Augmented reality is transforming marketing and advertising.

The brands looking for innovative ways to emotionally connect with the audience realized the need to incorporate augmented reality into their marketing, advertising, and branding solutions.

We all know retail is in the midst of a serious tech renaissance powered by augmented reality.

But what does that mean for marketers and advertisers today?

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have moved from trendy tech topics and the experimental phase to real solutions for marketers at scale, as more and more brands and consumers embrace these experiences and the technology that enables them.

A Deloitte study shows that 88% of midmarket companies (with revenues between $100 million and $1 billion) are using AR as part of their marketing strategies.

The introduction of wearable AR lenses in 2014, followed by the massive success of Pokémon Go in 2016, rocketed AR into the mainstream, opening the door for broader adoption across other areas particularly marketing.

With 1 billion expected users by 2020, and an expected $2.6 billion in ad spend by 2022, consumers are clearly showing an appetite for the unique type of experiences AR offers, creating new opportunities for marketers and advertisers to tell their stories in a fresh, engaging, and creative growing format.

Of late, Deloitte has identified that almost 90 percent of companies with annual revenues of $100 million to $1 billion are now leveraging AR into their business.

For smaller firms, research has revealed that 10 percent of marketers utilize AR, and 72 percent are planning to do so in the coming year. Such is the potential for immersive live augmented reality into marketing and advertising.

AR makes advertising interactive, allowing marketers and advertisers to reach out to consumers in totally new ways.

While there are many ways marketers and advertisers can take advantage of augmented reality, we’ve honed in on eight in particular.

Here are 8 ways marketers and advertisers can take advantage of augmented reality.

1. Catching the Customer’s Attention

“The more effective your marketing strategy is in grabbing your customer’s attention, the higher is your customer engagement”.

As technology changes the way consumers find, engage with, and purchase products, companies need to find innovative ways to gain brand visibility, establish trust and authenticity.

AR provides a unique opportunity to connect with customers in ways that traditional print, radio, and television cannot. Brands can quickly reach a large number of consumers, in brand-safe environments, to connect with prospective buyers, and more easily motivate users to interact with their brands on a repeated basis.

AR is unique, noticeable and therefore, social and viral. Augmented Reality enables advertisers to engage with consumers at a far deeper level than ever before. Instead of passively viewing a static ad or watching a video, people can now interact directly with brands.

From whimsical face masks (e.g. dump a bucket of Gatorade over your head during the Superbowl) to alien environments (e.g. transport yourself into the Upside Down in Stranger Things), AR provides an entirely new medium for advertising.

Drive playtime and advocacy with customers (portal AR, gamified AR)

Educate on products or features

Augmented reality is a fast-growing trend that is increasingly requested in the brand’s communication methods.

Marketers and advertisers have to pay more attention to Augmented Reality more than ever, as it promises higher brand awareness and sales for brands and ensures higher satisfaction for customers.

OVR responds to this with the state of the art of augmented reality experiences.

This will be a win-win situation for all!

2. Geolocalizing Customers Experiences

Digital advertisements utilize advanced machine learning algorithms to examine user behavior and interests so as to offer proper products and services to the right individuals. Augmented Reality advertisements offer advertisers a far superior chance with advanced geolocalization advertising.

“This possibility will allow businesses to profit with localized promotion and creative stimulation of clients in their vicinity. So many ideas can become reality that will be specific to what the client is doing normally around you and what type of client you’re looking for. The tourism industry will definitely benefit from this”. — Jonathan Laberge, Reptile

Dissimilar to conventional hyperlocal promotions that, for instance, inform clients regarding establishments, for example, bistros and outlets, AR geolocalized advertisements are really vivid as they can indicate objects on a cell phone’s screen. Along these lines, people are not just educated about spots that may intrigue them, yet are guided there also.

Source: Dribbble

OVR is based on geolocation of contents and on their tracking inside the augmented reality experience. We also provide a new way of conveying brand contents.

When it comes to sales and marketing one-time marketers had been adhering to the jargon “Content is the king”. Lately, things have changed, with AR customers may be both content creators and content consumers.

3. Offering Fun And Affordable Advertising

Despite the fact that digital advertisements are incredibly popular, conventional print advertisements are still a long way from out of date. Nonetheless, putting advertisements in mainstream print magazines can be somewhat costly.

For instance, one full-page color commercial in the Wall Street Journal may cost as much as $221,000, and the rates might be considerably higher in other national magazines.

Augmented reality advertising is normally more moderate and undeniably more vivid than a print advertisement. Obviously, the cost for an AR promotion varies depending upon its quality: a basic Augmented Reality advertisement can cost around $5,000 to create, while an advanced AR campaign with outstanding designs may go up to $100,000.

