Introduction

In todays increasing mobile world, the exponential proliferation of smartphone apps shows no signs of decelerating. On July 10th 2008, Apple launched the worlds first smartphone app store and forever changed the way we use our phones (Shoutem.com, 2012). The iTunes app store as of July 2014 boasted an impressive 1.2 million apps for iPhone users (Statista.com, 2015). Below is a chart detailing the number of apps available for download for each of the 5 big app stores, again as of July 2014.

(Source: Statista.com, 2015)

When at that stage of debating whether or not creating a company specific app is economically viable, it is important to take into consideration a few key characteristics related to apps in general.

Mobile apps have one clear advantage. In most cases, a well-made smartphone app delivers a far more seamless & intuitive user experience than even the best of mobile optimized websites are currently capable of (Maxwell, 2011). Note we say currently… with the advent of the “Cloud” and everything it is potentially capable of, this statement may well change later on…

An important facet of when wanting to design/launch your own company specific app, is the cost. In 2012 Appmuse.com and Techcrunch.com each had surveys and came to the conclusion that the average app, excluding gaming apps, cost approximately 6’500 USD (Stetler, 2012). It is considered far more costly to make a “native” app as you would have to build a specific app for each of the major app stores (listed in the bar chart above) from the ground up versus a cross-platform web-app. (Maxwell, 2011)

One could split apps into 2 broad categories:

1. Those designed to generate income
2. Those that are built for purposes including marketing, branding and/or customer service.

1. Those designed to generate income

Apps designed specifically for generating income derive said income using various revenue streams such as outright purchase of an app, in-app purchases as well as subscriptions. Examples would be most, if not all, Gaming apps, think Angry Birds and Candy Crush; Business apps, think Office365 and Google Apps; or Service apps, think TomTom.

However, it is important to note that of the millions of apps out there, less than 1% are actually profitable (Caulderwood, 2014)

2. Purpose built Apps 

As previously mentioned, these types of apps should be used more as an information portal for a specific company or idea than for generating revenue. Using an app can further drive potential consumers to your website. An app can build your brand recognition or market your products or services in a novel and creative way. If, for example, your app asked your first time users to input some basic info about them (age, gender, country of residence), you could create far more personalized marketing campaigns and promotions, which in turn captures your audience and allows you to redirect them to your company website. If your company is launching a new product, it could use the app to send a push notification alerting its subscribers of said new product availability.

However, there are two major concerns once your company has launched an app. The first is the increasing risk that your app will get lost among the thousands of new apps launched everyday. This means you may very well have to look into paying app recommendation engines to showcase your app which are third party websites that increasing numbers of mobile users are turning to before they even log in to their smartphones respective App stores (Walton, 2015). The second concern your company will be faced with are the overhead costs associated with maintaining apps across multiple platforms.

Final Thought

In todays app market, there is no sure-fire way of ensuring an app will reach its intended audience in the numbers it needs in order to be considered economically viable. There is however, one feature all successful apps share; that of being able to differentiate themselves to their competition. Having a clear USP, be it your product, your brand or your service, can only benefit your app’s chances of being downloaded in meaningful numbers.

References

Caulderwood, K. (2014). How Do You Make Money When Less Than 1% Of Apps Are ‘Financially Successful’. [online] International Business Times. Available at: http://www.ibtimes.com/how-do-you-make-money-when-less-1-apps-are-financially-successful-1537962 [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Maxwell, M. (2011). Is Developing a Mobile App Worth the Cost?. [online] Mashable. Available at: http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/mobile-app-dev-cost/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

ShoutEm, V. (2012). Infographic – The History of Mobile App Stores | ShoutEm – Mobile App Creator – Make App. [online] Blog.shoutem.com. Available at: http://blog.shoutem.com/2012/02/07/infographic-the-history-of-mobile-app-stores/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Statista, (2015). Apple App Store: number of available apps 2008-2014 | Statistic. [online] Available at: http://www.statista.com/statistics/263795/number-of-available-apps-in-the-apple-app-store/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Stetler, M. (2015). How Much Will My Business App Cost? | AppMuse. [online] Appmuse.com. Available at: http://appmuse.com/appmusing/how-much-will-my-business-app-cost/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Walton, Z. (2015). Is It Worth It To Build And Maintain A Mobile App?. [online] WebProNews. Available at: http://www.webpronews.com/gartner-mobile-app-development-is-becoming-less-profitable-2014-01 [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Tomorrow, Tuesday 21st April 2015, when you take out your smartphone & search for that perfect dress from the amateur dressmaker you find online yesterday, chances are you won’t find her website as easily if at all… And why is that?

