In today’s digitized era, AR is taking over popular social media channels. Marketers need to understand the significance of AR in social media and the best ways to use it for results. This article by Lauren Williams, senior marketing manager, MedicoReach, comprises a set of tips to execute in your AR social media marketing.
AR is a trending technology and has been impacting social media for years. Many brands opt for AR, but some don’t even consider it. However, AR is definitely a handpicked opportunity for many startups, small-, and medium-sized brands.
As AR becomes a crucial part of social media, you should have a precise understanding of its importance and how to use it for better marketing results. There is a complete set of dos, which you can execute in your AR social media marketing.
You can always take important things from this article, along with the importance of AR, and the tactics of using it so that you can zoom past all future marketing hurdles.
Learn More: Top 10 Ways to Use Social Media for Business to Boost Sales in 2020Opens a new window
Covid-19 has changed buying behavior in B2BOpens a new window as well as B2C. Companies are transforming into digital, and instead of regular experience, customers love the reality experience. AR is a great option that offers reality experience.
How Much Do You Know About AR?
Augmented reality or AR technology is a novice technology that facilitates users to have an interactive experience with a real-world environment via real-world objects enhanced by computer-generated augmentations. This helps the user to have an immersive and delightful experience.
As per social media experts, augmented reality and social media would significantly revamp the marketing strategy of various organizations in the coming years. The AR technology would help marketers to magnify user experience by transporting them to a whole new world.
Sam Murley, digital transformation director at PTC, USA, once stated an interesting view on AROpens a new window :
“It’s an exciting time. This technology is in its infancy but maturing very quickly. No matter what field you’re interested in, whether it’s marketing, design, architecture, art, sports, retail, manufacturing, e-commerce, or more, AR will be a key tool to add to your tool box for jobs of the future.â€
How Can AR Bring Both Marketers and Customers on the Same Page?
In recent years, its extensive usage of multiple social media platforms has evoked curiosity among users. AR would make social media more interactive with the 3D world. Marketers can share their products in a more engaging process and target new markets for increased revenue.
Just as email marketing and social media marketingOpens a new window worked wonders for many marketers, social media marketing and AR could bring about a massive transformation in marketing practices across the world. We can already see the impact of augmented reality on various social media platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram, etc. With the new generation of customers favoring visual presentation and immersive experience before buying any product, marketers are also changing their tactics and using the AR technology to boost their sales.
Augmented reality would successfully resolve the challenges, where the customer is confused about whether he should purchase the product or not. The AR technology would provide him an absolute and real-time experience of the product, thus motivating him to purchase.
Find the below graph to check the growth of AR in advertising:
Source: Rubygarage
Graph Representing Growth of AR in Advertising
You can see the exponential growth of AR in advertising, which was just 3.48 billion US dollars in 2017, grew to 5.91 billion US dollars in 2018 and is now projected to reach 198.17 billion US dollars by 2025.
It shows that soon many organizations will vigorously implement AR in their social media marketing strategy for mammoth business results.
Some of the following tactics explain how AR and social media can work wonders for marketers:
1. Developing the Right Buzz on Social Media
As a marketer, you must have experienced that creating the
right buzz on social media helps to promote the product to a broader audience, but there are some customers who are not convinced by such social media promotion tactics. These customers prefer to visit a physical store for hands-on experience with the product.
This is where augmented reality arrives as a savior.
AR can be effectively used to infuse experiential marketing for these buyers.
Users can browse products as usual from Instagram and check how a shirt or a shade of lipstick looks on them. The subconscious minds of these customers are at ease to physically see the products when, in reality, they are not at the physical location.
As a marketer, ensure to develop the right buzz so that users would flock to your brand, and explore the products via AR.
As stated by Lindsay Boyajian, ex -CMO of Augment, a US-based platform, augmented reality would be a game-changer and would shake up the industry, where the technology would be hugely used for the right shopping experience.
2. Motivating Impulse Buying
Many of the Millennial and Gen-Z users are known to be impulsive buyers. Almost 22% of Gen Z shoppers are known to make an impulsive purchase, as compared to 19% of millennials.
The AR technology that has the power of visual presentation can be rightly used by marketers to attract these customers. As a marketer, one has to develop the best strategy, so that when these consumers are transported to the augmented world, the attractive qualities of the product are showcased to them. This would obviously increase the chances of impulsive buying.
Find the below image where Facebook is implementing AR ads on its platform:
Source: Seeflection
Example of Facebook AR Ads
AR features can be seen in the news feed section and are helpful for mobile users as they can check how the accessories look on them
3. Discussing Educational Health Content
Many healthcare brands are promoting their products and services on social media. For example, Mayo Clinic, the American non-profit organization, recently published a post on standard healthcare practices.
The educational health content helps to amplify the promotion of the brand. The organization is also using AR devices in its project Precision Neurotherapeutics innovation program.
In the future, we might see many healthcare organizations sharing educational content with the help of augmented reality on social media.
Learn More: Easy Tactics to Help You Boost Your Social Media Marketing ROIOpens a new window
4. The Right Platform to Show Empathy
The world has become small as people are always connected via different social media platforms. Now, with global issues such as climate change, pandemic diseases, etc. many non-profit organizations would use AR and social media to address global challenges.
It would raise empathy among the people who would come forward to provide the right assistance and help wherever required. You must know that the UN uses social media very often to provide information about the humanitarian crisis. AR and social media can present a real-time crisis to a larger audience and effectively tell stories to induce the right emotion.
Conclusion
The world is at the cusp of great marketing transition with AR technology, just as social media became a way of life for users, augmented reality will also become that for consumers globally.
With AR making its own mark on social media, marketers should grab the opportunity to present their product in a more visual form. This will help to attract more customers to your brand before your competitor does it.