OVR offers an advertising system with transparent pricing. The decentralization of the OVR´s marketplace on the blockchain allows managing supply and demands with utmost transparency and traceability.

4. Creating Emotional Connections

Augmented reality ads are immersive, which means they help marketers create a certain emotional connection with customers. Unlike images or banners, for example, AR ads are interactive and lifelike: consumers can see and even interact with them.

Imagine, for instance, an eye-catching billboard advertising a just-released movie. Now think of the magic AR can do: passers-by point their smartphone cameras at the billboard and watch the trailer on their smartphone screens.

Which of these two strategies (a billboard or an AR ad) is likely to incite more interest? No doubt, most customers will opt for an AR ad.

Interacting with AR ads, consumers feel like they’re playing an engaging video game. This builds an emotional connection with customers, encouraging them to make purchases.

Needless to say, an emotional connection is a great tool for increasing brand awareness. People better recall brands they have positive associations with, so AR ads are perfect not only for promoting sales, but also for building a company’s reputation.

This strategy was used in the Arctic Home Campaign by Coca-Cola and the World Wide Fund. The campaign, aimed at the protection of polar bears and their natural habitat, included an augmented reality event at the Science Museum in London.

Visitors could see themselves interacting with virtual animals in their natural environment. This event helped the Coca-Cola company create deep emotional connections between people and the brand.

5. Creating Memorable Event Marketing

Event Augmentation is another way to launch a new product, update, pre-launch or other scenarios. A boring clown walks, stick walks don’t attract all the audience or at least does not provide the engagement factor with the business. Less than 10% of the audience who engage in ordinary events will recall the product after a day.

Using Augmented Reality, bring a personalized and memorable experience, attract, get the attention and provide the digital brand as part of Augmented Reality experience demonstrated. Making consumer being part of the experience changes the dynamics of the event-based marketing investments.

That’s not it. Better returns are gained by providing takeaways for consumers. They can be Augmented promotional giveaways or samples that are interactive and offer similar or varying Augmented Reality experiences out of the promo materials at their home.

Such offline engagement factor drives the longer duration of engagement at their home resulting in a more profound impact on brand recall resulting in better conversion, and there is more.

Tap onto consumer network by making them share their personal “Wow! Experiences” to their social media and that’s not it; such consumers can be retained and engaged for further product launches.

Here´s an example of how Visa used augmented reality for an event.

6. Creating Interactive Experiences

Take for an example of an advertising campaign, with a big billboard showing the movie release in upcoming days.

With the old advertising technique, you will only know about the date of the movie release, but what if the same advertisement offers you a chance to watch the trailer of the movie on your Smartphones, by just scanning the billboard advertisement using their regular mobile camera.

This is where the augmented reality holds the advantage.

Advertising in OVR merges with the 3D experience, thus enhancing the sponsored message.

7. Boosting Sales

AR offers different routes for advertisers and promoters to expand sales volumes through sponsored experiences.

A business can now easily generate AR assets representing their physical goods to enable a virtual product-trial experience. Allowing consumers to digitally try and interact with products before purchasing should not only increase sales, but also reduce return rates and overall customer churn/thrash.

AR can also be used to allow consumers to get more information on products, pricing, availability and, most interestingly, consumers can virtually try products.

8. Creating New Investment Opportunities

Like we have mentioned before, OVR provides a new way of conveying brand contents thanks to the world-scale experience of augmented reality.

When acquiring strategic OVRLand, marketers and digital marketing agencies can associate sponsored experiences in strategic locations of interest to the brands, allowing them to collect fees from publishers who want to use your OVRLand for distributing their contents and promoting experiences.

Again, a win-win situation for all!

Conclusion

Augmented reality marketing is here to stay for the simple fact it works. As more companies come on board, marketers will need to put more thought and effort behind AR. Campaigns that seamlessly integrate with other strategies will create the best user experiences.

Augmented reality advertising gives marketers an enormous advantage since this technology makes ads engaging, interactive, and efficient. As you can see, many companies have already embraced this top-notch technology and more are expected to follow suit.

As awareness and adoption of this exciting channel continue to grow, it is vital for marketers to understand their goals and the technical requirements in order to successfully add AR to their media mix.

Given the range of available options and new production methods required to create AR, it is incumbent upon marketers to take the time to plan and develop the execution for this new format.

As a Marketer and Advertiser, can you afford to miss out on the AR revolution?

About OVR

OVR is a cutting edge AR platform powered by the Ethereum Blockchain. OVR makes it possible for users provided with a mobile device or a smart glass to live interactive augmented reality experiences customized in the real world. OVR can be defined as a new standard in augmented reality where geographical experiences are based on the user’s position.

Website: https://www.ovr.ai/#intro

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