What exactly does the Metaverse offer?
Over the past decades, there have been repeated attempts to integrate virtual reality into people’s everyday lives. Platforms like “Second Life” have enjoyed great popularity for many years and have a solid community. In contrast to such websites, Metaverse has a huge advantage: Potentially, there are already billions of users for whom Meta knows personal data in the background.
The private or professional exchange should also take place in the metaverse in the form of avatars. The variety ranges from private chats to business meetings in a virtual conference room. Proactive interaction with other participants in the metaverse is explicitly desired and goes beyond the passive standard of other chat or virtual reality rooms.
What distinguishes the Metaverse?
Even though access to the metaverse is already possible today, comparatively few users have created an avatar. This is likely to change shortly, since the Metaverse is constantly evolving, just like real life. The developers behind Meta are likely to set priorities in the future, possibly with a stronger focus on business or gaming.
The Metaverse is innovative and has the best prerequisites for uniting users of WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram on a central, interactive platform. Here, the Metaverse creates new variants of online marketing that could suit one’s own company and the respective target group.
Especially a younger and media-savvy target group could perspectively swap texting via WhatsApp or messaging from Facebook with virtual reality in the Metaverse. Addressing the potential of the metaverse in advertising and marketing now could put any company at the forefront.
How does social media marketing succeed in the metaverse?
Selling virtual assets in the metaverse is possible and a source of revenue potentially open to every user. The direct connection to business partners and customers is likely to be even more important. Conventional online marketing with the use of social media aims at trust and proximity in image or text form. In the metaverse, this effect can be enhanced by the “real presence” of an avatar.
Completely new forms of interaction and event planning are conceivable. Users of the shooter Fortnite are familiar with the principle from recent years when well-known stars used the platform’s virtual stage in a Hangout. As a playful experience in which experience points could be earned, Fortnite players took part in virtual concerts. This is just one of the countless facets that could be implemented interactively for a social media giant like Meta.
Events of this type offer two advantages:
- The events provide a platform to bring brand fans and customers together. This enhances the feeling of a real community in a way that interacting via comments on Facebook or Instagram would not. A Facebook post that has 100 likes feels different to each person than a virtual space with 100 avatars inviting communication with each other.
- The design of events and content in the Metaverse is completely open to the respective users. From concerts to a virtual trade fair stand to regular meetings with the community for joint exchange, there are no limits to the conception of events in the Metaverse in theory.
Do content marketing in metaverse
Visibility in the metaverse is likely to be as hotly contested in the long term as the positions of ads on Facebook or Google Ads. Content marketing in the metaverse is possible and should be carried out at an early stage according to SEO aspects. Currently, this is more of a theoretical consideration, as the emerging content is not compatible with familiar search engine optimization methods.
It is foreseeable that the content in the metaverse will strive for a symbiosis of the real and virtual worlds. In perspective, the correct promotion of own events under SEO aspects is more important than the events themselves. Here you can initially proceed with familiar methods, for example, by integrating media-quality content optimized according to SEO into known social media.
Concrete example of the use of the metaverse
Put yourself in the role of a fashion company that wants to market its latest collection. Classic online marketing targets SEO-optimized content on the company’s own blog and in social media. High-quality visuals present the individual garments, and a direct exchange with brand fans and potential new customers is possible.
In the Metaverse, this could be combined with a type of consultation and direct exchange. As an event, it is conceivable to offer advice to young fashion lovers who are currently still looking for their style. A virtual “type consultation” with an avatar of the fashion brand in the Metaverse helps to find oneself fashionably anew and to use the brand-new products of the collection for this.
Companies considering online marketing in the metaverse should therefore think about the type and degree of interaction with customers and prospects. A new, virtual event culture is likely to emerge, which needs to be promoted via online marketing in the metaverse and familiar social media. This is a dynamic and exciting approach in which companies are not only involved in the development phase but actively shape it.
Getting started with ONELINE in the Metaverse
According to ONELINE’s assessment, the Metaverse has an excellent future. The development of the virtual platform has progressed somewhat slowly over the past months and years. However, due to the complexity of the platform and the fundamentally diverse possibilities of use, this is not surprising for such an uber-project.
Companies interested in sustainable and forward-looking online marketing should keep an eye on the metaverse. Even if this does not yet lead to the active planning of virtual events – brainstorming which events would be conceivable in principle is a first, sensible step.
To understand the Metaverse even better and to recognize its potential, ONELINE’s marketing experts are happy to provide personal advice. Of course, the virtual reality platform does not have to replace familiar forms of online marketing. In a constantly changing, digital world, the Metaverse is an evolutionary step that you should take.
