How To Get Your Own AR Filter And Make The Most Out Of It

Augmented Reality filters are trendiest now more than ever! They’re everywhere: you see them when you’re scrolling on your Facebook feed, when you’re watching a friend’s Instagram story and even on your Amazon delivery boxes.

They're a good opportunity for opticians, ECPs, brands, retailers and e-retailers to showcase their latest collections and best-selling glasses in an engaging way.

But what exactly is an AR filter? Augmented Reality filters are fully customizable effects that integrate digital elements into a real environment and allow users to interact with them. They are extremely popular on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and Wechat.

More than just a “funny thing to play with”, social media AR filters have become a real tool for businesses to promote their products in an entertaining and interactive way online, and the eyewear industry makes no exception!

In this article, we’ve gathered everything you need to know to make the most out of social media filters, including:

• Why having your own filter is a “must have”
• How to create one and make it your own
• How to successfully promote it and increase your visibility

Why having your own filter is a “must have”

Augmented reality filters started to appear a few years ago and quickly became popular thanks to their attractive prices and their high engagement rate (4x higher than video content). Augmented reality technology also makes them available anywhere, anytime and gives them a whopping 70% higher memorization rate than other kind of content.

That’s why filters are now used everyday by millions of people including end-consumers, brands and professionals of all sectors. That means they are powerful tools to reach a large amount of people with minimum time and effort, making it an efficient advertising tool.

It also means that not having your own filter makes you appear like you are lagging behind, and that can be highly detrimental for a business.

On top of that, augmented reality filters have many benefits, among:

• Improving your brand image and showing you are up to date with trends
• Increasing your notoriety with filters that will be shared in stories and viewable by a group of people who can discover your brand/business/new collections
• Offering a unique and immersive experience to users
• Generating traffic to your website and boost your sales
• Differentiating yourself from your competitors

And that list is just a few takeaways of all the many advantages filters can bring to your optical business. So, are you ready to have your own filter?

How to create one and make it your own

One other key advantage of social media filters is that they are 100% customizable. That means you can do pretty much anything with it: it comes in handy when you want your audience to dive into your brand universe, when you have a precise vision of what you want your filter to look like or when you want to showcase unique frames in a unique way.

We can help you create your own filters as we make our 100k 3D frame database available in the right format to use on social media platforms. All you have to do is choose up to 4 frames you want to display in your filter and tell us what you want your filter to look like. From a “beautifulizer” effect to a specific background or a shining effect on the frames, the possibilities are endless!

How to successfully promote it and increase your visibility

Before thinking of promoting your filter, you should think about the strategy of your campaign before, during and after in order to reach the right target and reap the benefits of your labor. Here are a few pinpoints you should think about when launching your campaign:

Step 1: Define a clear objective

Do you want to gain notoriety? Boost your sales? Gain new customers or encourage your clients to shop your brand/glasses again?

Step 2: Launching the campaign

• Publish the filter and encourage your followers to try it by putting it in your story or making a post out of it.
• Pin the filter so that it is accessible to everyone from your profile.
• Share your followers' interactions with your filter to create attractivity.
• Launch your filter campaign on several platforms simultaneously for more visibility.
• Create a QR code for your filter and share it on more traditional advertising platforms such as newspapers and magazines. By scanning the QR code, prospects will be able to virtually try on your filter in a blink of an eye.
• Share your filter with influencers so they can share their thoughts and videos with their audience while shedding light on your collections.
• Share your filter with local journalists so they can relay the info and highlight this new kind of advertisement.
• Launch a contest and encourage your audience to share their experience with their own followers to get a chance to win the contest and receive gifts/discounts.

Step 3: Collect data and adapt your strategy

By creating a filter, you get access to a back-office of the platform you choose to share you filter on. There, you will be able to get data on the number of impressions of your filter as well as information on the users you reach, which will allow you to adapt your online strategy.

Tip: You can launch your campaign on several social networks, however, it’s important to note some differences between them. For example, Snapchat™ features an easier access to filters, a better reach of organic campaigns and keywords can be used to increase visibility. However, Instagram™ filters are visible in a dedicated tab and they are also subject to the laws of the algorithm: the more a filter will be used, saved, and shared, the more it will be highlighted by the platform. Plus, Instagram and Facebook™ have the same rendering engine which means one filter can be used on both social media.

In the end, social media filters are a good opportunity to increase your visibility online in a world where digital advertising has become the norm. Handy, user-friendly, highly entertaining, low-priced, fully customizable… AR filters are definitely a worth shot at boosting your business and showcase your eyewear collections.