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date image icon July 24, 2022

Getting Started With Social AR: A Simple Guide To Instagram & Facebook Augmented Reality

Introduction

Augmented reality marketing isn’t just for big brands anymore. With the availability of many advanced tools, social media marketers are better equipped to harness the power of Social AR. Since 2017, it’s been possible for brands and businesses to leverage Facebook’s and Instagram’s Social AR integration called Spark AR to bring their product or service to life. With more than 700 million people now using Meta’s AR effects monthly, and total consumption volume of AR effects at more than 80 billion, Meta’s Instagram & Facebook platforms make for the perfect medium to spread augmented reality to the masses. This guide will help you to get started with Social AR for your brand.

What is Social AR?

Social AR is Augmented Reality that is viewed through a mobile camera lens using various social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok. For the purpose of this article, we will be focusing on Spark AR to design AR experiences for Instagram & Facebook. Social AR offers a new way to communicate and engage with customers. You can use camera filters that are fun and engaging, as well as provide a transaction between you and your customer.

Spark AR allows businesses to create their own AR filters to share content on their social media profiles in an immersive and interactive way. You can create experiences that track the face such as virtual try-ons or fun games, portals that lead to new worlds, creative marketing and promotional campaigns, or even transform your existing 2D content into one-of-a-kind interactive experiences using augmented reality overlays. This means that no matter what your business is, you can now create a custom filter for your followers to be shared on Instagram Stories or Facebook. Social AR is the future; it gives you a glimpse into your friends lives through an immersive experience. It’s amazing for shopping, travel, and entertainment.

How to get started with Social AR

If you’ve never used AR before, take a deep breath. It’s not easy to get your head around, but once you understand the basics, you’ll be able to integrate the technology into your Instagram and Facebook marketing efforts in no time. Start by considering your goal for Social AR and decide how you want to use the technology to better connect with your customers.

Are you looking to:

  • Engage with your audience on a deeper, emotional level?
  • Educate or inform your consumers about your product and its benefits?
  • Drive traffic to reach new audiences?
  • Convert your consumers into customers through immersive AR commerce sales?

How to use Social AR in your business

Social media requires creativity and unique social products to stand out in the eyes of customers. So, why not embrace a new technology that can help you make your posts and stories more unique to help connect with consumers in a unique way and design AR filters for content?

Cosmetic brands are leveraging AR to allow their followers to virtually “try on” makeup, furniture brands can use AR to show what their products would look like in people’s homes, and fashion brands can create virtual fitting rooms so that people can try on shirts, sunglasses, and entire outfits to see how they fit their shape and style.

How to measure your ROI

When you can see the ROI behind your brand’s social AR efforts, you’ll understand why you should invest in the technology for your social media marketing campaign. When it comes to advertising and marketing, the last thing you want to do is be tied down by a specific time period. One of the main benefits of utilizing Social AR is that there’s no end date to it. How long you continue to utilize it doesn’t matter because the technology can be leveraged at any time. But while it’s super simple to leverage, how do you measure it?

On Instagram & Facebook, the value of Social AR can also be measured using metrics via the Spark AR Hub dashboard. These insights include how many times your AR Effect has been: opened, captured, saved, shared, used, as well as impressions and average open time. By evaluating these metrics of measurement, you can determine if your augmented reality experiences are helping you reach your marketing efforts. The Spark AR Hub also provides valuable analytics for your demographics to really see who and where you AR efforts are succeeding the most. If you’d like to take your AR Effect a step further and create an advertising campaign around it, you can put ad spend behind it and transform your experience into an AR ad; AR ads can be experienced via Instagram & Facebook Stories and News Feed.

Conclusion

The future of social media is digital, so staying ahead of the curve with Social AR will help businesses on Instagram & Facebook reach new audiences, deepen their relationships with existing customers, and better engage their consumers with relevant content.

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Contact us to learn more about how your business can benefit using Social AR, please contact us at info@geniusventuresinc.com or visit our website contact page here.

Visit our Spark AR Partner page here.