Should Digital Marketers Care About The Metaverse?

In October 2021, the Facebook company officially rebranded to Meta. The name change wasn’t that much of a seismic shift; however, what founder Mark Zuckerberg announced alongside the rebranding can reshape the digital space and dawn in the next phase of the internet.

The Metaverse is poised to be a social channel like no other. Said to combine the best of the physical and digital world, it’s earmarked to be a prime location for internet users to work, play, learn, socialise, shop, and communicate.

But is this all hyperbole? There have been many potentially life-changing technologies from the past that never materialised in the mainstream. Google Glasses were set to change the world in 2014, but 8 years on, the general public are still resistant to this wearable tech.

The Metaverse can just as easily be a short-term trend and fail to engage consumers in the long-term, but on the other hand, what if it isn’t?

This technology has the potential to reshape how we think about the internet, so digital marketers should not ignore this emerging technology.

What Is The Metaverse?

One major reason so many digital marketing professionals are hesitant to engage with the Metaverse is that they might not know exactly what it is.

The problem with the Metaverse at the moment is that, due to its infancy, it’s something that’s hard to define. Currently, the Metaverse is a loose and amorphous web of 3D gaming platforms, virtual reality worlds, and augmented reality experiences. The main functionality of the Metaverse is it being a channel for social gaming, although as it develops, it’s very much expected to change drastically into a tailored platform for shopping, work, and more, yet how that’s going to look and operate is hard to tell.

In these games and experiences, users are more often than not able to create their own avatars, using virtual copies of real-world products to customise their characters. This makes the Metaverse a more engaging and less passive social space to be. It’s also one where brands can also interact with users directly, as they can form part of their virtual identity.

Currently, some major brands have already partnered and committed to the Metaverse, such as Nike, Gucci, and Disney. Their involvement might suggest that the Metaverse is something worth getting involved in.

Who Is Using The Metaverse?

As it’s very much related to gaming at this moment, the main demographic of people using this platform are people who already engage in this hobby in some way. This means that the average age range of users in the Metaverse covers  millennials, Gen Z, and even younger consumers as the most active on the platform.

The people on the Metaverse are also incredibly tech-savvy, as they’re those that have grown up with the internet and digital technology for most, if not all, of their lives.

This means that if your brand is targeting these types of consumers, then the Metaverse could be a useful platform to engage with your target market in a meaningful way and boost awareness.

In terms of the future for the Metaverse, there are some suggestions that it might target the older generation as it focuses on making online shopping a priority. Already, Walmart has created a virtual store where users can interact with and browse various products, check availability, and order it for their homes. This technology has been tailored to the elderly and vulnerable to make shopping more convenient for them.

Benefits Of Marketing On The Metaverse in 2022

The main benefit of marketing on the Metaverse now is that it’s very likely to be a popular platform in the future, regardless of what shape it takes. This means creating a presence on there today will help you better connect with more of your target audience.

At the moment, under 6 months since its launch, the Metaverse already sees 47 million unique users daily, which demonstrates that it needs to be taken seriously. Here is a look at some of the other benefits of turning your marketing attention to the Metaverse:

1. You Can Get A Head Start

Being an active marketer on the platform now will help you a lot in the future. In the past, those that adopted new technology quickly and stayed on the cutting edge were the businesses that survived and flourished in the digital age.

There will be a time in the next 2-4 years where most businesses will realise the power of the Metaverse and conduct a mad dash to get a foothold on the platform. You don’t want to end up being one of those businesses, as the market will be so much more competitive and more difficult to stand out in. There are fewer brands on the Metaverse right now, meaning that you’ve got a real chance to make a connection in this new social channel before it gets saturated with branded content.

Those that use the Metaverse well will be the leading brands in digital marketing for decades to come and when you look back from the future, it’ll be obvious that those leaders would have been the businesses that dipped their toes into the Metaverse right from the start.

2. It’s Cheap Right Now

The prices for running your own marketing campaign on the platform and creating your own branded experiences are extremely low. Meta is offering these low costs now in an attempt to entice more brands to try the Metaverse. This means that you can create various campaigns without eating too much of your marketing budget, making it a very low risk option at the moment of time.

Do bear in mind that these low prices aren’t going to stick around forever. As the platform gets more traction from both users and businesses alike, the cost to market on the platform is going to rise to reflect this growth of its value. Make use of the low prices now so that you learn and experience how to build a campaign on the platform without it being a financial risk.

3. Now’s The Best Time To Fail

As the Metaverse is new, and as it’s a form of marketing that differs a lot from what marketers may be used to on other social channels, mistakes are going to be made as teams try to come up with the most effective campaigns and experiences.

If these mistakes are going to happen, it’s best to make them all now while the Metaverse is still finding its feet than to do it years down the line where everything is more competitive and more expensive.

Use this downtime to play around as a brand, test what works for you, and build your reach.

4. Customers Will Be More Engaged

Users are tired of static social adverts and videos on other social platforms. When users interact with your brand on things like Facebook and Instagram, they are passive and detached.

