China’s Metaverse Marketing , What is Metaverse Marketing?
The basic form of the metaverse can be summarized as: a digital living space with a sense of the world, which allows users to have the experience of living in another environment at the same time and can support the user's other life. The metaverse must have three basic elements: avatar, free creation, and social interaction, as well as three basic characteristics: immersion, enrichment, and continuity. At present, there is still no unified concept or definition of the metaverse in all walks of life, and there is a lot of room for imagination and exploration about the metaverse. As a technology as a whole, the metaverse is still in its infancy in China, but many technologies that support its integration have already appeared and continued to develop for many years.
In the present and near future when the basic form of the Metaverse is in its early stages of formation, Metaverse marketing refers to "all marketing activities derived from Metaverse-related technologies and concepts". The essence of Metaverse marketing is to empower various process modules (content and product development, promotion, sales and data monitoring, research, etc.) in the marketing system on the basis of the Metaverse through related technologies such as the Internet and computing, electronic games, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, new human-computer interaction, and blockchain, to help form a new marketing method with a closed marketing loop. Using the Metaverse platform and technology, companies and brands discover or explore consumer needs, create, communicate and deliver value to consumers, and manage customer relationships in a way that is beneficial to companies, consumers, etc. An organizational function and a set of processes. "
The Relationship between Metaverse Marketing and Digital Marketing
Looking at the development path of the marketing industry, marketing methods are constantly changing with the generation, accumulation and maturity of technology. Metaverse marketing is a composite digital marketing method based on new technologies in the digital age, including "big data marketing" and "AI marketing". It may become an innovative consumer reach method adapted to the future metaverse environment. The underlying technology it requires is more complex. It takes providing consumers with multi-dimensional experience as the core marketing concept, with the goal of intelligence, combination of virtual and real, and multi-dimensional underlying demand mining, and is a new marketing method that provides consumers with an immersive virtual reality experience.
By combing through typical metaverse-related labeled words, we found that such words are currently the main method to help identify whether an event is related to the metaverse and metaverse marketing. Marketing activities and scenarios involving related content have covered many types of Internet applications that are frequently used by netizens. Labeled words are mainly divided into three categories. The first category: technical terms related to the metaverse, such as "new human-computer interaction, AI, blockchain, cloud computing", etc. are currently used to introduce what the metaverse is called. Because most technical terms are obscure and difficult to understand, the second and third categories of words help with understanding and cognition: that is, the possible application field terms of related technologies, and the words used to describe possible application scenarios and present pictures (mainly relying on the portrayal and imagination of the future world in science fiction books or film and television works).
Background and driving factors of the development of China's Metaverse Marketing
In recent years, the importance of the digital economy has become increasingly prominent, and it is becoming a new engine for China's high-quality economic development. In this context, the Metaverse has attracted much attention as another evolutionary direction of digital development, which may bring about a new round of technological upgrades and industrial layout. China has successively introduced a number of policies to support the development of the digital economy and digitalization, and accelerate the integration of digital and real. Nationwide, there are more than 100 policies related to the digital economy and the Metaverse, among which Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Beijing, Guangdong and other places have issued the most intensive policies.
In the past few years, China's macro-environment has performed poorly due to the combined effect of multiple factors . As a "barometer", the advertising industry is keenly capturing and reflecting environmental changes. In recent years, the growth of the online advertising market has been slightly sluggish. However, as the shadow of the epidemic dissipates and the country continues to expand the deployment of effective policy measures, it has injected momentum into the recovery and development of the economy, and the market will gradually pick up. Based on the data of previous years, it is estimated that the scale of China's online advertising market will reach approximately 1.14 trillion yuan in 2023, an increase of more than 10% year-on-year, and the economy will gradually enter a recovery period. At the same time, the market also has high expectations for the intensity of economic recovery, and the industry expects a 15%-20% increase in scale.
Overall, brands have faced the dilemma of slowing traffic growth and rising user acquisition and maintenance costs in recent years. According to the "51st Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet" released by CNNIC in March 2023, the expansion trend of the total number of Chinese netizens has gradually slowed down after 2020, and the year-on-year growth in December 2022 was only 3.4% compared with 2021, which is the lowest point in recent years. At the same time, on the brand side, consumer maintenance and acquisition costs continue to rise, at a high level in recent years, and brands are in urgent need of seeking new growth points to break the deadlock.
