How your company can benefit from creating an NFT collection (Part 2/3)

NFTs and the Metaverse are popular subjects in online communities, birthday parties, the news (they have been confiscated by the police) and on the work floor (but this last one might be due to me working at a marketing agency). As well as chatter, people are increasingly interested in learning about them.

In our field of (mostly online) marketing, we have come across some very (un)successful NFT projects started by well-known companies like Adidas, Gucci, Pepsi, and more. These projects made me wonder how our marketing agency can utilise the power of NFTs for our customers.

How can you use NFTs business wise?
While there are several ways for a company to use NFTs in their business, here are the most common options:

Brand experience
NFTs can help people connect with a brand. Simply by owning an NFT from a certain brand, a person can show their love for that brand to their friends and family. Also, the brand experience can be influenced by specific utilities or add-ons.

Loyalty programme
As a company you want to bind your customers to your brand. One effective and proven way to gain and retain customers is to use a loyalty programme or card which enables your customers to collect points or receive a discount.

It is possible to use NFTs in your loyalty programme. For example, by giving a (fixed) discount or a little extra to anyone showing you an NFT (from your collection) in their (mobile) wallet. You could even take this further by also having a coin connected to your NFT collection and letting people collect this coin when they spend money in your business. These coins would allow them to buy limited items from your dedicated NFT-holders store.

Community access
NFTs provide an excellent foundation for communities to grow as most people that hold an NFT believe in the project or company that created them. Of course, there are also flippers that are only in it for the fast money, but most of the people that hold an NFT for the long term think it's worth having it. This community can be anything from wealthy people buying Bored Apes to flex their online wallet muscles or people that share a common hobby like cycling or brewing beer. These people want to connect with like-minded people who share their interests. This is achieved because when you create an NFT collection where part of the added value is access to an otherwise closed off communication platform, people with your NFT will flock to this platform to connect with like minded people and exchange thoughts.

Platforms can be anything from Discord channels that you can only enter as a verified holder of an NFT to 3D virtual worlds where people can meet and interact with each other, such as Sandbox, Decentraland, and Gather.

This can also be applied In Real Life (IRL) like NFT guru Gary V did with the first NFT based restaurant. You can only gain access to this restaurant by holding a NFT of the Flyfish Club collection from the collection created for just this purpose. In this way Gary V ensured his restaurant would be one of the most exclusive as only holders of the NFT could gain access. For your information, these NFTs started selling at 2.5 ETH (+/- $7.900). This is one of the most expensive restaurant reservations ever… And you still have to pay for your meal. Fun fact, the restaurant also has a super exclusive room, with a master sushi chef and fresh Japanese sushi which is only accessible for the top tier NFT holders: these started selling at 4.25 ETH (+/- $13.485).

Diplomas, certificates, and tickets
Do you work with diplomas, certificates, or tickets? Whether it’s for a festival, theatre performance, course enrolment, training certificates, or university diplomas, these “products” are an excellent use case for NFTs as the authentication of an NFT on the blockchain guarantees a genuine item which can’t be copied or faked. Also, people like to collect this sort of memorabilia – and where better than in a digital wallet?

These digital tokens in your digital wallet would probably be complementary to the IRL diploma, ticket, or certificate you receive. There are multiple ways to use these NFTs that give a whole extra dimension to events people attend. For example, a Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) which can be integrated into NFTs to show that the holder has actually visited the event that the NFT belongs to or if they received it through a trade. This can be combined with community access to only sell certain products to people that show or verify their POAP NFT.

Funding (NFT Shares)
Whether you are starting up or are an established name in the industry, NFTs are a straightforward way to obtain more funds to realise your plans. Artists can also use them to limit their risk by monetising their art collection or music upfront instead of making it first and then having to market it.

To kickstart your business with funding from your NFT sales, your project needs to be trustworthy and provide enough utility to create hype so you can sell all your collection. One way to offer value is to pay out some sort of dividend to your NFT holders. As there is some debate as to whether an NFT is a security or not, dividend may not be the right word. A smart way around this involves creating your own crypto coin to pay your holders (aka investors). These investors are more than piggy banks as they can become involved in your project and to provide you with the insights you may need to grow from being good to better.

A nice extra is the percentage of every secondary sale you receive each time the NFT is sold to another person. This continues until the NFT is burned (destroyed).

Advertisement spots (on a website, the metaverse, or on buildings in IRL)
Instead of traditional offline advertising and/or digital marketing, you can make your advertisement into an NFT, so that advertisement spot is linked to the NFT. This means that the owner of the NFT owns that spot and can fill it with their ad. It’s recommended to put an expiration date on this utility so the person “renting out” the spot can gather a periodic income out from it. This can include cars, planes, buildings, billboards, and much more.

Hosting a lottery
Make your NFT a (collectible) lottery ticket and start drawing numbers, or add a win/lose prompt to your NFT that automatically shows the outcome on a set date or when a person “opens” their NFT. You can also make a good impact on the world by donating a portion of your sales to one of the many good causes out there, or even build a school like Astroheads NFT did in Nepal.

Want to know more about how NFTs benefit your company?
These are just some of the ways to incorporate NFTs in their business. The right idea can hugely benefit your company, but it does require the right strategy and a good bit of technical (coding) knowledge. If you want to take the next step, read the third part in this series on how to create NFTs for your business and contact Springbok Agency to help you create and sustain a successful NFT project for your business. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.