The world as we know it is changing as a result of web 3.0, blockchain technology, and the Metaverse. They have been changing the world for a while, but they are beginning to reach a tipping point of widespread acceptance and public awareness, making them difficult to ignore.
It is difficult to overstate just how disruptive these cutting-edge technologies will be over the coming few years. They will disrupt every industry and discipline, including B2B businesses and B2B marketing, while creating brand-new and far more intriguing industries and fields. Fortunately, B2B marketers are accustomed to constant change, the need to acquire new skills, and the need to re-evaluate strategies and tactics in order to be constantly successful.
However, is it necessary for B2B spaces to support a highly speculative sector like blockchain technology, Metaverse, and the broader Web 3.0? Is the hype forcing the B2B market to dangle its toes in these technologies? Is it still more profitable for top digital marketing agencies and businesses to stick with traditional marketing methods even ten years down the road?
Continue reading to learn the importance and uses of web 3.0, blockchain technology, and the Metaverse in B2B marketing.
Using Web3, Blockchain, And The Metaverse for B2b Marketing
The world interpreted Facebook changing its name to Meta in 2021 as a sign that it was entering a new digital era. The central theme of Facebook’s rebranding is the Metaverse, a different world that exists entirely online.
Metaverse-related investments are seen as critical for businesses that directly sell products to customers because everyday consumers are increasingly likely to patronize technologically adapting businesses. Thus, retail companies should prepare for the Metaverse to grow their business.
Furthermore, corporations all over the world have begun to invest in the Metaverse. The Musée D’Orsay in France has created virtual reality spaces for visitors to explore from the comfort of their own homes. H&M and Gucci have pioneered the use of virtual reality to sell customers custom-fit goods.
The most frequently discussed applications for NFTs and virtual world experiences lend themselves to B2C marketing and community building. However, as the world moves slowly but surely toward web3, marketers at such companies need to take into account a number of B2B applications as part of their strategies.
Here, we will talk about how B2B marketing can use Web3, Blockchain, and the Metaverse.
1. Product Launches
An ASX-listed cannabis producer named Creso Pharma is showcasing its Mernova cannabis cultivation facility in Nova Scotia, Canada, through its metaverse experience in The Sandbox.
This will help inform its partners and target market about its resources and offerings. Additionally, it will utilize its expertise to market its various cannabis strains (which can also be purchased as digital NFTs with future utility).
2. Data-Driven Marketing
One of the most crucial attributes of blockchains is their transparency. On websites like Etherscan, you can check the cryptocurrency balance and recent transactions of a wallet address. You could target your audience in line with what they are spending their cryptocurrency on online with some sophisticated analytics. This will provide you with wallet addresses for your target audience.
The LooksRare airdropped 125 of its native $LOOKS tokens, worth US$600 at the time, to the wallet addresses of its rival OpenSea in exchange for listing an NFT on their platform. The airdrop was targeted at the wallet addresses of OpenSea. Due to this, there was substantial overnight growth.
3. Promote Your Business in the Metaverse
It does not matter if it is a busy road, your Instagram profile, or one of the many metaverses that are currently experiencing strong growth; traffic is always monetized. Digital marketers must know about blockchain and its usage in marketing and business promotion. Further, they can use the lands in The Sandbox, Decentraland, Crypto Voxels, and other platforms to expose their brands to their target demographic.
It is essential to keep in mind that marketing in the Metaverse is not yet as advanced and programmatic as it is in web2, but it can still be used strategically by placing billboards and similar items in strategic locations and at events in which your target audience may congregate.
4. Collaborations With Brands
Influencer marketing and collaborative partnerships have become big businesses in the web 2.0 world, particularly on Instagram. However, in the world of web 3.0 and B2B marketing, the opportunity to collaborate has expanded.
For instance, using co-branded experiences in the Metaverse, non-competitive brands that target the same audience can benefit from each other’s respective audiences.
