For a while now, the stats have been showing us the rise in popularity of immersive technologies, such as Virtual and Augmented reality.

Virtual reality is basically doubling its market size every year, has more than 170 million users worldwide, 22 million in the United States alone and the number is growing rapidly every day. AR is estimated to have even more potential in the long run.

But statistics alone don’t always tell the whole story, do they?

Tell YOUR story

The world didn’t change with the arrival of immersive technologies. The basic principles of marketing are staying the same. Tell your story and tell it so your customers fall in love with your brand. But to have your customers fall in love with your product, you must first know your customers. A perfect advertisement written for the wrong target audience won’t bring results and neither will a poorly thought-out VR application.

No, marketing hasn’t changed, but Virtual Reality does open new doors for companies who are looking for a competitive edge. If you work for a forward-thinking company that wants to stand out from the crowd you just might want to check Virtual or Augmented reality solutions and what they can do for your product.

Should my company adopt VR and why?

When we think about virtual reality and transporting ourselves to a different place, we first think of real estate industry. And rightly so, virtual reality will deliver a massive change to the real estate industry, but VR is so much more than a teleportation system to another space.

According to a research conducted by YuMe, Inc. VR delivers 27% higher emotional engagement than a flat screen, which at the moment, makes it the perfect marketing tool. Virtual Reality – when used correctly – can form a strong, emotional connection between your client and your brand. And isn’t this what marketing is really about?

An excellent example of creative use of virtual reality to connect with clients comes from IKEA: The Swedish manufacturer first created a VR experience, where you could move a few things around the IKEA kitchen. Great, but there is no real connection there just yet. To take things a step further, IKEA decided to allow the user to cook an egg in the IKEA kitchen. What better way of promoting your kitchens than actually letting people cook in it?

IKEA is not alone

A quick Google search gives us several incredibly successful marketing campaigns that used virtual reality as its medium.

McDonald’s’ Follow Our Footsteps campaign includes a VR experience that lets the users track the origin of their products and it was a huge hit in the UK with a lot of media coverage. They are also trying to inspire young people into thinking about the opportunities in farming, so they are trying to do something good for the people as well.

The North Face launched a VR experience in 2015 and offered their adventure-seeking audience a virtual climb inside their stores. The users were transported to Nepal during winter. The clothes kept them safe, obviously, but North Face gained a lot of recognition for their creative branding experience.

These cases all show how knowing your target audience in combination with a creative VR experience equals in a massive boost to brand recognition and an incredible connection between your company’s product and those who are paying your wages – your costumers.

Virtual Reality perhaps won’t change the world, but it can change the way your customers feel about your brand. So why not use it to tell your story?

Keywords: #VR #VRMarketing #VirtualReality #DigitalMarketing #DigitalTransformation #Digital