Are you looking for a way to boost awareness for your brand? If so, you may want to consider using NFTs. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a great way to increase engagement and create a more immersive experience for your audience.
Additionally, they represent a multi-billion dollar market that is still growing, which means that it’s also a potential source of revenue for your business. In this post, I’ll discuss nine tips on using NFTs to boost awareness for your brand. Keep reading to find out more.
In this article
What are NTFs or Non-Fungible Tokens?
Non-fungible tokens, often known as NFTs, are unique digital items or assets traded on specialized platforms like OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces powered by crypto exchanges. They’re a form of crypto-collectibles, but instead of just being a collectible for their sake, they can also have many different uses for businesses.
The term “non-fungible” refers to a token’s uniqueness, like that of a work of art or a piece of furniture in your house, which is irreplaceable in the sense that there are no two that are exactly the same. Because of this uniqueness, NFTs are great for tracking and accounting for digital assets and representing ownership of both tangible and intangible assets.
How do NFTs work?
NFTs are similar to Bitcoin and other cryptos in that they use blockchain technology to create an open, digital ledger of ownership. They work by recording asset ownership information and a unique identifier on the Ethereum blockchain through minting. The blockchain is an unalterable, decentralized digital ledger ideal for storing digital assets like NFTs. When buying or selling NFTs, transactions are authorized and verified using a set of private and public keys and a complex mathematical algorithm, making them very safe and tamper-proof.
A token’s uniqueness and ownership are encoded in its uniqueID and metadata. These are stored and managed as smart contracts and stored in the Ethereum blockchain. These same smart contracts also manage the transferability of the NFT and can add extra value to the digital asset, a value that can later be used in the real world or virtual worlds to different ends, some of them directly related to marketing.
NFTs are becoming more popular by the minute.
According to Reuters, 2021 saw over $25 billion in NFT sales last year, and the market is still growing.
Although the upward trend is beginning to slow down, it’s still a huge market full of opportunity and full of thousands upon thousands of investors and average internet users searching far and wide for the next multi-million-dollar gif.
But why are they so popular?
Contrary to other crypto assets such as cryptocurrencies, NFTs are indivisible. You can’t buy or sell half an NFT. This implies that they can only have one official owner at a time. This ownership is tracked from the moment the NFT is minted, and it’s updated every time it is sold to someone else, something readily verifiable thanks to the underlying blockchain technology.
These features make NFTs similar to physical assets that you can own in the same way you own a printed book or a Blu-ray movie. In other words, NFTs help make our digital lives a little more like our real lives, transforming otherwise generic pieces of code and data into things we can use and show off both in the virtual world and the physical one.
9 Tips on using NFTs for brand awareness
Businesses big and small are using NFTs in different ways to reach different types of goals. Below, you’ll find nine ways to can use NFTs to boost awareness for your brand:
1. Use NFTs for more effective storytelling
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former Twitter CEO, sold his first-ever tweet for a whopping near $3 million. This sale was one of the big NFT headlines of 2021 that sparked the flame that drove the market to more than $25 billion in sales.
But why did anyone pay so much for a seemingly meaningless line of text that only read “just setting up my twttr”?
Because that tweet was the first tweet ever published in the famous short-message social network. In other words, that tweet that anyone can type out in under 10 seconds is a big part of Twitter’s history, and someone somewhere can brag that they own a piece of Twitter’s history. It’s the digital equivalent of owning the first song Mozart composed or the original blueprints of the Titanic.
If you have similar digital assets strongly related to your brand’s history, assets that tell your story, minting them as NFTs and auctioning them or offering a copy of them as a loyalty reward or something similar is a great way to involve more people with your brand and to turn eyes in your direction.
2. Use tokens as rewards for your referral program
Many businesses use referral programs to increase brand awareness and get more customers. A referral program is a marketing strategy that encourages current customers to refer their friends and family members to the business in exchange for rewards.
One way to increase the effectiveness of your referral program is to use tokens as rewards. Unlike monetary rewards, tokens can be used to unlock special privileges or discounts, or they can be used to enter raffles or contests. This gives customers a different and more entertaining incentive to refer their friends and family members.
Another advantage of using tokens as rewards is that they can create a sense of community among customers. Customers who share the same token can feel like they are part of a special group, encouraging them to stay loyal to your brand.
3. Run giveaways & contests with NFTs as the prize
NFTs are unique, so they’re both collectible and may become very valuable over time. Consequently, some NFTs are extremely costly for you to acquire, and people are always on the lookout for ways to get their hands on them for little to no money. Consequently, organizing contests and giveaways with NFTs as the prize will always draw a crowd.
These contests and giveaways help businesses connect with a wider audience while at the same time helping them acquire valuable market information, collect leads, increase sales and more. Woorise offers the perfect platform to build, set up and deploy powerful branded giveaways, contests and competitions, all from a single place.
By combining this platform with the power and popularity of NFTs, you can’t go wrong.