These experiences may include, but are not limited to:
- Product launches
- Product displays
- Conferences and educational sessions
- networking activities
- business updates
Brands may introduce a POAP, which is essentially a proof-of-attendance NFT that users collect while, say, attending a product release in the Metaverse. This NFT may offer holders product discounts, 100 free licenses for a software package, NFT loans (to borrow money with NFT collateral), 100 free consulting hours, or any other service you could indeed think of providing your target market.
5. Development of Partner Relationships
Web3 can help brands create stronger connections with their customers and partners. For example, brands could use their own metaverse events and experiences to highlight their customers’ and their clients’ products.
You could give your customers and partners free access to your increasingly expensive metaverse lands so they can host their own personal experience (like letting your friend crash on your couch).
Although it is still early, the potential for collaboration or for giving clients and partners an advantage in the Metaverse is substantial, and some of the use cases only scratch the surface.
If you have not already noticed, any rumblings about a well-known brand entering the Metaverse tend to attract a lot of media attention because, as the adage goes, any publicity is good publicity.
6. Promote Engagement and Use of Products and Services of Your Brands
An influential differentiating factor from rival and top marketplace OpenSea is provided by LooksRare, an NFT marketplace. The latter, which functions in a manner similar to a centralized organization, charges a 2.5% commission over all trades made through its platform. However, LooksRare returns 2% to the traders, effectively giving them trading rewards when they use the platform.
You can include such “token economics” in the web3 strategy of your brand. You could, for instance, charge your clients in your native tokens, which are actual tokens that they can trade on exchanges for ETH or fiat money.
7. Encourage Sharing and Evangelizing
It is one thing to ask a customer for a review and to ask them to recommend the services of your business to their friends; it is quite another to reward them with the native token of your business.
The lifeblood of web3 is tokens, and whether they are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) or fungible tokens like ETH or SAND, they can be used to effectively motivate people in ways that have never been possible before. In fact, a lot of web3 projects have devoted around 20% of their token pool to sales and marketing, which serves as an effective incentive for users to use and spread their product.
People from all walks of life, including corporate executives at large B2B organizations, aka your partners and clients, are getting into the game at a time when interest in crypto is at an all-time high.
8. Reward Shareholders, Customers, and Business Partners
Brands can offer benefits by establishing their own NFT catalogs and airdropping those into the wallets of stockholders, clients, and partners as an alternative to sending Christmas cards and bottles of champagne, which most people find to be way too sweet to consume alcohol and run the risk of becoming insensitive to non-drinkers.
9. Restricted Content and Community
To build a stronger community, you might implement a social token or an NFT to grant your primary audience access to gated content like a Discord group, support channels, videos, blog posts, AMAs, webinars, and so forth.
10. Token Staking Rewards
Staking is a term used to describe the process of verifying transactions on proof-of-stake mechanisms, which is analogous to minting crypto on proof-of-work mechanisms. Staking can be considered as trying to add liquidity to smart contracts of a protocol, allowing transitions to be validated.
It is somewhat similar to, but not quite the same as, making an investment in a conventional term deposit, where the bank uses the money to support its own capital allocation and investment strategy and pays you interest.
Customers or token bearers can stake native tokens of your brand and efficiently earn interest, or perhaps an annual percentage yield, in the case of staking (APY). Staking practices vary greatly, but some tokens, like Polkadot’s DOT, pay 12.5% APY, which is significantly higher than just what your bank will offer you. This provides an additional opportunity for people to interact with your token and the ecosystems it connects them to.
A Complex But Hopeful Future
It will take years for ordinary consumers to feel and see the impacts of Metaverse, web 3.0, and blockchain technology in digital marketing and their daily lives. Phones and laptop computers were unheard of ten years ago, but they are now commonplace tools.
In short, advanced technologies like web 3.0, Metaverse, and Blockchain will pave the way for other industries in the future. Furthermore, B2B companies will once again be required to make the initial investments in acquiring and advancing advanced technologies before B2C can advertise and use them for regular consumers.
