The Future of Marketing in the Metaverse
The ever-changing landscape of technology presents new opportunities and challenges for brands. A quick look into the past shows how digital media has been completely changed by technology. The World Wide Web went public in 1993. The first ads for Facebook were introduced in 2004, and the iPhone, which many people believe is one of the world’s most game-changing inventions, launched in 2007. This was a time when marketing was completely transformed. When the internet began to grow in popularity, businesses saw the potential advantages of having a website and began creating them. As more and more people use their smartphones for shopping, social media marketing and mobile-first development have become important for industries of all sizes.
Many technology leaders are focusing on the “metaverse” as the next big technology platform. It is estimated that the market size for the metaverse will reach $800 billion by 2024, which is a significant increase from its 2020 estimated worth of $478.7 billion. In this article, we’ll explore the metaverse – what it is, why it matters, and how it’s set to change digital marketing in the years ahead.
What is the Metaverse?
Now imagine being able to bring your physical world experiences into a virtual universe.
The internet became publicly available just thirty years ago, and only twenty years ago did many businesses realize they needed a website for marketing.
It took social media networks a long time to catch on.
Virtual reality experts are predicting that in 2020, 58.9 million people in the United States will use VR at least once a month, which is 17.7% of the total US population. They are also predicting that 93.3 million people in the United States will use AR at least once a month, which is 28.1% of the total US population.
At a conceptual level, the metaverse can be thought of as the successor-state to today’s internet – just as today’s predominantly mobile internet was built on top of fixed broadband internet of the 1990s and early 2000s, according to Matthew Ball’s Metaverse Fund.
The combination of 5G, AI, and edge cloud processing will soon make it easier to deliver more seamless, enjoyable, and cost-effective AR VR experiences across a variety of connected devices.
Some experts are predicting that the metaverse will become as necessary for brands as the internet is today.
Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is becoming a “metaverse” company. Tech journalist Tara Swisher believes that it is still not clear who will lead the metaverse revolution, but she thinks it might be Apple or Google.
Metaverse Madness: 7 Quick Facts
1. Google Trends is showing a significant increase in the number of people searching for the term “metaverse” over the past 12 months, with a peak of 100 in March.
2. Top-tier media are all in. Cathy Hackl, a tech futurist and metaverse strategist, provides a weekly round-up of news from all corners of the metaverse for Forbes.
3. There’s a fund. A media analyst and co-founder of the Metaverse Investment Fund, Matthew Ball, has published The Metaverse Primer. This collection of nine free essays is a great starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about the topic, and Ball is definitely someone worth following.
4. Chief Metaverse Officer and other metaverse titles. If you search “metaverse” on LinkedIn, you will find around 2700 results of people who have used the term in their profile title, headline, or experience.
5. A search for “metaverse news” on Google News yields 175,000 results.
6. On Twitter, the #metaverse hashtag gets between 500 and 600 tweets per hour, depending on the news cycle.
7. Instagram shows more than 43K posts using #metaverse. According to insiders, the photo-sharing app Instagram is going to start focusing more on videos instead of photos. This is part of a larger trend of people moving into virtual realities, or the “metaverse.”
How Do Marketers and Brands Prepare for This Technology and Culture Revolution?
The agenda for today includes using new technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality wrapped around artificial intelligence as part of the digital marketing strategy.
Savvy marketers will keep up with the changing world, and adapt to new virtual worlds that present themselves.
Hackl points out that:
” marketers will need to rethink their narratives and embrace emerging technology at a faster speed in order to stay ahead. Brands are also worldbuilders in the metaverse.
How Can Brands and Marketers Stay Relevant?
Matt McGowan, Snap Director and General Manager Canada, says:
Marketing to “the Snapchat Generation” (i.e. Gen Z and millennials) is important because of the value they represent.
What happens in a person’s life between the ages of 13 and 34? This is referring to people who are leaving their parents’ house for the first time and beginning to live independently. They get their first apartment, first credit card, first car, and start buying the products they’ll need for the rest of their lives.
80% of parents of Gen Z report that this generation has a massive influence on household spending. This group has over $4.4 trillion in global spending power.
The following is a list of SEO, social media, and public relations advice to get you started.
SEO and the Metaverse
Marketers who are successful in getting their content found in search engines like Google, YouTube, and Bing are likely to be successful in getting their content found in the metaverse as well.
This can be done by claiming a space in a world, community, or platform that your audience is present in.
Are search engines going to be the way people find things in the metaverse? If you want to be found online by people searching for a “metaverse” experience, it helps to have that word in your brand name, product, or headline.
Visual Search Plays a Key Role
Any good SEO strategy should focus on creating deep, well-written content. The better your content serves a user’s needs, the more it will help your SEO rankings and organic search traffic.
Images are a highly effective form of content. As Google’s algorithms become more sophisticated, the role of images in search results will become increasingly important.
Take a close look at your content strategy and see how you can use AR, VR, and 3D experiences in your marketing plans.
Social Media and the Metaverse
Earlier, it was mentioned that Facebook sees its future as a metaverse company.
The social network Facebook appears to be preparing to launch into a 3D virtual reality platform, equipped with brands such as Oculus (the hardware), Facebook Horizon, and a newly formed Facebook Metaverse executive team.
Facebook Metaverse Steps to Entry: Horizon
If you are ready to explore the metaverse through the eyes of Facebook:
- Get yourself an Oculus 2 headset.
- Create an Oculus account.
- Sign up for Facebook Horizon [currently in beta].
- And create your avatar in the Oculus Home dashboard.
No experience is necessary.
