Meeting the Metaverse Marketing Universe: Should You Enter?

Technology is advancing every moment and what’s coming next is here to stay. Yes, we are talking about the METAVERSE! Social media has already succeeded in creating an online environment where one can engage with friends and strangers alike. Metaverse is just taking it up a notch. And, that’s where metaverse marketing comes into the picture.

Read on to find out how marketers can use Metaverse to up their game!

Source: The Marketoonist

What Is Metaverse?

A metaverse is basically a network where you can interact in a 3D virtual experience. It’s a hypothetical universe that works with personal computing and augmented reality headsets.

You can create virtual avatars of yourself that will experience life as it is in a virtual world. 

Why Should Marketers Enter the Metaverse?

Firstly, the expansion of marketing in the metaverse is inevitable. Secondly, personalization in marketing has been on the high for the past few years. Even the audience wants to see content that is specifically designed for them. And metaverse can help marketers take personalization to the next level.

Next, how your prospects interact in the metaverse will tell a lot about their preferences. Hence, metaverse gives marketers a chance to use this intent data to personalize their marketing campaigns. 

Moreover, statistics show that prospects are increasingly interacting with the Metaverse. Have a look at the details in the image below. 

So, you can see that marketers need to hop in before it’s too late. 

When augmented reality came into being, marketers made sure to use it to their advantage. And, the response was amazing. Well, who doesn’t like to see how well a pair of sunglasses suits their face or what share of lipstick works better? AR marketing has changed the way consumers shape their shopping experience. 

With metaverse marketing coming in, one can now have a 3D experience and that’s like jingle bells for eCommerce marketers. While the metaverse has currently only entered the gaming world, more is yet to come. It will provide marketers with a wider space to connect with their customers. 

How Can Marketers and Brands Leverage Metaverse Marketing?

If you are a marketer who hasn’t thought about how millennials and GenZ are influencing marketing, you need to reevaluate your strategy. 

Metaverse is just the right step forward in targeting the generation that’s highly tech-savvy. And, the rising digital marketing trends suggest that the future is all about artificial intelligence. Marketers and brands can leverage artificial intelligence to get into metaverse marketing, thereby taking the first step toward building an online community. 

Here are a few areas to focus on

#1 Virtual Advertising

Virtual advertising is an ideal approach to reach an audience that can’t reach you. Advertising in the online world through ads, billboards, popups, etc. is what virtual advertising is all about. You can use virtual advertising to create campaigns that add value to the audience and at the same time feel natural. 

Place your campaigns at places that are relevant to your brand and make your campaigns interactive. In the metaverse, when you choose to advertise, you first have to pick the right place. A space that’s not relevant for your brand and audience is not one to go to. 

Then, focus on the kind of content that’ll work for you. Just having a billboard might not be enough, adding a call to action will help the audience engage with your brand. 

For example, adding an interactive quiz about choosing a personalized work from home setup might be more effective than adding a static graphic showing the list of devices. After all, marketing in the metaverse is all about interactivity. 

#2 Brand Collaborations

While it’s important to build your own community in the metaverse, it’s strategic to leverage others’ as well. How? Well, other brands whose services might be complementary to yours can have an audience that might be similar to yours. 

You can try to collaborate with the brands and creators that are already existing in the metaverse. This can be done by reaching out through social media or email outreaches. For instance, if a brand or a creator has created their own space in the metaverse, you can connect with them to represent your brand in that space. 

This way you can target an audience that is already engaging with the metaverse. Collaborating with these brands to generate a common immersive experience will be a win-win for everyone involved. 

Collaboration with influencers can also act as a good start. Microinfluencers have a huge impact on how Millennials and Gen Z engage online. Interacting with the audience through them is a great step to tell the virtual world that you’ve arrived. 

#3 Augmented Reality

Well, AR has been here for a while, and trust us, it’s not going anywhere. Augmented reality helps your audience get a virtual yet real-time experience of using your product. In fact, the entire shopping experience has been optimized with the entry of AR. And metaverse will enhance digital marketing for eCommerce even more.

But one must note that AR is not limited to eCommerce. It’s for you to understand how you can use AR in the metaverse to promote your business. 

For example, look at Outgrow. Outgrow is an interactive content creation tool that helps you create content like quizzes, calculators, chatbots, surveys, etc. without coding! With Outgrow, you can use augmented reality in the metaverse to give the users an experience of using a quiz in real time. 

It’d be like an interactive video, but 3D. In 2014, Coldplay released ‘Ink’, an interactive video, as a part of their music video ‘Ghost Stories’. That happened in 2014. This is 2022 and Metaverse is here. Just imagine what all you can do with technology now!

#4 Branding With NFTs

So, what are NFTs? NFT or a non-fungible token is any digital intangible asset that cannot be replaced. Anything on the internet can be an NFT if you want it to be. Some common examples of NFT would be celebrity images, digital art, videos, etc.

But how is it related to marketing in the metaverse? See, NFTs can be bought and sold at huge prices(really huge sometimes). Since even the metaverse is an intangible place, one that we can’t access in real life, every element in the metaverse is also intangible. Naturally, everything qualifies to be an NFT. 

Brands can create assets and avatars that can be treated as NFTs to be bought by their customers. If Audi now decides to create a car just for the metaverse, it might just earn millions for something that, well, simply doesn’t exist. Crazy? Yep, it is. 

Balancing Real World Marketing With Metaverse Marketing

Whether you decide to market in the real world or in the metaverse, the key lies in maintaining your brand image. Your focus should be on curating content that displays your brand. For example, brands like Nike or Adidas can use the metaverse to help people upgrade their avatars in the virtual world. 

Similarly, it’s important for marketers to understand how they can portray their brand and create a virtual community. Organizing events in the metaverse might be a great way to connect with the right audience. You can consider hosting online events in the metaverse through virtual or augmented reality. 

Challenges in Metaverse Marketing

Everything comes with a few drawbacks. But with every challenge, one must ask two questions:

• Is it worth the risk?
• Can we overcome the challenge?

Metaverse might be extremely creative but it does require a sound understanding of technology. So, if your target audience is the older generation, you might not be able to leverage this. 

One should also note that entry to these platforms requires access to the right tech devices. Not everyone has the privilege to make use of such resources. So, it’s important to be careful about who you are targeting. 

Conclusion

Metaverse is here, and so is the chance for marketers to enter it. We are still at a stage where we can leverage Metaverse for digital marketing easily. Let’s not miss this opportunity. 

As a first step, you can start with creating interactive content like quizzes, chatbots, eCommerce recommendations, etc. that’ll give your users a real-time engaging experience. 

Don’t know how to code? Here’s a super easy and no-code way of creating amazing interactive experiences with Outgrow. Start your free trial now!

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