As a growing number of companies enter virtual worlds to interact with customers or employees, experts are predicting that virtual marketing will start to dominate brand building over the next five years. Before going virtual, organizations need to consider the current trends and predictions for the 3-D internet.

According to VirtualWorldNews.com, more than 50 individual virtual worlds currently exist. By far the most familiar of these 3D environments is Second Life. Consumers exploring Second Life can find virtual stores for companies such as Coca-Cola and Apple. Recently, Second Life provided a virtual component to the 2008 World Economic Forum by providing virtual interviews and discussion forums with key attendees. On the other hand, many organizations have used the medium for a one-time media blitz and then abandoned the project, leaving large deserted areas. Taking a page from lessons learned from the dot-com era, companies need to consider the move to a virtual platform carefully and develop a strategy that’s tailored to this new medium.

IBM Virtual Business in Second Life

Even if a business reason exists to enter a virtual marketplace, companies still have a number of questions to answer. Before wading into a virtual world, companies need to thoroughly assess available environments. Providers include ActiveWorlds, Multiverse, Proton Media, Moove, Forterra Systems, the OpenSimulator project and Croquet. Companies also need to consider their objectives and determine how they will measure the results of their approach. Think about developing scenarios that describe expected customer experiences and detail the products or services to be provided. Don’t forget that many virtual environments have rather intensive desktop applications, so make sure that you take into account how the minimum requirements will affect your audience.

Companies should also be reviewing virtual technologies for their use within their organization. Virtual environments can encourage team building among distributed employees. There may also be cost saving benefits as training, education and even trade shows start to appear in these mediums.

Brooks Virtual Training

Even with these advantages, companies need to be aware that reliability, scalability and usability still remain significant issues in many virtual platforms. Compliance may be another hurdle as centralized logging is offered in very few of these technologies. There are promising signs however, as IBM has already organized a conference designed to tackle virtual world interoperability.