How Prototyping Tools Can Improve Marketing Campaign Efficiency

A good marketing campaign starts before the launch of a product. Sometimes, it starts even before there’s a product. This is usually the case in the entertainment industry, like video games and TV shows, which give us trailers months and years before the product is serviceable. However, these trailers often derive from the product, making them significant marketing tools.

Fortunately for you, there’s something better - with the help of prototyping tools, you can create an interactive, visual representation of the product. It can give you a virtual prototype to create a marketing campaign around. Here’s how this is supposed to work.

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Great for fundraising

Asking people to trust you is generally not the smartest of ideas. After all, anyone with a good story can sell a business idea, but people with money usually have a higher level of financial literacy. This means they’ll want to see your business plan, talk to the other investors, and generally do their homework on what you’re selling.

A business plan and referrals are great, but a prototype is even better. This way, you’ll show them that the product can be built. Even in its crude state, it’s a sign that you’ve invested an effort toward making this come to life.

The bottom line is that you’re also creating a bit of a FOMO. All the product is already being made, and it will hit the shelves with or without them. This is how you should always approach fundraising - you’re not begging for the resources; you’re giving them an exclusive opportunity to make money before it’s too late. If they miss out on the opportunity, others won’t. This way, your marketing has one more USP to work with.

Even with crowdfunding, people want to see screenshots, instructional videos, and more. This way, they’ll better understand what you’re offering. Some people have trouble imagining the finished product without first seeing the design. However, upon seeing it for themselves, they won’t have a problem committing resources.

Prototyping tools enable user experience testing

One of the most important marketing tasks is to assist your sales team in guiding your customers down the sales funnel and tracking every step of their customer lifecycle. Why marketing?

When you use prototyping tools, you get to test and improve user experience. Making projections on how well your product will perform is one thing, but making a prototype and seeing it in action is something else entirely.

First, a customer’s experience doesn’t start with buying a product. It starts with them finding your site, which goes under the domain of either SEO or PPC. Then, they’re more likely to check out your offer, motto, logo, or content, each of which is supposed to be handled by your marketing team.

Most importantly, when it comes to their user experience, the experience usually depends on the expectations. Your marketing department’s job is to manage these expectations the right way. If you promise them too much, they might end up disappointed (as well as sue you for false advertising), but if you promise too little, they might not come at all. Therefore, you’re looking for a middle ground between the two.

Great user experience will make them return, but your marketing team will also have to reengage them through methods like post-sale follow-up. This will also be the marketing team's responsibility, and they’ll be far more effective if they have something to work with.

Better feedback and collaboration

So far, we’ve mostly talked about how partners may struggle to visualize the product, understand its strengths and drawbacks, etc. However, they’re not the only ones who might face such problems. Your internal teams may struggle, as well.

Sure, your development team may have the clearest idea of the true properties of the product, but what about the rest of your staff? Will they be able to accurately convey the scope of the product to the marketing team?

A misunderstanding here is quite easy to make, but it’s even easier to avoid when you have a prototype. Even if there are some differences between the prototype and the finished product, these deviations are usually insignificant enough to cause a major misunderstanding.

Most importantly, simpler communication will lead to quicker decision-making, one of the most important determiners of success in a competitive field. Also, if there are changes that the management, marketers, or stakeholders want to make, they’ll have an easier job describing/explaining it via a prototyping tool. More importantly, if the change cannot be made, the team will have an easier time explaining this with the said tools.

An optimized feedback channel will soon evolve into a sales funnel; you must be ready for it.

Saving costs

There’s so much money to be saved by making a prototype. You see, instead of making thousands and tens of thousands of products only to discover they all have flaws, you get to make a single product. Sure, due to the nature of production, a prototype is more expensive than subsequent products, but it’s still one unit.

This allows you to discover flaws before you put the blueprint into mass production, meaning you’ll save a fortune on the chargeback, reclamations, and fixing the problem. The point at which marketing enters the fray is that you’ll also save yourself from a lot of reputational damage. Launching a faulty product will be a PR nightmare. Even if you fix the issue (even with the day one patch if we’re talking about software), the initial problem will remain to shunt you.

Also, you may overestimate some of the strong points of your product and base your entire campaign around it, completely oblivious that this is not the full story. Fortunately, you can discover this early on with a prototype and avoid this potentially expensive marketing mistake.

Any problem you discover before the campaign is launched will save you a fortune and won’t slow you down significantly. When it comes to optimal efficiency, there’s nothing quite like the prototype. Having a product in your hands before deciding how to sell it best is how it should be.

Easier visualization

Some people are good at describing products; however, you don’t want to depend on the efficiency of your customers and shareholders. No matter how good your description is, it will never be as good as the concrete visualization you can get with a prototype. This is especially important if you’re trying to represent an abstract idea.

Then, people don’t want just to see the product. They want an interaction. They want to be able to touch it and try it out. They want to see it in action. With the help of prototyping tools, they can navigate the product, click its buttons, and even use some of its functions to see how it will hold up in practice.

Perhaps the most important thing you’ll get from this is a chance to avoid ambiguity. You see, sometimes, the same term will create different associations in the minds of your customers. In that situation, you must ensure the prototype clears it up.

Previously, we’ve already mentioned communication, but it might be worth stressing it out again. A prototype ensures that everyone’s on the same page.

Earlier access to UGC

User-generated content like reviews are essential to the success of your business, but how do you get reviews before you launch a product? The simplest way is to make a prototype and give some reviewers early access.

This method is especially common in the gaming industry where some of the most popular content creators get demos, early alphas, or even a finished product in advance. This allows them to prepare and launch their content early or on the launch day. Many people won’t buy before the reviews, and you can’t wait for weeks until these first reviews come through.

With a prototype, you can build your entire marketing strategy around these positive reviews.

Now, there are a few things you need to bear in mind. First of all, a prototype is the first serviceable version of the product, which means that it will be imperfect and have numerous bugs. You don’t want the reviews to focus on that. The prototype should only be available to the most responsible users. Ensure they understand that these bugs are only currently present and that every issue will be resolved before the launch.

While you do want a bit of bias, making a fully-marketed piece is something that your audience will be able to notice from a mile away.

Prototyping tools will give your marketing team something concrete to work with

With the help of prototyping tools, you can develop a product (or a representation of a product) at a minimal cost. This gives you something to work with without spending too much of your initial budget. This also leaves more money for marketing, allowing you to create a more formidable campaign and base it around something concrete.

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