Every article I’ve read defining ‘what is AR/Augmented Reality,’ puts a fine point on the mobile app’s technology but ignores its incredible marketing and branding capabilities. It makes sense. Who isn’t curious about an application that manipulates user environments by overlaying augmented elements onto it? It’s amazing. However, as an entrepreneur, I’m also aware that AR is a new paradigm shifting playground for brand activation. So then, how can augmented reality help your company achieve digital marketing success? Here are some of the best reasons AR shines as a marketing tool.
Stand Out From the Crowd
The AR industry is in a unique moment. When eight of the ten tech giants position AR-ready phones as the next generation of mobile tech, AR’s capabilities advanced in the extreme. Yet user adoption is still in its infancy. This provides brands a golden opportunity to educate the consumer directly through wholly designed targeted experiences. Rather than shout through the noise of a facebook or Instagram feed, AR offers savvy, social media saturated consumers a novel approach to brand engagement. And there’s no time like the present, it seems. Marketing executives report that 53% of mid-sized companies have already initiated AR/VR pilot programs.
Stickier Impact
These days brands large and small are in a constant state of brand definition and reinvention. Social media was, for a time, the low-cost holy grail for experimentation and virality but producing, editing and posting daily content that bests competitors and lives up to the specifications of an ever more sophisticated and jaded audience has proven a labor intensive and insecure means of brand engagement. An interactive AR app not only grabs the customer’s attention, it allows your company to tell a brand story so immersive consumers literally bring your product into their home, work, and personal environments, even before the product is ever in hand. In this way, AR integrates, invigorates and motivates consumers’ experience with your brand, making conversion that much more likely. As an added and unintended bonus, this also happens when your brand’s name/app are on their phone. It’s a small reminder, a tiny billboard on the single screen that is checked, on average, at least 85 times a day. How’s that for low cost ad placement?
Get strong ROI statistics
Every piece of marketing will tout its high ROI but apps, which collect precise statistics at every level of engagement from download to offload are the real deal. If you’re already getting this information from your general branded app, then you know what I’m talking about. But for more ephemeral or time-sensitive products like movie promotions, services, and certain consumer packaged goods, it’s a bit more difficult to get a customer to download a specific studio’s app versus that of its latest superhero franchise. For these products, statistics around product engagement were scant. In the past, advertising dollars spent on print and tv ads may have provided a general sense of exposure. Low tech social media, with its likes and click through rates, offered slightly clearer key performance indicators. Of the existing tools, only a website offered data-collection as robust. Now you can build an in app feature leading back to your site or any other engagement metric you like.
In short, it’s an exciting time. With AR in its early days, innovation and disruption are sure to follow. Don’t be overwhelmed by the possibilities. We’re here to help. Reach out for any further information or read on to hear more about what we’ve been up to. It’s my pleasure to share my enthusiasm with the latest in mobile marketing.
