What is the metaverse? In the world of business, a brand would not miss the opportunity to market itself in the most exciting world of Web 3.0 – the metaverse. After reading this article, you will gain more insight into what the metaverse is, what it means to marketers, and how marketers can benefit from it.
What is Metaverse? How Much Should Brands Pay Attention?
The technology industry is eager to innovate, as is capital. Users are also enthusiastic about new experiences. These are why everybody in the industry is talking about the metaverse.
The main concept is to augment the Internet from 2D into 3D, and combine all 5 senses – hearing, vision, touch, smell, and movement – into a virtual reality that users can access via specific devices. It will be a universe that blends physical reality, biometrics, and digital reality of billions of people together, driven by more than 50,000 million smart devices, together with 6G and IoT.
The idea of the metaverse started a long time ago. But what makes it trending today is interactions between virtual reality and digital space with the physical world as well as new societies connected by and built upon technologies. Modern virtual reality emphasises personalised entertainment experiences as well as enhanced personal and social capabilities. The logic behind metaverse development is to fulfil social and entertainment needs.
Before metaverse, the Internet could only transfer data. But today’s Internet can transfer emotions. For consumers, the metaverse gives them a more complete experience. In addition to products, brands can communicate cultures, experiences, and backstories. Metaverse helps brands become a part of the consumer’s lives in several dimensions. Products and platforms employing VR/AR gain better online interactions, entertainment, and consumer responses.
How Does Metaverse Affect Brand’s Marketing?
A new world means new business opportunities. Current metaverse focuses on gaming, social media, and immersive content. These 3 directions can be starting points for your marketing directions.
Metaverse brings something other innovations cannot – the ecosystem of next-gen Internet with 3D interactions. As it combines virtual and physical worlds together, early metaverse is online-only. In the future, however, parts of it will be available offline, enhancing offline experiences further. The line between virtual and physical worlds will become blurred. For example, products and entertainment will be transferred to virtual reality.
When trust, money, and identities are forged in a virtual world, relationships between brands and consumers cannot be based solely on products. Interactions and experiences matter too. This shift is also an opportunity to build brand loyalty via features that fulfil people’s needs with the highest level of entertainment.
3 Aspects Metaverse Revolutionises the Industry
Entertainment (Gaming)
Games were where the metaverse first emerged because game words are simulations of reality. Some of their forms are similar to the metaverse, such as virtual identities, openness, economy, immersion, and sustainability. These are the five major characteristics that metaverse games focus on.
Roblox is a metaverse game project with the largest market share. There are 7 million map creators. It is the closest thing to the metaverse concept. The advantage of metaverse games is in their strong social features, augmented by rich content, creative incentives, and various playable themes brought about by the large player capacity in a virtual room.
Thus, your brand’s marketing can start with existing game platforms. Employ the game experience, player creation processes, and social attributes to promote brands. You can even cooperate with other players to create brand’s products.
Interaction (social media)
Great social products consist of 3 capabilities – relationship establishment, development, and transformation – working together at the same time. Interest-based social, many-to-many, and avatars are innovations of Metaverse’s social products. Interest-based social is primarily based on common interests shared by acquaintances or strangers.
Examples include rooms with different themes in VRChat, interest tags in App Soul, etc. Virtual platforms under the metaverse umbrella, such as VRChat, can create and share player-made personal avatars, which is highly praised by ACG fans. In a metaverse context, the internal logic of social interactions is still to attract enough users through interest or content to form platform effects. Brands should plan marketing strategies based on these two focuses of consumer interest and differentiated interaction methods.
Immersive Content
The starting point of the metaverse is not a platform, but content that is independent, self-iterative, and multidimensional, which attracts users to take part in the experience, or even start creating. With the help of technology like blockchain, AI, and AR/VR, immersive content will be used for consumers and players to create experiences that are different from the physical world.
Best Practices for Brands to Employ Metaverse Marketing’s Power to Connect With Consumers
Collaboration With Virtual Idol and Metahuman
Character IDs are the primary assets of the Metaverse. Thus, Metahuman, a word describing virtual idols, is the guarantee for recognising virtual identities and user immersion in the Metaverse. There are no strict technical requirements. There are many business scenarios that can be applied to marketing.
