Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a tremendous surge in the market size of Augment Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR).
The pandemic revolutionized the market by accelerating XR adoption across industries. B2B enterprises also have started embracing or exploring the opportunities of AR and VR in their marketing strategies.
According to a recent market report by Statista titled, “Extended reality (XR): AR, VR, and MR – statistics & facts,” the worldwide market size of XR was nearly USD 31 billion in 2021. The research predicts the market will grow by approximately USD 300 billion by 2024.
XR is a perfect tool that B2B marketers can use to convert complex data and ideas into an understandable transcript. AR and VR will help B2B enterprises to provide a full-fledged experience to the total addressable market.
Also Read: B2B Marketing Automation Challenges and Ways to Overcome them
Why do Businesses Need XR in Technical Sales and Marketing?
Sales and marketing teams are essential to every organization that offers technology products and services. Revenue Operations teams need to be agile in adopting the latest technologies to enhance their business operations, as there are various opportunities that businesses can leverage to embrace the latest virtual technologies. Business owners need to invest funds to buy the best AR and VR technologies for B2B marketing teams to generate high-quality leads and deliver an immersive customer experience.
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Product Demo
There are two crucial benefits of integrating XR tools into the customer experience tech stack of the organization. Firstly, marketing teams can develop a prototype of the products utilizing robust VR tools and offer immersive customer experiences about how the product works. Offering product demos through AR and VR will help organizations increase conversion rates. Adopting extended Reality in the Martech stack will help businesses to display their products more effectively in virtual conferences.
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Personalization of the Product
Clients usually want to try various variants of a single product with multiple colors, designs, and alternative parts. B2B marketing should be able to customize the products to their needs. B2B enterprises expect wide product options to ensure the best possible option is chosen to accomplish the business objectives. Extended reality tools will help businesses try out multiple product variants, test them and select the best one to get the desired outcomes.
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Reduced Sales Cycle
Most B2B buying journeys are complex, long, and intricate, with multiple touch points compared to a B2C purchase cycle. In a B2B purchase cycle, decision-makers are at all levels, from the end users to management and stakeholders. As VR product demos are immersive, they can lure all the decision-makers, which helps to reduce the sales cycle significantly.
Ways to Embrace Extended Reality in Technical Sales and Marketing
Here are a few tips for embracing extended Reality in the B2B marketing landscape:
Displaying Products and Services with XR
CMOs should consider implementing AR/VR in the B2B buying journeys to present their products to prospects. Irrespective of how aesthetic the products or services catalog is designed, it will not be able to offer the immersive experience that XR is capable of. Portraying the products and services through AR and VR will help organizations simulate the normal environments businesses can create.
Deploy XR in Educating the Target Audience
B2B buying journeys are complex and long, which requires vendors to train their target audience to make the most of the products or services. Enterprises can consider embracing extended reality solutions to offer a better understanding of products or services to the clients and their workforce. CMOs should consider all the touch points where they can implement XR in their strategy to enhance the marketing campaigns.
Deploying XR in the B2B purchase cycle will assist in making a compelling case and increase the conversion rate substantially.
Creating a Virtual Store
With the increased competition and awareness among buyers today, they expect a full-fledged experience and want to participate actively in the buying process. Even if businesses have a robust product, tool, or service to streamline and enhance the workflows of other enterprises, if they fail to portray the exact value of the products and services, all the efforts to develop robust tools are in vain. Creating a virtual store with XR tools will effectively portray the products’ true value to enhance the B2B purchase journey.
Integrating Metaverse as part of B2B Marketing
Metaverse is revolutionizing the paradigm of many businesses; today, CMOs should consider exploring opportunities for Metaverse in their strategies. A few businesses are already leading the bandwagon and have created virtual lounges on Metaverse. Recent research by Unsupervised, “MARKETERS ON THE METAVERSE,” suggests that approximately 44% of marketers plan to advertise their products and services on Metaverse in 2022. Metaverse is a perfect way to embrace XR in B2B marketers to enhance their virtual presence and target a new audience set.
Offer Real-Time After-Sales Support for Implementation, Maintenance, and Operations
Over the years, customer service has witnessed a tremendous change with technological advances in chatbots, remote screen sharing, and video calls to streamline interactions. However, organizations dealing with technology find it difficult to interact with clients and build a rapport with them. Extended Reality is a revolutionary technology that offers B2B tech companies to offer immersive remote interaction with clients in the engineering industry.
Also Read: How Intent Data Will Alter B2B Marketing Trends Through 2023
Self-serve training videos and manuals that the engineering departments can leverage through self-service virtual reality platforms will help organizations to increase their adoption rates. These VR and AR, self-serve training materials will help technical teams to dismantle engineering equipment, explore product models and parts, and view simulated equipment operations. It is one of the most significant ways to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. An immersive virtual demonstration of assembling and dismantling a product will help to reduce equipment downtime.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Integrating extended reality tools in the tech stack will help sales and marketing teams to capture missed opportunities for improving brand loyalty by achieving sustainability goals and reducing time and cost. Embracing XR in B2B marketing helps overcome traditional approach limitations. All organizations aim to become socially responsible, and implementing extended Reality helps them to achieve that goal.
The adoption of AR, VR, and XR is rising throughout the industries; business leaders should embrace these technologies to get a competitive edge.
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