Understanding the Metaverse: A Marketer’s Guide to the Future
The Metaverse is taken into account for being the next phase of the internet. This configures many forms like business meetings, and various online communities, including gaming where people can interact collaboratively through a digital facsimile (also called ‘avatar’) of their own choice.
Imagine a world without any rules or regulations, without any limits, where people can live, shop, work, play, and interact with others while sitting at home in the physical world. This virtual concept is called ‘Metaverse’. This term didn’t just come out of the blue, it was introduced in October 2021 by the CEO of Facebook, launched with the corporate name ‘Meta’.
The Metaverse is taken into account for being the next phase of the internet. This configures many forms like business meetings, and various online communities, including gaming where people can interact collaboratively through a digital facsimile (also called ‘avatar’) of their own choice.
Understanding the ‘Metaverse’ is quite complicated as it is non-existent and still under development. Since there are major gaming and IT companies working on it, there is a countless evolving vocabulary to describe its upcoming iteration.
What Is Metaverse?
The term ‘Meta’ means ‘behind and beyond’ or it could also mean ‘transformative’ or ‘more comprehensive’. If the experience of the already existing internet is 2-Dimensional, i.e, scrolling and browsing through the screen (3-Dimensional), it is called Metaverse. You will be ‘walking’ all over through headsets or glasses connected to your system.
Although, it is still unclear whether there will be different metaverse areas or just one metaverse, or nothing at all. Metaverse is considered to be the next-generation advanced version of the internet, which would be Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) technology.
People can represent themselves with the help of digital facsimiles or avatars in the Metaverse to interact with each other and build a virtual community. Digital currencies could be used to buy anything from clothes to weapons or power upgrades in video games and other items as well. Meta users can also travel virtually throughout the metaverse world just for fun and exploration with a VR Headset and controller.
Types of Virtual Worlds Technology
In the virtual world, Metaverse is considered the next biggest breakthrough that brings an immersive gaming experience to everyone. It lets people all over the globe participate by using the power of your system hardware and software. People can acquire those things in this virtual world that would be certainly impossible for someone in the real world. They can play with others, work, buy things, make digital products, and many more.
How to create a Metaverse and what are the types of virtual worlds are some questions that many entrepreneurs and large enterprise owners frequently ask these days. Hiring an expert metaverse developer from a Blockchain Development Company like LBM Solutions is the answer.
Here are the different types of the virtual world technologies that exist as of now:
Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented Reality or AR is a virtual overlay forecasted over the real world. For example, ‘Google Glass’ and a few reality-based games. Although Google Glass couldn’t make it to the marketplace, you could still expect AR-connected glasses from other companies working under the Metaverse technology.
Virtual Reality (VR)
Virtual Reality or VR is an improved visual experience where users can put the headsets & headphones to see and operate the things in the digital world from the physical world. Currently, VR uses fully-covered headsets instead of glasses, giving the user a 360° immersive virtual experience where they can move around and play freely unless they crash into some physical wall.
Mixed Reality (MR)
Mixed Reality or MR includes the elements of both AR and VR, however, the real definition of MR is still cloudy. People can communicate with the real as well as virtual world simultaneously, and virtual objects can converse with real-life objects. For example, many social media applications have filters that after turning on the camera initiate a virtual character on screen that dances across the table and do some random actions without falling off the edge.
Extended Reality (XR)
Every concept of AR, VR, and MR overlapped with each other is called Extended Reality (XR). Ultimately, the lines between AR, VR, and MR might become Marky as the metaverse gradually becomes reality that making XR a better appropriate terminology.
Marketing In Metaverse
Digital marketers must stay updated with the current technological developments which include understanding the metaverse world with a powerful perspective. Digital Marketers need to know the fact that the metaverse is much beyond being trendy; it is here to evolve into something greater and unimaginable to humankind.
Secondly, marketers need to be well aware of the values of GenZ and Millenials as their target audience. These two generations are the most avid users of all sorts of virtual worlds, metaverses, and PC/Mobile games with VR-based technologies. With that being said, let us see how marketing your brand can be done with Metaverse in the future.
Metaverse Marketing = Real Life Marketing
For your brand promotion in the Metaverse world, you must develop marketing strategies that you already do for your brand in real life. For example, skateboarding companies have designed virtual skating parks in many games where the players can perform new tricks and earn points to redeem them later for rewards or customize their avatar in their virtual marketplace.
Attention-Grabbing Immersive Experience
Using the potential of the metaverse, you can create much more than just virtual billboards like putting more immersive experiences into your advertisements. It is an excellent way to capture your audience’s attention.
Create Collectibles
It is people’s hobby to collect things and those things could be anything from artworks and coins, even stamps. You can make them buy things from your metaverse world and stay here by creating limited-edition assets or items that can be collected only here.
Joining Hands With The Existing Communities
Partnering and joining hands with the present communities is one of the ways of enhancing the reach of your brand in the Metaverse world. For instance, one gaming company is collaborating with other companies working on the same Metaverse concept for item creation. This brings customers from both worlds together and gets more support. This method also helps to showcase more user-related content while spreading your reach to a greater audience.
Future of Metaverse
Metaverse has already caught the attention of people from various global communities while many wonders if this trend is just a fluke and will fall off the shelf one day. Whatever the reason is, metaverse technology has really got many companies interested in it and many are actually investing while choosing the right place to bet on.
One example of this is the emergence of Non-Fungible Tokens (or NFTs) where people have started to buy or sell various art collectibles in exchange for cryptocurrencies in Earth 2. It is a very strong indication that the Metaverse world is here and people must get ready to step into this immersive world to generate income.