AR, also known as augmented reality, is a technology that creates a new World in the existing world. In other words here provides a layer of digital information, audio or video over our physical world. Some of the year applications require a particular headset or glasses however if you have a smartphone or tablet that includes a camera you may probably explore AR.
The concept is not new in the market even it has been there for more than 20 years. However, AR does not support the concept of VR or virtual reality. Virtual reality or VR provides a digital environment with no view of the actual world, whereas the concept includes digital content that shows where you are actually.
Augmented Marketing: What Is It?
With the evolution of almost every industry, marketing is making an introduction of a new avatar by launcing AR. However, the words are not providing any clarity or explanation for further information. Let’s uncover augmented marketing in reality.
AR is the new trend in the marketing industry; however, the concept of this technology was developed in 1968 at Harvard. By providing visuals, audio, and other sensory details of our real world, AR can give customers an overall idea of the products before final purchasing. Big brands like IKEA, Coca-Cola, Sephora, Burberry, NIKE, etc., are taking advantage of the richness and unique experiences of customers. Each year, this technology is growing faster, more reasonable and more comfortable for business operations and customers.
Augmented Reality In Our Everyday Life
In the landscape of today’s technology, AR is more than just a new concept it is going to be an integral part of our daily life. Let’s take some examples where Are is making an impact:
Gaming industry
Among all this industry that has been existing, the gaming industry was the first one to embrace augmented reality. You may be familiar with the game Pokemon Go in the year 2016 have become worldwide famous. In this game, we see a player has to catch a virtual creature from the real world and become a global phenomenon. This game is a brief demonstration of the potential of AR in an engaging and interactive experience.
Retail and marketing
Augmented reality is changing the game of the retail sector full stop there are brands like IKEA and Amazon offering AR apps that engage customers in visualizing how furniture and other products will make their home look according to their imagination before making the final purchase. As a result, Augmented Reality is not only enhances the shopping experience of the customers but it also helps at the same time in reducing returns.
Education industry
If air is the future of our everyday life then the education industry is going to witness a revolution by adding this technology as a part of learning methods. For example, Google Expedition offers students 3D visuals of virtual field trips to historical sites or explore the human body. The approach of AR has made complex subjects more understandable to students, so they have problems engaging with complexities.
Healthcare industries
In health care industry is offering medical students to comprehend the studies, medical training to patient care. Moreover, there are surgeons who are using AR glasses to access critical pieces of information during surgical procedures. Moreover, physical therapists are also preparing to use Augmented Reality to guide the patient with exercises. The AR application is able to improve accuracy and upgrade itself with new outcomes in medical treatments.
What Benefits AR Can Bring In Your Business?
Increase Accessibility
As per the record of 2022, approximately 6.6 million people were using smartphones, which defines 83% of the world’s population. By 2027, experts are predicting that the number of smartphone users will grow upto 7.6 billion. This growing market of smartphones is targeting AR facilities accessible to the public, which would be the vast majority of consumers.
Besides, the brands are aiming to enable brand experiences and comfort for the customer so that they can interact from home. With the perfect planning and execution, brands are becoming truly global. Customers will able to bring your products wherever they are by tapping a button of QR codes or convenient links.
AR experiences can help you go viral
Have you seen a commercial by Pepsi Max, an ‘unbelievable bus shelter’? By implementing an HD footage camera, the ad entertains the waiting passengers with AR content. Within 7 days, this commercial received 2 million views and won several awards. The point here is, to make more conversion in your business, you must make an advertisement of your brand by using the AR technology for viral.
A Camera IQ survey says 78% of the respondents are likely to share brand experiences with Augmented Reality technology, while the rest have already shared AR content on social media. As the above-mentioned example says, viral content can make your brand awareness campaign more visible. Like the big brands, you may not be able to reach billions within days, but with a brilliant concept, thousands and potentials surely. Here is the catch in the sense of the evolution of campaigns; AR can make your content unique.
Educate your customers
Suppose an automotive dealer is trying to sell a part of a car engine, but it is complex to give a demo to a customer from another country. Augmented reality conveys even the most complex information in a smooth way to the customer with proper content and visuals for better understanding. Besides, it allows customers to spend less time comprehending the product and more time calculating how beneficial this could be.
