Can movies encourage a startup concept?
It did for Raj Sunder. As he watched Prime Gun in a theatre, he puzzled, “Which aviators are Tom Cruise carrying?”
However alas, there was no means he may know that on the spot.
He later based Wootag, an interactive video model. It lets customers faucet or click on on parts in movies to uncover information about them.
“Interactive content material is about satisfying human curiosity,” believes Raj, CEO of Wootag and Unlead.ai. And for firms, this may imply higher engagement and enterprise.
On this chat, he encourages sellers to view their merchandise as customers too, and produce ‘snackable’ content material. With consumers’ personas turning into diverse, he identifies three pillars of engagement.
This interview is a part of G2’s Skilled Highlight sequence. For extra content material like this, subscribe to G2 Tea, a e-newsletter with SaaS-y information and leisure.
Heat-up questions
What’s your favourite beverage? When do you get pleasure from it?
I do not drink something aside from water on an everyday working day.
However once I journey, say I’m in a lodge or on a flight, and I need to spend the subsequent few hours brainstorming, I’m going for crimson wine.
What was your first job?
After I accomplished my engineering, I landed a job as a developer at a gaming agency. It helped me develop logical considering and problem-solving expertise.
While you construct a recreation, you do not view it out of your perspective alone. You additionally think about the gamers’ and the AI’s factors of view. Doing this gave me a greater understanding of constructing a product utilizing a number of lenses.
I additionally ended up taking part in a whole lot of video games on the workplace as a result of we had been anticipated to be immersed within the gaming tradition. This taught me that you may’t construct a fantastic product until you’re a consumer of it. So, I all the time use the merchandise I’m constructing every day. I’m their greatest consumer.
What’s your favourite software program in your present tech stack?
My complete group is on Slack. We do not internally talk by way of e mail or calls. The software program has been an integral a part of the stack from Day 0.
Eradicating Slack may have an effect on our functioning, and we could need to spend time and assets migrating to different technique of communication.
What issues at work make you need to throw your laptop computer out the window?
It’s about human intelligence. It’s irritating when individuals do not use it. You can even name it frequent sense. We speak about AI, however we do not even respect our personal intelligence and leverage it to its fullest potential.
When individuals don’t apply frequent sense throughout a dialog, you ask your self why you’re even part of it.
Deep Dives with Raj Sunder
Might you’re taking us by means of your skilled journey? What have been the important thing milestones?
I have a look at my journey as orbiting. And it’s an orbit I didn’t design. Steve Jobs had mentioned that you simply had been positioned in an orbit because the dots linked.
I did not ask to be a recreation developer. I used to be simply an engineer determining what to do in life. However I ended up in Mumbai, not realizing the language Hindi, which is extra frequent there. All of it felt like a simulation.
However, as soon as I understood the logical frameworks of constructing a product, it felt pure to transition to the position of a product supervisor. Subsequent, I confronted questions like, “Who’s going to pay for the product you construct? How a lot cash are you able to make from it?” So, the subsequent orbit was that of a enterprise supervisor.
I used to be a vp at 32 at this Indonesian firm. However the concept for Wootag instantly popped up, main me to start out it and go away every part else.
I don’t come from an entrepreneurial household, and neither did I’ve an understanding of enterprise capitalism, so I used to be ranging from scratch. Initially, we had been promoting the product to entrepreneurs, and I had not labored within the advertising and marketing operate earlier than. It felt like leaping off an plane and constructing a parachute on the best way right down to land safely.
In life, we don’t know what the subsequent orbit shall be. This uncertainty makes life thrilling.
The middle of those orbits is the that means and goal of life. It’s troublesome to place a reputation to this middle. While you sleep peacefully and spend blissful moments with your loved ones, it’s a sign your orbit is in the appropriate route. There is perhaps challenges within the type of asteroids, however you don’t cease orbiting, proper?
You constructed a product that makes use of interactive content material to gasoline enterprise. Nevertheless, the hyperlink between such content material and enterprise outcomes is just not very evident. What can firms do to strengthen this hyperlink?
