3 Signs Your Brand Needs a Metaverse Marketing Strategy

The digitization of our global economy has surged.

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Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the worldwide creation of fully digital or digitally-enhanced offerings has accelerated seven years ahead of initial projections. The most exciting frontier for this evolution in digital experiences lies in the metaverse. With humble beginnings in platforms like Second Life, metaverses such as Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite have since exploded in popularity — Roblox alone recently reported a daily active user count of 54.7 million. Meta’s VR approach to the metaverse has also kicked off with a bang, experiencing a 10x growth in its user base after only a few months on the market.

These and other emerging platforms provide marketers with a wealth of new and unexplored opportunities to maximize brand awareness among a passionate and dedicated audience. JPMorgan estimates the market opportunity of the metaverse at over $1 trillion in yearly revenues. It’s causing brands like Nike, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola to construct metaverse marketing strategies, form brand partnerships with popular metaverse platforms, or design digital assets to market directly to consumers.

It’s still early days for the metaverse, though. While every business should look to adopt a metaverse marketing strategy eventually, some are best positioned to take advantage of this emerging tech immediately. If your audience represents one of the following core traits — or these traits represent an untapped market segment that you’ve determined is strategically advantageous to pursue — you should make a metaverse marketing strategy a number one priority.

You need metaverse marketing if… your audience is under 35

The predominant audience currently drawn to metaverse spaces is young and highly engaged. A recent study on Newzoo found that nearly three-quarters of all Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox players are between the ages of 10 and 35, with an average age of 27.

These younger Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha players have all grown up around some kind of proto- or current metaverse experience and will continue to see them as a valuable part of their daily lives. This demographic is also increasingly difficult and expensive to advertise to, as they are more likely to install ad blockers, skip ad content, or tune out traditional advertising altogether.

Reaching these ad-blind customers requires going to where they are and engaging with them on their terms. Platforms like Roblox offer numerous advertising opportunities, from branded virtual items to interactive events. As just one example, Gucci saw massive success within Roblox when nearly 20 million people took part in a two-week branded event called Gucci Garden, where players could interact with a digital recreation of a real-world art installation in Florence, Italy.  During the event, hundreds of thousands of players purchased virtual Gucci clothes created in a partnership with a popular Roblox creator. Players tended to wear these clothes longer and resell them for more money than other items found on Roblox’s storefront.

Gucci Garden, Travis Scott’s performance in Fortnite (which drew 12.3 million concurrent players worldwide), and other events have led a range of brands (like Puma and Balenciaga) to view the metaverse as a ripe opportunity to build awareness with an enormous audience. Reaching users here can reward dividends through immediate sales, as well as through long-term brand engagement.

You need metaverse marketing if… your audience is tech-savvy and adopts early

Early adopters compose much of the audience currently dialed into the broader world of non-fungible tokens (or NFTs — a digital asset with purchase provenance backed up on the blockchain) and cryptocurrency. These audiences also embrace emerging technologies like augmented and virtual reality, which are key components of the overall metaverse.

According to Pew Research, 28% of Americans are strong early adopters of new technology. These early adopters are largely younger and earn higher incomes than those more reluctant to dive in. Connecting your brand with new and emerging technologies will position it as tech-forward and current, keeping it top-of-mind with an engaged audience willing to spend on the latest bleeding-edge developments.

You need metaverse marketing if… your target audience loves to collect

If your brand has any amount of collector enthusiasm behind it, you should develop a metaverse strategy. In addition to the previously mentioned strategies fashion companies have taken on metaverse platforms, the blockchain allows brands to create a similar feeling of scarcity and ownership of digital assets, much like their real-life counterparts.

Take the recent success of Nike’s Cryptokicks, which have sold over $11 million in digital sneakers since their April 2022 launch. The athletic shoe manufacturer, which has already created a flourishing physical collectible market among dedicated sneakerheads, purchased virtual designer RTFKT in December 2021 to bolster its metaverse marketing strategy. RTFKT has since released a collection of limited NFTs called Nike Dunk Genesis Cryptokicks, which tap into the same sense of collectibility and FOMO that accompanies physical sneaker collecting. Unlike physical shoes, Cryptokicks can be augmented and customized with digital items in ways that would be impractical or outright impossible in the physical world.

Though fashion brands are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the benefits of the metaverse, many other brands are taking advantage of this digital collectible market. NBA Top Shots has created a series of NFTs that elevate the concept of trading cards into digital, tradeable plays (called “Moments”) from throughout the history of the NBA. Since its launch, Top Shots has amassed over a million users, and Dapper Labs is building similar platforms for the UFC and NFL.

Whether you’re offering digital fashion, trading cards, collectible characters, comics, records, or anything else — tap into the collectible mindset with your metaverse offering and combine it with a sense of immersion only found in the digital space. You’ll discover an audience willing to invest.

Get a head-start on your metaverse implementation

Once you’ve determined that you need a metaverse marketing strategy and are ready to implement it, reach out to the experts at dSphere to aid with your rollout. We provide an end-to-end product suite with tools and plugins to help you manage drops, connect them with real-world events and items, and integrate them directly into the metaverse. Contact us today to learn more.

 

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