AR becomes a new driving force for social e-commerce growth, Snapchat's latest report interpretation
Social e-commerce has gradually become a new trend in the e-commerce industry, and AR marketing is a new trend in promoting the convenience of social e-commerce sales. As a platform that focuses on developing AR technology, Snapchat is also at the forefront in this regard.
Snapchat recently released a quantitative survey of 4,028 consumers aged 13 to 49 who use AR to shop. From this report, we focus on revealing the psychology and preferences of consumers when they are guided by AR marketing to shopping. We share them, hoping to inspire more brands seeking growth momentum.
1. AR enables social commerce to strike the right balance between utility and engagement
The COVID-19 epidemic has prompted people to shift their consumption behavior online, and the emergence of social e-commerce has effectively connected the two needs of "obtaining social information" and "obtaining shopping information", making it an excellent choice for online shopping.
And whether it’s online shopping on a website or a social media platform, there are still limitations—experience and engagement.
Consumers are planted by pictures and amused by videos on social media, but no matter how new the social media content is, it cannot replace the user's sense of trust in the on-site experience when shopping offline.
AR marketing fills the gap of social e-commerce.
According to Snapchat, a quarter of consumers said they would use AR as a replacement for "in-person experiences" across categories including CPG, apparel, retail and travel.
80% of AR consumers said they feel more confident about purchasing after using AR. This confidence comes from the simple and immediate effects that AR provides. Such effects include:
product visualization
try on, color
Interact with brands using special effects or gamified experiences
The first two are that AR helps social e-commerce to fill the gap that cannot be experienced on the spot, and the last one is to add new advantages of experiential marketing to social e-commerce. Through the superposition of these effects, consumers' confidence in social e-commerce and online shopping has been enhanced.
In addition, compared to other social e-commerce methods, 66% of consumers are less likely to return products after using AR.
2. How can brands use AR to increase social e-commerce sales?
The three major enhancement effects of AR on social e-commerce are also three directions to give full play to the role of AR. Brands choose according to their own product characteristics and sales goals, and they can use this to increase the sales of social e-commerce.
- Product visualization
For all products that need to be displayed, AR can be used for product display.
For example, in 2021, Lego and Snapchat will jointly launch an online AR version of Lego. Users can build Lego in the AR filter through three modes of "single, friends, and nearby people". And the built Lego will also be displayed in the display world directly through the AR lens.
- Try on, try color
For beauty and apparel products, being able to try on and test colors through AR is a very direct sales stimulus. In April of this year, Snapchat also revealed its latest AR marketing tool to be added, clothing try-on templates.
Brands can easily and quickly deploy their own apparel product models through this template, and can easily complete try-on AR special effects. This move also solves the problem of requiring a lot of technical support for many emerging apparel brands.
- Use special effects or gamified experiences to engage with brands
AR can not only provide functional experiences like offline physical stores, but also bring more experiences to consumers through creative filters and various digital interactive means.
For example, the "Mi Middle East New Snapchat AR Marketing Case", which won the Kotler Marketing Award recently, is an innovative and interesting display of the new product's camera function using AR.
The special effect recognizes the user's face and incorporates it into a high-definition, beautiful scene captured by the Xiaomi 11T Pro. In the end Xiaomi's ARLens campaign attracted more than 2.62 million users in Saudi Arabia and generated 12.3 million impressions. Users spent an average of 9.32 seconds interacting with the game during the immersive experience.
Conclusion:
According to Snapchat’s survey data, 96% of shoppers still want to interact with AR after making a purchase to get more product information or share their shopping experience. This increases the opportunity for brands to promote secondary and continued shopping.
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