A buzzword gaining momentum in the world of tech and business from the past year would be THE METAVERSE. THE METAVERSE is intrinsically a virtual realm that expands the capability of the eyes, ears, and brain – to see, feel, believe, and do what we could not see, feel, believe, or do before. Metaverse seems to encapsulate Virtual Worlds, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Non-Fungible Tokens and blockchain. 

Nitu Surendran, Senior Director at OMD UAE

The metaverse is the next big thing as it’s predicted to become an $800 billion market by 2024, brands & people have already started adapting to this new world of reality – one of the recent big hits being the Travis Scott in Fortnite event in 2020 where almost 46 million watched.  While all of this sounds ornate and futuristic, the question lingering on the minds of marketers is how is this going to shape the future of marketing. As we all know technology has skyrocketed, and the digital world is taking the lead. Finding ways to offer customers a way to use your products and services without having to leave the house will only be accelerated with the use of the metaverse. The key is determining how marketers can create that exceptional experience to develop growth, loyalty, and, most importantly, retention amongst consumers.

Embracing metaverse marketing would be a seamless progression in the world of digital marketing. Consider our transition similar to our steps away from news, radio, and television advertising to social media, SEO & inbound marketing. To advertise online using search engines and social platforms, we use text, graphics and videos to get our messages across. VR is some of the prominent technologies that are playing a role in shaping up the Metaverse, these visuals will become virtual and 3 dimensional. Three key pillars for brands to stay focused while driving their strategy would be: –

  1. Designing seamless integration: It is key for brands to seamlessly integrate marketing efforts to avoid creating silos and alienating users from their brands.
  2. Connecting with customers: It would be imperative as a part of the strategic planning for brands to find their niche in the Metaverse and not being able to capitalize on this could come off as brands being overly tenacious in their messaging and in the end up alienating their audience.
  3. Place in the right environments: It is also equally important to plan the placements properly once the niche and messaging is identified as its critical to ensuring that messages to the audiences in the metaverse seem natural and well-integrated in the right environments.

Because branding, marketing and advertising in the metaverse are so new and nascent, for creative minds the sky’s the limit. If you’re a brand or business with an open mind and your target audience spends time on a metaverse, it’s time to give it a go. Regular advertisements are unlikely to work–we need to think creatively, and use engagement as our main KPI. Since this technology is new, the measurement and tracking we’re used to with other marketing tactics aren’t there yet, but it’s only a matter of time before the metrics catch up. 

For brands to make it click in the metaverse, they will need to carefully craft brand experiences that resemble real life situations to create that last connections with their customers. However, what seems super exciting and opportunistic for brand experiences although yet to be unlocked comes with a few unique challenges as well. 

First, as a result of the technological requirements of metaverses, certain audiences may have difficulty accessing them. The requisite equipment to access the Metaverse is not available to all, and not every person has the budget to invest in VR lenses and top-of-the-line PCs. This could impede mass marketing efforts. The second most important challenge would be security and data privacy. The advent of new technologies always brings the need for new digital security measures, including measures that protect privacy and data. Metaverse personal verification may require more data from users, thus increasing data privacy risks. Whilst adoption and accessibility of the metaverse will take its due course of time just like digital marketing did in the past, building trust amongst target audiences on the metaverse will require brands to adhere to the best practices for data privacy. The key to be successful is to be mindful, deliberate, and seamless with the marketing strategies. In doing so, users will be comfortable sharing the virtual space with the brand and engaging with it as well.

The future of marketing will be a wild ride as we adapt to new ways of reaching consumers through virtual reality and augmented reality, and adapting to these new, immersive and 3 dimensional technologies will only bring us close to the consumers than ever before. 

To summarize, The Metaverse is already there. It is a matter of time before we as marketers start to partake in it in some way or another. We just need to plan and understand real-time on how to use this hyper-real digital revolution by starting to integrate it within the overall marketing strategy. Brands that can effectively create new realities and narratives that they can share with their target audiences will usher in a new era of marketing.