If you’ve been keeping a close watch on technology trends, then you probably know that virtual reality, augmented reality, 360° interaction and 360-panoramic video stream are gaining popularity. So is adopting VR something that you should do?
Well, it’s certainly something you could explore. In the era of marketing automation, VR does offer an immersive experience for existing and potential customers, serving as an effective content marketing tool that can boost engagement. Here is a look at the rise of VR in marketing.
What Is Virtual Reality?
Virtual reality is a computer-based simulation of an interactive environment. Through the use of gadgets like phones, headsets and glasses. The user is transported to a world that feels real, physical and even interactive. It immerses the user by stimulating their vision and hearing. VR is one of the biggest technological innovations we are seeing in the modern world. At present, VR technologies rely heavily on headset-style products that allow a user to quickly immerse themselves in virtual worlds and play games.
While it may seem like VR is only in the reach of some (due to pre-requisites of needing a headset and/or other gadgets). It is steadily on the rise. Global VR revenues touched $7 billion in 2017, and reports indicate it could touch $120.5 billion by 2026. What is driving the growth is not just gaming and entertainment but a whole host of other industries, including defence and aerospace, manufacturing, automotive, education and healthcare.
Unfortunately, like any new technology, VR sets at the moment come with a pretty hefty price tag, and not the most sophisticated of features, much like mobile phones in the 90s. However, there are several major players backing this segment with significant amounts of money. Big names like Facebook, Playstation, Samsung, HTC and Google have plans for VR headsets, ranging anywhere from the $20 Google cardboard to the $100 Samsung Gear to the $800 HTC Vive. So while it may be expensive to get started, one cannot ignore the fact that these big-name companies are investing in the technology and have the power to shape where it’s headed, making it more accessible for all.
As a smartphone-centric society, new technologies need to be accessible to stay relevant. Today’s phones have some pretty impressive capabilities, and VR can be experienced even in the palm of your hand – Pokemon Go is a perfect example. Below we look at how VR can be incorporated into your marketing strategy.
VR and Marketing
Marketers and advertisers need to stay on-trend and ahead of the curve. So becoming an early adopter of VR could put you in an enviable position in future. There are many advantages to VR in marketing.
Data: It becomes much easier to gauge consumer behaviour and preferences with VR as it gives a full picture of needs, buying patterns and more. VR offers unique features that allow advertisers and marketers to even track eye movements of the consumer so they can see which parts of the screen they are focusing their attention on and interacting with.
You can show your customers what they are getting: The best way to whet a consumer’s appetite? Give them a taste of what they can have! Through immersive experiences and real-life simulations, people can get up close and personal with the product at hand. IKEA, for example, released an interactive VR kitchen experience that gave customers the opportunity to virtually remodel their kitchen. Travel companies often immerse their customers in real-life walking tours of the destinations they would like to visit. When they get a lifelike feel of the product or place. They are bound to want it more and make a purchase.
Storytelling and emotional engagement: VR is changing the storytelling game with an all-round, immersive experience for the user. Marketers can branch out into different narratives to direct the story, and give users a 360-degree experience. People like connecting to real-world experiences and set ups. Emotions are a key factor in driving marketing engagement. With storytelling that resonates with people, you are bound to get more conversions.
Nascent as it may be at the moment, VR is the future – and it is an untapped. Wunderkind of a marketing tool that can help you connect with customers like you never have before. Now would be the ideal time to dip your toes into it and see how it works out!
For Curious Minds
Virtual reality transcends traditional content by creating a fully simulated, interactive environment that captures a user's complete attention. This deep immersion makes it a uniquely effective tool for building emotional connections and driving engagement in a way static content cannot. The power of VR lies in its ability to transport customers directly into a brand's world, stimulating their vision and hearing to create memorable, lifelike simulations. This is a significant step beyond passive viewing, as it encourages active participation. Stronger strategies use this to build unforgettable customer journeys by focusing on three areas:
Emotional Resonance: Craft powerful stories that customers do not just watch, but experience firsthand.
