Marketing and Advertising in Second Life
From Second Life business, marketing and advertising wiki
Contents |
Preamble
Second Life marketing has it's own peculiarities, and can be roughly categorized to in-world marketing and online marketing (we omit offline marketing since SL business owners rarely promote their SL services in RL).
Also, marketing services can be free to use or paid (or almost free, like SL Search).
In-world marketing
Free
- First of all you need a main store or office. This can be something you rent, but you're likely going to own it if you're successful. This is the place you will send all your customers to through landmarks.
- Put landmarks with all your items when you sell them. Referrals are a big and FREE way to gain the loyal customers.
- Optimize your parcel to appear higher in SL Search by using SL Search Promotion techniques.
Almost free
- Make an update or support group. Loyal customers will want to know when you put out something new, run an exclusive sale or make a special offers. Try inviting your customers to join this group, so you will be able to notify them in the future using group notices. L$100 one-time payment per group.
- Make sure your parcel is listed in SL Search, it's highly advisable for any kind of business. It's almost free, L$30 per week.
Paid
- Create ads and find in-world places to publish them. You can use a traditional AdBoards (paid by time) or advertise at Pay-per-click billboards (so you pay only when someone clicks on your board).
- Rent small shops/offices in big clubs with lots of traffic: for example, people love to zoom out and look at nearby shops' windows with their cameras while their avatar is dancing. Take care about the real traffic and visibility.
- Create a Classifieds with a L$ amount high enough to get you in the top five of your keywords ("hat", "accessory", whatever).
- Think of getting to the top of SL Search by using special services.
Web and online marketing
Free
As 100% of your customers use Internet, it's required to put as much as possible information about your goods and services all over net.
- Register your business in SL Business Directory, a free listing of Second Life business. This project also provides a lot of free advertising services which will be useful for all business owners: upload images and screenshots, provide the description of your business. This will also boost your popularity in Google.
- Check out all the blogs for who you should send items to to get reviewed. Most times you just drop a notecard with your info and some items to this person and they will find good things to say or politely pass if they can't. Tons of people with lindens burning holes in their pockets read these reviews and are looking for high quality things that they MUST buy.
Paid
- Advertise your business by publishing your info and ads in online magazines.
- Buy Web banners to advertise your web site or SLUrl.