Navah Berg, Facebook Horizon Creator and co-founder of Women in Horizon, says:
” Horizon is a community-building experience where you can connect 2D newsfeeds to a 3D world and build with others. Horizon is the heart of the social metaverse.”
Horizon is a place where you can go to visit different worlds that are based on specific topics and interests. The Facebook app provides a variety of content including gardening, gaming, meditation, and community groups.
Berg and Paige Dansinger created Women In VR to empower women to build in Horizon. They host monthly meet-ups and hosted Facebook Horizon’s community leaders Q&A for their first Accelerator program. The group also holds Horizon world-building classes, and in early March had an all-day International Women’s Day event with meditation, speakers from Facebook, Futurists, and Social Media experts. The event included a variety of activities designed to help attendees learn more about the world-building process and how to use social media to enhance their projects.
Facebook allows you to share moments from “Horizon” with other Facebook users through groups dedicated to the game. You can share things like selfies and 3D worlds with a 2D audience. They are creating a bridge between worlds.
It’s possible to create entire worlds in this game, to collaborate with others players on projects, to host in-game events, to have meet-ups, to take selfies, and to create meaningful relationships with other players’ avatars.
Snapchat Metaverse AR World – Starting, Optimizing, and Trending
McGowan shared how brands can easily get started with AR on Snapchat:
” The free Lens Web Builder tool is a great way for you to get started with augmented reality on Snapchat. The app offers a quick and easy way for anyone to create professional-looking AR Lenses using either templates with pre-selected 3D assets or from scratch.
This week, Snapchat released a public, web-based tool for advertisers, partners, and more to learn which words and phrases are trending across Snapchat and what’s driving buzz for our community of 500 million monthly active users.
It’s a great way for partners to understand the community’s interests in real time, said McGowan.
Spectacle-Ular World, Bitmojis Strike a Pose
It launched its first 3D filter in April, called 3D FloodFill, which allows users to place 3D objects into their shots in real time At a steady pace, Snap is also snapping into 3D content. In April, it launched its first 3D filter called 3D FloodFill which allows users to place 3D objects into their shots in real time. Spectacles: The Next Generation is a beta launch that is pushing the boundaries of what our 3D world will look like.
Strike a Pose, There’s Nothing to It – AR Vogue
Snapchat is hoping to capture the hearts of 16-25-year-olds with its new 3D, fashion-forward Bitmojis. Use your favorite brands to dress your avatar and make it the best digital version of yourself.
How Can Brands Prepare For The Metaverse?
Many brands would love to have detailed information about the metaverse and a guide on how to be successful there. What we do have are best practices, which are shared through trial and error, and evolve over time. The truth is that there are no set rules yet, only best practices that are shared and evolve over time. The metaverse is still relatively new and undeveloped, so everyone is still exploring what uses and applications it might have. This includes testing out new marketing strategies. There are a few things brands can do to make themselves more appealing as more users from different backgrounds and with different interests start to explore the virtual world for themselves.
Optimize Your Social Media Marketing
The metaverse is a digital world that feels similar to the early days of social media. As more brands see the power behind social media marketing and the influence social media has on people’s spending habits, they can apply this knowledge towards new and creative metaverse marketing strategies. Fashion marketers can target users of metaverses (computer-generated virtual spaces) who want to dress their avatars (virtual representations of themselves) in fashionable digital clothes and accessories. They can do this by creating highlights (prominent posts) and user-generated content (UGC) campaigns (advertising and promotional content created by users) on Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms. Fitness marketers can improve their health and wellness campaigns by incorporating virtual classes and exercises into them. This will allow them to reach users all over the world and show results across their social media channels, which will in turn increase engagement and brand exposure. Some examples of how social media and the metaverse are similar are that they both connect people and have interests and lifestyles in the digital realm.
Explore Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
Setting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as one of the biggest marketing trends for 2022 suggests that companies should explore ways to use them to improve their digital marketing. This could involve creating unique brand experiences, brand awareness campaigns, or interacting with target audiences in new ways. NFTs are digital images that can represent real-world objects. They can be used in the metaverse and grant their owners unique ownership of art, music, in-game items, and even videos. There is a lot of excitement surrounding NFTs that are bought and sold with cryptocurrency. Creators and companies are experiment with the technology and it continues to gain notoriety. $174 million has been spent on NFTs so far, which is a lot of money and shows that there is a lot of potential revenue for creators and brands who are willing to be innovative with their intellectual property. Companies like Grimes, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Ray-Ban, and even the NFL have all launched NFT campaigns.
Formulate A Metaverse Marketing Strategy
There is no definite way to tell what will happen in the future of the metaverse, but it is certain that it will have a large impact on businesses and marketing strategies of many different industries. To reach an online audience, brands need to come up with new ways to engage with consumers where they are spending their time – online.
What are your long-term goals? How will you adapt as technology evolves? Do you want to create or sponsor a virtual world like Nikeland for your digital marketing goals? Does your company have any intellectual property that could be used as an NFT or included in a game? If you want your business to succeed in the metaverse, you should create a marketing team that is dedicated to this task. This team should be composed of people with experience in the metaverse, and their job would be to oversee all marketing initiatives related to the metaverse.
While some of the questions in the text might seem strange, it is important to remember that the metaverse has similarities to the earliest days of social media. Businesses that once had a single social media manager eventually switched to having entire teams dedicated to executing complex campaigns. This switch was due to the creation of guidelines on how social media marketing should be conducted. This means that the arrival of the metaverse will probably be similar to what happened before, with the bigger brands making most of the decisions about how other brands should do digital marketing in this largely unexplored area.
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