Product Demonstration: Allow users to interact with complex products in a hands-on, intuitive way.
Virtual Trials: Give customers 'try-before-you-buy' simulations that reduce purchase anxiety and increase confidence.
The ability to track interactions within these worlds provides rich data that feeds directly into marketing automation systems, allowing for highly personalized follow-ups. As the market grows towards a projected $120.5 billion by 2026, understanding how to craft these compelling narratives is becoming essential. Discover how leading brands are already using these principles to stand out.
Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulation that replaces a user's real-world surroundings with a digital environment, making them feel physically present in that new space. Its marketing power comes from its multi-sensory approach, primarily stimulating sight and sound to achieve a state of deep immersion. By engaging these two critical senses with high-fidelity graphics and spatial audio, VR makes the artificial world feel believable and interactive. This sensory engagement is what separates it from other digital media. Marketers can leverage this to create truly memorable brand interactions that drive consideration and loyalty. For example:
They can build detailed virtual showrooms for products that are large or complex.
They can offer guided tours of remote locations, as seen in the travel industry.
They can let customers experience a service's benefits firsthand.
Brands like IKEA have demonstrated this by allowing customers to virtually walk through and customize a new kitchen. This level of interaction, with global VR revenues touching $7 billion in 2017, goes far beyond a simple video, creating a stronger impression and influencing purchasing decisions. The full article explores how this sensory-driven approach is reshaping brand communication.
Selecting the right VR hardware requires balancing campaign goals with audience accessibility. The choice between an inexpensive viewer like the Google Cardboard and a high-end system like the HTC Vive depends entirely on the desired level of immersion and the target demographic's access to technology. An effective evaluation process involves weighing several key factors. A strategy focused on broad reach and initial engagement might favor accessible, phone-based options, while a campaign targeting tech enthusiasts or offering high-value B2B demonstrations would justify a more powerful headset. Consider these points:
Accessibility and Reach: Mobile-based VR like Samsung Gear reaches a wider audience that already owns a capable smartphone.
Immersion and Quality: High-end headsets provide a more realistic and interactive experience, crucial for detailed product showcases.
Cost and Logistics: The budget for hardware distribution or on-site event setups will heavily influence your choice.
Campaign Complexity: Simple 360-degree videos work on basic viewers, while fully interactive simulations require advanced systems.
The key is to align the technology with the marketing objective, not the other way around. The full article provides a framework to help you determine the optimal VR platform for your specific campaign needs.
IKEA's VR kitchen experience set a powerful precedent for experiential marketing by allowing customers to do more than just view products; they could interact with them in a personalized, simulated space. The application let users virtually walk through a life-sized kitchen, open drawers, and even change the colors of cabinets and countertops. This 'try-before-you-buy' simulation directly addresses a primary consumer pain point: visualizing how furniture will look and function in their own home. This approach proved successful because it transformed a passive browsing experience into an active design process. The key takeaways from this strategy include:
Reducing Purchase Hesitation: By giving customers confidence in their design choices, the experience lowers the barrier to making a significant purchase.
Enhancing Engagement: The interactive and personalized nature of the simulation creates a much deeper and more memorable brand interaction.
Gathering Valuable Data:IKEA could analyze how users interacted with different layouts and products, providing insights for future designs.
This example highlights that VR's true marketing value lies in creating practical, problem-solving tools, not just novelties. The full article details other companies achieving similar results with this powerful approach.
The significant financial backing from giants like Facebook and Samsung is the clearest indicator of VR's expansion beyond entertainment. Their investments are broadening the technology's applications and, crucially, making it more accessible for the average consumer. The evidence of this transition is apparent in how various industries are adopting VR for practical purposes, far removed from gaming. With global VR revenues touching $7 billion in 2017 and projected to grow, the market is validating these non-entertainment use cases. We are seeing this shift in several key areas:
Automotive: Brands offer virtual test drives and showroom experiences.
