Despite skepticism about metaverse prospects, they continue to grow and evolve. In the near future, new technologies and business investments in metaverse will help develop new scenarios of emotionally colored communication with the audience.
Business migration: causes and perspectives
Experts agree on one thing: the penetration of business into metaverses will become the fundamental trend in the development of the direction in 2024 in Russia.
In particular, the focus is on integration with gaming platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite, which have evolved to metaverse levels from gaming applications.
The choice of these platforms is explained by their successful work on community development and interaction with the audience, which ensures a natural flow of visitors without the need for additional motivation and advertising. Notable examples of this interaction include Eminem‘s Fortnite concert and Peris Hilton‘s whole metaworld in Roblox.
What attracts business in the metaverses?
First, metaverse as a format opens a new channel of communication with consumers, offering more affordable cost parameters compared to traditional channels.
Secondly, platforms like Roblox and Fortnite allow you to connect with a youth audience. Game metaverses provide unique opportunities to interact with Generation Z and Alpha by offering creative and interactive communication formats. This is a familiar environment for this target audience, many of its representatives spend a significant amount of time in metaverses almost every day.
The third point: one of the most important aspects of attracting brands to metaverse is the possibility of visual presentation of products.
The introduction of interactive showrooms, where consumers can virtually familiarize themselves with the product (from a smartphone and its functionality up to cars or real estate), test it and study the characteristics in an interactive format, opens up new horizons for marketing strategies.
This approach not only enhances engagement and emotional perception of the product, but also enables deeper and more productive engagement with potential buyers.
There are practically no limits to adapting the format to the tasks of the “real world”: last summer in the Minecraft universe, the production of the play “Greenhorn” by the BDT virtual theater was played.
Technological aspects
The trend towards the emergence of new metaverse from various brands is the result of growing interest on the part of users in a new format of interaction with each other, objects and the environment. Metaverse is an interactive platform with incredible business opportunities that can offer users an exciting new experience.
The key strategy here is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced reality (XR), which includes augmented (AR) and virtual (VR) reality technologies.
It will allow you to create advanced chatbots that can ensure the natural features of user interaction with the metaverse and solve their requests in real time. Such innovations significantly deepen the interaction with virtual spaces, turning them from an entertainment platform into a functional tool for solving everyday problems.
Additionally, AI plays an important role in creating and optimizing visual content of metaverse. Developers will be able to significantly speed up and improve the process of creating three-dimensional objects, enriching virtual worlds with diversity and realism, as well as a large number of interactive mechanics.
This opens up new horizons for business to interact with consumers and allows testing marketing hypotheses in a unique virtual environment.
In the Roblox gaming metaverse, VkusVill customers could earn virtual coins, exchange them for Robux and get discount points for real products, such as mango. In addition to buying, users could gain experience through game mechanics, grow their own mango tree, learn about the product and brand better without leaving the virtual world.
Promotion
The development of various tools for promotion in metaverse opens up new horizons for marketing and advertising. Despite the fact that standard advertising formats in virtual worlds are still in their infancy, the potential for their integration and optimization for specific platforms is enormous.
This creates the prerequisites for the development of new, more effective ways of business interaction with target audience.
Business demand for effective advertising mechanisms in metaverse drives the development of new approaches and technologies. In the near future, a significant proportion of metaverse studios are expected to focus on building tools for ad integration, which could be an industry trend.
For sale
The next significant aspect is the prospects for sales in the metaverse. At the moment, the sale of physical goods through virtual platforms faces a number of difficulties associated with both technological limitations and the peculiarities of the perception of such sales by users.
However, the virtual merch sector, including digital accessories and goods, is showing steady growth. The increase in the number of design studios engaged in the development of virtual merch, and the expansion of internal marketplaces in metaverse hint at the formation of new commercial opportunities and distribution channels.
Events in Metaverse
The integration of bloggers into metaverse is a key marketing strategy for promoting sales aimed at attracting a youth audience (14-20 years old) actively participating in virtual worlds.
Creating specialized placements (placing products or brands in virtual spaces to increase their recognition and promotion) in parallel with the organization of challenges in collaboration with popular bloggers allows companies to generate targeted traffic.
An example of such a successful campaign is Nike’s collaboration with Cristiano Ronaldo at Roblox, where a football player’s unique virtual avatar was created. Regular challenges increase fan engagement and attract a new audience, increasing interest in the brand and its products already in the real world.
In the future we’ll face the development of mechanisms for the sale of real goods through manipulations with ordering and payment in the metaverse.
The use of virtual goods as a means of promotion allows brands not only to increase awareness, but also to draw attention to physical goods and services, thereby creating additional points of contact with the consumer.
Collaboration with bloggers
Moreover, collaborating with popular bloggers and creating unique content in metaverses, such as special challenges, opens up new channels to attract traffic and interact with brands’ CAs and audiences in general.
Education options
Metaverse opens up new horizons for business and educational institutions to interact with audiences and employees.
The business can effectively use these opportunities to increase its visibility and strengthen the brand, turning screenings into real income. Virtual events and events in the metaverse provide greater audience contact compared to traditional digital channels, increasing the value and effectiveness of advertising and marketing campaigns.
In addition, metaverse offers unique opportunities for HR and corporate learning. Engaging employees through game elements and interactive meetings in virtual spaces makes the learning and adaptation process more interesting and efficient.
Onboarding in the metaverse, which allows new employees to get acquainted with the history and values of the company in an interactive format, opens up new prospects for creating a strong corporate culture.
Metaverses provide unique opportunities in the context of group learning and soft skills development. Co-learning in virtual reality contributes to a deeper understanding and mastery of the material, thanks to the interactivity and ability to simulate various situations.
The online education industry will also find new approaches in the metaverse, creating virtual auditoriums and lecture halls where presentations and educational materials are complemented by interactive 3D models and virtual reality capabilities.
This not only increases student engagement, but also provides them with a deeper understanding of the material being studied.
Marketing vector
Integrating metaverse with the real world through QR codes, promo codes and other tools provides new marketing opportunities and deepens the interaction between brands and consumers.
Examples of such integration, including Burger King campaigns, demonstrate how companies can use virtual worlds to stimulate interest in their products and services by offering unique interactions that take a user from online to offline and back.
Burger King launched a marketing campaign, introducing combo boxes with unique codes. These codes provide a double benefit: the ability to exchange for Burger King’s branded currency, called burger coin, to get discounts on food, as well as the option to earn additional burger coins in the Burger King metaverse. Customers can use these coins to shop at restaurants with substantial discounts, up to 99%, or exchange them for the domestic currency of the Roblox platform, thereby emphasizing the importance and popularity of virtual currency.
Metaverse have experienced steady development in recent years, gradually integrating into society and becoming increasingly popular. Despite the lack of radical change, the constant improvement of VR technologies and the emergence of new trends such as mixed reality (XR) point to the continued influence of metaverse on various aspects of life and business.
However, despite significant potential, metaverse faces a number of obstacles, including the limitations of current VR technologies and the need to develop more stylish and functional devices.
In a word, there is still where to grow – but this growth will definitely happen. And very soon.
By Vladimir Lantsov, Head of Metaverse, division of Hybrid in Russia