We think NFTs and marketing are a use case here to stay! Let's get into it...
What do all the companies below all have in common?
- Starbucks
- Evian Water
- Budweiser
- Gucci
Welp, if you guessed that they all use NFTs in their marketing, you would be CORRECT!
Pretty crazy, huh? Maybe you are one of the people who thought NFTs were just pictures of cartoon animals you buy with some internet money… turns out that’s not quite the case.
Whether directly labeling them NFTs or just using the technology behind the scenes, many big brands, creators, and marketers have been figuring out creative ways to capitalize on this new tech.
In the past, we’ve seen new technologies come along, only to be labeled a “gimmick” as people first learned about them.
Look at the website as an example. Once upon a time, having a website for your business was deemed a gimmick… then came the MARKETERS!
Suddenly, the website became the digital “home base” and a necessity for EVERY business. Nowadays, people will look up your company's website first thing to decide if you are legit.
NFTs may not become the “one size fits all” tool for all your marketing needs, but…NFTs are great for helping you better:
- Make your marketing more interactive and engaging
- Gamify certain aspects of your product or site
- Reward loyal customers, increasing LTV and customer retention
What makes NFTs useful for marketers?
Nfts have unique properties that make them a great way to interact with your audience. Let’s break down a few of those properties below below…
Proof of ownership
Gone are the days of useless loyalty programs and boring discount codes. NFTs allow for proof of ownership. This means a single person owns each NFT, and we can track that through something called a “wallet” that lives on the blockchain.
This allows you to give customers individualized rewards or passes, giving them access to special pages, products, discounts, wait times, or events.
The use cases here are pretty broad, with the important point being that we can see EXACTLY WHO OWNS the NFT. This gives you the ability to give special experiences to specific customers.
Transferability
You can think of NFTs as digital tokens. In the same way, if I were to give you a token in real life, we would be able to decide who has possession of the token (as we talked about above, “proof of ownership”).
Instead of the physical token and our eyeballs being the way to decide who owns the token, a digital ledger dubbed “the blockchain” is the technology that keeps track of who is currently in possession.
This also means one person can send an NFT to another person.
Transferability mixed with loyalty programs opens up a world of really cool opportunities.
Customers can now gift, trade, and barter for different NFTs given away throughout your loyalty program. This creates more engaged customers and a more alive community!
Programmable
Another great property of NFTs is that you can code them to do whatever your heart desires. Pair this with the above 2 points, and there are endless opportunities to create rare and engaging experiences for your customers and communities.
One example is to use the NFT as a coupon or ticket to redeem something. Whether redeeming a discount, access to a special shopping catalog, or access to an actual event, you can use the NFT as a token, and once used, we can program it to either:
- disappear
- made useless and turned into a collectible
Other examples could revolve around “gamify-ing” certain aspects of your product.
One example could be an NFT that will automatically be gifted to a customer once they spend $100 on shoes in your store. We’ll go deeper into some examples later…
In summary of these useful properties of NFTs:
PROOF OF OWNERSHIP —> See exactly what customer owns an NFT
TRANSFERABILITY —> owner of an NFT can send it to another person
PROGRAMMABLE —> using code, we can make NFTs into most anything we want
There are so many potential use cases when it comes to the intersection of NFTs and marketing To see some examples of how other brands and businesses are using NFTs, check out this other article on our blog here!
Create top-tier online experiences for your community and customers.
If you understand the use cases for NFTs, you can use them to get your audience buzzing about what cool things your business will do next.
Let’s walk through an example of a few ways you could use NFTs in your marketing.
Gamify your whole marketing funnel
Thanks to the properties of NFTs we talked about above, you can see how they can be great for gamification. You can easily set up scenarios where a customer would receive an NFT for taking some action.
Let’s think through an example here together…
We’ll say we run an ecommerce coffee website specializing in sourcing the best bags of coffee from local coffee shops across the country.
As a top-of-funnel initiative, we can offer some lead or signup page where a user can enter an email to receive a special “Coffee Pass” NFT. This “Coffee Pass” NFT will allow them to receive free shipping on all their orders of coffee when they log in with their connected NFT at checkout.
After using the “Coffee Pass” NFT to get free shipping 2+ times and spending over $100 on our coffee, the user’s NFT will upgrade.
Now when a user logs into our site with their connected “Coffee Pass” NFT, they can unlock hidden pages of specialty coffee… the rare, small batch kinda stuff. They are now in the “Elite Coffee Group”. The only way to be in the Elite Coffee Group is to hold and upgrade your “Coffee Pass”.
As customers become increasingly loyal, we can have different unlocks and perks for holding the NFT. This can keep people engaged and properly rewarded as they go from a new customers to a loyal ones.
The above examples are how you could implement NFTs to create better marketing initiatives and customer interaction.
Get started creating better online experiences today!
If you want to get your customers stoked and create better brand-to-customer interactions, look no further!
All of the things we talked about in this article can be easily set up and managed WITHOUT CODE using Cloud3 Labs.
Our team lives and breathes this stuff. Fill out the form below, and I’ll get back to you to schedule a free consultation and we can figure out how Cloud3 Labs can help you create better experiences for your customers and communities.