21 Mar How Prepared are you to Invite your B2B Customers to the Metaverse?
Not many know that playing has been a key driver of progress. In his book Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World, Steven Johnson says that some of our most important innovations, including probability theory and artificial intelligence, began with people having fun.
Now consider the metaverse: It’s a fantastic gaming universe for the Gen Z, where aspects of social media, online gaming, augmented reality, virtual reality, and cryptocurrencies are brought together to allow users to interact and play virtually.
But is that all that it is? Or is metaverse joining the ranks of digital tools that are set to disrupt how we connect and engage in the near future?
The answer is evident when you understand why Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook’s company name to Meta in October 2021. “We are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started,” said Zuckerberg.
If that’s not enough, a recent McKinsey research lists metaverse as one of six digital trends that will influence life in 2022 and beyond. But how should the relatively digitally sluggish B2B marketers look at the metaverse?
The mainstay of B2B marketing are live events, seminars, trade shows, product demonstrations, client meetings, customer service and advertisements, all of which can be drastically turned around using metaverse. Plain vanilla shows can be transformed into highly innovative and immersive hybrid environments that include virtual stalls/booths with real-time interaction for B2B clients, especially the younger generation.
Companies like NewSky XR have already taken the metaverse route. The company hosted 11 fully immersive and interactive B2B events in the metaverse with more than 1,000 attendees, keynote halls, networking lounges with avatars, and staff training areas.
The possibilities are endless. For example, chatbots are likely to be replaced by metaverse-based enterprise helpdesks that improve quality and experience of customer support and reduce wait times.
However, there are questions with regards infrastructure and hardware penetration. Some argue that the challenge with headset adoption, integration of augmented reality etc., will slow down the onset of metaverse. But experts believe this is not true, because the oncoming 5G connectivity will speed up adoption of all the tools necessary for advanced digital technologies, including the metaverse.
Although there’s still some time for the full potential of metaverse to be realized, improved access of virtual reality is bringing us closer to the metaverse space. But metaverse encompasses fun, lively, and spontaneous engagement and B2B marketers need to get into such a mindset for adopting it seamlessly into marketing.
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