Tomorrow Google are rolling out a world wide update to their ranking algorithms, specifically ranking “Mobile Friendly” websites at the top of the search page. This update affects mobile platforms in all languages and will, as had their last update in 2014, drastically change first page search result rankings for the worse (Moz.com, 2015).

Google have decided to commit to mobile as they noted that 60% of all daily searches are generated from mobile traffic (Comscore.com, 2014)

This impressive statistic backs up Google’s willingness to fully commit to mobile. Google have always said that was content was key to having a high ranking… But with the incredibly rapid shift towards mobile platforms, Google are now no longer content with content. They now want companies to keep the end-user’s experience in mind when designing their websites. (Atkinson, 2015). Until recently, it was difficult for entrepreneurs to determine what exactly Google was taking into consideration whilst testing websites for their mobile-friendliness.

Therefore in order to not be penalized because your website is not considered mobile friendly, here are a few tips that will render your desktop website more “mobile friendly” and therefore potentially avoid what some are calling the “Mobilegeddon” (DeMers, 2015). The tips below were drawn from the  Official Google Webmaster Central Blog as well as a handy infographic made by SumAll. 

3 Essential Updates

• Large, easy-to-read titles and text
• Easy-to-click links
• Responsive Page Layout: pages that automatically resize proportionate to the window size available

Tips on Google’s Ranking Criteria (Sumall.com)

• The easiest way to verify whether or not your website is mobile friendly is to use a Google certified program to “grade” your website. Please click here: Google Mobile-Friendly Test
• Bear in mind Google will judge on a page-by-page basis your site’s mobile-friendliness.
• Small text and videos will result in a lower “grade”
• Google will weigh your site’s average loading time. This means image, video or content rich pages will affect your site’s loading time.
• Fluidity of experience: Does your site force your viewer to download an app? To click on another link? Unnecessary intermediaries will also result in a lower “grade”
• Ensure you allow GoogleBots to scan CSS & JS files on your website to increase its “grade”

References

Atkinson, D. (2015). Is Your Site Mobile Ready for Google’s Big Algorithm Change? (Infographic). [online] Entrepreneur. Available at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245089 [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

comScore, Inc, (2015). Major Mobile Milestones in May: Apps Now Drive Half of All Time Spent on Digital. [online] Available at: http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/Major-Mobile-Milestones-in-May-Apps-Now-Drive-Half-of-All-Time-Spent-on-Digital#imageview/0/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

DeMers, J. (2015). Is Your Website Optimized For Mobile? You Have Until April 21 To Get It Done. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/03/31/is-your-website-optimized-for-mobile-you-have-until-april-21-to-get-it-done/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

Moz.com, (2015). Google Algorithm Change History – Moz. [online] Available at: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, (2015). Finding more mobile-friendly search results. [online] Available at: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

SumAll, (2015). How Google’s Algorithm Change Will Drastically Affect Your Website’s Traffic – SumAll. [online] Available at: http://blog.sumall.com/journal/googles-algorithm-change-will-drastically-affect-websites-traffic.html [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been heralded as one of the largest, and mostly untapped, frontiers in our increasingly digital age. The other frontier is the potential implications of Big Data. What exactly is this IoT? In layman’s terms it is a network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors and connectivity to enable it to achieve greater value and service by exchanging data with the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected devices (Techopedia, 2015).

The potential the IoT has to revolutionize the manner in which we not only collect data, but also generate data, is at this point still relatively unquantifiable. Cisco created an eye opening presentation on the possible main revenue drivers of the IoT’s but by their own admission the figures presented remain an estimate. The figures below represent what Cisco valued the IoT at in 2013.

(Cisco, 2013)

By 2022, Cisco predict that the IoT’s will create a whopping extra $13 trillion in the global economy.  Cisco also attempts to quantify the results of the increasing pervasiveness of the IoT’s, as more and more traditionally untraceable products and services are coming online.

(Cisco, 2013)

There is however a more immediate issue to address before even beginning to dream of the riches IoT is bound to bring to early adopters and tech savvy entrepreneurs. It has to do with the manner in which companies are manufacturing internet connected products and the channel/software employed when attempting to send and receive data.

