Can movies encourage a startup concept?
It did for Raj Sunder. As he watched High Gun in a theatre, he questioned, “Which aviators are Tom Cruise sporting?”
However alas, there was no manner he might know that on the spot.
He later based Wootag, an interactive video model. It lets customers faucet or click on on components in movies to uncover details about them.
“Interactive content material is about satisfying human curiosity,” believes Raj, CEO of Wootag and Unlead.ai. And for corporations, this will imply higher engagement and enterprise.
On this chat, he encourages sellers to view their merchandise as customers too, and produce ‘snackable’ content material. With patrons’ personas turning into different, 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 publication 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 apart from water on an everyday working day.
However after I journey, say I’m in a lodge or on a flight, and I wish to spend the following 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 abilities.
If you construct a recreation, you do not view it out of your perspective alone. You additionally contemplate 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 enjoying numerous video games on the workplace as a result of we have been anticipated to be immersed within the gaming tradition. This taught me that you may’t construct an awesome product except you’re a consumer of it. So, I all the time use the merchandise I’m constructing each day. I’m their largest consumer.
What’s your favourite software program in your present tech stack?
My total group is on Slack. We do not internally talk through electronic mail or calls. The software program has been an integral a part of the stack from Day 0.
Eradicating Slack might have an effect on our functioning, and we might must spend time and sources migrating to different technique of communication.
What issues at work make you wish to throw your laptop computer out the window?
It’s about human intelligence. It’s irritating when individuals do not use it. You may also name it widespread sense. We discuss AI, however we do not even respect our personal intelligence and leverage it to its fullest potential.
When individuals don’t apply widespread sense throughout a dialog, you ask your self why you’re even part of it.
Deep Dives with Raj Sunder
Might you are taking us by 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 stated that you simply have 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 figuring out the language Hindi, which is extra widespread 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 function 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 following orbit was that of a enterprise supervisor.
I used to be a vice chairman at 32 at this Indonesian firm. However the concept for Wootag abruptly popped up, main me to begin it and depart the whole lot 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 have been promoting the product to entrepreneurs, and I had not labored within the advertising perform earlier than. It felt like leaping off an plane and constructing a parachute on the way in which all the way down to land safely.
In life, we don’t know what the following orbit will probably 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 heart. If you sleep peacefully and spend blissful moments with your loved ones, it’s a sign your orbit is in the precise path. There is likely to be 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. Nonetheless, the hyperlink between such content material and enterprise outcomes is just not very evident. What can corporations do to strengthen this hyperlink?
The concept for Wootag got here whereas I used to be watching High Gun. I used to be curious concerning the glasses Tom Cruise was sporting, however I had no manner of figuring out the place they got here from. However, if I might work together with the on-screen expertise, perhaps by tapping on the display screen, I’d be capable of know.
This tells me that though interactive content material is a technical time period, it’s all about human curiosity. If somebody is interested by one thing on display screen, we can provide them an opportunity to handle this curiosity by an interactive expertise. Firms can use this expertise and its insights to derive enterprise worth by suggesting options, merchandise, and companies.
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If you market a product, you need clients to take the following step by enquiring about it or taking an indication. 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 recurrently examine the outcomes between interactive content material and standard content material. The previous tends to ship an up-to-sevenfold improve in engagement.
Within the interactive content material house, manufacturers are shifting to a extra user-generated strategy to creating movies. How can they leverage such content material to construct authenticity and belief?
From a B2B perspective, I needed to do one thing attention-grabbing with Unlead.ai. So, I went on my dashboard and crammed within the particulars of a buyer I used to be pursuing.
Unlead.ai has a performance known as Persona AI. I feed particulars referring to a prospect and their group to the instrument. Then, I report myself on the display screen speaking about my product. The instrument makes use of this video and prospect particulars to supply a customized video through which I’m proven as suggesting how my product might assist resolve their issues particularly.
“With the patrons’ personas turning into different, the flexibility to personalize, contextualize, and be artistic will turn into vital.”
Raj Sunder
CEO, Wootag and Unlead.ai
If I wish to ship this to 5 individuals in a company, the characteristic will routinely add their names and generate customized movies that includes me speaking concerning the product.
If you watch it, you’ll really feel such as you’re listening to an actual particular person discuss a product. It’ll additionally generate a customized name to motion (CTA), which might assist construct belief and credibility.
If you create such customized movies, you present that you take care of your clients 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 is probably not possible for corporations of all sizes. There are prices referring to software program, specialised roles and the time taken. How can smaller corporations strategy interactive content material in an inexpensive and scalable manner?
Should you go to YouTube or Instagram, you’ll understand that only a few movies are produced utilizing high-grade modifying software program. I don’t suppose viewers are influenced by the tools you employ or the ending touches you give. They care extra concerning the message.
Earlier, producing movies might 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 reside in, so you must give worth within the kind that works: a snack.
Definitely, we now not comply with solely door-to-door gross sales methods. How have buyer engagement methods advanced through the years?
Within the movie ‘The Founder’, individuals go door-to-door making gross sales. They preserve 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. Should you obtained the possibility to fulfill somebody in particular person, you’ll nonetheless go for it, proper?
Later, you had a mixture of video calls, emails, and in-person conferences.
Immediately, 70-80% of the gross sales playbook remains to be based mostly on emails. The one points that may make the distinction, as I discussed earlier, are personalization, contextualization and creativity utilizing know-how.
You wish to have interaction your viewers in one of the simplest ways attainable and speak to them of their language.
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Observe Raj Sunder on LinkedIn to study extra about viewers engagement methods.
