What augmented reality means for your business

While augmented reality might sound like just tech-speak, it will impact your business sooner than you think. The most recent (and applicable) example of augmented reality is an iPhone application released by Yelp, the business review website. This application allows online reviews to synch with live video.  Essentially this means that someone walking along a street looking for a restaurant can activate the app, point their iPhone camera at restaurants and reviews/ ratings will appear on their phone.

The combination of GPS, video camera and internet access make apps like this possible. There are an infinite number of marketing options for this technology, but critics point out that developing useful, streamlined applications could be a challenge. For businesses, this technology means that consumers will have more information than ever prior to walking into your establishment. This could either help or hurt you depending on how savvy you are with your brand online.

Another development that stands to change how consumers conduct their pre-purchase research is Google Goggles released this week. Android phone users, using Goggles, will be able to conduct visual searches. Taking a picture of a book cover, city landmark or business card will initiate a search—removing the step of entering a query into a search engine. This means that consumers will be able to find you and your products with ease and accuracy. From a marketing perspective, search engine optimization plans will need to take multimedia assets into account like never before. Up until now, images and videos were perceived as an avenue to boost search engine rankings, but content was still the most important factor. With Goggle, multimedia assets will be increasingly important as consumers adopt this interactive means of searching for content online.

Moving into 2010, businesses should evaluate all of the ways consumers can find them—online and offline. If your consumer base is especially mobile-savvy, audit the information they can access on their cellular devises. You might be surprised at the information at their disposal. As for Google Goggle, it’s too soon to predict the rate of adoption by Android users, but incorporating interactive multimedia content is never a bad idea (just to be on the safe side).