In the last two decades, businesses and brands have had to revolutionize their advertising and marketing techniques to leverage the mass reach and impact that the internet has on consumers. With the world moving rapidly towards digital, brands and marketers have to realign their strategies to make the most of the opportunities that Web 3.0 provides – One of them is in the Metaverse.
Brands and digital marketers need to be up to speed with the metaverse and its full potential. What marketers need to understand is that the metaverse is here to stay, making its way to becoming the next big thing. Let us understand why.
Why is the Metaverse Attractive to Marketers?
- Changing Demographics: The target customers for the metaverse can be segmented based on industry, occupation, or technology. However, probably the most obvious target customer group for all brands is based on age group. Marketers need to keep in mind the value of millennials and GenZ users, which are already proving to be a huge target market. This group of users are born in the digital era with almost all of them digitally connected and are already early adopters of the metaverse in some shape or form.
- Easier access to technology: With 4.8 billion internet users rapidly multiplying across the globe, the online social sphere continues to adapt to accommodate new forms of communication, interaction, and entertainment for a digitally-smart demographic. For example, It’s expected that revenues from the Global VR industry will reach over $6.71 billion by 2022 and an even more impressive $12.19 billion by 2024. It was also estimated that approximately 85 million users experimented with AR or VR at least once a month in 2021.
- Online Commerce: As we continue to adapt to new ways of marketing to customers through the use of augmented, virtual, and mixed realities, the marketing game will shift dramatically. Brands that wish to prove successful in their efforts need to keep their consumers central in their messages. At the same time, they need to use pioneering technologies to help them connect with leads in ways that were never possible before.
- Major investments in the Metaverse: According to a report by BCG, Metaverse platforms are likely to become a channel with a $1.3 trillion potential by 2030. Meta, Microsoft, and Google have all made significant investments within the metaverse space. For example, Meta’s $10 billion rebranding from Facebook to its current namesake, Microsoft’s mixed-reality feature Mesh for Teams, the US$70bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and Google’s reorganization of the AR/VR team, Google AR glasses, and acquisition of North.
Concerns That Marketers Have With the Metaverse
- The Metaverse is a white space: One of the most significant challenges for marketers is that the Metaverse space is still growing and is being explored. It is untested, and brands are still trying to understand its full potential. The logic and logistics of marketing in the metaverse are dramatically different than they are in the physical world. In the traditional world of billboards, commercials, print advertisements, and banner ads – which is the current age of traditional marketing, brands are trying to catch your attention and get your business. But the world of marketing in the metaverse is different, less about one-dimensional showcases for your product and more about the creation of imaginative, highly-interactive, three-dimensional experiences.
- Deciding Which Metaverse to Market in: Although it may sound like one single universe, the metaverse is not a singular entity but rather an ecosystem of immersive virtual worlds competing to host users, events, play-to-earn games, and everything else that makes these platforms such exciting alternatives and complements to physical reality.There are currently several major players in the space, including Decentraland, Sandbox, and Roblox. Prospective advertisers should study each of these platforms and develop a working knowledge of their respective demographics, land costs, growth opportunities, and monthly users before deciding where to target their meta-marketing push.
- Measuring ROI: Due to its nascent stage, few metrics have been set to measure the return on investment. Organizations have not determined a standardized way to measure the success of any marketing or promotional campaigns in the Metaverse. Brands are still experimenting with possibilities and metrics to determine ROI. Now is the right time to adopt a test-and-learn mindset, to be open to experiments in the metaverse, and to move on quickly from failure and capitalize on success.
How Should Marketers Approach the Metaverse in the Present and Near Future?
For the reasons mentioned above, although there is almost infinite potential in the metaverse, it is unlikely that brands will fully direct their marketing efforts away from the traditional channels as yet. While the adoption of the virtual worlds and technology, in general, is increasing exponentially, marketers today have to carefully gauge the effort they are willing to invest in a relatively untested channel.
Having said that, it is certain that as consumers immerse themselves in the digital world and the target market for brands on these platforms swell, brands will start using the metaverse as a major channel for marketing and advertising – and it can turn out to be as revolutionary as the television once was.