George Santayana’s infamous quote ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ has never rung truer when looking at the IoT’s future. As it stands, the IoT is currently running the risk of creating “networks of networks”, an issue that plagued the early days of the Internet by not allowing networks to communicate with one another, therefore practically negating the advantages of the Internet . These new connected products all require their own respective app to be controlled, requiring the user to jump from one app to the next and therefore no synergies can be made to bring down costs(Evans, 2015). This results in companies not benefiting fully from Metcalfe’s Law  (Madureira et Al, 2013)

In order for the IoT to become a truly viable and revolutionary tool, we must first rid ourselves of these “islands of technology” (Evans, 2015) that are preventing us from efficiently collecting the potential wealth of information just out of our reach.

References

Cisco, (2013). The Internet of Everything (IoE) Value Index. [online] Cisco, pp.4 & 9. Available at: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/innov/IoE-Value-Index_External.pdf [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

Evans, D. (2015). We Need To Get The Internet Of Things Right. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/19/we-need-to-get-the-internet-of-things-right/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

Madureira, A., den Hartog, F., Bouwman, H. and Baken, N. (2013). Empirical validation of Metcalfe’s law: How Internet usage patterns have changed over time. Information Economics and Policy, 25(4), pp.246-256.

Techopedia.com, (2015). What is the Internet of Things (IoT)? – Definition from Techopedia. [online] Available at: http://www.techopedia.com/definition/28247/internet-of-things-iot [Accessed 20 Apr. 2015].

Brief History

E-commerce has become, without a doubt, one of the most important pillars of the Internet Age, driving entrepreneurship, creativity and profits to never before seen levels. E-commerce boils down to carrying out business over the Internet with the assistance of computers, which are linked to each other forming a network, therefore dealing away with the need for “human” middleman, and by extension, minimizing potential human error (Ecommerceeducation.com, 2015)

Global E-commerce sales have increased over 15% year-on-year for the past 5 years and show no signs of slowing down. Traditionally, the North American market was largest by total number of sales, but was surpassed by the Asia-pacific region for the first time in 2014. The graph below, drawn from Statista.com, details the impressive growth seen in E-commerce.

(Sources: Statista.com & Emarketer.com)

Advantages of E-Commerce

1. Overcome Geographical Differences

With the advancements made in global shipping and transportation of goods, it is becoming increasingly easy to ship a company’s products virtually anywhere in the world (Khurana, 2015)

2. No need for Physical Stores 

If you decide to to sell exclusively online, there is no need to showcase your products in a physical store, which drastically reduces your overhead costs.

3. New Customers Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

By efficiently optimizing your website to appear as high as possible on search engines’ results, using a combination of relevant key words to maximize your visibility, it is possible to increase your site traffic and therefore your potential sales. 58% of people begin their online shopping from a search engine homepage and 81% use search engines to research purchases over $300 (Boone, 2013). Therefore never underestimate the power of SEO!

4. Open 24/7, 365 Days A Year

Although your initial shipping of the product bought online may be restricted to standard working hours, your online store is not! Use this to your advantage as your potential future customer could be living somewhere far away with different time zones.

5. Price Comparison

With the ever more precise search engines at your disposal coupled with the facility to find relevant information online (price, size, etc), comparing prices for identical or similar products online has never been easier. There are multiple websites specifically dedicated to comparing prices of products from virtually any industry such as Google Shopping, Nextag, Ebookers etc.

6. Ease of Experience

With the advent of E-commerce, never has shopping been so easy. There are no queues,not being placed on hold, availability of a product is known instantaneously, and most importantly the practically endless CHOICE at your fingertips (Khuruna, 2015)

Disadvantages of E-Commerce

1. Price

Due to discount and promotional nature of selling products online, prices tend to be cheaper online, which is good for the consumer, but less so to the seller. It could therefore be argued that there is increased market competition online vs the traditional retail.

2. E-commerce slower final delivery

Due to the consumer not going to a physical location to purchase his goods but instead purchasing online, the consumer will always have to wait a certain amount of time. As previously mentioned, with the technological advancements made in containerization, shipping goods cheaply has become a reality. (How containerization shaped the modern world – Sir Harold Evans, 2012)

One exception to e-commerce’s slower delivery times are digital products such as ebooks, music and film that are all instantly downloadable once purchased.

