How can a brand creatively integrate Augmented Reality into business?

With the advent of augmented reality (AR), brands have the opportunity to express themselves in a completely new way.

Augmented reality is a technology for augmenting the real world with digital images, audio and text using mobile devices, a computer or glasses.

Augmented Reality (AR) allows to create an extraordinary customer experience and visualise the product in the form and environment that the customer desires. The novelty effect gives the brand a powerful viral promotion and increases the audience. The interactive and playful components of augmented reality arouse and keep user interest, and easy accessibility on mobile devices make the technology very promising.

There are industries with highest demand in AR applications:

  • furniture and interior items
  • clothing
  • food and drinks
  • shoes
  • cosmetics
  • jewellery
  • toys

With the help of a AR mobile app, manufacturers have the opportunity to show their consumers:

  • size, composition and available colours of the product
  • compatibility with other products
  • value and offers.

The use of AR in marketing gives companies:

  • brand promotion,
  • competitive advantage,
  • attraction of new clients,
  • increase in income.

How augmented reality works:

  • the product “presents” itself with the help of online instructions, gamification or a virtual consultant.
  • non-standard presentation of information involves the consumer in interaction with the product, creating additional brand awareness. Augmented reality affects emotions, thereby increasing the time of consumer contact with the brand.
  • AR gives the opportunity to try on a product in 3D or show the client how the product will look at home in real size and real shape.
  • AR enables convenient navigation in shopping malls, entertainment centres, and supermarkets.
  • Augmented reality provides access to interactive learning and visualisation of educational material in 3D graphics, which is of great benefit to educational and medical institutions, museums, and exhibition centres.
  • Augmented reality allows you to choose the content format. It can be in the form of 2D graphics, video or 3D graphics. The format of AR content depends on the marketing goals of the campaign, the audience, and the product being promoted using AR. In practice, 3D graphics are more often used.
  • After selecting the content format, a script is developed for its translation into AR. It should be aimed at the main consumer and reflect the marketing strategy of the company.
  • Content is the main component of AR technology that the customer sees through a smartphone. The result of the campaign depends on the content.
  • The brand needs to determine the duration of the AR campaign – the time during which augmented reality will exist with the brand’s product.
  • There are several ways to program an AR project, and therefore ways to launch it.
    • Creation of a stand-alone mobile AR app for a company, or use of a ready-made universal augmented reality app, or embedding an AR feature into an existing brand app. To run AR, the client must download the app.
    • AR programming on the site, that is, WEB AR. To launch it, the client must go to the brand’s website and press the AR button.
    • Augmented reality programming on brand pages on social networks Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat. To activate AR, the client should enter the company page.
    • Creation of augmented reality with the help of special hardware devices located in a certain place. To run AR, the consumer needs to be near the screen.

Deloitte Digital and Snap Inc. shared the results of involvement of AR technology in business. The study included users of Snapchat, where AR originated before other social platforms. In the course of studying the experience of audience interaction with augmented reality, the following conclusions were presented:

  • AR increases conversion by 94%
  • 72% of users recognize AR content, but due to insufficient digital literacy, they cannot give it an exact definition.
  • 76% of users expressed a desire to use augmented reality AR in everyday life.
  • AR technology is equally understood and used by children and zoomers, as well as by generations of millennials and boomers.

It also provides data on the results of using AR by brands:

  • Increasing the attention of potential users to the brand by 30% (subject to high-quality AR content)
  • Increase in 2 times the memorability of information about the brand.
  • 46% of users said that AR technology has influenced their confidence in the quality of the product.
  • More than half of users prefer the function of “trying on” a product using augmented reality.
  • 75% said they were willing to pay more for a product with AR (especially after trying-on).
  • AR fittings reduce returns by 25%.
  • With AR, users are 20% more likely to buy and 26% more likely to talk about a product.

The use of augmented reality allows companies to conduct marketing analysis and to study the opinions of consumers about the product. The AR application can collect and send geodata, and see the outlets that customers visit most often, their length of stay, as well as information about the age and gender of the customers. The built-in interactive tools will help to make the application interesting for the customers – games, stimulating lotteries and quizzes, personal messages and notifications.

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