Metaverse Marketing Value
Under the combined effect of multiple factors, Metaverse Marketing may solve existing problems due to its own characteristics and has multiple important values:
1. On the Metaverse platform, all parties participate in marketing activities in the digital world with virtual avatars, making Metaverse marketing naturally entertaining and interesting, similar to video games. The virtual form weakens or even breaks away from the influence and constraints of the real world to a certain extent , providing a platform and outlet for consumers to show their deep real needs in the inner world (such as cognition, expectation, desire, etc.), and thus providing fertile ground and venue for brands to find new marketing opportunities. At the same time, it is convenient for brands to manage the behavioral data generated by consumers' needs, creating a favorable environment for brands to accumulate data assets.
2. As the prototype of the Metaverse gradually takes shape, brands can make full use of the entertainment and immersive features of Metaverse marketing (which can provide a multi-sensory, highly interactive upgraded experience), present brand stories in multiple dimensions on the Metaverse platform, integrate advertising into the environment, and turn the environment as a whole into a channel for brand stories and value output. Specific content construction and output can start from multi-sensory dimensions such as sight, hearing, understanding, and experience. Through direct interaction, the sense of distance between the brand and consumers can be reduced or even eliminated, bringing trust and a sense of security, while providing more possibilities for hitting the "emotional" touchpoints of consumers and fully stimulating potential purchasing awareness. Metaverse marketing provides guidance and space for consumers to deeply and individually understand brand value, truly realizing that brand value output varies from person to person, and understanding and feeling are "one size fits all" rather than one size fits all.
3. When consumers’ deep and multi-dimensional needs are met, and they understand the brand story and value from multiple perspectives and form their own perception of the brand, they will establish a connection with the brand at the emotional and demand levels. Then, through a more entertaining and relaxing game-like presentation in a virtual environment, a more creative, fresh, participatory, and emotionally arousing content co-creation method, real-time and efficient interactive communication, and an immersive interactive experience model enabled by multi-sensory access, consumers’ feelings in marketing activities can be enhanced at multiple levels, helping brands to build a “co-creation, empathy, and resonance” consumer relationship.
Metaverse Marketing Industry Chain
The underlying Internet service providers in the midstream provide technical support for the entire chain . The Metaverse tool layer provides technical support for the Metaverse marketing environment and event construction, and the application combined with the content layer serves the establishment and commercialization of the marketing environment and events. Both upstream brands and downstream consumers can use the technology and services of the application layer to provide creative materials for the content layer.
Service providers mainly differentiate and empower brands’ Metaverse marketing by combining their own capabilities with Metaverse-related concepts or technologies. According to the dominant factors, two dimensions can be roughly divided: technology-led and commercialization-led. Service providers that empower the Metaverse with technology are mainly companies with technical reserves such as games, cloud computing, AI, 3D modeling, blockchain, VR/AR, etc. Most of them start from providing services such as building Metaverse infrastructure, components or interaction methods. On the other hand, service providers who are well versed in marketing operations focus on assisting brands in creating "Metaverse"-related business activities.
Typical marketing tactics
Some brands use digital images or digital products of the Metaverse to reintegrate them with their own brands or products to create new marketing content.
The specific modes are: self-owned and cooperative, that is, brands launch their own virtual images or digital collections that combine their own brands and products, or directly cooperate with virtual images or digital collections with existing traffic. Use 2D/3D digital images or digital products to replace or assist different roles in marketing activities. The content and form still mainly use the existing marketing methods of digital marketing to "sing new tunes with old ones". Try to attract young or specific consumer groups by creating freshness and topicality through new elements, focus on Internet application scenarios with high usage rates among netizens, and tap into traffic and future opportunities.
Some brands start by changing the marketing scene or interaction method, and use content to link new and old metaverse marketing application platforms for marketing innovation. The specific methods are divided into two types: changing the form of a single event and expanding new long-term marketing space. Among them, single events are mainly conducted by changing the presentation form to 3D or virtualization, that is, presenting marketing activities in the form of 2D/3D virtual games on existing media or new platforms, or introducing VR, AR, holograms and other multimedia technologies when users participate. At present, brands that expand new marketing space mainly use three methods:
1. Existing media platforms are directly transformed into Metaverse platforms.
2. Join the Metaverse platform built by others.
3. Build your own Metaverse application platform based on your own or other people’s technology.