How IoT and AR Can Amplify Marketing Initiatives

It may be that your exposure to augmented reality (AR) has been limited to searching for Pokemon while commuting or having a grand time putting dinosaurs on your furniture. However, the potential for AR innovations to alter the marketing world has been universally acknowledged as staggering. Recently, AdAge called AR a “trillion-dollar opportunity,” recognizing the seismic shift it portends.

If your company isn't already contemplating how to integrate AR into your marketing arsenal, then you're falling behind. Additionally, the place where AR tech combines with Internet of Things (IoT) data allows better functionality of service for consumers and improves the way your company can target specific demographics.

What Is AR?

Augmented reality (AR) is a way of superimposing helpful information onto a video feed of the real-world.

How Can AR and IoT Enhance Marketing Initiatives?

Some of the best ways to put AR to work for your company are in the marketing sphere. As IoT generates information about the physical world, it can be integrated with AR to create a better experience for your customer. AR is useful for many industries.

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Location-based services: Perhaps the simplest way to create an AR experience through IoT is to have a marker for the location of your brick-and-mortar location (or your product within one). Apps like Wikitude show customers the physical locations for certain products they may be searching for. Or, you can create a better purchasing experience. For example, Gatwick Airport put in place locations services as wayfinding markers for airline travelers to reach their destinations more smoothly. This same tech can bring people to your products easily and efficiently.

Choice and experience-based services: Designers have been using AR and IoT to reimagine spaces, but consumers can use this technology to see how their furniture fits in the living room of a new house, or what the best color for a new shirt might be.

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Metrics and data: Another good reason to integrate AR and IoT into your general marketing is that it has the functionality to allow you to target consumer actions more thoroughly and to work as predictors. Location services can give you a better idea of how your consumers act in certain situations. Even more importantly perhaps is that a majority of customers say they prefer using the engagement they get with AR related products, giving them more product information before they purchase.

It’s important that you break down and facilitate that data to create more effective marketing strategies. How does the weather affect your consumer, for example? What other real-world variables are changing consumer behavior? IoT and AR working together can tell you more about your user experience and allow you to troubleshoot to become more efficient.

Written by Sarah Archer, Content Marketing Manager at Clever Tap.