It has been four years since Pikachu and his friends descended on earth and started playing their Augmented Reality (AR) hide & seek game with the humans of the real-world. Pikachu is the tiny yellow rodent-like fictional character from the Pokemon game. There couldn’t be a better way to get introduced to AR; superimposing a digitally created world (images and sounds) on the busy streets of New York and everywhere else. It was not just the gamers, but the entire world took notice of AR, thanks to Pokemon. Little did the world know that AR would be a game-changer in businesses too. AR and its complementary technology virtual reality (VR) are reshaping business realities and opening up new possibilities for critical industries such as manufacturing, oil & gas, transport, retail and entertainment.
AR and VR in Marketing
The advantage that AR and VR offer is to create an experience that is usually not possible within the restricted parameters of real-world. In some sense, AR/VR is a magic wand to open one’s imagination and create a fantasy world. Doesn’t it sound like a marketer’s playground? Marketing minds happily inducted AR/VR into their marketing mix: IKEA allowed its customers to try out different styles of home entrance doors with a VR app; L’Oreal invited young women to spruce up with varying shades of cosmetics; Wayfiar entertained customers to visualize interiors before buying stylish home furniture; 7-Eleven launched an in-store basketball experience to improve customer loyalty.
All these immersive experiences allowed customers to live in two parallel worlds at the same time. Aside from the benefit — experience before buying — that AR/VR offers to customers, the excitement of participating in a virtual world is in itself a memorable event for customers to remember and recall a brand for a long time. A research conducted by Oracle confirms that 61% of companies who used AR or VR were able to improve their customer satisfaction ratings.
1. Zoom toplantılarınızda hayatta kalmak için ince AR filtreleri nasıl kullanılır?
2. Kulaklıksız İlk Sanal Monitör
3. Artırılmış gerçeklik (AR) Restoran Menüsünün geleceği mi?
AR and VR in B2B Marketing
B2C businesses were early adopters of AR/VR, and it was not a surprise as B2C customer interaction space offer enough room for yaratıcı oyunlar. But how B2B marketing is tapping this virtual advantage? Is it possible to unleash an imaginative digital world in the rational-driven B2B sales journey? According to b2bmarketing.net, by 2022 of all B2B experiences, VR will account for 40%. Interestingly, some brands have done it already.
CISCO created a device-agnostic 3D customer experience product and service catalogue for sales meetings, events and conferences. The marketing objective of this initiative was to help Cisco’s global sales teams, VARs and partners to consistently articulate the value proposition of its extensive product lines to customers. Ottobock, a manufacturer and supplier of prosthetic limbs, used VR to communicate the functional value of its highly technical products, often comes with concealed working parts and mechanisms’, to its potential customers. Sales enablement platform Showpad launched an AR feature for its healthcare and industrial manufacturing customers’ to help create a virtual setting at prospects place to illustrate product advantages. Such VR experiences can help initiative fast and positive sales conversations.
Augment B2B Sales Experience
Sales meetings, product demos, user training and conferences are the possible avenues where VR or AR can be used to enhance B2B sales experience. Sales enablement is critical for the success of B2B pazarlaması. While hunters and framers are busy scouting for wins, it is high order for marketing to help them communicate product value and establish a strong connection with prospects or existing customers. Even though VR/AR is seemingly expensive, it would act a differentiation factor for sales teams and open up myriad possibilities.
AR/VR is a new tool that can rightfully go into sales enablement kit.
Source: B2Bmarketing.net, smartercx.com, Kaon.com and a few other websites.
