Augmented Reality Marketing: Increase Your eCommerce Conversions

The past decade brought considerable advancements to the eCommerce retail industry, which only grew in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic. As more and more shoppers shift to online shopping as their primary method of shopping, there’s a clear need for innovative ways for brands to reach their target customers online. One emerging method to engage digital customers, rapidly growing in popularity, is augmented reality technology. Keep reading to understand how marketers incorporate 3D & augmented reality marketing to enhance their digital marketing campaigns and their customer’s online shopping experiences.

What Is Augmented Reality Marketing?

Augmented reality marketing (AR marketing) is a promotional method that allows customers to interact with 3D models of your products in their “real-life” environment. Unlike conventional 2D photo or video ads, augmented reality marketing campaigns allow users to preview a product as if they were in a physical store.  Customers can access augmented reality experiences directly from a computer or mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet, without downloading additional software or purchasing external hardware. Typical uses of AR in marketing include product try-ons, product placements, social media marketing, and paid media advertising.

Augmented Reality Marketing: Top 4 Uses

Exactly how can AR be used in marketing? Here are the top 4 methods:

• Augmented reality product try-ons: Traditional online shopping can leave customers unsure whether a product will fit their needs or have the right look; AR product try-ons provide a solution. Using their tablet or smartphone camera, customers can view themselves trying on a 3D digital image of a product, such as apparel, footwear, or makeup.
• Augmented reality product placement: Gauging the size of a product can be difficult from the confines of a screen. With AR product placement, shoppers can use their mobile device camera as a 3D Viewer to place a 3D (true-to-size) product model in their home or yard, such as furniture, kitchen products, or outdoor gear.
• Augmented reality social media marketing: With an average of 97 minutes per day spent on social media by Americans in 2021, it can be challenging to create content that stands out from your competitors on social media. Using AR & 3D technology to create immersive experiences and filters is an effective tool to engage your followers.
• Augmented reality advertising: With countless advertisers and brands vying for the attention of online shoppers, AR advertising provides a solution that will capture your audience’s attention before they scroll past your ad. 3D & AR can boost engagement on ads across search engines, social media, and video. With VNTANA’s recent partnership with Meta, you can implement 3D & AR in your advertising directly from your Facebook Ads Manager or Instagram Shop.

What Are Some Augmented Marketing Examples?

So what does AR look like in practice? Here are a few augmented reality advertising examples from major brands using AR. Studying these examples may stimulate some augmented reality ideas your brand can use.

Sephora: AR Makeup Try-ons

Makeup supplier Sephora gained an edge over competitors by becoming an early adopter of AR. Sephora introduced a virtual makeup app that lets users combine selfies of their faces with digital effects to preview how they’d look wearing different types of makeup. The app uses facial recognition technology to detect users’ eyes, cheeks, and lips. Applying AR layers, users can instantly apply different colors to test different looks. As this illustrates, one of the benefits of augmented reality is that users can quickly try different products much faster than they could in real life, with less hassle. Sephora’s virtual makeup app gave its Southeast Asian branch a 28% increase in feature adoption and a 48% increase in overall makeup feature traffic, illustrating the value of augmented reality campaigns.

Gucci: AR Shoes Try-ons

The same approach used by Sephora to sell makeup has been used in other augmented reality ads to promote AR clothing campaigns. A good example is Gucci, who partnered with Snapchat during the height of pandemic lockdowns to sell luxury shoes through AR. Using technology developed by Snapchat parent Snap, Gucci’s AR filters let users pick a pair of shoes from Gucci’s Snapchat profile and point their camera at their feet to see how they’d look wearing them. If users decide they like a shoe, they can go straight from the AR filter to Gucci’s site to make a purchase.

Mountainwear: AR Outdoor Gear Product Placements

Augmented reality works for placing products such as furniture and outdoor gear in shopper’s environments, too. Mountaineering brand Mountainwear has developed an app that lets shoppers select multiple products at once to create a customized kit. Shoppers can view items such as tents in their own living room or backyard. Viewers also have the option of seeing items against any of four backgrounds: forest, snow, cave, or studio.

What Are The Benefits of AR Marketing?

Augmented reality marketing offers significant advantages for online shopping. Some of the most notable augmented reality benefits for marketing teams include:

• Generating excitement around your brand with lifelike ads which differentiate you from your competitors
• Allowing customers to experience products realistically by trying them on virtually or previewing them against a live background, leading to a more positive customer experience
• Increasing conversions and average cart size by reducing buyer reluctance and increasing shopper enthusiasm, while simultaneously reducing return rates
• Interacting with consumers to increase customer engagement and loyalty
• Providing a highly accessible interface for end-users that only requires a smartphone or tablet to experience

These benefits deliver measurable results. On average, users of VNTANA’s AR platform enjoy an increase in conversion rate of 83.1%, an increase in order value of 61%, and a decrease in returns of 40%.

Choose the Right AR Technology for Your eCommerce Marketing

Deploying your AR marketing strategy successfully depends heavily on choosing the right technology. The VNTANA 3D Commerce platform is designed to make it easy for you to get started using AR. If you already have 3D digital models ready for AR you can upload them, or our network of partners can help you create them. Once you’ve got your content uploaded, the VNTANA content management system helps you organize it for easy retrieval and display on your site or sharing on social media. File size is optimized to make it fast and easy for customers to view your content in any digital channel. Built atop the industry’s first purpose-built 3D CMS, VNTANA provides infinite, automated scale that allows brands to deploy 3D assets for commerce through the highest-quality, fastest-loading 3D web viewer with built-in AR. Schedule a live, 30-minute demo today to see for yourself how AR can benefit your business.