Imagine yourself walking down the street. The app on your mobile suddenly detects a virtual floating shirt, 10 feet ahead of you. You take a pic of the shirt using your app and instantly a coupon for 10% off at the nearest H&M store appears on your phone.

Photo courtesy of GoldRun

Welcome to the world of augmented reality. For the uninitiated, augmented reality (AR) represents a view of the real world around you which is enhanced and enriched by computer generated images or information. GoldRun is a mobile AR platform that allows you to spot, interact and engage with virtual goods and products placed in your real environment. For example, it allows you to try on the latest fashion offering from H&M, click a picture with it and instantly share it with your friends on Facebook.

GoldRun offers the unique opportunity for marketers to tailor dynamic promotional campaigns with the aim of capturing public attention and interest and thereby creating enough of a buzz and incentive to convince them to visit the nearest outlet. As a marketer, if your intention is to create an experience for your consumer and to get him or her to engage with your brand, then GoldRun is just the thing for you. Assume a guy has just clicked a pic of himself with his arm wrapped around a virtual image of your product. He’s just done something cool and is itching to let his friends know. What would he do? Go online and share it on Facebook of course! Suddenly, all of his friends see that he thinks your brand is cool.

You begin to realize the kind of potential this tool offers. You can design and execute a viral campaign which would help spread word about your brand like a forest on fire. You can organize scavenger hunts (or a Gold Run, as the name suggests) which would require customers to visit your shop, hunt for virtual goods using their mobile phones and earn themselves discounts and offers. You can now enhance the customer experience to engage them in ever more inventive ways. The sheer scale of possibilities which GoldRun unlocks is indeed mind-boggling.

This increased level of engagement can be easily leveraged to boost foot traffic at your store. By offering virtual goods, leaving a trail of virtual markers or by organizing a host of fun contests, marketers can now pique the consumer’s curiosity and draw them to their brick and mortar locations. GoldRun helps leverage the possibilities offered by Augmented Reality and thus opens the doors to innovative and effective below the line promotions. This helps convert the increased foot traffic into successful sales. Virtual merchandise can be used to capture and channel the customer’s interest towards particular brand offerings and provide them with opportunities to share the incentives with their friends.

With the explosion of smart phones and on-the-go connectivity, an augmented reality platform like GoldRun has the potential to revolutionize shopping and enhance customer experience and brand engagement like never before. By using the built in capabilities of GoldRun rather than building a one off app, the burden on the wallet is dramatically reduced and makes this form of promotion affordable and accessible to marketers. The possibilities are limitless and marketers today are keyed in to this opportunity. It just might be that extra push you have always needed to really boost your brand’s presence.

If you’d like to find out more about this business changing platform, visit the GoldRun website.