Real Estate and Travel: Companies provide immersive property tours and destination previews.
Healthcare and Education: VR is used for complex training simulations and interactive learning modules.
Retail: Companies like IKEA create virtual stores and product customization tools.
These examples demonstrate that businesses see a clear return on investment in using VR to solve real-world problems. The full content explores how this trend is set to accelerate and reshape audience engagement.
A travel company can use VR to give potential customers a compelling taste of a destination, moving them closer to a booking. An effective implementation plan goes beyond passive 360-degree videos and focuses on creating interactive, choice-driven experiences. The goal is to make the user feel like they are already there, making their own discoveries. A clear plan to achieve this result involves a few key steps:
Identify Key Experiences: Pinpoint the most visually stunning and emotionally resonant locations or activities at a destination, like walking through a historic city square.
Capture High-Fidelity Content: Invest in professional 360-degree video and photogrammetry to create a realistic and high-quality virtual environment.
Incorporate Interactivity: Add clickable hotspots or guided narration that let users choose where to explore next, turning passive viewing into active exploration.
Optimize for Accessibility: Ensure the experience works on accessible platforms like Google Cardboard or directly on smartphones to maximize reach.
Integrate a Call-to-Action: End the virtual tour with a seamless link to 'Book This Trip Now,' converting immersion into action.
This approach turns a marketing tool into a genuine utility for travelers. Learn more about measuring the ROI of these immersive campaigns in our complete guide.
That massive growth projection signals that VR is evolving from a peripheral trend into a core component of the digital marketing landscape. To prepare, marketing departments must shift from a reactive to a proactive stance, treating VR not as an experiment but as a future channel for customer engagement. This requires a strategic adjustment in both mindset and resource allocation. The primary goal should be to build internal capabilities and understanding now, so you are not left behind when VR becomes mainstream. Key strategic adjustments include:
Budget Allocation: Begin dedicating a small but growing portion of the marketing budget to VR/AR content creation and platform testing.
Skill Development: Invest in training your team on 3D content creation, immersive storytelling, and the technical aspects of VR platforms.
Content Strategy Evolution: Start thinking about which aspects of your brand, products, or services would be most compelling in an immersive format.
Technology Partnerships: Identify and build relationships with VR development agencies or tech providers like those backed by Facebook or Google.
Companies that begin this integration today will hold a significant competitive advantage. The full article provides a roadmap for phasing these changes into your existing strategy.
The most frequent misstep is creating a VR experience that is technologically impressive but lacks a clear purpose or value for the consumer. Many early adopters fall into the trap of showcasing the novelty of VR itself rather than using it to solve a customer problem or enhance the brand story. This results in a memorable gimmick but fails to influence buying patterns. To avoid this, successful companies shift the focus from the technology to the user's needs and desires. Instead of asking 'What can we do with VR?', they ask 'How can VR help our customers make a better decision?'. This pivot involves several key actions:
Focus on Utility: Create a tool, not just an advertisement. IKEA's kitchen planner is a prime example of utility-driven VR.
Tell a Compelling Story: Use immersion to build an emotional connection or narrate the brand's mission in a powerful new way.
Simplify the Experience: Ensure the VR interaction is intuitive and directly related to the product or service being offered.
Integrate with the Customer Journey: The VR experience should be a natural step in the path to purchase, not a standalone distraction.
By prioritizing substance over spectacle, brands can transform VR from a novelty into a powerful conversion tool. Explore more examples of purpose-driven VR marketing in the complete analysis.
Eye-tracking in virtual reality provides a direct, unfiltered view into a consumer's subconscious attention and interest, which is a major advancement over traditional metrics. Unlike clicks or time-on-page, which only measure explicit actions, eye-tracking reveals precisely where users are looking, for how long, and in what sequence. This granular data gives marketers an objective picture of what truly captures interest within an immersive ad or product simulation. This capability, powered by hardware from companies like HTC, transforms how campaigns are measured and optimized. The key benefits of this data include:
Optimizing Visual Layouts: Marketers can see which parts of a product or virtual store receive the most attention and redesign accordingly.