3. Can NEVER Try Before You Buy

Since the wide-spread adoption of e-commerce in the 90’s (Winterman and Kelly, 2013), the single most logged complaint was that the product received did not correspond to what the consumer was expecting. 

One cannot touch the fabric of clothing, or try on a pair of shoes, or test the video quality of a TV buying through online. There have been forays into creating virtual mannequins that were supposed to showcase what the items would look like in real life. The most famous of these companies to attempt it were Boo.com, considered by many to be one of the biggest failures of the dot.com bubble (Boo – Business Nightmares, 2011)

4. Security

When the consumer has finally chosen to buy a good or service online, they must then provide at least their credit card information and mailing address. Many e-commerce websites require far more information and are then able to harvest other information about your online behavior  and habits. This could then lead to either credit card fraud or even identity theft (Khuruna, 2015).

The website below contains just a few of the most recent credit card breaches that seem to be happening with ever increasing frequency.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/category/data-breaches/

Conclusion

If you are planning on starting your own business, or already have one, be it B2B or B2C, that plans on selling any type of good or service online, it is definitely worth giving your potential customers the option to buy online!

References

Boo – Business Nightmares. (2011). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9kgZqbCJiM: BBC.

Boone, L. (2013). Contemporary marketing, 2015 update. [S.l.]: Cengage Learning.

Ecommerceeducation.com, (2015). Benefits of Ecommerce | Advantages Of Ecommerce | Online Business | Ebusiness Benefits. [online] Available at: http://www.ecommerceeducation.com/benefits-of-ecommerce.asp [Accessed 14 Apr. 2015].

Emarketer.com, (2015). Retail Sales Worldwide Will Top $22 Trillion This Year – eMarketer. [online] Available at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Retail-Sales-Worldwide-Will-Top-22-Trillion-This-Year/1011765 [Accessed 14 Apr. 2015].

How containerization shaped the modern world – Sir Harold Evans. (2012).  http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-containerization-shaped-the-modern-world: Ted Talks.

Khurana, A. (2015). Is Ecommerce Right for Your Business? 36 Pros and Cons. [online] About.com Money. Available at: http://ecommerce.about.com/od/eCommerce-Basics/tp/Advantages-And-Disadvantages-Of-Ecommerce.htm [Accessed 14 Apr. 2015].

Rampton, J. (2015). 25 Tips From SEO Professionals. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2015/04/13/25-tips-from-seo-professionals/ [Accessed 14 Apr. 2015].

Statista, (2015). Global B2C e-commerce sales 2009-2018 | Statistic. [online] Available at: http://www.statista.com/statistics/222128/global-e-commerce-sales-volume-forecast/ [Accessed 14 Apr. 2015].

Winterman, D. and Kelly, J. (2013). Online shopping: The pensioner who pioneered a home shopping revolution. [online] BBC News. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24091393 [Accessed 14 Apr. 2015].

Since its inception in 2006, Twitter has seen phenomenal growth in the past 9 years. It is the largest microblogging site in the world, with its 255 million users tweeting 140 characters at a time.  Twitters online reach and user base, taken from an AdWeek infographic made in February 2015, speak for themselves (AdWeek.com, 2015). Laura Lake (2015) states that: ‘Think of Twitter as a means to get instant public messages out to your audience, whether it is an audience of colleagues or potential customers‘

(AdWeek.com, 2015)

So what would be the best way to leverage the incredible power of directly tweeting into your followers pockets? It is not just a question of creating an account for your brand and expecting your tweets to instantly reach the maximum target audience. Below are ten tips on how to maximize your company’s presence on Twitter.

1. Optimize your Company Bio

The Twitter Bio is the landing page any user lands on if he clicks on your company account. It is therefore the first thing people will see. It is therefore vital that your company bio reflects your actual company identity as well as a unified brand front and that it is consistent with who you are and what it is you are trying to achieve. Make sure you link your company website to the homepage. (Schiff, 2015)

2. Initial Follower Build-up

The next step after creating a unified twitter account is to begin building up your followers. The first, and by far easiest step to take is to request your colleagues/employees to “follow” your twitter account. The next step is to reach out to family and friends and kindly ask for their help.

3. Identifying & interacting with influencers 

Twitter Advanced Search is a highly precise internal search engine that allows its users to fine tune what type of field, geographic location, subject, industry field, similar projects, people or company they would like to follow. By combining and refining ones search terms it can allow your company to identify influencers (Support.twitter.com, 2015). The next step is to interact with them on a regular basis.

