What if consumers can try the products even without visiting brick-and-mortar locations of businesses or any store?
It’ll be wonderful, it’ll save a lot of effort, and time for both consumers as well as brands.
Is it possible, if yes then how?
Yes, it’s absolutely possible, and augmented reality makes this possible!
So, want to know more about augmented reality and how this works?
Let’s discuss this chapter of marketing in detail!
What is augmented reality?
Consumer experience is what makes users loyal, and advocates of the brands. It further leads to retainer consumers and provides helping hands to other marketing strategies such as word of mouth marketing, inbound marketing etc.
Augmented reality and virtual reality are some of the emerging technologies that are working in the world of bettering consumer experiences with ease.
Augmented reality and virtual reality both are sharing similar goals but augmented reality is more real than virtual reality. And today we are going to talk most about augmented reality.
Augmented reality provides consumers immersive engaging experience combining both real and virtual interactive elements. It helps consumers experience the products even before buying them. As we know AR creates an immersive engaging experience for loyal consumers and potential prospects that helps personalise the brand experience.
Augmented reality is just making the present real-world products more appealing and enabling consumers to experience the product before purchasing. It just augments a real-world scene with the help of technologies while keeping consumers connected with the real world.
Still wondering if it will work for your brand?
I would say everything works out if it is performed properly.
AR is used in enhancing brand experiences somewhat in every type of industry such as product-based brands, clothing brands or textile industry, education industry, cosmetics, automobile industry, furniture, electronics, mobile industry, personal events, service-based start-ups, books etc.
We’ve mentioned one other emerging technology along with AR in this blog that is VR (Virtual Reality).
Let’s differentiate between them
Major Difference between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
As we’ve discussed Augmented Reality (AR) creates an immersive engaging experience with the help of both real and virtual interactive elements. The immersive environment created by AR is more real and less virtual. Users of AR technology are always connected with the real world. In the statistics, it can be said that it is just 25% virtual.
But on the other hand virtual reality also create an immersive environment but it’s more virtual and less real. It is named virtual reality because it creates an immersive virtual environment. Users of VR enter into a completely fictional world. In the statistics, it can be said that it is just 75% virtual.
The next biggest difference between VR and AR is the method of making use of these technologies. To experience virtual reality we need a particular headset device, but in augmented reality, it’s not like this. We can experience augmented reality even with a mobile device.
VR has its own place in the field of marketing but AR is also becoming more popular day by day in it, we can use augmented reality with just a smartphone.
The mobile phone is the most popular device used by consumers for accessing brands, their products and services and making buying decisions.
AR is becoming a great tool for experiencing the products and testing them. As result, it helps in enhancing brand value, and brand loyalty. Further, these things drive sales and more revenue just by converting consumers into brand advocates and retainer clients.
Let’s discuss how we can use Augmented Reality in our favour through marketing!
Implementations of Augmented Reality
Various ways of incorporating augmented reality in marketing and making the best use of them are the following;
First Experience then Believe and Buy the Products
Being a human being it is not easy for us to believe in something if we don’t see it with our own eyes. In the same way, we can’t believe in the qualities and specialities of the products if we have not experienced them so far. This is why people first want to try products than making a buying decision directly.
This requirement can be fulfilled with the use of Augmented Reality. It is the reason AR shopping experiences are one of its own and rising trends in the retail industry.
It is a little bit expensive to build an augmented reality testing material for products & services instead it is in virtual reality. But along with big brands, many small brands have started adopting this technology.
Clothing brands are building fitting rooms for consumers so that they can try the clothes there. In the same way, cosmetic brands are providing cosmetic samples. The automobile sector isn’t also far behind, it is using automobile test drives to lure and satisfy its target audiences even without the requirement of a physical inventory.
This way they can check which products and services are fulfilling their needs and how much a product can be useful.
This is the first and biggest use of augmented reality in marketing the products and services of the brands.
Let’s discuss some more implementation of augmented reality in marketing!