There are several brands that are working on educating customers who are likely to prefer the technology for trustworthiness and transparency, and both of these are the two pillers in building a global brand. For example, we used to buy a furniture for our home online by watching the available pictures and reviews. This technology allows you to virtually check the product by providing you with a button on your phone. You can see the furniture by focusing on the spot in your home where you want to place it, and the virtual furniture is there.
Increase engagement
The wonder of augmented reality content is that it can allow brands to rise above the average due to its interactive nature; it can enhance customer engagement and customer experience.
AR technology is even highly dynamic, as it performs well in physical marketing, too. The technology can be included easily in digital assets, fostering engagement online and offline. Applications like JigSpace can create QR codes for the brochures, packaging, and more, prepared for customers to scan for the interaction with 3D content on their phone.
Improve Brand Visibility
When we compare brands that depend on conventional channels, well-executed strategies from AR marketing improve those who are more innovative, exciting, and forward-thinking. It encourages you to see yourself as a future-prepared brand, which is quite essential for businesses selling expensive products that generally need long-term warranties. The experiences with AR are simple fun! Besides, we all are aware that offering customers entertainment is an excellent way of becoming a brand.
Live Chat
Coordinating a live chat service on your site can significantly support the visitors live, prompting more clients and a superior conversion rate.
It is an useful conversion strategy for eCommerce websites because it rates by 40%. Additionally, live chat allows you to recognize customer pain points and collect feedback, letting you to make improvements. To add live chat on your site, use Drift, Zendesk Visit, or Intercome. You also are free to customize the design and placements of the chat widget on your site.
Once you have planned and opened a live chat counter on your site, use it effectively and respond professionally to all inquiries. Do not forget to follow up with customers who have initiated a purchase.
Optimize Value Proposition
A convincing request assists potential clients with understanding the reason behind choosing you rather than your rivals. A powerful value is short and addresses client issues with clear arrangements.For instance, Apple’s approach to the iPhone has concentrated on the consistent coordination of programming and tools, evoking an unrivalled client experience.Another example is Slack, which exhibits clear benefits for organizational efficiency by desiring to improve team communication and decrease reliance on email.
To optimize your value proposal, start by thoroughly understanding your website’s purpose and its effectiveness. To optimize your value, start thoroughly studying the purpose of your site and its impact in fulfilling your audience’s needs. This implicates researching customer feedback, communiction, and market trends to check your products or services.
Enhance Mobile Experience
By providing a smooth user experience, a mobile-friendly site increases your average conversion rate. Optimizing your strategy, content, and implementation are all aspect of making your site more responsive. When creating a mobile website, design your buttons and links to be easy to tap and sufficiently spaced to prevent random clicks. Moreover, it ensures that your site offers fast interactions and lodes on cell phones. Fortunately, site developers, such as Hostinger site Builder and WordPress, come pre-installed with mobile-friendly themes.
Test Precisely
A/B testing defines a process of corresponding two landing page versions with diverse elements, such as copy, buttons, and calls to action (CTA). For practical A/B testing, you must consider several elements like multimedia, colour collaboration, navigation lists, headlines, etc.
Begin with components such as landing pages, headlines, CTA buttons, etc. Experimenting with various headlines might disclose what language best grabs your audience’s attention.
By changing some of them, create an alternate page with selected elements. For example, the headline of a page or image keeps text and CTAs the same. Consider Google Firebase A/B Testing, a tool to set up and run your tests. These platforms assist you by spreading your context to different segments of audiences and collecting data. You can conduct the test as long as you want or until the result satisfies you. At the end of the test, you will get reliable data.
Enhance Trust and Security
Securing trust and safety in your site is essential to retaining potential clients and generating conversions. You need to make the user feel confident that the data they are sharing is safe with your site. Improve trust and security issues on your website:
Privacy policy
You must plan for a clear and easy access privacy policy and highlight how you assemble data and protect it. Make a separate page just to showcase the policies and link it to the sales page.
Secured payment.Go for the payment options that have built-in fraud protection measurements; for example, Paypal. You can use the logos of these payment applications on your site to give customers an assurance of security.
Budget-friendly
When AR started its journey as a commercial product, it was much more expensive for someone to use, even it required an expert to use. However, in modern days, anyone can create excellent AR content using applications like JigSpace without investing a lot.
The tecnical companies aim to design the technology as user-friendly as possible with features like drag and drop, sharing and a large stock of premade models.
How Ar Technology Brings Evolution In Marketing
As a compelling technical vision, how do you combine AR with commerce?
