Back in 2018 we published a blog talking about Snapchat filters and how even though Snapchat marketing with ads is probably not the best move for your business, creating your own filters and lenses could help strengthen the community around your brand and yield some great user-generated content for your business.
Augmented reality is all about bringing elements from technology and the digital plane into the real world. Think back to the mid 2010s and Pokemon GO.
While playing the game, you’re still seeing the real world in front of you, but at the same time you’re interacting with digital pokemon and “catching” them all over the world.
AR is all about enchanting reality, rather than replacing it, making it distinct from VR. Just a few ways to market using this up-and-coming technology include QR codes, virtual trials, social media filters and features, and any creative, experiential marketing campaign you can think of.
You can place QR codes around a town or city like flyers, attach them to menus at restaurants, and put them on pamphlets and maps that help out-of-towners explore the area. Once people have the codes, you can send them to sites that show them how your business can help with whatever they’re going through that makes them scan the code.
At restaurants, you can have them order online, you can just have it pull up the menu to reduce paper waste, or you can create a game for them to play while they wait in line to get seated. For pamphlets and maps, you can give them a more guided experience through your town or museum without having to hire a guide and schedule a tour. You can use them to advertise events around town or just to peak people’s curiosity so they scan the code and find your company.
Virtual trials is a massive one for any company selling a physical product. Think of Home Depot’s paint feature where you can see what the different colors will look like in the room you want to paint. IKEA has a feature where you can take a picture of where you want to put a piece of furniture in your home and it will show you, to scale, what it would look like there. Glasses USA lets you upload a picture of yourself and virtually try on any frames you think you might like.
This sort of virtual trying-on can be so beneficial for online companies who struggle with customer hesitancy due to their inability to see the product in person. It can also help increase a company’s sales region by removing physical limitations to trying out the product.
For social media filters, Instagram is now coming out with a feature that lets you change the background of your photo using AI. Once you upload the picture, you can click “backdrop” and Instagram’s AI system will analyze the photo to find the sections that should be replaced before generating two new background options for the photo based on the prompt you enter. If you don’t like either, you can just keep clicking a button to generate more versions until you find one you like.
This can make taking product pictures outside of a studio setting so much easier. You can take a picture of your product in any location and then ask AI to change the background to a more professional setting without having to go into photoshop and edit it yourself.
Additionally, there’s so many new AI tools coming out surrounding social media and crafting posts. A lot of these tools utilize augmented reality through the use of both digital and real world components.
With AR at your fingertips, improving and growing every minute, the only limit to how you can use it in your marketing strategies is your imagination. For the chronically online society we now live in, AR is a great way to snag people’s interest and hopefully keep their attention and support.