Brands Enter The NFT Space — 6 Actionable Ways To Get Started With NFTs

A couple of years back, the NFT space started getting popular as artists were tokenizing their works and gaining huge returns. Recall the viral incident of how Mike Winkelmann, a popular artist, sold one of his works for over $69 million. But at the moment, the scope of NFT has expanded beyond only the art world as some mainstream businesses are now dipping their feet into the industry little by little.

Some months back, Hennessy—a multinational alcohol brand—launched its first NFT collections and eventually sold it for 66.49 ETH which is over $206k. In a similar occurrence, a New York Times journalist also auctioned his column for $560k.

One way or the other, diverse types of businesses are embracing NFTs. However, a larger percentage of mainstream businesses are not too sure whether or not to join the NFT world.

This doubt is understandable as the dust of NFTs is still in the air and most business decision-makers find it hard to filter through the noise to see the essence of NFTs

What is an NFT? Why Are NFTs Valuable?

NFT is an acronym for Non-fungible Tokens. Fungibility means that something is interchangeable or replaceable with another. Thus, the non-fungibility of NFTs suggests that each of them is one of its kind.

Although one NFT might resemble the other, they are not the same things because each of them has distinctive underlying codes on the blockchain. In essence, an NFT is a unique digital file or asset that is stored on the blockchain.

Who then buys NFTs? Who also makes them?

Almost all entities can buy NFTs; individuals, corporate institutions, DAOs, and even governments. For instance, Sina Estavi—an entrepreneur and the CEO of Bridge Oracle—bought the first tweet of Jack Dorsey. 

📌 Read more: Who Actually Buys NFTs: A Deep Dive

On the other hand, every entity that can buy NFTs can also make one. Reports have it that the UK government hopes to mint NFTs this summer. 

At this point, you might be inquisitive to ask, “What exactly gives NFTs value?"

The NFT utility ideas are the basic reason NFTs are valuable. Utility refers to the extent to which the NFT in question is useful to the prospective purchaser. Of course, "utility" can be subjective. 

Using Ronald's NFT card as a case study, the person who bought it for $290k might have had an unparalleled emotional attachment to Ronaldo's legendary football career. Thus, [s]he deemed it fit to part with $290k to own this special NFT. 

That aside, various industries like hospitality and supply chains are finding NFTs useful. In the supply chain, NFTs can be used to track the cycle of a product; that is the utility of NFTs there. 

Why brand should enter the NFT Space

In case you’re contemplating if it will be worth it for your brand to embrace NFTs, these are the reasons you should consider getting into this innovation early: 

1. A New Way of Customer Interaction

Interacting brands and NFTs affords the users or customers a new—or perhaps a better—purchase experience. This helps in increasing the rate of engagement among the existing customers and also converts more leads. 

More importantly, NFTs are enhancing how brands reward loyal customers. AMC—one of the largest American theatres—recently airdropped 86,000 NFTs to its loyal customers. These NFTs will grant the holders the right to watch a Spider Man show for free and discounts on some movies in the future. 

In the entertainment industry where millions of fans die to meet their favorite artists, NFTs make this closer relationship a dream come true. As we reported in March, a Vietnamese artist released NFTs with which his fans can eat dinner with him along with a few other exclusive perks. 

📌 Read more: NFT Hype Officially Hit Vietnam As Binz Releases His Debut Music NFT Collection

Having said that, NFTs will also help businesses in their supply chain. In other words, customers would be able to verify the authenticity of a product through its attached NFTs. 

In addition, the journey of a product can also be traced; right from when it was manufactured to the final consumer. 

A top executive at Carrefour, one of the multinational retail companies, noted that NFTs have made their supply chain easier as they could trace the current location of the goods on the map, and know when they are unloaded. 

2. A new income stream when brands enter the NFT Space

As brands and NFT are constantly looking for fresh ways to generate revenues, NFT appears to be a lucrative option. What makes it more interesting is that these businesses don’t need to incur a lot of costs, yet they stand a chance of making a huge amount of returns. 

Taking a look at the journalism industry, their income streams are limited to sponsorships and advertisements. But NFT is opening up completely new—and far better—revenue streams by tokenization of reports and columns. 

That aside, the traditional museum system is also tapping into the NFT economy. According to reports, the British Museum is set to launch a $41 million NFT collection. 

With all these developments, other forward-thinking mainstream businesses are getting started with NFTs as a way of enhancing their revenues. 

3. Scalability to the Metaverse

For clarity, the Metaverse is an immersive world that is achieved through the coordination of different artificial realities—augmented and virtual—with blockchain technology as its underlying infrastructure. 

Grayscale reported that the Metaverse “could be a $1 trillion business opportunity in the future.” Thus, businesses are on track to scale to the Metaverse. No wonder, Facebook recently rebranded its name to Meta in furtherance of its Metaverse agenda. 

But how will ape into NFTs help brands scale to the Metaverse? 

Each file, item, or asset in the Metaverse exists as an NFT. This includes landed property, in- NFT game characters, clothing accessories, and so on. Thus, mainstream brands are launching NFT versions of their products so they can be Metaverse-relevant. 

At the moment, fashion brands are spearheading this with the way D&G, Louis Vuitton, and Adidas have launched their respective Fashion NFT collections. If you don't want your business to miss out on the Metaverse economy, then you should get started with NFTs. 

How traditional brands get started with NFTs — 6 actionable ways

Having known the reasons it’s important for your business to ape into NFT, you might be confused concerning how to put the best foot forward. Thus, you should try to kickstart your brand’s NFT journey with these actionable steps:

1. Decide how your NFTs will be 

The first step for your brand to get started with NFTs is to conceptualize how your NFTs will be, then you contact an artist to eventually bring the idea to life and create an NFT artwork.

