If you have been spending any time online these days, you must have heard something about NFTs (non-fungible tokens). So it captured my attention when I heard about some of those big sales numbers. For example, did you know that the most expensive NFT was sold for over $91 million?
Big names across all industries are joining the NFT movement. For example, stars like Lindsay Lohan and Youtuber Logan Paul created collectibles based on NFTs.
Bitcoin is the future, happening now. Support my vision of empowerment by collecting this 1 of 1 NFT from @rariblecom https://t.co/0JvU0d1tNI
— Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) February 10, 2021
So naturally…the chatter finally piqued my interest, so I began researching the technology. In this blog, I want to share what I found out about NFTs, along with my thoughts on how this technology can influence digital marketing now and in the future.
What I’ll cover in this article:
- What is NFT?
- How brands are using NFTs to combat the digital consumer market
- How NFTs can be used in a B2B environment
- Impact of NFT on Healthcare and Dental Industry
- My thoughts on the future of NFT as a digital marketing strategy
I want to invite you to join the conversation. Leave your thoughts in the comments after finishing this article.
NFTs are very new in the market, so understandably, true potentials are unlimited. Nevertheless, it will be fun to predict the future.
So without further ado…Let’s get started.
What are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)?
Non-fungible tokens are a particular type of cryptographic token representing the authentication and uniqueness of a digital asset.
Let’s look at a simple example: A made-up character named John is a music artist. He is trying to sell his music online, but copyright concerns come with posting his art online. So he gets a non-fungible token (NFT) for all his digital music because NFTs provide authentication for the assets, are easily transferable, and provide him with the ability to maintain ownership rights on the music. Through NFT, John adds a unique authentication to the asset, adds a digital signature to it, defines its ownership, and provides him with the ability to sell the asset for cryptocurrency or cash.
Why are they calling it non-fungible? Because NFTs are not interchangeable. For example, dollars or crypto are fungible assets exchanged for smaller values. $20 can be changed to two $10 bills or four $5 bills. But if you have ownership of the “Salvator Mundi”, it cannot be replicated. It can be copied but loses its originality and therefore loses its value.
NFTs hold some information:
- Who owns it
- Who sold it
NFTs are young and have been around since at least 2017, when the earlier versions of the collectibles launched on an Ethereum based platform. CryptoKitties, first-ever made virtual cat trading game went viral that year. I’m not going to go into much detail about the rise of NFTs. Instead, you can check out the development of NFT on OpenSea.
How Brands and Marketers are Using NFTs
Overall, NFTs have been making the scarcity and monetization of digital assets more prominent in the past few years. Now more than ever, celebrities such as Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, and many more create their own tokens for charity purposes.
NFTs are attached to collectibles and arts, and now industries are entering the space to purpose them for other opportunities such as real estate, event ticketing, brand licensing, and buying and selling real-world assets. Some with success and some with failed projects and aspirations. Square Enix president mentioned possibilities of utilization of NFT in the future of gaming, with the “play to earn” concept becoming a prime example of such usage.
The Sandbox NFT metaverse platform raises $93M and rapidly grows, with brands claiming lands in this game.
On the other hand, STALKER 2 developer quickly cancels the NFT plans for the upcoming game due to fan uproar.
Under Armour launching its charitable NFT to celebrate Stephen Curry’s record for lifetime 3-point shots in basketball.
Examples are endless, with honorable mentions going to Taco Bell, Coca-cola, Microsoft, and Nike.
You can see that brands are trying to find new ways to battle the digital consumer market.
What are these brands trying to accomplish with NFTs? With purchasing land on sandbox metaverse? Simple. Technology allows them to open a new channel of improving user experience and increasing brand awareness and affinity. Especially in the mobile advertising model, using NFTs can enable brands and companies to create gamification models, personalized experiences, and vouchers for their customers.
A true brand experience that can expand on brand loyalty.
Let’s pause here for a moment…all this sounds great in B2C space. So now the question is, are there any opportunities in B2B space to utilize NFTs?
We will dive right into that in a sec…
How NFT Can Impact B2B Space
It is hard to imagine how NFT can be utilized in B2B space. But, if brands like McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut can create campaigns around NFTs and sell their digital burgers and pizza arts, so can B2B companies benefit from this technology.
Here is how:
- Like B2C space, B2B companies can also benefit from creating a unique brand experience. NFT ownership can create a life-long partnership between customers and businesses, Increase brand loyalty and personalize a value for their end-user customers. Doing this right, though, goes back to knowing your target audience well because you have to answer “what’s in it for me?” from the eyes of your customers. One example of this is: using NFTs for creating buzz around a new product launch.
- Higher the value propositions higher the chance of winning. Let’s say you have a tech product or a solution. If the value of your brand increases, so does the value of the digital asset. It’s brilliant; create brand loyalty by having your customer invest in your brand.
- Value becomes the priority over revenue. Going back to value proposition, it is crucial to understand that NFTs will only be used indirectly. If you try to utilize NFTs to increase revenue, customers will catch on fast. It will backfire quickly by diminishing the value of your brand trust. A great example of this was STALKER 2 game. GSC Game World wanted to use NFTs as a direct revenue approach. This resulted in the game getting almost banned by gamers 4 months before its release date.
The bottom line is…whether you are in B2B or B2C space; think of NFTs as your brand awareness campaigns, not revenue-generating ones.
Beyond the three points mentioned above, some indirect values can come out of NFTs. For example, creating APIs that can support analytics, creating machine learning and big data opportunities.
Now that we covered NFT in B2B space let’s look at use cases and NFT’s impact in Healthcare Industry and specifically dentistry.
Digital Transformation: NFTs impact on Patient Data Management Systems
Despite revolutionized technology, health data remains divided amongst different platforms and creates accessibility issues for operators.
Beyond that, in-house wearable devices, smartwatches, health applications are gaining popularity. However, the question remains how to harness the health data and efficiently secure and manage it responsibly.
Entrepreneurs can leverage NFTs to decentralize data collection, optimize data access, and give patients back control over their healthcare data.
Examples of such efforts are below:
- Aimedis allows the patients to process their health data and transfer them securely to their doctors and dentists.
- Have you heard of Dentistry 4.0? OpenSea, the NFT marketplace, has the collection to support many worldwide that have no access or limited access to dental care. This collection is created by Dentacoin as a charitable way to provide support to those in need of oral care awareness, prevention, and treatment.
My Thought on Future of NFT as Digital Marketing Strategy
It is important to understand NFTs, their work, and their importance on business growth. Realistically, NFTs are here to stay. It might be more prominent and tangible in the B2C realm, but that doesn’t mean B2B space should ignore this technology altogether. I say the same thing about blockchain. Both have values, but both are very young and have not been well described by the creators and well understood by the users/businesses. We won’t see mass usage on both until all questions are answered. Yet, understanding the solution will determine whether or not your brand can be an early adopter or not.
Brands will continuously jump on the experiment creating their version of this digital collectible to engage their core fan base. Furthermore, as the personalization and utilization of AI are becoming huge in the marketing space, NFT as a unique personalization tool will also become prominent across the majority of the industries.
That said, flexibility to try out new business models is a MUST.
External factors such as political and financial systems should also be updated to consider digitalized assets, transactions, and future incomes made through NFTs…directly or indirectly.
SUBSCRIBE TO MY LINKEDIN NEWSLETTER
Was this article useful to you? You can subscribe to my monthly LinkedIn newsletter for free to never miss an article.
About the Author:
