With constant developments that marketers have to keep in mind; virtual reality is certainly one of them. What are the changes we are currently seeing and how can your (small) business utilize the benefits in a world in which VR and the Metaverse are becoming more important. Let’s dive into the world of virtual reality experience.
What is a brand experience?
A brand experience, simply put, are all the experiences a (potential) customer has with your brand. These experiences can vary from viewing your website to interacting on your social media channels, from reading a blog post to seeing a video or attending an event organized by your organization. These experiences, behaviors, and interactions can also be called touch points. It is the marketers’ job to create an entire ecosystem around a brand and aim to transform cold leads into happy customers.
The holistic experience that the target audience is presented with are all opportunities that help solidify the position your brand has in the market. Every single one of these touchpoints, experiences, and interactions makes up the brand experience. Marketers create, analyze, and iterate this experience constantly. Often a brand experience is thoroughly strategized and aimed to let customers walk away with a certain ‘feeling’ or ‘urge’ to complete an action, such as purchasing one of their goods or services.
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Why is brand experience important?
When marketers create touchpoints they think about the experience they would like their potential and current customers to have. They often do this by creating materials that are based on emotions. Emotions are strong drivers for change, including a change in perception. When the target audience gets the same experience, sees the same values, and is exposed to the same train of thought; these ‘touchpoints’ will solidify in their brains.
This means that, over time, when presented with multiple touchpoints, the brand gets crystallized in the customers’ minds. The crystallization of these experiences contributes to the position this brand has in the mind of the consumer. Therefore, brand experience plays a major role in the brand position of a brand, both in the individual minds of the consumers and the market they operate in. If brands don’t take the time to carefully create these experiences, they will find themselves at a disadvantage where the consumer might walk away with a different feeling or experience than they want them to have.
One of the touchpoints that marketers design is virtual reality. Let’s look at how building a brand experience around VR can create an immersive brand experience that will leave your (potential) customers engaged and intrigued.
Virtual reality will help to create a deep and personalized brand experience
As we mentioned in an article about virtual reality: ‘’Virtual reality is the computerized simulation of reality experienced through the use of a head-mounted display and other special-purpose devices. Virtual reality is different from augmented reality, which uses real-life images to supplement a person’s view of the world’’. Virtual reality is still at the early stages of development and the implementation of VR in marketing strategies is often not easy. However, there is a huge potential for its growth, especially with the Metaverse around the corner.
Virtual reality is an immersive medium. This means that the person using VR will be immersed in its world and will see images all around them. We know that people will remember something and create more intense emotions and connotations around something when it happens right in front of their eyes. Immersed in the world of VR, the viewer will feel like he or she is actually there. This makes this experience more memorable and has the potential to create a link to a brand that can’t be realized through traditional content.
What shifts are we making in the world of digital marketing?
Even though the Metaverse can also exist without the use of Virtual Reality, it is a virtual environment in which VR plays a big role. As Meta describes the upcoming changes: ‘’The ultimate promise of technology is to be able to be together with anyone, to be able to teleport anywhere, and create experiences from nothing’’. And this is exactly what they are creating; a virtual world in which the user can immerse. From talking to friends to trying out virtual Nike’s, or walking through a potential home they’d like to buy without actually needing to visit the property.
Both the technologies behind virtual reality and the Metaverse are advancing in the coming years and we all will be able to live through these virtual worlds at some point. Slowly, companies are evolving their marketing strategies to ones that include (parts of) the Metaverse and VR marketing. Meta even goes as far as calling these changes ‘the new chapter of social connection’. What are three ways in which brands can create virtual reality experiences that will help them create a better brand experience?
3 examples of immersive VR brand experience
Here are three examples of brands who have successfully adopted virtual reality strategies to create a better brand experience.
1. Selling products with the help of Virtual Reality
Imagine this; you enter a shoe shop looking for some new sneakers. There are many options and you don’t have much time, but you want to try on a few different ones. The salesperson looks at you and mentions the in-shop VR experience that you can try out. You place the VR glasses on your head and now you can try on multiple different styles, without the need to let the assistant go and get you all these different shoes and have to put them on and take them off. This is an innovative example of using VR in real life, to help create a brand experience for the customer.
2. Letting people experience your service through VR
Another experience for the customer is to get a glimpse of the service that a brand is providing. You can think of someone being able to drive a car and take it for a test round, without the need to step into the actual physical car. This makes it much more accessible and reduces a lot of costs and risks, without taking away the experience. Another example is that real estate agents can now show multiple homes without needing to take their clients to all these different properties. This saves up a lot of time and costs.
3. Creating a virtual world that showcases your brandA third way of using VR to create a better brand experience is through creating a virtual world, portrayed in the Metaverse, that clients can walk through with virtual reality glasses. Nike, Gucci, Samsung, Mcdonald’s, and other leading brands have created worlds in which people can interact, try on goods, experience services, and be exposed to all the touchpoints we mentioned earlier. This way, the customer can immerse into the world of the brand and experience all sorts of facets of its branding.
Will virtual reality attract a new generation of consumers?
Whilst it might be costly for many businesses to implement VR into their marketing strategies, it is important to be aware of the role VR and the Metaverse are going to play in our digital lives soon. As a brand, you can already start by leveraging virtual storytelling and finding out in which ways you can promote your product or service online. While you might not be able to create VR-based campaigns yet, you can keep updated about marketing innovation and visual storytelling.
Which audience will virtual reality reach?
Research by MetaFAQs shows that the main demographic for VR is male, aged 25-39. However, we also know that Gen-Z, being true digital natives, are particularly interested in interactive marketing. Even though they grew up in the digital world, they do also crave personal connections. They are early adopters when it comes to everything VR and the Metaverse. Great ingredients for them to be able to easily understand, value, and adopt VR-based marketing approaches.
Do you want to learn more?
Would you like to learn more about creating brand experiences using VR? Are you interested in how you can take visual storytelling to another level? We are here to help. Get in touch today and book a call with us. We’re happy to assist you in further growing your business into a future of new digital possibilities.