Gamification in Marketing
We know that augmented reality enhances a real-life environment by providing a simulated environment connected to the real world.
Gamification in marketing is one of the uses of this environment. Its use is increasing in the world of games because it gives users an opportunity to play the game in the real-world environment by bringing out the game on a screen to the real world.
So, the question is how we can bring out the game to the real world. Well, you’ve already seen this with the games who are involving essential daily activities in the games such as getting points on visiting a location or performing some usual tasks.
The examples of gamification in marketing are;
- Pokemon Go
- Zombies Run
If you’ve played these games, you’d have understood how we can use gamification in marketing with the help of augmented reality.
If you’re a brand that can make a relationship between the brand and the daily activities then you can use gamification to augmented reality for marketing in your branding strategy!
Let’s move a step further and discuss how augmented reality helps in augmenting stories, and branding materials and creating a buzz all over it.
Augment Stories, Brands, Branding Materials & Creating Buzz
AR enhances the brand experience and status by making augmented stories and incorporating them into branding materials. As we all know that it is an emerging trend in the field of marketing. So, a well-designed and properly executed AR experience can generate ever-lasting memories to talk about the brand in the lives of consumers.
You can use augmented reality in several ways for business cards or brochures or conveying stories. Adding a virtual component to the branding materials will play a part for you.
For example, you can provide the options for scanning the branding material to get more info about the brand, and watching brand stories. In the brochures and business cards, you can also add scanning options to get more insights about the brand by accessing different kinds of media and contact options respectively to connect with the brand.
This way you can easily create a buzz about your brand.
Keeping Consumers Healthy and Fit
We know that we can also add gamification to marketing with the help of augmented reality. It’s done by connecting it with exercises and daily activities and these exercises help consumers keep them healthy and fit.
With the help of gamification, you can track the fitness routines of your consumers and provide them with the best suggestions on the basis of analytics. This way you can help your consumer in improving their nutrition and fitness level.
Improving Ease of Use with Augmented Touring and Assistance
Augmented reality is being used in providing a virtual tour of physical locations such as real estate properties, branded cars, a stadium, or a theatre.
You can see the 3-D view of a stadium or theatre before making a reservation for the seats. You can see the augmented reality manual to get to know everything about your branded car and have an experience of everything. You can also view the complete real estate apartment you’re going to buy with augmented reality touring and assistance. This way augmented reality improves touring and assistance.
Leveraging AR for both B2C and B2B
AR isn’t just limited to any particular kind of industry. Whether you’re targeting B2C or B2B you’re always free to leverage augmented reality for your products and services.
Augmented reality can transform the experience between consumers and brands in several ways. It helps in improving every step of the sales process by implementing tactics to augmented reality.
You can create dynamic brochures, flyers, sales representations, reports, and proposals with the help of augmented reality. Augmented reality provides so much customizations options for products and services. If you want to provide more personalized and customized services, then AR can do that for you by delivering specifically tailored products and solutions to its consumers.
With the help of AR manuals, you can allow your users greater access to the information and experience that is enough to make a buying decision.
It doesn’t end there, you can also provide your consumers remote tech support via augmented reality, and that’s awesome, don’t you think?
Now, let’s move and understand the ways of incorporating augmented reality in content marketing!
Leveraging AR in Content Marketing
We’ve already discussed the ways of leveraging augmented reality in content marketing like making dynamic presentations and brand materials incorporating augmented reality.
Creating AR manuals is also part of content marketing that helps in understanding the features of products and services.
Have thought to create your own AR manuals?
Then go ahead!
Let’s wrap up the blog now with some concluded insights!
Wrapping Up
Augmented reality can play an important role in your sales and marketing strategies along with improving brand experiences and making them more immersive combined with virtual interactive elements.
Want to stand out from the market with the help of augmented reality or build brand advocates with retainer clients?
It can come true with the properly designed and executed augmented reality campaigns.
We love to hear in the comment section how you’re going to incorporate this!
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