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Customer Experience Customer Journey Augmented Reality

Five ways to boost your marketing strategy with AR

By Grace Vassallo, Marketing Manager

Zappar

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The Drum Network article

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February 14, 2022 | 6 min read

Augmented reality (AR) is a powerful marketing tool. It can drive sales, increase engagement and maximize budgets by tracking consumer behavior and creating deeper emotional connections. Grace Vassallo, marketing manager at Zappar, takes us through five ways AR can enhance your marketing.

Zappar on why greater personalisation is needed and how to get ahead by using AR.

Zappar on why greater personalisation is needed and how to get ahead by using AR.

Marketing, post-cookies

With Google’s planned cull of third-party cookies around the corner and browsers like Safari and Firefox already restricting cookies by default, advertisers and publishers must build their strategies around a cookieless diet. Marketers should be looking at AR to provide the sustenance they need to deliver better, more impactful marketing in 2022.

Outside of the walled gardens of Meta, Google and Snap, AR can leverage first-party data from brands and partners, delivering personalized experiences in multiple formats.

In a recent AdWeek report, 70% of consumers agreed that they’re more likely to interact with AR-based advertising than traditional digital ads. As the spatial landscape evolves and privacy remains front and center AR can be a key component for marketers' 2022 strategies.

Championing sustainability

It’s more important than ever for brands to navigate an expanded definition of relevance and trust. In a recent Clear Channel and JCDecaux study, two-thirds of consumers stated that they don’t trust brands and 61% wanted greater transparency.

With climate change and the environmental impact of consumerism firmly on the agenda, AR provides marketers with the perfect opportunity to communicate sustainability messaging and bridge the divide between brand purpose and consumer trust.

66% of millennials are prepared to spend more on sustainable products, but a brand’s sustainability information is often hard to find and requires a lot of research - time which many consumers cannot afford.

With AR, brands can turn products, packaging and places into digital discovery channels, surfacing their sustainability efforts through a QR code or a simple URL within digital comms.

Leveraging the mobile web

Mobile traffic grew to 55% of global traffic in 2021. In 2022 that trend is set to continue. Marketers need no convincing when prioritizing their websites for mobile, but in the experience economy buyers are looking for more. According to Forrester, 61% of US adults say they are unlikely to return to a website that does not provide a satisfactory experience, regardless of how good a product is.

WebAR provides an opportunity for marketers to surprise, delight and educate their website visitors in 2022. Take product visualization; marketers can enable site visitors to quickly view and visualize their products in their intended environment at a tap of a button.

Savvy brands are already doing this to great effect.

Shopify recently stated that interactions with products with 3D/AR included showed a 94% higher conversion rate than products without. These stats show the huge untapped potential for marketers to leverage WebAR to drive more engagement and increase conversions.

So the stage is set for brands to take advantage of the tech and start incorporating WebAR into their mobile sites. If mobile was the second phase of the web, then WebAR is the third. It’s now over to you marketers to start thinking about your websites differently and offering your visitors a better, more immersive experience.

Whether it's taking advantage of the mobile web, communicating your sustainability efforts or taking your ABM campaigns to the next level, AR holds the key in 2022.

Enhancing your ABM strategy

Rightly or wrongly, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has become the go-to strategy for many enterprise-led B2B brands. Investment soared in ABM in 2021, with 70% of world marketers reporting using ABM (up 15% from 2020) to generate awareness, engage target accounts and elicit a response.

But with increased spending comes more pressure to drive business results. In 2022 marketers should be using AR to make their ABM campaigns work harder. AR can drive more engagement across channels, as well as greater personalization, unifying physical (direct mail, events) and digital channels (display, blog content, email) to tailor more immersive experiences to prospects.

AR can make both physical and digital components of ABM more impactful. For example, email campaigns that link through to personalized face filters or wearable branded merch can make all the difference when it comes to generating attention and click-through.

With AR triggered from a QR code, URL or embedded directly on-site, this cost-effective engaging solution is one marketers should give some serious thought to in 2022.

Personalization at scale

Personalization has always been (and will be) an important part of customer-centric marketing, and in 2022, this largely happens on mobile devices. Yet, mobile experiences still lack that something special. Personalization pays too; research by PwC found that shoppers are willing to pay up to 16% more for personalized experiences and with AR as part of the marketing mix, marketers can drive more contextually-relevant experiences and personalization at scale.

Think interactive product packaging that’s personalized to the buyer at point of purchase, or a product unboxing experience where the company CEO introduces and demos the product on the countertop in front of the consumer in 3D.

The need for greater personalization is only going to increase. Marketers can get ahead by using AR to drive personalization at scale, across the customer journey.

Customer Experience Customer Journey Augmented Reality

Content by The Drum Network member:

Zappar

Zappar is the world’s leading augmented reality platform and creative studio for mobile and web apps. Since 2011, Zappar’s mission has been to democratise AR...

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