How conducting a thought experiment can boost your business

Every time you go to a Philippine mall, you’re bound to run into someone passing out flyers. These are usually for pre-selling properties – condominiums that will be turned over to unit owners one, two, 3 years down the line.

There’s a huge disconnect there. Most mall-goers are looking to relax, dine, or shop – not make one of the biggest purchases of their adult lives. While the determined agent may get the odd person here and there interested in buying a home – or what they would call a “lead” – a far more efficient use of their time would be digital marketing.

In the online space, it is easier to discern intent. A person using Google to search for “condominiums in Bonifacio Global City” is more clearly a prospective home buyer than a random person strolling around an air-conditioned mall.

To illustrate this point, my company, ZipMatch, which provides a property portal for prospective home buyers, sent 3 of our executives: John Dang (CEO); Chow Paredes (CRO); and Kyle Wiltshire (CTO): to pass flyers around Bonifacio Global City.

The results were not surprising. The 3 executives tried as hard as they could to find someone interested in buying a home, but they were ignored more often than not. Flyering, as we initially hypothesized, is extremely hard, if not altogether, humbling.

By documenting their futile efforts on tape and making an entertaining video out of it, we were making an implicit suggestion to agents: Try us.

ZipMatch, as you see, connects developers to the prospective homebuyers who look for properties and read through real estate advice on our site. As a result of the thought experiment, we had many developers inquire about the services we offer.

I highly encourage other entrepreneurs in the Philippines to try their hand at thought experiments particular to their own products or services, so that they can get similarly beneficial results.

Running your own thought experiments

What we did was nothing original. Staging thought experiments has been a common marketing activity for companies for some time now. They can validate business models, highlight the problem your company solves, or accentuate the strengths of your product.

Here are 3 key tips on conducting your own thought experiments as an entrepreneur or small business owner in the Philippines:

Be theatrical. Take a look at this thought experiment from Vaseline. They could have demonstrated the quality of their skin products through a variety of ways, but they choose the one that best lent itself to video: A professional model is intentionally made to look ugly and then interviews for a job with HR personnel. After sprucing up his face with a variety of Vaseline products and revamping his clothes, he interviews again with the same HR personnel, all 3 of whom have no idea they are speaking to the same person. Later on the truth is revealed to them, and their surprise sells their skincare products better than any advertisement could: It’s so good that it can make you into an entirely different person.

You should similarly think of the most visually striking or dramatic thought experiment to promote your products or services.  

Do not be pressured to be scientific. While we label these activities as “thought experiments,” there is really nothing scientific about them. We do not follow the scientific method, and you should really feel no pressure to make them in any way academic or objective. In fact, you can set the conditions in your favor, as we arguably did with the flyering video – we could have chosen an easier location to film at, but we choose Market Market, where the executives were likely to get ignored amid the high foot traffic.

Of course, you should never go completely in the opposite direction by trying to stage or script your thought experiment. Such works best when you capture people’s real reactions, which is what audiences are most responsive to and moved by.

Do a soft, rather than hard, sell. Perhaps the only way that a “thought experiment” is similar to an actual scientific experiment is that you want the audience to draw their own conclusions. You do not want to try to force them into a conclusion that is just not there.

For instance, with our flyering experiment, we could have argued that ZipMatch’s portal is a better way to find prospective homebuyers. But we did not. By showing that flyering is largely ineffective and enormously difficult, we left the door open for agents to explore other methods of marketing, particularly in the digital space.

Whether they proceed to try ZipMatch is left to them, but you can bet that those who do are truly sold on what we do.

Traditional digital marketing channels shift and change. Facebook’s algorithms are limiting the reach of company posts that seem too advertorial come 2015, for instance. Thus, Philippine entrepreneurs must get more creative in how they promote their brand.

A good start is thinking about thought experiments, as you can see in this video.

– Rappler.com


Rappler Business columnist Ezra Ferraz is also the chief content officer at ZipMatch, a tech company backed by Ideaspace Foundation, Hatchd Digital, IMJ Investment Partners, and 500 Startups. He brings you Philippine business leaders, their insights, and their secrets via Executive Edge. Connect with him on Twitter: @EzraFerraz