The Future of Instagram Marketing – AR Filters!

Instagram filters are a kind of Augmented Reality (AR) application that allows users to modify their environment or interact with virtual elements in real-time. Since Instagram began allowing brands to utilise filters for marketing in August 2019, it has attracted the attention of numerous brands around the world as a creative strategy to engage their customers without boring them. Here are 7 reasons why Instagram AR filter marketing is the future for social media marketing.

1. People spend more time at home and on their phones than ever before.

Covid-19 revolutionised the world by making people work from home and purchase items online. As a result, online digital marketing is even more critical for brands to stay relevant to social media users. Brand stories account for 1/3 of the most viewed Instagram stories, and brands’ stories have an 85% completion rate, according to Instagram. Furthermore, marketers who employed interactive tools like polling stickers increased video viewing by 3 seconds in 90% of their campaigns.

As the newest interactive tool on Instagram, AR filters may help brands better engage Instagrammers by giving a new kind of entertainment for their audiences who are locked at home, as well as spreading positive messages to help the community cope with lockdowns and travel restrictions. Instead of a 15-second video that will be quickly forgotten, marketers can leave a great impression on Instagram users by providing an interactive filter.

2. Multiplying effect on shareability

A recommendation from someone you know is more credible than any other. When an Instagram AR filter is entertaining and involved enough, users are more likely to share their stories with their friends. Since they first saw the filter on their friends’ stories, their followers are more likely to use and share it. Because of the participatory nature of Instagram filters, this cycle will reach a larger audience than you might imagine.

Like a normal story post, Instagram filters can be used as a sponsored story advertisement to reach out to a brand’s target audience. Instagram filters, on the other hand, can be more effective than merely asking a brand’s consumers to promote its products or services because they create a more personal experience by focusing on the user.

3. Encourages people to generate content

Consumers are 2.4 times more likely to regard user-generated content as authentic than content published by brands, according to Hootsuite. As a result, having user-generated content for your company will increase its trustworthiness. The majority of brands choose Instagram as their primary channel for user-generated content, such as reposting images from their followers highlighting their brands. This is still an effective method to use. However, getting followers to create content for a brand is difficult unless the brand’s engagement is already high.

If the provided filters are what the followers want to use, Instagram filters can be utilised to get a brand’s followers to create content for themselves. Instagram also includes a function that allows brands to see a selection of stories from users who have used the brand’s filter in the last 24 hours.  On top of that, some individuals employ the filter and tag the brand’s handle in their posts.

Following the sharing of these user-generated stories on the brand’s stories, brands can save them as a highlight on their Instagram profile for anyone who visits the page to see. As a result, having user-generated content with Instagram filters can increase a brand’s reputation while also engaging followers with engagement.

4. Trackable Metrics For A Brand’s Campaign

Anyone with a Facebook account can log in to Spark AR Hub and upload filters to Instagram or Facebook. With Spark AR Hub, you are able to track down key analytical metrics for your Brand’s Campaign.

5. Demonstrate the Brand’s Personality

By producing effects that match the brand, Instagram filters may be utilised to show off a brand’s personality. A company aimed at young people, for example, may design a fun AR filter game to engage its target audience, while a female-oriented brand could create a makeup filter to beautify its target audience.

6. Customisable

Instagram filters can be entirely customised to fit a brand’s marketing strategy. An AR filter can include a campaign catchphrase, a brand’s mascot, and branding colours, among other things. Provided the brand hires an AR developer with a diverse set of skills to construct a variety of AR filters.

7. AR filters tracking is only going to get improved

Instagram AR can only track faces, planes, an image target, and hands as of December 2020. However, it’s just a matter of time before Instagram adds features like body, feet, hand motions, and even personalised tracking, offering brands even more ways to interact with their followers, such as virtual Tryons for clothes and shoes. As a result, brands should familiarise themselves with AR today to get a head start before it becomes the norm for advertising.

With these 7 reasons, there is no doubt that AR will play a significant part in the future of marketing. Since the early birds get the worms, it is better to start early in AR filters if you are interested in it!

Feel free to contact us if you want to develop your very own AR Filters.