Metaverse: How it can be gamechanger for brands in future?

The metaverse wave is sweeping through the world and companies are dipping their toes to make the most of it. From FMCG to automobiles to consumer marketing, brands cutting across industries are leaving no stone unturned to lure new-age customers who are increasingly spending more time on virtual platforms. Major companies and brands have been investing a huge amount of money and technology into the metaverse - which can be a gamechanger for brands in the near future.

According to Ashish Agarwal - Co-founder, Lepasa -Brands can also take their engagements with customers in the metaverse to the next level through digital avatars and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

"The creation of virtual communities and organising activities can also be utilised by brands for forging, building, and maintaining relationships with prospective buyers on metaverse platforms. All these measures will help in building and establishing a strong bond and customer loyalty that, in turn, will lead to better profitability and sustainability of business in the long run,” Agarwal said.

To make the most of the metaverse revolution, companies cutting across product domains and service categories are devising new methods to connect with new-age customers on these virtual platforms. From Citi Bank to Samsung and Nike to Hyundai, brands are hopping on the metaverse bandwagon to explore customer segments in a completely new digital manner. 

Kunal Bajaj - Chief Business Officer, eSec Forte - feels that firms should not be afraid to experiment with their traditional marketing approaches.

"It is important for brands to recognise that virtual worlds are comprehensively different from physical reality and to win over customers here, they require an integrated and holistic approach towards customer acquisition and retention. Firms can establish their own virtual world, create digital properties, and then use them for advertising and promotional purposes to target prospective users. The digital twins of famous personalities can also be utilised and by organizing virtual concerts with these notable names, firms can break the monotony, strengthen their recall value, and strike long relationships with target audiences. Organisations can also try their hand at gamifying the interactive experience between them and consumers as nothing works better than games to arrest the imagination of buyers from Generation Z,” Bajaj added.

Metaverse platforms are increasingly becoming a new breeding ground for innovative marketing practices. With virtual commerce accounting for nearly half of total gaming revenue online, the future trade on metaverse platforms will become more seamless and unhindered. Further, the influence of new-age consumers across branding, promotional, and sales practices will grow significantly. In fact, the users in metaverse platforms will lead brands’ promotional and marketing efforts by offering firms inputs on how to create, communicate, and deliver engaging customer experiences. 

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But Farheen Ahmad - CEO & Co-founder, Interality - feels that metaverse comes with its own share of challenges. Prominent among these are data safety, information security, and compliance with regulatory norms that vary from country to country. 

"To tide over all these challenges, it’s recommended that organisations must come up with a holistic metaverse strategy that should include integrated planning, analysis, and control approach to effectively build and manage their brands in virtual space. This entails careful segmentation of the potential market, selection of the target audiences, and then effectively positioning the offerings to potential users for maximum market share,” Ahmad added.

However, the metaverse can be complicated as most of the brands want to start small and understand the exact return on investment. Therefore, there is already so much hesitancy with which brands start their thought process when it comes to implementing something around the metaverse. 

"Brands are getting stuck with questions around, what would be the use case, how could I measure the outcome, what would be the cost and how scalable would the experience and investment actually be?" said Anshul Agarwal, Co-founder, XR Central.