Another tip would be to identify the 100 most influential people in your field and begin to correspond with them on a regular basis, brokering a sustainable and valued relationship. Shanelle Mullin, director of Marketing at Onboardly, a provider of PR and content marketing for startups says to remember that influencers can be found in a wide variety of fields and industries such as: journalists, thought leaders, potential clients/customers, big-name bloggers and writers, potential partners, celebrities etc. (Schiff, 2015)

4. Content: Quality over Quantity

Almost all Twitter analysts and experts agree on the following. Creating quality content almost unanimously trumps quantity of tweets in building followers and especially in retaining followers. The use of keywords in a tweet is vital as it directly links into Twitter’s SEO. A study recently conducted by Rutgers University found that users that were considered informers (amounting to 20% of active twitter users) had on average double the amount of followers to meformers. What exactly is the difference between a meformer and an informer? (Naaman, Boase and Lai, 2010)

• Meformer – Users who post social media updates mostly relating to themselves
• Informer – Users who post social media updates related to information sharing

Make sure your tweets are well crafted and Aim to boost your information sharing on social media so that you more closely align with the informer cluster rather than the meformer cluster (Lay, 2014)

5. Tweet regularly

Although this seems a given it is vital to tweet on a regular basis… which, in order to get the most out of twitter should be daily or every 2 days. Longer than that and your company may not be able to keep up with the latest trends.

Make sure to however not send out the same tweet multiple times during the day. Users will quickly catch on and will resent the lack of effort on your part.

6. Responding/Replying

Twitter always you, through Twitter analytics, to track mentions and therefore responding when appropriate: If a user mentions your company in a tweet, find the right moment to jump in to their conversation. This hands-on approach will in most cases benefit your company image greatly. Make sure to reply in a tone thats suits the conversation. For example, using humor can have a significant impact on how much your reply could be retweeted. Below the Smart car company came up with a novel way to capitalize on a joke made at their expense.

7. Retweeting 

Sharing interesting content found on Twitter is vital in growing ones follower base. It also directly contributes to the brand image your company is attempting to display online as well as show your company’s thought process within an industry. (Hall, 2011)

8. Be Visual

The final tip I will give you is to craft your tweets to be as visually stimulating as possible through the effective usage of images and videos, although keep in mind that not all tweets should follow this rule. Some variety is key. Crafting a media rich message generates, on average, higher engagement with your followers.

References

Adweek.com, (2014). Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat – Social Media Stats 2014 [INFOGRAPHIC]. [online] Available at: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/social-media-statistics-2014/499230 [Accessed 12 Apr. 2015].

Hall, S. (2011). Five Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing That You Might Not Know About. [online] Entrepreneur. Available at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219701 [Accessed 12 Apr. 2015].

Lake, L. (2015). Twitter: A Valuable Marketing Tool?. [online] About.com Money. Available at: http://marketing.about.com/od/viralmarketing/a/twitter.htm [Accessed 12 Apr. 2015].

Lay, K. (2014). 6 Research-Backed Ways to Get More Followers on Twitter and Facebook. [online] Social. Available at: https://blog.bufferapp.com/get-more-followers-twitter-facebook-research [Accessed 12 Apr. 2015].

Naaman, M., Boase, J. and Lai, C. (2010). Is it really about me?. Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work – CSCW ’10.

Schiff, J. (2015). 14 Ways to Use Twitter to Market Your Business. [online] CIO. Available at: http://www.cio.com/article/2380667/twitter/14-ways-to-use-twitter-to-market-your-business.html [Accessed 12 Apr. 2015].

Support.twitter.com, (2015). Twitter Help Center | Using advanced search. [online] Available at: https://support.twitter.com/articles/71577-using-advanced-search [Accessed 12 Apr. 2015].

Virtual Reality. A term coined by Mr Jaron Lanier in 1987 whilst researching the potential application of Head Mounted Displays in various fields (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2015).

Fast forward to 2015, where, for the first time since its inception, Virtual Reality is set take the world by storm, disrupting industries ranging from the obvious, such as video games and film, to the un-obvious, such as medicine. Why? Because technology has finally caught up to deliver the user his or her first taste of a truly fully immersive, 360° viewing experience.