4. Create NFT versions of your products and distribute them in virtual worlds
Nike, Coca-Cola and Gucci are just a few of the many major consumer brands and manufacturers that have already recognized the potential of NFTs. They are actively manufacturing virtual 3D models of their goods or branded merchandise and selling them on various platforms, increasing their brand’s visibility in virtual settings. Users usually buy these NFTs within the platform using cryptocurrency, becoming the new owners of the digital assets.
The main advantage of producing these digital representations of your items is that you may integrate them with the metaverse, allowing people to show them off on their avatars, exposing other metaverse users to your brand.
5. Partner with NFT artists to create branded digital collections
Many businesses have begun using this approach, which is comparable to traditional influencer marketing in many ways. By partnering with popular NFT creators to produce a set of branded limited edition NFTs, you stand to gain much exposure for your brand. Some NFT artists are so renowned that anything they produce goes viral.
For example, even though the RTFKT shoe brand was relatively new and unknown a few months ago, an NFT sneaker produced by artist FEWOCiOUS for that brand earned $3 million, sending RTFKT to the spotlight.
6. Partner with other brands
One way to build brand awareness is to partner with other brands using NFTs to their advantage. This can be done in several ways, such as collaborating on a promotional campaign or producing a joint branded NFT. When two or more brands team up, their combined reach is usually much larger than what any one of them could achieve on their own. This allows them to expose more people to their brands and products.
Another benefit of partnering with other brands is that it can help you tap into new markets. By aligning yourself with a brand that operates in a different industry or caters to a different demographic, you can reach new customers you would have otherwise been unable to attract.
When it comes to partnering with other brands, there are a few things you need to consider. First, you need to make sure that the brand you’re considering partnering with is compatible with your values and beliefs. You also need to make sure that the partnership will benefit both brands.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that partnerships should be strategic. You shouldn’t partner with just any brand; you should partner with brands that will help you reach your marketing goals. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness through NFTs, you might want to partner with a brand with a large social media following that already has a strong presence in the NFT ecosystem.
7. Tokenize your brand’s events
This is an excellent option for service companies that hold regular public or private events. Gary Vee, a Belarusian-American entrepreneur, writer, speaker, and influencer, has been experimenting with NFTs to promote his personal brand in an innovative way. He created a series of digital drawings, which he then minted as NFTs that double as admission tokens for various workshops and conferences he runs.
Being unique and collectable, these NFTs offer two main benefits for those who buy them: They grant the owner access to interesting and relevant talks and conferences, and they can also bring a profit if the NFTs become popular and increase in value. This makes it likely that the owners of the NFTs will likely spread the word about the events (and about Gary’s brand) to motivate more and more people to join in.
As you can see, admission tokens are a great way to use NFTs for brand awareness, but you don’t have to limit yourself to admission tokens alone. NFTs can double as backstage passes; they can give the owner access to unique experiences within the event or grant lifetime access to the information or tools presented in it, etc. You can do almost anything with the underlying smart contracts that power NFTs.
8. Use NFTs as souvenirs or merchandise at events
As mentioned earlier, NFTs are extremely popular. As a result, they can often generate buzz for your brand just by being seen around. All you need to do is make sure that as many people as possible get their hands on your NFTs. One way to do this is by giving them away or selling them as souvenirs at an event. The event can be a live, in-person event where you can transfer NFTs to interested bystanders through their mobile phones, or it could be an online, virtual event or conference where the NFT is awarded as proof of attendance with extra perks.
For example, suppose that the Squid Game Netflix series organized an entertainment event like a live performance or a convention. They can include an area where viewers can buy cool Squid Game-inspired merchandise featuring branded NFTs as certificates of authenticity. It’ll be a conversation starter wherever the buyer goes.
9. Take advantage of metaverse real estate
The metaverse is a catchall term for virtual and augmented reality environments that allow us to interact with other people. They are online worlds built for social interaction on top of existing virtual worlds.
There are many metaverses under development at the moment, and in most of them, you can purchase plots of land and build on them just like you would in the real world. These plots of land are indivisible and unique digital assets, i.e., they’re NFTs.
One way to take your brand into the metaverse ecosystem is to purchase real estate in a target metaverse and use it to build all kinds of virtual experiences for that world’s users, including:
- Online VR stores where people can buy digital versions of your products.
- A branded amusement park with rides where users are exposed to advertorial content of any kind.
- Your website’s content repurposed as VR or AR experiences.
There are endless possibilities in the metaverse that will get your brand in people’s minds, all thanks to NFTs.
The bottom line: What the future holds for NFTs in marketing
Non-Fungible Tokens or NFTs are a new form of crypto assets used by brands in different ways. If you’re looking for a way to get your brand in front of more people, consider partnering with NFT artists or other brands entering the NFT ecosystem that could offer you valuable advertising and marketing opportunities. You can also organize NFT contests and giveaways or set up your referral program with NFTs as rewards using the Woorise platform.
In this article, I showed you nine tips on using these tokens for your marketing strategy to boost your brand awareness, but you can also find plenty more ways with some creative thinking and research. The possibilities are endless when using NFTs as an innovative form of digital content marketing.
