Augmented reality campaigns – the term is no alien to any marketer with a basic knowledge of immersive technologies. When its sibling, Virtual Reality, works by taking the audience to a visual world, Augmented Reality creates wonders by blending virtual entities with the real-life around. As the technology requires an object to be scanned through a mobile app and nothing else, marketers have found producing AR ads easier to reach more people. Okay, apart from the feasibility, there must be some lucrative marketing benefits with AR production, no? So come, let’s learn how the immersive technology can boost up your business.

Gain the lifeblood:

On 6th July 2016, public places in America and Australia were packed with people catching pokemon and very soon, the whole world went gaga over the game, Pokemon Go. Just in a month of its initial release, the mobile game set five Guinness world records by being the most downloaded game, highest revenue grosser, topper of international game charts in terms of downloads and revenues, and the fastest one to gross $100M. There have been several mobile game/video game franchises boasting huge fan base, but what is the distinguishing factor in Pokemon Go that caused the disruption? Well, it’s the magnificent User Engagement grabbed by the augmented reality enabled game. This is just an example of how AR pulls the much-needed user engagement. And marketers of the 21st century have taken a step forward to incorporate AR in their marketing campaigns, which in turn generated a great for the brands. Let us show you an example of how you can stimulate the emotions of your audiences using augmented reality advertising:

We all know how scary the zombies look in the television series, The Walking Dead. The makers of the show wanted to scare their audience with the zombie characters in their latest season and stimulate their audience. The makers relied on augmented reality advertising production and campaigning in bus-stops. And how the audience received this campaign? Well, you have already seen the faces of the scared and amused audience in the video, haven’t you? AR advertising is the best way to immerse your customers with your brand story. Just as an example, we take the marketing campaign by UBER at the Zurich main station. The online cab services company decided to give its audiences a unique experience of the sort they would get through their services. Here you see how the campaign turned out to be a big success:

Customer Retention

With your amazing content, you have grabbed the attention of your target audience and attained customers for your products. That’s great! But all your efforts will go in vain if a customer stays no longer with you. So, Customer Retention is the now battleground. Of course, you would be providing the best services possible. But, your modern day customer has a great appetite for fun in every small thing he does. And there are so many brands that have already jumped on the bandwagon of AR production to attain customer loyalty. Here is Dutch Lady, a Malaysian milk, and dairy product manufacturer, that wanted to upscale their mobile penetration. As part of their strategy, they designed mobile apps, enabled with Augmented Reality technology. When scanned any pack of their milk products, the app will take you to a new world. This campaign targeted kids with a funny concept that features Matt Truitman and the results were amazing. The mobile app got more than 40,000 downloads in no time and the sales went up by 19%. That’s great, isn’t it?

One shot – two birds!

The world is going digital, but print ads are still significant in taking your message to zillions with guaranteed visibility and that’s why a full page magazine ad in four-color printing will cost you an arm and a leg. So, let’s make the campaigns more fruitful by making them interactive. How? It’s augmented reality content production again to give your audience more than an image and evoke emotions of your audience. We found an AR ad of Viking, a branded shoe company, that would make the readers check out all the available models when scanned through an AR app of the company. The campaign provoked the audience to download the app and check out their latest models, which in turn brought conversions. Thus, they achieved several objects of their campaign such as spreading awareness and getting user engagement as well as earning conversions. They would have ended up investing a fortune if they did it otherwise. But, thanks to technology, it all happened at the cost of just a single-page print ad.

As a business operating in the 21st century, you should never forget the fact that millennials are the moguls of future. And these folks are tech-savvys who consume tons of immersive content. And for all the reason you read throughout the blog, we could say that Augmented Reality advertising is the new wave of modern day marketing, undoubtedly.