Once seemingly confined to the spheres of gaming and technology, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are becoming increasingly common in both personal and professional ventures. In fact, VR and AR can be used to great effect in one’s personal branding strategy, especially if it’s giving your audience a deeper connection or more intimate look at your business.

As successful business leaders, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council are on the pulse of the latest industry trends and technologies. Below, they share nine high-impact ways you can incorporate VR and AR into your personal branding.

Young Entrepreneur Council members suggest taking advantage of these AR or VR opportunities for your brand.

Photos courtesy of the individual members.

1. QR Code ‘Business Cards’

A really simple way to stand out that hasn’t been done much with AR is to have your contact information available via a QR code scan. Simply hand your “card” to someone who can then use a smartphone camera to see an AR business card—which you can really use your imagination to design in order to make it stand out. We have just started testing these internally at our company and so far the consensus is that they are amazing. – Lorne Fade, VR Vision Inc

2. 360-Degree Viewing Rooms

Incorporating AR and VR in your branding strategy is more important now than ever before. As everything moves virtual (like conferences, networking events, etc.), it’s important to develop the right virtual presence that can be equally immersive for your audience, and a simple landing page won’t do that. Brands are beginning to explore the creation of virtual conference booths, interactive 360-degree viewing rooms and AR experiences that clients can share around the globe. One high-impact way to get on board would be to add a VR experience or 360-degree viewing room to your own website so that you can be ready to participate in the next virtual exhibit hall that most notable conferences are already spinning up. – Amy Balliett, Killer Visual Strategies

3. Virtual Games

One cool way to implement AR into your branding strategy is with virtual games. You could create a game where users get to wander around your store and search for clues using their smartphone. If you don’t have a brick-and-mortar company, you could allow users to tour your company office using VR. These strategies will help encourage customer engagement, which means more people will remember your brand. As a result, you can usually expect to see more traffic and sales. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

4. Whatever Pleases Customers

IKEA uses AR on its website to let customers see how furniture would look in their homes. It’s easier to lead them through to purchase if they feel more confident about it, and showing them the potential their home has pushes them to buy. This is just one way companies are using AR to please their customers and give them what they want. Make it part of your personal branding strategy to go the extra mile and give consumers what they want. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

5. Product Demos

While big brands are slowly getting to the stage of doing quite amazing things with VR and AR, it’s still in the early days and not that widespread. As entrepreneurs (and, inevitably, marketers), it’s critical for us to assess where we’re going to get the best return on our investment, whether that’s money, time or other resources. Spending a lot of money on setting up AR product demos may seem fun, but you’re going to want to ask yourself if that’s the best use of your resources. If you’ve already got a huge audience and excess resources, this might very well be the case. If you’re still in the early days, I’m willing to bet there are better levers to pull to help grow your brand. – Travis Jamison, Smash.vc

6. Engaging, Educational Content That Builds Trust

In a world of ever-increasing technology, consumers today expect to be reached in new and exciting ways. As everything moves virtual, incorporating VR and AR into your brand strategy is more important than ever. While there are countless ways to enhance your brand’s product or service experience using these forms of AR, one of the most effective is utilizing them to engage, educate and reach your customers. Use VR to give office tours, day-in-the-life examples and other behind the scenes content. You can also offer AR to transform and improve your brand’s e-commerce experience. Ultimately, use these technologies to build trust and relationships, position yourself as an expert, engage with followers and create a one-of-a-kind experience. – Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker

7. Virtual Tours

Especially during these times where people are practicing social distancing, VR is one of the best ways to build trust, as customers can actually feel the product with their own eyes. Industries like real estate, clothing, luxury goods, manufacturing, etc. can benefit from VR as they follow new guidelines. And the best of all is it eliminates the need for outlets and large inventory quantities. It also validates the element of trust and authenticity in the world of e-commerce where people are reluctant to purchase products from new vendors or are uncertain if they will be receiving the same products as they were shown on the websites.  – Kelly Richardson, Infobrandz

8. Your Philanthropic Initiatives

AR and VR tech aren’t just being used by businesses. Many nonprofit organizations use AR and VR to help people empathize and understand important issues in society and in the environment. You can use such applications of AR and VR tech as inspiration for your own personal branding, especially to showcase your philanthropic side.  – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

9. Behind-The-Scenes Access

One of the most effective ways to stand out in a saturated market is by doing something few others are doing. VR and AR are new technologies that the majority of social platforms are encouraging. This is a great opportunity for early adaptors to take advantage of a way to not only stand out from the crowd, but also embrace its advantages. Our company started placing GoPro MAX devices around our production sets to give clients the experience of being physically there during the shoot without having to leave their home or office. We are giving them unprecedented access to move around as they please without interfering with our production and taking up space. In this day and age, I can’t imagine a better value-add for our clients that is also embraced by our crew internally. Welcome to the future! – Jacob Tanur, Click Play Films

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