When creating your NFTs, you must determine the number that would be in a collection as well as the categories. Ensure that the supply of your NFTs doesn't surpass demand.

Similarly, the categorization of your NFTs is important so you can introduce levels of rarity. More importantly, you must decide how your NFTs will benefit your customers. In other words, your NFTs should have utilities. 

Indeed, there is no limit to what the utilities of your brand's NFTs can be. You can use your NFTs to reward your loyal customers, give them some perks, and trace the supply chain. The golden rule is that your NFTs should enhance your customer's interaction with your brand or positively impact them.

Finally, you should decide whether you'd want to sell your NFTs at fixed prices or if you'd rather prefer to auction NFTs. Most mainstream brands often prefer auctioning their NFTs because the bidders will compete and the highest bidder would get it - more money for them. 

2. Research available NFT marketplaces

Once you’ve created your NFTs, then you should research the available NFT marketplaces; check their peculiarities, and check if any of them is a good fit for your project. 

There are a couple of factors you should consider at this stage. Foremost, you should ensure that the marketplace you want to choose is popular for your type of NFT.

Moreover, you should research the following factors, if the marketplace

• has multichain support 
• is not complicated to use 
• supports popular NFT wallets, and so on. 

At this point, we must point out that if the marketplace you envisioned is extremely sophisticated, you can think of building yours from scratch. However, you should bear in mind that this takes more time—depending on the level of complexities—and also costs more. On average, creating your own NFT marketplace might cost you nothing less than $47k. All the same, it is worth it. 

3. Create a community around your NFT  

A vibrant community is the backbone of every successful brand’s NFTs. You can kickstart this by telling your existing audience the narrative behind why you launched the NFT. 

As more people are interested in your project, you can add them to a platform where you can always keep in touch with them. The two popular platforms you can use are Telegram and Discord. 

Once people are landing on your Discord server or Telegram channel, the next step is to strategize various activities to engage them and make them see more prospects in your project. 

The end goal of nurturing your community is to strengthen the members’ belief in the project so they can eventually purchase your NFTs during the minting period. 

Mercedes-Benz demonstrated this when it released its G-Class NFTs around two months ago. The brand put the NFTs up on Nifty Gateway, and because of the large community and value the brand has been building for years, the NFTs sold out “almost immediately.”

📌 Related: How to Build An NFT Community The Right Way. 

4. Use NFTs as a gateway to your brand’s services

As a mainstream brands enter the NFT world, you should design your NFTs as a gateway for people to access your services. 

Stephenson Law, a law firm in Bristol, blazed the trail when it integrated NFTs into its legal services. The firm auctioned its NFTs on OpenSea and whoever holds these NFTs can redeem them for one-hour legal consultation. 

Currently, one MetaPsych Mental Health Clinic is selling its NFTs on OpenSea which will guarantee the buyer some therapy sessions; maybe in person or virtually. 

Meanwhile, those in the sports and entertainment industries are fast embracing the idea of NFT tickets to ensure that only those who have indeed bought the tickets can watch them. 

5. Connect physical products with NFTs

The use of NFTs isn't only restricted to only those offering services, but also to the businesses that are selling different products, especially physical ones. 

At the moment, realtors are making the sale of real estate property fast and more efficient with real estate NFTs. Since the real estate NFT is connected to its underlying asset, the purchaser becomes the owner of the actual property. 

Similarly, Wingstop is also in talks with regulators over trademarks to sell chicken wings in the Metaverse. Once approved, customers can buy chicken NFTs and redeem them for real-time Wingstop chickens. 

Adidas is another brand that connected its physical products to its NFTs, the multinational shoe brand launched its NFTs which can be “bred” to have new physical pairs of shoes. 

6. Market and promote your NFT

As a brand, if you want your NFTs to sell out, then you need to double down on promoting and marketing NFT Collection. We must also emphasize that you shouldn’t make the mistake of promoting your NFTs only after mint. 

Rather, your marketing and promotion should start even before launching. At this stage, you’d need to run marketing campaigns on social media channels and the Web to sensitize people about your brand’s NFTs. 

The more attention your NFT gains during promotion, the better your chances of selling out early enough. Moreso, you can also collaborate with similar mainstream businesses when you are launching – thereby leveraging their audience too. 

When Coca-Cola was about two release its NFT collection last year, the brand published a couple of press releases and publicized them on Twitter specifically. 

Records have it that it also partnered with external agents like Tafi and Virtue. The collection, at the end of the day, was sold out for over $575k.

Concluding remarks - when is the best for brand to come into NFT? 

Earlier this year, Jefferies—a multi-national investment bank—predicted that the market capitalization of NFTs will hit $80 billion. In the next couple of years, we will witness the influx of many mainstream business, brands enter the NFT space

This is bound to happen with the way the NFT world is gaining popularity and becoming applicable across many industries. Therefore, the best time to get started with NFTs is now, and the first sets of brands to explore NFTs will enjoy the early adopter advantage. 

To implement the actionable ways explained above, we recommend that you keep in touch with an NFT consultant or build an in-house NFT team. 

Create and sell your brand's NFTs with NFTify

As a mainstream brand that wants to get into the NFT market, it is more beneficial to have a customized storefront that speaks to your brand, where you can also efficiently manage your NFT collection from the backend. 

This is the reason you should leverage an advanced white-label NFT marketplace like NFTify. Our platform helps brands to build their storefront without any need for technical knowledge; it is simplified already. 

You can build your storefront within minutes without spending upfront costs. If you want your brand’s NFTs to be the next big thing, go ahead to create your own store. 

⭐️ Go ahead & open your NFT stores via: http://nftify.network/