This year there’s been a lot of talk about how NFTs can help marketers get a competitive advantage.
Brands like Coca-Cola have already launched successful projects using NFTs. The execution and insights behind these activities show that by adopting new strategies and technologies businesses can differentiate while staying true to their brand values and objectives.
To marketers, NFTs will be vital in providing the following:
Marketers can mint NFTs as digital assets for digital marketing with perpetual and intrinsic value to enhance branding, build loyalty and increase revenue.
How can you create your own NFT and make it available for the world to purchase?
Brands like Adidas, Budweiser, and Twitter have been jumping on the bandwagon to create their own NFT products. For Adidas, that meant you get exclusive clothing and first-in-line access to future products. Adidas made over $22M from their first NFT mint.
The more people want a product, the higher the price can go for resale. So if you have a big following, minting is a great opportunity to make money or provide other value (tax offsets, charitable donations, DAOs, funding).
Community has always been a massively important tool for marketers.
We’re moving to a cookie-less internet, which is going to make it impossible to track and advertise the way we have in the past. NFTs give brands the opportunity to start building community – like the new email list for a decentralized, private web 3.0.
Twitter and Discord are the most popular platforms for NFT communities.
Blockchains’ transparent, decentralized nature, and immutability have valuable applications in preventing ad fraud and securing the ad supply chain. Those same benefits also deliver great value for brands that are dedicated to building strong first-party data strategies since consumers want to be able to opt out of data sharing, and they want transparency into what data is being collected. Brands that can provide the transparency that blockchain offers will win customers’ trust. This will incentivize customers to continue engaging with the brand and sharing data.
NFTs can express the identity, uniqueness, and scarcity of physical and digital objects throughout the digital and the physical world. Whether an NFT represents a copyrighted image, financial instrument, or digital asset, an NFT can be secured, and its custody chronicled within a blockchain.
For example, LoanSnap is opening mortgage underwriting to the masses by assigning NFTs to property loans. They are using a new protocol (BACON) and NFTs to encapture the data about a loan, its underlying asset, and its mortgagee, all to facilitate individuals’ ability to invest in loans
NFTs could grow in importance as the metaverse takes shape. For brands, NFTs can generate brand value and brand love in a number of ways, but as a virtual souvenir, it makes the digital object more personally significant to the customer. The fact that these tokens can follow a user wherever they go in a virtual environment makes NFTs essential to the VR experience.
This is a chance to reimagine virtual experiences and find better ways to do all the things we’ve been trying to do in the real world, including building community among customers, experiencing physical goods virtually, understanding shopper behavior, and creating more personal (AI-powered) services. There are a million directions retailers could go, but those with clear intentions and a desire to enhance the total experience with the metaverse will be able to pull ahead.
One thing marketers should pay attention to is the bad reputation certain blockchain technologies get for using up lots of energy. To update the ledger for each unique token or coin, computers in a decentralized network are put to work generating a new chain. Many blockchain vendors have gotten ahead of this concern by pledging their sustainability practices.
When marketers introduce an NFT promotion or another blockchain strategy, they will want to let consumers know that the technology they are using is environmentally responsible. Consumers will be thinking through the impact of carbon emissions released by the creation of NFTs and other digital tokens.
NFTs are evolving away from being solely valued on hype, but also to the real-world utility they can provide. For instance, If you own a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, you get access to meetups, party access that only token holders can access. When celebrities like Steph Curry own one, this becomes an enticing perk. The easiest thing to think about utility when it comes to your business is customer loyalty. Provide tokens with additional value to your top customers.
Right now NFTs are mainly contextualized as digital art. However, true long-term value comes from blockchain technology and smart contracts. A smart contract is some code that runs on blockchain and enables a secure value exchange. Smart contracts can remove the need for a mediator when two parties want to exchange valuable digital or physical assets such as access to events and other premium content.
Blockchain technology will give the power back to creators. No more stealing content.
For example, think of something as simple as a meme. Memes are some of the most-viewed pieces of content on the web. We usually never credit the creator. People simply take screenshots and reshare with no gain for the creator. With blockchain, we’ll be able to credit all re-shares back to the creator. That could mean potential compensation for the value they’ve created.
The move to web 3.0 means more privacy and less ability to reach customers the way we do now. Platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will likely cease to exist as we see them now. This cuts back on massive marketing channels that we’ve relied on for years to acquire customers. Instead, we’ll need to look for new opportunities in the blockchain and NFTs.
