Metaverse Marketing — The Secret to Competing for Consumers’ Shrinking Attention
Today’s consumers have an average attention span of only 8 seconds. That is one second shorter than even that of a Goldfish. How do you make them remember your brand? (attention span research by Microsoft)
We face countless distractions every day. Just between the time I opened this tab and wrote this draft, I received a ping on Slack, some in-mails on LinkedIn, a Google calendar reminder for my upcoming meeting, and a Netflix notification to continue to watch Breaking Bad. It’s the price we pay every day for the convenience of entertainment, productivity, and pretty much everything else at our fingertips.
However, this has become a headache for all marketers because it is increasingly difficult to engage your customers and get them interested in your product or remember your brand.
If you have reached this sentence in this article, congrats, you have beat the average consumers by concentrating for more than 8 seconds. Before we lose you, let’s get on with why this can be a problem.
Why We Need a Change
You pay a lot for consumers’ attention
Even if we put aside the cost to produce the content for your brand’s consumers and only focus on what you are paying to get their attention, the stats are shocking.
Across the whole industry, on average, you are paying $2.69 USD for a consumer to click on your ads and get only 8 seconds of attention. Businesses in consumer services, for example, are paying $0.8 for 1 second’s attention. This has resulted in an extremely high customer acquisition cost.
Brands are competing for consumers’ attention
Even if your margin allows you to afford the high cost and ignore the fact consumers have a shrinking attention span, your competitors won’t let you do it.
Besides the already shrinking attention span, the consumer market is saturated with products, brands, and businesses that wish to take up their attention. For all consumer products, this is a world ruled by an attention economy.
When you are publishing new content to build better branding or send out a brand message, you are essentially putting it up for a competition for attention. Before you compete for consumers’ dollars, you must first compete for their attention. This can be done by making the shift from creating content to creating experiences. This is where leveraging metaverse marketing becomes important, and increasingly, table-stakes for all consumer brands.
What is Metaverse Marketing
First of all, what is the metaverse? At its essence, the metaverse is an evolution of our current internet and it is a digital and immersive universe where your avatar can work, play, socialize, and shop. Metaverse is not just a temporary hype, and many brands have already made their efforts to build a presence on the metaverse.
Metaverse marketing refers to marketing initiatives that are immersive, social, and gamified through the use of all metaverse technologies and channels. One of the best examples would be LOUIS The Game, a mobile game published by Louis Vuitton to engage its consumers virtually.
An immersive, social, and gamified metaverse marketing will help your brands to better capture your consumers’ attention. Attention spans are going to continue shrinking as the technologies are becoming more and more invasive in our lives, which means your brand needs a metaverse marketing strategy to effectively engage your consumers.
How Can Your Brands Embrace Metaverse Marketing
Avatars
An avatar is a digital identity in the metaverse, just like how a player is represented in a video game and how you are represented in the physical world. You can partner with games or avatar creation platforms to make your brand’s products accessible in the metaverse for consumers to accessorize their avatars and express themselves.
Who to watch — Genies
Genies is the world’s largest avatar technology company, setting the foundation for swift, widespread adoption of avatars in society and culture, allowing individuals to truly express themselves. Genies provides consumers and celebrities with the tools to create high-quality avatars, enabling anyone to own their digital identity and express themselves across metaverses. The technology features an avatar wearables/skins marketplace built with Dapper Labs, API integrations, and a consumer app.
Collectibles and NFTs
While consumers can choose to buy digital goods for their avatars, they can also collect digital collectibles, often in the form of NFTs, just like how they collect designer toys or baseball toys. Your brands also collaborate with artists or startups to launch your own series of collectibles to improve customer loyalty.
Who to Watch — RTFKT
RTFKT is a very eclectic, creator-led organization. RTFKT uses the latest in-game engines, NFT, blockchain authentication, and augmented reality, combined with manufacturing expertise to create one-of-a-kind sneakers and digital artifacts. RTFKT enables designers and brands to create the most compelling virtual collectibles.
Virtual Events
Brands often engage in creating direct interactions with consumers through various marketing and promotional events. While during the pandemic and in the post-pandemic world consumers will miss grabbing a beer at those events, they will still be able to attend virtual events online, either through a VR headset or simply on their screen. Brands can host various events in the metaverse, just like in the physical world.
Who to Watch: ROBLOX
Roblox is a platform where people come together virtually to share experiences. Every day, tens of millions of people from around the world come to Roblox to play, learn, work, and socialize in immersive digital experiences all built by a global community of creators. Many brands host events on ROBLOX.
Immersive Storefronts and Spaces
Many brands are building their presence on the metaverse through setting up a virtual storefront or branded space. Within your immersive storefronts, consumers should be able to connect with your brand, get social with their friends, and experience your product through a web-based experience on any device. This will also be an integral and unmissable part of all brands’ new omnichannel strategy.
Who to Watch: Matterverse
Matterverse is a no-code editor for anyone to create a photorealistic and game-like virtual storefront on their website’s pages. Matterverse helps brands to build immersive, social, and gamified experiences on the metaverse.
I’m creating a series of metaverse e-commerce and metaverse marketing articles on medium. Besides building my own startup, I also provide consulting services to help brands innovate in the metaverse space. Feel free to follow me and reach out to me on LinkedIn!