Let’s check out a few examples of AR advertising that stand out:
QR codes
The odd thing is that we all have used a QR code for different purposes. For example, most of us have encountered the new trend of scanning a QR code in restaurants from our phone to pull up a digital menu. Now imagine something more than just a menu card; it can be any video of food items or chef’s special items.
Business owners can put a QR code on their business cards, commercials, or anything else that people can interact with. The QR code leads them to a website that superimposes digital features with the screen.
You must be wondering what that would look like.
Suppose a billboard table with a QR code on one side of the frame. Once you scan, it opens up with the AR component, which will show your virtual components to their phone directly. Now, you can have characters to play around with their surroundings.
Virtual trials
Virtual trials make it more comfortable to notice the value of AR. Picture that you run an online clothing store. The one problem you are facing is people are hasitating to buy them as they can not try them.
Now, this is your field to make something unique to give the customer satisfaction with the products and solve the problem, too. You choose AR to crack this problem. With AR, you can operate the scaling components on a smartphone to project accurately how someone would look by putting on the item. They even shop on their phone by using the selfie camera and attempt it virtually. This AR experience is a strong shopping mechanism for consumers and businesses.
AR also permits people to check what products that have been bought online. Businesses with different products can try their new arrivals products like fresh outdoor table sets, kitchen appliances, wall paint, and more.
Experiential marketing strategy
This is the place where creativity shines with AR marketing. Do you remember the game Pokémon Go? What if you could create a simple AR app that will be fun for users and you will promote a product or service? It’s a tool for digital marketing with excellent attention, delivering a distinctive augmented reality experience to every customer.
If you want to avoid making a game, you may plan to have digital band play pieces or characters from famous cartoons dance around—the opportunities are endless.
Real-world Examples Of How Augmented Reality Is Generating Conversions
IKEA
IKEA is letting customers place realistic, accurate 3D models of own products at any place of their house. Moreover, the brand launched the IKEA Place AR app in 2017. The app supports customers visualizing furniture in a setting of a real-world so they can feel how exactly products would suit in their homes.
Sephora
With so many products and shades to choose from, it can be nearly impossible to decide whether a particular lipstick or foundation is going to look good on you.
If you are a dealer of a beauty brand and follow the trends, then you must be familiar with how impossible it is for a customer to choose a shade that compliments their skin tone. Take it for an example, lipstick or a foundation. However, Sephora introduced the Virtual Artist App with AR technology that allows users to access ‘try on’ mode from their home. A customer can choose the perfect shade from a vast collection.
Pepsi Max
Conveying the ‘unbelievable’ nature or Pepsi Max to life, the brand took the advantage of the magic of AR to display unbelievable occurrences at bus shelters throughout Great Britain.
They used cutting-edge AR technology on the glass side of the bus shelters. Performing the same way as the AR does on smartphones, the glass showed a live video of the street, overlaid with wonderful techniques to make it feel as if they are real and happening.
Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN
Modelling a new name, a new lineup, a logo, and a new car, Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN needs to find a unique way of generating a crowd and as much excitement as possible before the 2022 season of the Formula 1 race.
To help bring fans droning about the takeoff of their new car, the team collaborated with JigSpace to fetch the C42 in the hands of every fan as a 3D model from AR.
The launch of the race car overlapped with releasing of JigSpace’s WebAR Viewer. With WebAR Viewer, fans have explored the head-turning style of the new car anywhere in the world without even downloading the app.
Again in 2023, Alfa Romeo F1 has used this technology to establish their C43 livery and get supporters onboard. This was displayed at WWDC in the Apple Vision Pro launch.
Gucci
Gucci was among the first liner luxury brands to let customers have an Augmented Realityexperience by trying on a pair of sneakers.
By allowing online customers to envision what the shoes would look like in reality, Gucci successfully increased sales and customer satisfaction. Their promotion ‘try before you buy’ powers of AR let the shoppers acquire an accurate idea of what they’re buying, promoting to minimize returns.
Conclusion
From the above content, it is clear that AR is useful for almost all kinds of business. However, business owners and experts need to remember that the effectiveness of augmented reality depends on objectives. In other words, based on the product’s purposes and target audiences, you should plan for the message or a commercial through which you are generating conversions. Professionals believe the most significant effect on AR marketing can be performed in B2B marketing, especially in cutting-edge manufacturing. This is because it will solve the communication gap for complex or novel, costly, and complicated transport products.