The emerging Augmented reality (AR) technology is deeply integrated into our everyday lives and experiences with a blend of reality and a fictional digital world. Whether in the form of entertainment like Pokemon GO or interior design apps that allow us to create and design our dream houses virtually, AR is prevalent and will not slow down any time soon.

Also, AR is not just about games or entertainment; it already showed its potential in various industries like education, healthcare, fashion, and real estate. Infact, using augmented reality in marketing plans and strategies is a new market norm. Our expectations are pretty high, with augmented reality doing wonders in marketing and advertising space.

How Augmented Reality In Marketing Work?

Augmented reality is a growing trend in the sales and marketing domain — Overlaying visual, auditory, and other sensory information onto the real world gives users more personal and unique experiences just with a tap on their mobile screens.

Changing the world of consumer marketing with Augmented reality, digital marketers tell stories and build a more empathetic connection with you through immersive and 3D experiences, hence making significant sales in return. Not limited to these, the benefits of AR in marketing are huge.

Also, AR is a great sales driver and enhances brand value, which makes it a priority for B2C marketers.
Along with its mind-blowing ability to change how we experience things in the real world, AR has recently become one of the most widely used tools in marketing and sales. More and more brands are now betting on experiential marketing with it every day.

Since it creates an immense impact, AR is the perfect ally for brands, generating numerous benefits.

What are the Benefits of Augmented Reality in Marketing?

Here are a few benefits of using augmented reality in your marketing strategy.

Rich and Immersive Shopping Experiences

“Try before buy” is the ultimate benefit augmented reality offers you!

It doesn’t matter whether you like to shop online or prefer to visit the shop; AR has created exciting and immersive experiences for both. However, 63% of customers are sure that augmented reality may enhance their shopping experience.

AR apps for marketing are changing the e-commerce game for brands that mainly target tech-savvy consumers. Now you can try anything before purchasing it. Whether it is a makeup product, clothes, shoes, or furniture, you can try them virtually, making better and more informed decisions with an augmented shopping experience.

  • IKEA

“IKEA Place” is the best example of how Augmented Reality can enhance your shopping experience. The furniture and home decor giant IKEA’s AR app allows you to place realistic, 3D models of products from the app’s catalog in any house space. It helps you visualize furniture settings in real world so you can get an idea of how exactly the product would fit into your house.

  • Sephora’s Virtual Artist App 

With a huge variety of makeup products, choosing a perfect shade of lipstick or foundation for yourself is pretty hard. Also, it is nearly impossible to try each makeup product available.

To deal with this long-existing issue, Sephora, one of the leaders in the cosmetic industry, launched its AR-powered app. This virtual artist app allows you to select the best-fit product for yourself without stepping out of your home. Moreover, you can virtually try every shade without applying it to your skin.

  • Gucci 

Getting the most out of AR technology, Gucci is one of the first luxury brands to let its customers try on a pair of sneakers virtually. Like other brands, Gucci’s AR-powered app lets users visualize their best-fit pair of shoes!

Brand Awareness 

According to The Drum reports:

Augmented Reality captures people’s attention for over 85 seconds, increase interaction rates by 20 percent, and improves CTR to purchase by 33%.

While AR apps are built with the ultimate goal of increasing sales, augmented reality in marketing strategies is more focused on enhancing brand identity and exposure.

Brands can create some well-thought, fun experiences using AR to make the much-needed buzz in this competitive market.

Besides AR apps for marketing, appealing AR advertisements can help you grab the audience’s attention first, converting them into long-turn customers later.

Your brand needs to communicate visually for increased awareness. Augmented reality plays a role at a greater level. Customers can visualize the products with a tap on their smartphones. Furthermore, you can offer product previews, social media filters, and interactive manuals.

  • Branding Materials

Augmented reality takes branding materials like business cards and brochures to the next level by adding a virtual element. You can scan a specialized QR code imprinted on the card with your mobile device and learn about the product in detail, which is otherwise impossible.

Track and Share Your Content

Not just limited to AR-powered apps and filters for brand awareness, they can also be leveraged as a perfect marketing tool. For instance, you can introduce shoppable AR filters on photo-sharing apps like Instagram and Snapchat, allowing users to swipe through and take photos with virtual makeup looks and dresses.

You can integrate a purchasing option in filters so that if users like their look with that product filter, they can purchase immediately.

Snapchat states that 93% of its users are interested in using AR for shopping.

You can share these filtered photos with your family and friends. They can also track the product filter and can make the same purchase.

Broader Customer Reach

AR-based ads carry a magical appeal that can instantly grab the audience’s attention at a greater level, impacting the viewers positively. Since the creative direction is up to you, you can get wider exposure and reach by adding augmented reality in marketing campaigns, either in print media or social media.

Just like Pepsi Max – leveraging the power of AR, they display unimaginable scenes at bus shelters in Great Britain.

Pepsi Max entertained people waiting at the bus shelters with fantastic and mind blowing scenes through the glass windows placed at the sides of the shelters. Crazy scenes like tentacles rising from the ground and alien abductions were shown. People acted surprised and frightened at the moment — That’s how creatively Pepsi Max turned the bus shelters into an internet sensation with augmented reality.

