Augmented Reality Marketing is an emerging trend in marketing and sales strategies, amplifying brands in providing unique customer experiences within the convenience of tapping into their mobile devices.
In this digital age, consumers interact with brands through smartphones to make viable purchase decisions. In this consumer-driven marketing and sales process, AR marketing gives the brand wagon, a tool, in their armor for driving sales and enhancing brand value through mobile devices.
Is Augmented Reality Marketing apt for all areas of Marketing?
Who said AR Marketing is just limited to Social Media? Augmented Reality Marketing is going beyond the scope of social media. However, it places a huge impact on social media content consumed by millions of users on a daily basis.
With the evolution of Facebook AR Studio and Snapchat feature, Shoppable AR, these social media apps have been creating interactive visual driven real-life experiences for marketers to promote their products and services in unique, exciting and engaging ways.
However, AR Marketing is just not limited to Social Media. Moreover, AR provides you with an environment where you can place your digital content in consumer’s everyday lives.
Marketers can quickly see the value of being able to place your content into their customers‘ reality. And that value applies to more than just social messages, videos, content, displayed usually on social media, etc.
AR will revolutionize marketing while creating impactful AR experiences for marketers who are planning to ace up their marketing strategy for 2020.
Businesses are planning to invest in augmented reality for marketing that will make the AR market worth $120 billion by 2020 as per the reports by Digi Capital.
So, what are you waiting for?
Marketers buck up as I bring in for you the 5 implicit ways to include Augmented Reality Marketing to ace your marketing game in 2020:
Try before they buy:
Are you the one potential customer, who is always on a lookout for trying products before you actually buy them? Usually, customers are bound to try products prior to purchasing it has been observed as a general human behavior for buying tendency.
Currently, Augmented Reality Marketing is one of the most emerging trends in E-commerce and Retail industries.
Using AR in marketing, customers are able to model, try on makeup, clothing items, and a wide range of home-related products without the need to directly interact with them. This has negated the need for large inventory in order to allow customers to try on sample products before they find the one that best suits their needs.
The applications of augmented reality in E-commerce and Retail have already begun to take shape as marketers are trying to reap in the benefits that AR has to offer.
Marketers can transform the ways customer experience shopping through AI-powered e-commerce tools that will completely revolutionize the customer experience.
For instance:
Facebook has already begun to use AR in marketing strategies through paid advertisements that let potential customers try on virtual sunglasses with the aid of their device’s camera.
L’Oreal, on the hand, a big name in the beauty giant, has recently launched an Augmented Reality Beauty App, which lets buyers try on makeup products through a virtual dimension AR experience.
Retail stores are experimenting with AR-enabled virtual changing rooms that let buyers try on clothes at the tap of a finger without much hassle.
Brands like Topshop and Timberland are the front-runners in developing AR fitting and changing rooms to give their customers a virtual experience, helping them to select their desired clothing items.
Augmented Marketing in Touring and Assistance:
Augmented Reality offers the potential for businesses in touring and assistance. You can always add a digital component to the top of their physical products and services.
Customers are able to scan a product or object in order to pull up an AR experience tailored either giving toward additional information about the product or some form of supplemental brand-related experience.
The application of AR Marketing can be seen in numerous industries and markets. For instance: The ticket selling company, Stubhub, created an augmented reality app, which allows users to view a 3D display of the stadium where the SuperBowl was played.
This marketing strategy allows fans to have a visual tour of the field and choose preferable seats in order to enjoy the match.
On the other hand, Starbucks has turned to augmented reality marketing in order to digitize the experience of touring one of its coffee shops. Consumers are able to scan objects within the shop to access a virtual tour, conveying the additional information to supplement the physical site.
AR applications can be seen in the automobile industry. Major automobile giants Mercedes and Hyundai have been adopting AR marketing through augmented manual for drivers and
Mercedes has taken this forward with AI assistance and augmented reality interface named Ask Mercedes‘ to answer a host of potential questions.
Augmented Marketing in Symphonising Branding Materials:
A great AR experience is highly shareable, hence you can take branding materials like business cards and brochures to the next level by adding a virtual component.
As a brand, if you try and create amazing AR experiences in the form of interactive videos, visuals, etc that is worth sharing with your audience is incredible for newer brands and marketers for word of mouth and user-generated content.
AR-enhanced branding materials let marketers create and inject dynamic virtual elements into branding materials like business brochures and business cards.
AR Marketing in creating a buzz around the brand:
These days creating a buzz around the brand is not that easy as it sounds. AR in marketing can also be used in indirect sales and marketing strategies. AR can also be used in enhancing the status of the brand itself.
Creating a novice and unexpected AR experience can result in a significant buzz for a brand if implemented properly. AR is still a relatively new experience for brands to explore and plan out a detailed AR marketing strategy.
A well-designed AR experience can help in creating long-lasting memories. To illustrate this further, a perfect example could be seen in a campaign by Uber that happened in Zurich, creating AR experiences for their riders and generating in excess of one million Youtube views.
In this highly competitive world, AR can be a differentiator in making a brand stand out from competitors for sustained growth and recognition.
Leverage Augmented Reality for B2B:
Augmented Reality stands steady to transform B2B customer/vendor experience in a number of ways. AR marketing has the potential to create significant improvements in the entire chain of the sales process.
AR can improve B2B sales by creating a dynamic sales presentation material. AR sales tool allows the customer to see and interact with the products in a detailed way as desired from a high-level overview to a granular inspection of individual components.
AR marketing aids product marketers in graphing out the product marketing strategy providing a smoother chain of feedback leading to customers getting exactly what they want and vendors being able to provide it for them.
The possibility of effective and interactive support from AR manuals to tech support via AR augmented reality offers the possibility of making customer service more interactive and responsive.
Parting Note:
Augmented Reality is the driving force behind sales and marketing innovation over the next decade. Businesses can opt for AR to upgrade the experience they offer their customers, leading to increased business opportunities and sales.
In the realm of marketing innovations, you need an augmented reality developer who can push forward your marketing scale to delight customers in the long run.
