It’s one of the hottest topics in the technology world and it divides opinion like few other trends in recent memory. Of course, we’re talking about the metaverse.
Before you think we’re talking about avatars with no legs, let’s first make a distinction between what companies are marketing and the overall concept of the metaverse. If you’ve heard Facebook’s new name, Meta, you might think that’s “the metaverse.” But, Meta is just one of many company-driven products that should instead be thought of as a channel.
For brands looking to start down this path, we recommend thinking of “the metaverse” as a more immersive experience that you offer to your customers to enable them to engage with your brand in new ways.
The best use cases offer customers an experience they would not be able to have otherwise. One form might be in the form of virtual reality like Meta (the company), which currently requires a headset. Or, it could be something more tangible like the experience Triumph Motorcycles is exploring to bring its products to customers that might not be able to visit its physical stores. See the demo below powered by Microsoft, Sitecore, Touchcast, and Annata:
If you’re thinking about bringing your brand to the metaverse, here are 5 things to consider:
1. Agree on your company’s definition of the metaverse
With emerging technology, aligning on definitions will help ensure successful outcomes. While this will seem unnecessary to some, simply do a quick poll and see how many different answers you get to the question ‘What is the metaverse?’. Locking in your company’s definition will help keep teams on track, prevent scope creep, and better enable the design of new experiences.
If you want an easy definition, our view is that the metaverse refers to immersive experiences that allow a person to complete an activity they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do in that moment. It is currently a collection of different, disconnected channels that includes branded items such as Meta and Dreamland as well as immersive digital experiences that are brand-created and maintained like the Triumph example above. These are often delivered via your digital experience platform.
2. Identify your customers’ unmet needs
One of the problems brands have with the metaverse is that it often seems like an answer to a question that no one is asking. But as you can see with the Triumph example, if you examine your customer’s journey, there will be several friction points for which a rich, immersive experience would be welcome; especially if it doesn’t require additional hardware.
The Triumph example is unique because it seamlessly connects into a journey the customer is already undertaking. It offers something new and valuable to the customer in the form of education and reduces the risk or hesitation the customer might have in choosing a Triumph product.
Of course, you also need to consider if your core customer is even interested in a metaverse experience. Recent research from Sitecore uncovered that Millennials and Gen Z are the most likely to engage in metaverse experiences. The most common use cases include experiencing products before buying, improving remote collaboration, and replicating physical stores.
3. Prepare your content
As you might expect, it’s not enough for a brand to decide to have a metaverse strategy and be successful. You need to account for 3D assets, rich media like hi-res video, and your ability to deliver the experience at scale. Scale in the metaverse can mean including all the markets you want while ensuring that the experience is lightning fast. The importance of a great content experience is amplified in the metaverse since it must all be designed just for your brand.
If that all sounds new to you, starting with a DAM can make it easy for your marketing teams to be self-sufficient and store and transform rich media. You’ll want to provide the tools and vision to empower your creative resources to leverage the full range of their skills.
4. Invest in your people
While you are getting your content house in order, it is also critical to ensure your employees have the right skillsets to sustain your brand’s presence in whatever form of the metaverse you choose to pursue.
For example, if you’re going to go the most common route brands take, like Triumph, and start by thinking about the metaverse as an extension of your current digital experience, you’ll want to make sure your digital teams are trained, built to scale, and are using modern techniques and cloud technologies. This is critically important because speed is viewed as a commercial differentiator; faster experience load times lead to more revenue. Unfortunately, even the promise of a more engaging experience is not enough to overcome the short attention spans and low patience of your customer.
5. Fund it (modestly)
We’re big believers in the promise of the metaverse and metaverse-inspired experiences to elevate brands to meet the ever-increasing expectations of consumers. These experiences have the potential to infiltrate virtually every industry in some way: from big-ticket purchases all the way to reimagining how governments interact with their citizens.
That said, it is still early days in the maturity of these immersive experiences.
We recommend that brands make modest investments to test, learn, and optimize today to help you keep your brand on strategy without introducing massive and unwanted distractions.
David Schweer is the VP, Portfolio Marketing at Sitecore.