In 2014, Oculus Rift, one of the leading players in the VR market, sent out 100’000 developer kits to media players, marketing agencies, brands and vendors across the globe, enticing marketers to come up with novel ways using said technology. For what do marketers want most? Engagement with a captive audience… which is a defining core competency of VR (Heine, 2015)

Jim Morel, from DigiCapital, recently assessed the current VR and Augmented Reality (AR) markets and forecast that combined, these markets are set to achieve a $150 billion market cap by 2020 (TechCrunch, 2015)

These impressive statistics are backed up by the number of tech giants willing to throw billions at start-ups in order to acquire their own virtual reality hardware (VRH) in order to be the next “iPhone”. Take Facebook, who, in 2013, paid a combination of $3.2 billion in cash and stock options to acquire Oculus Rift, currently the industry’s leading hardware designer. Another example is Google, who have recently invested $542 million for Magic Leap, another iteration on a virtual reality headset (Merel, 2015)

With such tech giants willing to spend colossal sums of money in this infant industry, it seems virtual reality is here to stay. As Shuhei Yoshido from Sony Worldwide Studios stated: ‘We used to say seeing is believing… Now we say experiencing is believing’. 

Below are 2 examples of companies successfully using virtual reality as the medium in a marketing campaign.

1. Toyota: TeenDrive365

With the New York Auto Show coming to a close tomorrow on April 12th 2015, Toyota have clearly differentiated themselves from other automakers by embracing the use of VRH. During the promotion of their new 2015 Corolla, Toyota invited car enthusiasts to strap themselves into the car, put on an Oculus Rift VRH and experience their Distracted Driving Simulator, designed to replicate being in the car with 2 talkative teenagers whilst driving in a big city during rush hour (Mashable, 2015) as seen in the video below;

https://youtu.be/tk70OUMRV0A

Why was it successful?

Besides the average 2h long queue to try out the driving simulator, for many users this was the first time they had tried a VRH that, depending on the direction they were looking in, the VRH would replicate it. Another reason why it was successful was that users instinctively felt as though they were actually driving the car.

2. Marriott Hotels: #GetTeleported

 In September 2014, the Marriott Hotel Group decided to set up a fully immersive 4-D Virtual Travel Experience, taking guests to on a virtual tour of 2 different hotels, with 2 wildly differing experiences, as Marriott Hotels imagines the future of travel with Oculus Rift technology (Marriott Newsroom, 2014).

Marriott Hotels set up two booths in Wedding Park in New York city where 0ver 100 hundred couples get married each day and offered them to try a 2 minute “honeymoon”, virtually teleporting users to the tropical sandy beaches of Hawaii or on top of London’s iconic Tower 42.

Why was it successful?

Marriott Hotels coupled one of the tech markets hottest emerging products with their vision of the future of travel which was: Experience a taste before you buy (Marriott.com, 2015). They then went to Reddit to ask users which cities they should bring their 4-D booths to and elicited over 230 million social media impressions in total, the hotel groups highest ever (Heine, 2015).

Michael Dail, Vice President of global brand marketing stated that they were thinking of introducing Oculus Rift headsets in their hotels across the globe, further cementing the success of effectively using virtual reality in digital marketing.

Final Thought

These are but two examples of successful VRH marketing. As VRH are not readily available for consumers, I advise you to wait a few more months to see in which major direction VR is going to head, be it towards gaming, film or B2B.

References

Encyclopedia Britannica, (2015). virtual reality (VR) | computer science. [online] Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/630181/virtual-reality-VR [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Heine, C. (2015). How Oculus Rift Is About to Reshape Marketing Creativity. [online] AdWeek. Available at: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/how-oculus-rift-about-reshape-marketing-creativity-162124 [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Marriott.com, (2015). Marriott Oculus Get Teleported | Marriott Travel Brilliantly. [online] Available at: https://travel-brilliantly.marriott.com/our-innovations/oculus-get-teleported [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Marriott Newsroom, (2014). #GetTeleported. [online] Available at: http://news.marriott.com/2014/09/getteleported-the-most-immersive-4-d-virtual-travel-experience-arrives-taking-guests-to-parts-known-and-unknown-as-marri.html [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Mashable, (2015). Toyota and Chrysler teleport into the fast lane with virtual reality. [online] Available at: http://mashable.com/2015/04/01/toyota-chrysler-oculus-rift/ [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Merel, T. (2015). Augmented And Virtual Reality To Hit $150 Billion, Disrupting Mobile By 2020. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/06/augmented-and-virtual-reality-to-hit-150-billion-by-2020/#.gkw8ht:aSyo [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].