Although my FL job has been developping in communication-related areas for almost two decades now, I am not a markeeter, nor will pretend to be. Whenever I share in here any products that I either bought or was kindly offered in-world, that only means that I really enjoyed something and found it useful to share it with the few people that follow this writings on a regular basis. Nothing more, nothing less. Ah, of course I am aware that finding out about those items may encourage one person or another to run to the store in question. However, that is not, and never was, my main motivation.
That been said, as an active consumer in the virtual SL environment, no doubt I pay attention to what goes on around me. And after some reflection, I decided to gather my thoughts about marketing and advertising of in-world products. Mainly because I feel there are really amazing things being created out there that simply don’t reach us, common shoppers.
First of all, dear designer/creator in-world, do not deceive yourself: what leads us to buy your products is: we LOVE them! hehehe, simple enough, right ? Well, of course you have always to consider the individual taste in this matter as well as the financial factor but at the end of the day… if we don’t like what you do, we will not buy it! Surely you will have to adapt the quality of your creations to the target you wish to reach – but if your product costs over 300 L$, it HAS to be of a pretty good quality, believe me!
Then, when you are sure that the quality/cost relationship is fair, you will need to get in touch to your customers. From my own experience and on the basis of what I see, read and listen here and there, these could be good starting points for you to start communicate with us:
Create a brand. It may be your in-world name or just another name you found attractive. Then, stick to it and use it as often as possible !
Be sure your brand is clearly visible on the facade of your store. Sometimes, finding a particular shop in the middle of a huge mall is almost a Mission Impossible, let alone in a whole sim filled with distractions.
Together with the brand, create an atmosphere at your store. Find a theme, or at least some colour scheme and play around with them. This will help shoppers retaining your shop in their minds. Anonymous shops, they all look alike and 20 minutes later we often can’t remember where did we saw that good-looking skin – specially if they don’t keep landmarks, as is my case hehehe.
Don’t be shy. Join Plurk, Twitter, Flickr, create a blog of your own, a regular SL group, a susbscromatic group. And take the time to update them all. You see, people who actually expend money in-world are usually connected to a computer during their working hours. And they make breaks whenever they are either bored or stressed-up. A lot of them are also users of the media pointed above, and there is where they look for new releases and interesting notices.
Don’t be afraid of sending review copies to fashion bloggers. And no, I am not asking to receive some, lol – lately I don’t have that much time on my hands! You see, fashion bloggers usually know a LOT about photo processing and there are some who find amazing ways of highlighting your products – don’t be mad at me, but some of them do it much better than YOU do *winks*. And whether we like it or not, they are indeed shoppers’ first source of information. Most everyone reads blogs – again, I think this is part of our internet addictive culture, LOL. Those who don’t, tend to ask those who read them, for they know all too well who is paying attention to what has been going on.
Join hunts. Ah, true, this strategy has its downsides. Some hunters are rude, others just stress over the tiny little things, your shop gets cluttered with their abandoned boxes and lag annoys your regular costumers. BUT. A hunt does wonders for your visibility. It takes lots of people there… people who are taking notes of the stores they like, so they go back later and have a closer look at it.
Give away good free samples of your work. Yes, I mean freebies. Above all, they are your visit card. If you offer poor freebies, you will probably get a lot of visitors looking for cheap products. If, on the other hand, your gifts are worth wearing, be sure the person wearing them will tell everyone “this was a freeb!”. Use all those groups and spoil your customers. I am sure they will paid off the effort *winks*.
Finally, always include your landmark in your product packages. Sometimes, we simply are not able to edit your profile and look for the shop location in your profile, with SL behaving badly, maps not opening, searching not working, etc.
There… I think I have included all the important hints I could think of. I may come back to this matter some other time, for I have to admit it, this is one of the areas that does fascinate me – not only in-world, of course, hehehe.
Hope I was useful – wish you shoppers happy shopping sprees and you designers happy business balances at the end of the mond 😀
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Summer's Way 