that has led companies from all segments to bet on practical innovations for the development of their sales and public contact campaigns. The proposal is simple: create special actions and proposals that help to capture, integrate and connect brands and consumers, generating a more meaningful relationship that goes beyond the mere commercial transaction.
Experience Marketing meets an increasing demand from the public, in search of greater exclusivity, personalization and service levels – people are looking for unique offers, addressed to their needs. This means that, in order to transform the fragments of customer attention into real sales opportunities, companies are being forced to think of differentiated content and solutions that specifically meet the objectives of each potential consumer.
Market research indicates that the sale of personalized items is steadily growing, with customized trade representing approximately 30% of all global retail chain revenues.
The advancement of technology, in this sense, has been fundamental to offer new ways of personalizing products in organizations of all segments of the industry. This happens not only in the production lines, but also in the advertising and publicity stages. One of the factors responsible for this innovation is the expansion of new 3D digital solutions, which have added a series of possibilities to the market, creating unique and hitherto unexplored paths for the personalization and segmentation of advertising.
For example: have you ever imagined arriving at a dealership and being surprised by the exact version of the car you've always dreamed of, in the model that has just been released? This type of action is possible with the use of new advanced digital applications, which explore the virtual experience as a solution for product demonstrations.
We are talking about a high-end, hyper-realistic and fully interactive visualization that simulates every detail of the real product. The minimum components and differentials can be shown and highlighted by the seller, following the specific preferences of the customers.
3D digital platforms also allow another essential advantage to speed up and reduce the costs of advertising campaigns: the possibility of integration and collaboration between engineering, development and production teams. This means that a change made in the design of the product will be propagated, automatically and in real time, to all material used by the marketing area. In addition, these 3D digital platforms allow the customization of models in different communication channels, from a single 3D model. Existing tools on the market, for example, are capable of automating the production of advertising pieces for 700,000 different versions of the same product with just one click. With the use of this technology, it is also possible to produce hyper-realistic scenarios, eliminating transport costs and renting space for the production of photographs and films.
In the case of a dealership, for example, customers can choose colors, accessories and check out every aspect of a newly introduced model, without running the risk of choosing an item that is out of print. For retailers, this means the chance to optimize product exposure, maximize cross-selling and reduce costs, as it is possible to do all this without having to deal with gigantic inventories.
Another benefit is the possibility of automating the production of content, integrating and connecting all touchpoints between the brand and consumers – from social channels to the showroom in a digitized format with a reduced area installed inside a shopping mall. In this way, it is possible to create a cohesive and complete strategy for the entire consumer journey, stimulating the steps of discovery, attraction and the consolidation of customers' desires. It is possible to show what your offer is, how it works and why this is the right product to solve the public's demands.
Companies need to understand that consumers no longer interact linearly with brands. Today, connecting online engagement with the physical experience is a strategic tactic that successful brands must quickly master. Armed with the ability to express individuality through personalization, consumers connect with a brand more easily, especially when they can see their preferences reflected everywhere they shop.
Taking advantage of 3D digital platforms to create premium marketing content, combining production and sales data is a unique possibility to generate intelligence and accelerate go-to-market actions also for product launches. These solutions create a compelling in-store experience through features that capture consumer preferences – and can later be used to reactivate a consumer who hasn't converted, through messaging with images and even personalized videos. or virtual reality experiences with the product that was configured in earlier stages of the buying journey, with a direct impact on sales figures.
If your company presents the same content to everyone, the eight seconds will be reduced to zero quickly. It is necessary to innovate, capture desires and offer value to its consumers. Experience Marketing is a trend for companies to provide customers with a truly unique, unforgettable and enchanting shopping journey. Visionary companies are already on that path. And you, are you ready?
*Rodrigo Baptista, Business Transformation Director for Dassault Systèmes for Latin America
Warning: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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