10 Things Your Competitors can Teach you About Augmented Reality Early bird gets the worm
An oft repeated but incomplete maxim. The maxim to live by, especially for an intelligent marketer is: “Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese”.
This is true about Augmented Reality as well. You don’t have to be the first one off the blocks with a gimmicky application of this emerging technology but you cannot sit idle either. Observe what your competitors are doing - and use the learning you glean from them to build your own app.
Here are 10 things you can learn from your competitors: 
Customer persona: The single most important factor behind any successful marketing campaign is your understanding of the target group. Look at your competitors Augmented Reality campaigns to finds out who is interacting with them, build their persona and using this, refine your target group definition.
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What works: While the technology is so new at the moment that any campaign will generate a buzz, not all will leave the audience with a great experience. Keep an eye on the various campaigns your competitors try out, and see which elements are worth replicating.
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How to interact: Interaction is the king. See what generates most interaction on your competitor’s campaign, what generates negative feedback and what sinks like a stone. Find out how the Augmented Reality application is being promoted, and which venues seem to attract most attention.
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And where: Equally important is to find out the locations where the Augmented Reality triggers have been mounted and where they are not - you have to capture the location where customer is present but the competition is yet to tap into.
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How to personalize: AR gives an opportunity for hyperpersonalization. Use your competitors’ apps and see how they are achieving this. If they are doing it well, nothing wrong in incorporating the same into your own strategy. Of course, having seen what they have done, you will be able to take it a step further by adding your own ideas to it.
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Which content to pair: AR does not exist in isolation. It works to enrich content elsewhere. Look at your competitors to find out which pairing adds the most value to the customers. Also, keep an eye out on content that they are not pairing with AR - this is where you could be the first one to grab the audience.
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What goes viral: In the digital age, all the marketers want to go viral. While it is impossible to predict what will go viral, always keep an eye out to understand what factors contribute to virality.
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Who to collaborate with: AR campaigns are best carried out with partners who know the technology inside out. You may also want to include artists with experience in the medium in your creative team. Keep an eye out to see what kind of partnerships benefit your competitors campaign - this will let you know which skills to value when looking for partners yourself.
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What KPIs to consider: KPIs to measure the success of a AR campaign can be very different from the traditional marketing campaign. Follow the buzz created around you competitors' campaigns closely to tease out any you may have missed.
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Promote AR: AR is an emerging technology. It is a good idea to work with your competitors to promote the concept - it will attract eyeballs for you as well.
About WOWSOME WOWSOME solves marketers’ problems using mixed reality. Our obsessive Research in computer vision, integrated with marketing and advertising best practices, created the most useful suite of products in the segment. Our solutions merge marketing & edutainment, real and digital, founding a mixed reality that delights as much as it advances us towards an evolved lifestyle.