Marketing in the Metaverse – Short-term Trend or Long-term Strategy?
Marketing
Posted 11 Apr 2023
A few years ago, it was hardly imaginable and soon it is expected to be part of our everyday life – in a few years’ time, the metaverse is anticipated turning our entire digital life upside down. But what exactly is the metaverse? It is a virtual reality, a new platform that will primarily be used for socializing. In the near future, the platform will offer an immersive, interactive, and decentralized environment in which humans and machines can interact.
The Metaverse will cover various application areas, including gaming and online shopping. PR and marketing industries will also benefit tremendously from the Metaverse. More information under: The future of the metaverse and Extended Reality
The Metaverse is an emerging technology that creates an immersive virtual world where users can interact, communicate and transact in real time. It is considered the next chapter of the Internet that will take us into a new era of digital co-existence and collaboration.
Through its various uses, marketers are offered a new portal to promote services and products in a virtual world and 3D environment.
Especially within the technology sector, this new space offers companies a unique opportunity to address their target groups spending their time in virtual worlds and to actively interact with the digital environment. Automobile manufacturer BMW is already using the Metaverse and 3D advertising on their Website, to provide consumers with a unique experience since the iX1 Metaverse allows customers to explore the streets of Milan in digital space with BMW’s latest model.
Even if it requires a very intense collaboration between marketers and developers of these virtual spaces, we may soon be confronted with 3-dimensional advertising in the Metaverse as well.
5 tips for modern marketing in the metaverse you can find here
Thanks to the metaverse, PR gains a new way of communicating with different audiences and presenting its messages in an interactive and immersive environment.
Another benefit of the digital landscape is the possibility of organizing events for international visitors. PR professionals could soon plan virtual events, conferences, exhibitions and other activities that can be attended by people from all over the world. This makes it possible to reach a much larger audience than through conventional on-site events. In addition, the metaverse offers the opportunity of creating an immersive experience that not solely increases audience engagement and interaction but is also optimizing the effectiveness of the PR campaign. One of the greatest advantages of virtual events is that they allow a wide range of people who, for a variety of reasons, would not be able to attend live events to participate.
The Metaverse can enable PR to make use of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies to present products or services in a new and innovative way, bringing a breath of fresh air to the PR world. By creating virtual spaces, PR professionals can offer their clients a memorable experience and present their brands in a unique way.
In summary, the metaverse can sustain PR by reaching target audiences in a new and exciting way and therefore increasing the effectiveness of PR campaigns. This is achieved through interactive and immersive experiences and innovative technologies to showcase products and services.
The metaverse comprises a virtual world consisting of various elements. For marketing, it thereby offers a multitude of opportunities to promote brands and products. However, there are also risks that could negatively affect or even harm marketing in the metaverse. Some of these existing risks include, but are not limited to, data privacy issues. Since the Metaverse is a virtual space, there are privacy and data security concerns. Companies making use of the Metaverse must ensure that they comply with applicable data protection regulations and thus prevent user data from being misused.
Another aspect is that the Metaverse is operated by many different companies that have different business models. It can therefore be complicated to communicate to users – especially in terms of trust and reliability. When it comes to the use of user data, it becomes essential for companies to be trustworthy and reliable, as otherwise related issues of cyber security and privacy are increasingly becoming relevant to end users and determine a company’s public reputation.
Furthermore, it is possible for any user of the Metaverse to create and modify anything they want, and moreover how they want to. This – amongst others – can lead to the momentous consequence of brands being used illegally to promote false or even harmful products and services. Therefore, companies need to ensure that their brands are protected against cyber threats. Additionally, they should create policies and regulations to structurally prevent brand misuse.
Because the Metaverse is a novel landscape, companies that are investing early on may be able to form a monopoly or at least a dominant position. This, in turn, can make it difficult for other companies to enter the new market. Such monopoly formation may result in inhibiting the growth of other companies in the Metaverse.
These risks may affect marketing in the Metaverse. Nevertheless, it should be noted that some of these problems also apply to the World Wide Web, this has nevertheless become integrated into our everyday lives and is successfully used for PR and marketing services.
Alternatives to marketing in the metaverse can be found on our HBI blog: Digital Marketing – A Steb-by-Step guide
In summary, it can be said that despite its risks, the metaverse owns great potential for the future and is likely to enrich the PR and marketing world. However, to what extent and at what speed this development will take place remains to be seen.
Marketing Advisor at HBI Helga Bailey GmbH – International PR & MarCom
Jasmin Sobhanian has been part of HBI’s marketing team since 2023. As Marketing Advisor, her responsibilities include the development of marketing campaigns, social media management and the creation of specialized articles.