With the Metaverse and its implementation of VR and AR, customers will be far more engaged in interacting with your brand, as they will have a lot more agency, and a lot more senses will be used to visualise your brand. In the Metaverse, the users are actively taking part and experiencing your brand in exciting ways that might drive up sales.

5. The Entire Customer Journey Can Happen Within The Metaverse

This is perhaps the biggest benefit of them all. Traditionally with digital marketing, you’ll have to engage with a customer from various channels to get a customer down the sales funnel. Make them aware of your brand on social media. Redirect them to a landing page for them to make a transaction. Send out an email to entice them to repurchase. It’s a multiple-channel process that can be hard to maintain and keep track of.

With the Metaverse, you can go from the top to the bottom of your funnel all on one platform. A user can discover a brand, gain its trust, and make a purchase all in a single place.

Of course, some social media channels have had a shopping functionality attached to it already, such as Facebook and Instagram (which are both owned by the Meta group), but this will be much more seamless on the Metaverse and is extremely exciting.

How To Market On The Metaverse

Marketing on the Metaverse is a drastic shift away from marketing on more traditional social channels. Whereas marketers might be used to creating content in the form of blogs, social posts, infographics, adverts, and even videos, the Metaverse is focused on experiences and things that people can interact with.

Some of the most successful marketing campaigns on the platform so far involve creating a space or form of entertainment that complements what’s already out there.

For example, Roblox is the most popular Metaverse at the moment. This is a game where users create avatars and explore a world that other users can add to with their own creations. Both Vans and Gucci have used this social space to market their brands to good effect.

Vans created an in-game skatepark that users could play on, and via playing, earn points that can be spent on in-game collectibles that can be used to customise their characters.

Gucci created a Gucci Garden on the platform, a virtual garden that mirrored the real-life event they held last year. Here users could explore a beautiful forest and other awe-inspiring landscapes while also browsing their latest collection. They also released a special in-game shoe with no real-life counterpart called the Gucci Virtual 25. The rarity of this item made it a must-have digital collectible and generated a lot of buzz.

It appears that the best way to market on the Metaverse is to create these games or experiences, which not every brand will currently have the know-how to do. That’s why programmers and other roles related to the Metaverse have grown by over 400% to facilitate businesses’ desire to create similar experiences to those mentioned above.

Apart from creating these immersive experiences, what else can you do on the Metaverse to boost your marketing?

Create And Sell NFTs

NFTs are non-fungible tokens and are items that can be bought, traded, and owned exclusively online. A good example of one is the previously mentioned Gucci Virtual 25. More and more people are starting to engage with NFTs, as people enjoy collecting items that they can use to showcase their personalities on these online platforms

Digital marketers can use the Metaverse to capitalise on this trend and create their own branded NFTs that users can buy, trade, and sell. If you create an NFT that mirrors a product you sell in reality, it can help build more attention to those items. However, if your brand has enough influence and you create something that’s desirable, NFTs can become a revenue stream of its own.

Engage In A New Type of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is nothing new. Connect with a user with a high number of followers, get them to promote your brand somehow, and reap the rewards.

However, influencer marketing has taken a new form on the Metaverse. Instead of connecting with real, physical, and breathing people who have a presence online, your brand can create virtual influencers with no real-life counterpart.

This might sound creepy at first, but by doing this, you get to create the perfect representation of your brand and create a persona that matches your values, brand identity, aesthetic, and more.

To help you get your head around this form of influencer marketing, you can check out the ones that already exist on the Metaverse, such as Candy which Prada created.

Virtual influencers were already a thing on other platforms and were very popular in south-east Asia; however, the Metaverse might now begin to introduce them to the Western world.

Are There Any Drawbacks To The Metaverse?

The main issue with the Metaverse is that it’s too early to say if it will be a massive success. People might not get it or understand its benefit and simply shun it. As a digital marketer, though, even if you’re hesitant about it fulfilling its potential, the fact that it has a huge amount of potential means that it’s worth investing some time and effort in right now.

People were hesitant of TikTok a few years ago, and now it’s one of the most popular social channels, and businesses who previously ignored it are now scrambling to try and capitalise off of it. You cannot allow the same thing to happen to you regarding the Metaverse.

Another point of contention is that it might be harder to be discovered on the platform. As users have more agency, they have far more control over what they see, do, and interact with.

If you want a certain demographic to see your brand on traditional social channels like Facebook, you can run a targeted advert and appear in their feeds. On the Metaverse, all you can do is create something that should resonate with and attract your target audience and hope that they discover it and are drawn to it on their own. You can create an entire VR experience or launch unique branded NFTs, but if people aren’t bothered about them, then it’s going to fail.

To Conclude

The Metaverse could be big, or it couldn’t, but the likely scenario is that it will become an effective marketing channel, especially for younger audiences. Marketing well on the Metaverse can be extremely rewarding, as customers can engage with your brand in ways they’ve never experienced before.

Trying on your products in VR or buying NFT items to customise an avatar might be a novelty at first, but the trends are showing that this is set to become commonplace.

Start marketing on the Metaverse now so that you don’t miss out in the future.