Opinions expressed by Digital Journal contributors are their own
Imagine this work week – The week starts off with an inspection of a factory in Los Angeles. On Tuesday, there is an important meeting with a prospective investor to attend in Austin, followed immediately by a flight to New York to survey a potential site to build a new company headquarters on Wednesday. Finally, a trade show in Las Vegas, featuring product demos and a panel discussion, caps off the week.
In 2005, this type of workload would cost an exorbitant amount of money, time, and wellbeing. Fortunately, it can be anticipated that the work expectations of the future will be much less taxing as new technology is making it possible to actually accomplish something like this without having to go anywhere at all.
Once considered a platform simply for an immersive video game experience, virtual reality (VR) has grown leaps and bounds to become more than just a simulation. Along with the emergence of the metaverse, there is now a virtual reality network that spans across the globe and integrates real life experiences to create an accurate emulation of the physical world.
This enhanced interconnectedness opens up an entire realm of possibilities, particularly for businesses. From marketing, to customer interaction, to employee wellbeing, the metaverse has the potential to redefine how businesses operate. International entrepreneur and marketing expert Valentinov Danchev has witnessed the ever-changing business landscape first-hand and offers his take on how businesses can adjust to and benefit from these new, emerging technologies.
Give the people what they want
As the world continues to evolve beyond traditional media such as print, radio, and television, it’s important for businesses to undergo self-reflection to avoid becoming outdated. Marketing is one area that has long been stuck in its ways.
Whether in the form of a newspaper or magazine ad, internet pop up, or television commercial, marketing is often perceived as annoying and intrusive. Rather than enhancing the experience that they are financially supporting, it ends up taking away from it.
In addition, most conventional advertisements lack true data driven insights. They are either too broad or too niche. Each and every one of us, regardless of the similarities in consumption tendencies, have different triggers and values. Lumping entire demographics together simply because they all watch football or visited the same web store is inefficient and a waste of potential opportunity.
By implementing the metaverse into a marketing strategy, a company can directly engage with consumers through non-intrusive and personalized experiences and ultimately increase the likelihood of patronage.
No more throwing money away on a loud and annoying commercial that 95 percent of viewers take a bathroom break during. In a VR space, companies can directly engage consumers with an immersive experience to spotlight a product.
If they don’t respond positively, it’s not a problem. Surveys can be incorporated into these experiences to find out what the consumer wants to see and these data and insights can be used to improve the customer’s experience in the future.
Businesses can also engage customers through virtual trade shows and virtual showrooms. Customers might not live within a reasonable distance to a business’ showroom to see a product of interest and, if they do, might not even be in stock. A virtual showroom gives businesses the ability to present customers with a to-scale model of a product and a representative can even demonstrate how it works “face-to-face.”
Prioritizing self-care
As critical as customers are to an organization’s success, the employees are of even greater value. A business could not operate without its workers so it’s important that they are looked after and taken care of.
Virtual reality has the potential to give workers more flexibility and a greater work-life balance. Many jobs have transitioned to remote over the last few years but some employers still prefer the in-person environment. The metaverse creates an opportunity for virtual workspaces, which allows employees to work remotely without sacrificing the supervision and the social aspect of an office.
Employees may also gain an expanded network through the metaverse. The world has already converted conferences and meetings into video calls but a lot of the personal touch has been taken away. With virtual reality, employees can not only attend meetings with their peers, but they can now access larger industry events and conferences located anywhere in the world to network and connect with industry leaders.
And just as businesses can engage customers through an immersive experience, they can do the same with their employees. From perks like virtual attendance at a sporting event to virtual fitness classes, organizations can better ensure that their employee wellbeing is being prioritized.
Whether internally or externally, the metaverse has the potential to completely alter the business landscape. The world has already started to see a digital revolution over the past few years, now it’s time to fully embrace where things are headed.