Broader Customer Reach

AR-based ads carry a magical appeal that can instantly grab the audience’s attention at a greater level, impacting the viewers positively. Since the creative direction is up to you, you can get wider exposure and reach by adding augmented reality in marketing campaigns, either in print media or social media.

Just like Pepsi Max – leveraging the power of AR, they display unimaginable scenes at bus shelters in Great Britain.

Pepsi Max entertained people waiting at the bus shelters with fantastic and mindblowing scenes through the glass windows placed at the sides of the shelters. Crazy scenes like tentacles rising from the ground and alien abductions were shown. People acted surprised and frightened at the moment — That’s how creatively Pepsi Max turned the bus shelters into an internet sensation with augmented reality.

Sales and Conversions Boost

According to Shopify’s internal data, on average, merchants using AR content in their stores experience a 94% conversion lift.

Counting augmented reality in your marketing plan undoubtedly impacts business conversion rates. Whether through AR apps for marketing or in-store displays, it makes a big difference in your business’s bottom line. Also, it better engages customers with your brand.

Generating more curiosity and hype with AR marketing gimmicks can significantly boost your sales and reduce retention rates.

Track Consumer Behavior

Since AR solutions and apps leverage web and social media analytics, they can easily understand consumer behavior with it. These analytics serves as the basic bedrock for tracking consumer behavior, which further helps in creating more user-appealing marketing strategies.

Pulling together the analytics of the real world and digital world help brands create a more personalized marketing approach.

Crush the Barriers

No one can deny the power of visuals. Since they are more appealing than anything written or in the form of sound significantly impact human minds. Augmented reality has the advantage of playing with visuals — The stronger the visuals, the greater the mark.

AR technology communicates messages through interactive visuals, crushing the language and location barriers. Although you need a basic understanding of any language to communicate, visuals can help you get through that better.

Saving Your Money

While you think AR technology will cost you a lot, the truth is: it saves you money in the long run. It saves you from spending a huge amount on traditional marketing. However, using powerful augmented reality in marketing strategies is an innovative and cost-effective move.

Cool Augmented Reality Marketing Campaigns

Here’s our top pick of some of the unique AR marketing campaigns that caught our eye in the first place.

  • Fresh at IKEA — IKEA’S Summer Campaign

IKEA collaborates with Ad agency Uzina in the summer of 2022 to show off its new summer collection of bedding products. The innovative element that IKEA brings into their latest campaign is promoting new, lighter bedding linking it with ice cream and bright colors. Since ice cream gives a “fresh” feel in summer, so does a fresh and lighter bedding would. It creates an instant relevance between both products.

It seems strange, but it is the best thing about their campaign — approaching Ikea’s bedding products while making you hungry, at the same time.

  • Burn That Ad — Burger King

Professional enmity between the fast food giants Burger King and McDonald’s over the years is what everyone knows about. The motto “After all, flamed grilled is always better” led Burger King to produce a brilliant marketing campaign: “Burn that Ad.”

Although Burger King created the campaign to promote its newly launched phone app for pre-ordering their food online, it virtually made customers in Brazil set the McDonald’s ads on fire. In return, customers got a free grilled burger.

Using the immersive AR technology, customers with the BK app place their mobile screen on McDonald’s ad and click on their screen to burn the Ad. That’s how Burger King made more than four hundred thousand people burn their competitor’s ad. The app became one of the most downloaded in the food and drink category.

Internal data of BK also states that their sales increased by more than fifty percent with the campaign.

  • Scary Shelter — The Walking dead

To promote the fifth season of the famous American TV series “The Walking Dead,” Fox and Sky made the most out of augmented reality in the show’s marketing campaign, making the audience truly connected with it.

People at the bus shelter saw zombies walking toward them through the AR experience on the glass screen beside them. The moments were full of awe and excitement. This amazing marketing stunt made viewers believe that the dreaded zombie apocalypse from their nightmares had started right before their eyes.

However, it is one of the worst uses of augmented reality in marketing campaigns, winning 10 million Youtube views.

  • Rita Ora — EE (Internet Service Provider)

EE is one of the UK’s largest mobile network operators and internet service providers. They launched an immersive AR campaign to introduce 5G services and expose the iPhone 12 pro’s potential. The impressive web-based AR experience with EE brought Rita Ora as an avatar to the fan’s home for an exclusive performance.

When Avatar’s performance ended, a display button appeared: “Discover the Power of 5G”. If a user clicks on it, it leads them to EE’s website, offering detailed information about the novel 5G technology. Moreover, users don’t have to download the app to enjoy the avatar’s performance. They can activate the experience through the web page.

Future of AR in Marketing and Sales

AR’s future in marketing and sales is pretty exciting — customers can view products in scale, gauge aesthetic choices compared to what they have now, get in-depth details from every angle, and much more. Moreover, retailers can connect and engage with their customers more broadly.

We are in a digital world where social media and technology drive people in their everyday tasks. So the flux of Augmented Reality in marketing opens up an entirely new world of opportunities.

Today, Augmented reality shouldn’t be taken for granted, however. Without a doubt, It’s capable of delivering amazing experiences we just thought of a few years ago. And the benefits we mentioned above will certainly further extend reality and deliver more immersive experiences. I think every manufacturer should seriously consider using 3D technology in their marketing strategies.

Level up your marketing strategies with Revolve AI’s Augmented Reality solutions, capable of winning users’ attention with practical insights.