Augmented Reality (AR) is a powerful marketing tool. It can boost sales, engagement, and budgets by tracking consumer behavior and building stronger emotional bonds. Marketer Grace Vassallo of Zappar shows us five ways AR can improve your marketing.
- Marketing, post-cookies
- Championing sustainability
- Using mobile web
- Boosting your ABM plan
- Scale personalization
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Marketing, post-cookies
Advertisers and publishers must adapt their strategies to a cookie-free diet as Google prepares to delete third-party cookies. Marketers should look to AR for the nutrition they need to deliver better marketing in 2022.
Away from Meta, Google, and Snap’s walls, AR can use first-party data from brands and partners to deliver personalized experiences in various formats.
According to a recent AdWeek survey, 70% of consumers prefer AR-based ads over traditional digital ads. As the spatial landscape evolves, privacy remains a top priority for marketers in 2022.
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Championing sustainability
Brands must now navigate a broader definition of relevance and trust. According to a recent Clear Channel and JCDecaux study, two-thirds of consumers distrust brands and want more transparency.
With climate change and consumerism firmly on the agenda, AR allows marketers to communicate sustainability messages and bridge the gap between brand purpose and consumer trust.
Most millennials are willing to pay more for sustainable products, but the information is often hard to come by and requires extensive research, which many consumers cannot afford.
To promote their sustainability efforts, brands can use AR to embed a QR code or a simple URL into digital communications.
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Using mobile web
Global mobile traffic grew to 55% in 2021. This trend will continue in 2022. Marketers know to prioritize mobile websites, but in the experience economy, buyers expect more. According to Forrester, 61% of US adults say they will not return to a website that does not meet their expectations, regardless of the product’s quality.
Marketers can use WebAR to surprise, delight, and educate website visitors in 2022. Consider product visualization: marketers can enable site visitors to see their products in their intended environment with a single click.
Smart brands already do this well.
Shopify recently reported that 3D/AR-enabled products convert 94% better than non-enabled products. These figures show how marketers can use WebAR to increase engagement and conversions.
So now it’s up to brands to start incorporating WebAR into their mobile sites. WebAR is the third phase of the web after mobile. Now it’s up to you marketers to rethink your websites and give your visitors a better, more immersive experience.
AR holds the key to maximizing the mobile web, communicating sustainability initiatives, and elevating ABM campaigns in 2022.
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Boosting your ABM plan
Many enterprise-led B2B brands, rightly or wrongly, rely on Account-Based Marketing (ABM). In 2021, 70% of global marketers reported using ABM to raise awareness, engage target accounts, and elicit a response.
But increased spending means increased business results. In 2022, marketers should use AR to boost ABM campaigns. AR can increase cross-channel engagement and personalization by combining physical (direct mail, events) and digital (display, blog content, email) channels.
AR can enhance ABM’s physical and digital components. Email campaigns that link to personalized face filters or wearable branded merch can generate a lot of attention and clicks.
With AR triggered by a QR code, URL, or directly on-site, marketers should seriously consider it in 2022.
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Scale personalization
The importance of personalization in customer-centric marketing has always been (and will continue to be) on mobile devices. But mobile experiences lack that special something. Customers are willing to pay up to 16% more for personalized experiences, according to PwC research, and marketers can use AR to deliver more contextually relevant experiences and personalization at scale.
Consider personalized product packaging or an unboxing experience where the company CEO introduces and demos the product in 3D in front of the consumer.
Personalization will become more important. Marketers can gain an edge by using AR to personalize the customer journey at scale.