The thought for Wootag got here whereas I used to be watching Prime Gun. I used to be curious concerning the glasses Tom Cruise was carrying, however I had no means of realizing the place they got here from. However, if I may work together with the on-screen expertise, perhaps by tapping on the display screen, I’d have the ability to know.
This tells me that though interactive content material is a technical time period, it’s all about human curiosity. If somebody is interested in one thing on display screen, we may give them an opportunity to handle this curiosity by means of an interactive expertise. Firms can use this expertise and its insights to derive enterprise worth by suggesting options, merchandise, and providers.
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While you market a product, you need prospects to take the subsequent step by enquiring about it or taking an illustration. Enabling particular interactive factors inside an commercial and connecting them to your CRM software program additionally helps. And also you measure all of it utilizing analytics instruments. That is the way you strengthen the hyperlink between interactive content material and enterprise outcomes.
I frequently evaluate the outcomes between interactive content material and common content material. The previous tends to ship an up-to-sevenfold enhance in engagement.
Within the interactive content material area, manufacturers are shifting to a extra user-generated method to creating movies. How can they leverage such content material to construct authenticity and belief?
From a B2B perspective, I wished to do one thing attention-grabbing with Unlead.ai. So, I went on my dashboard and stuffed within the particulars of a buyer I used to be pursuing.
Unlead.ai has a performance referred to as Persona AI. I feed particulars regarding a prospect and their group to the device. Then, I document myself on the display screen speaking about my product. The device makes use of this video and prospect particulars to provide a personalised video through which I’m proven as suggesting how my product may assist resolve their issues particularly.
“With the consumers’ personas turning into diverse, the flexibility to personalize, contextualize, and be artistic will develop into important.”
Raj Sunder
CEO, Wootag and Unlead.ai
If I need to ship this to 5 individuals in a corporation, the function will mechanically add their names and generate personalised movies that includes me speaking concerning the product.
While you watch it, you’ll really feel such as you’re listening to an actual particular person speak about a product. It’ll additionally generate a customized name to motion (CTA), which may assist construct belief and credibility.
While you create such personalised movies, you present that you take care of your prospects and their ache factors. You seem extra human and fewer institutional. That is the important thing to constructing belief and authenticity utilizing user-generated content material.
Producing interactive content material will not be possible for firms of all sizes. There are prices regarding software program, specialised roles and the time taken. How can smaller firms method interactive content material in an inexpensive and scalable means?
When you go to YouTube or Instagram, you’ll understand that only a few movies are produced utilizing high-grade enhancing software program. I don’t suppose viewers are influenced by the gear you employ or the ending touches you give. They care extra concerning the message.
Earlier, producing movies may take days. It was once an train in itself. Now we’re speaking minutes.
“We should produce snackable content material. I name this snackable worth promoting.”
Raj Sunder
CEO, Wootag and Unlead.ai
Even a 45-minute TV present episode on Netflix is snackable. You watch it, and you progress on. That is the world we dwell in, so you must give worth within the kind that works: a snack.
Definitely, we not observe solely door-to-door gross sales methods. How have buyer engagement methods developed over time?
Within the movie ‘The Founder’, individuals go door-to-door making gross sales. They hold calling and calling, and it’s an actual hustle. This was the preliminary mannequin of doing gross sales.
Then we had the e-mail. But, knocking on the door was nonetheless there. When you obtained the possibility to satisfy somebody in particular person, you’ll nonetheless go for it, proper?
Later, you had a mixture of video calls, emails, and in-person conferences.
Right this moment, 70-80% of the gross sales playbook remains to be primarily based on emails. The one elements that may make the distinction, as I discussed earlier, are personalization, contextualization and creativity utilizing know-how.
You need to have interaction your viewers in the easiest way attainable and discuss to them of their language.
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Observe Raj Sunder on LinkedIn to study extra about viewers engagement methods.