Today, metahuman’s profit model has completed the preliminary commercial closed loop through social account operations and traffic monetisation. Brands can use metahumans as their brand ambassadors in the virtual world. Compared to traditional idols, Metahuman’s core competitiveness is in its purely market-oriented construction. That perfectly fits various business scenarios and products in theory. It also has a wide range of applications in industries – be it movies, music, or consumer products. Also, brands will not be affected by real people’s legal and moral hazards. Metahumans’ personalities, appearances, and behaviors can be used together with brand marketing. Brands and people can create virtual characters that are in line with their brand culture and brand images. They can be brand ambassadors and image representatives in the metaverse.
Marketing Via In-Game Products
In-game products may be virtual recreations of real-world items or branded items that promote real-world products. Selling in-game products and character skins has become an important part of the income of gaming companies. Brands can also use in-game characters and scenes to create or promote their products. Assets and appearances in the virtual world, especially in open-source games, can all be used as social currency. Consumers are willing to spend money in this regard. In sports games, users want the experience of the game to be as real as possible. When a new product in the real world is released, users can immediately get the virtual Air Jordans released in the game. Thus, virtual sneakers or jerseys also have potential in the market.
The Launch of NFT (Non-Fungible Token)
The Metaverse is a virtual world where NFTs can be houses, cars, or paintings. Assets in the metaverse can be traded and circulated freely. At the same time, NFT products can be in any digital format – JPEG, GIF, 3D animation, VR, etc. Brands are no longer limited to providing physical products or services. They can provide virtual products. Consumer choice ranges have been expanded.
Data from DuneAnalytics shows that every NFT platform adds up to more than 7 million trading accounts. There are more than 600,000 users on OpenSea alone. NFT’s trading volume and attention are very high. Thus, releasing NFT products is a direct and necessary method for brands going forward.
First, brands must pay attention to the combination of brand cultures and NFTs. Every digital collection is actually an image, prop, or scene. They form the basic elements of establishing a brand image. In addition, the more culturally-attributed the brands, the easier it is to make NFT digital collections that complement each other.
Secondly, brands should pay attention to virtual world experiences to facilitate people’s interactions. When physical experiences are transformed into virtual ones, physical constraints such as time and space will be eliminated. Creative spaces and the boundaries of brand marketing will be endlessly expanded. Behind this is the growing power of virtual life. Similarly, with the metaverse concept, Gen Z, growing up with the Internet, has become accustomed to virtual lives. They use virtual identities to make friends with various virtual avatars. They buy and play games online, living a virtual life in full immersion.
Bring Digital Ads to the Metaverse
Apart from creating digital worlds or brand images, brands also emerge in metaverse environments through digital advertising. The Metaverse creates a new world for consumers beyond the real world. As long as you have creativity, everything in the real world can be recognized in the metaverse. Thus, it is possible to move real-world advertisement concepts into the virtual world.
For example, the video game advertising technology company Bidstack initially engaged in outdoor advertising in the physical world. Now they transfer their technologies to virtual worlds.
With the full development of the metaverse, more virtual spaces will appear. For example, Fortnite streamed a Christopher Nolan movie in a game in 2020. If this format becomes more popular soon, it is possible that more trailers and advertisements will be shown in the virtual world than in the real one. Brands should not only seize the virtual world’s new consumption scene, but also its consumers’ attention.
Use VR/AR Technology to Improve Customer Experiences
VR/AR, as the driving force for the metaverse’s development, is an important tool to provide users/consumers. At this stage, the iterative direction of AR and VR in the metaverse world is to enrich content and promote interactions. Sports giant Nike announced that it would cooperate with the metaverse platform Roblox in launching the virtual world Nikeland, where players will be able to put on digital versions of Nike products such as the Air Max sneakers for their avatars. The Nikeland website is currently promoting Nike exclusive products such as hats and backpacks.
Source