Measuring Ad Effectiveness: It becomes possible to know if users are actually looking at the intended branding or call-to-action.
Understanding Buying Patterns: Analyzing gaze patterns can reveal the features that are most influential in a consumer's decision-making process.
This deep behavioral insight allows for a level of personalization and campaign refinement that was previously impossible. Explore the full article to understand how this data is revolutionizing consumer profiling.
The global phenomenon of Pokemon Go demonstrated that immersive experiences do not require expensive, dedicated headsets to achieve mass adoption. Its success provides a powerful blueprint for marketers: leverage the device consumers already have in their pockets. By overlaying a digital experience onto the real world via a smartphone camera, it created an engaging and shareable activity with a very low barrier to entry. Brands can apply these lessons to their own strategies. The key is to integrate the digital experience with the user's physical environment in a way that is fun, useful, or rewarding. Marketers can replicate this by:
Creating Interactive Store Experiences: Allow customers to scan products in-store to see additional information, reviews, or virtual models.
Developing Branded Games or Scavenger Hunts: Encourage users to explore real-world locations to unlock digital rewards or content.
Offering Product Visualization Tools: Let customers use their phone's camera to see how a piece of furniture would look in their room, similar to IKEA’s approach.
This smartphone-centric model makes immersive marketing accessible and scalable. The complete analysis offers more examples of how to apply these principles effectively.
For a retail brand, the goal of an initial VR project should be to create a high-impact, low-friction experience that showcases products in a new light. Using accessible, smartphone-based platforms like the Samsung Gear VR is the most effective starting point to ensure a wide potential audience. The implementation process should focus on a singular, clear objective, such as a virtual showroom for a new collection. A practical plan involves these key stages to deliver measurable results:
Select a Hero Product or Collection: Choose a visually appealing product line where an immersive 360-degree view would provide genuine value.
Develop a 360-Degree Experience: Create a high-quality 360-degree video or series of interactive photos that place the user in a stylized environment with the products.
Integrate Information Hotspots: Add clickable points within the experience that reveal product details, pricing, or 'add to cart' options when a user looks at them.
Promote and Distribute: Market the VR experience across social media and email, potentially offering free branded Google Cardboard viewers as part of a promotional campaign to drive adoption.
This approach ensures a manageable first step into VR marketing that delivers measurable results. Read on to see case studies of retailers who have successfully executed this strategy.
The long-term implication of VR in marketing is a fundamental shift from passive storytelling to active 'story-living.' Unlike traditional media where brands broadcast a one-way message, VR invites customers to step inside the narrative and become a participant. This transition requires a complete rethinking of how brands communicate their values. The focus will move from crafting the perfect message to designing a compelling world in which the customer can have a personal, memorable experience. With market growth projected to hit $120.5 billion by 2026, this change is imminent. Future brand strategies will need to incorporate:
User-Driven Narratives: Creating experiences where the customer's choices shape the outcome, fostering a deeper sense of connection.
Empathetic Immersion: Using VR to help customers experience a brand's mission firsthand, such as a charity showing the impact of a donation.
Community-Based Worlds: Building persistent virtual spaces, inspired by platforms from companies like Facebook, where brand advocates can gather and interact.
This evolution will redefine brand loyalty, building it on shared experiences rather than just product satisfaction. Uncover more about this future in our in-depth exploration of immersive branding.
Chandala Takalkar is a young content marketer and creative with experience in content, copy, corporate communications, and design. A digital native, she has the ability to craft content and copy that suits the medium and connects. Prior to Team upGrowth, she worked as an English trainer. Her experience includes all forms of copy and content writing, from Social Media communication to email marketing.
Growth Strategy and Planning
