Recommend me a reliable marketeer

[BlacklightUnity]

Can anyone recommend a reliable marketeer for my new store? I've just opened it and I don't really have many ideas of how to get the word to spread about it. I have done the basic, classifieds, picks, facebook page, joined fashion groups to send notices about new releases and registered my business on a couple of SL business directory lists. But what now? I have the time to spend but I don't know what to do next.

Can anyone recommend someone that has worked for you before?

 

[Magnet Homewood]

Welcome to being a SL merchant. Your experience is probably exactly like most of ours. Personally, as I have said long ago somehwere on this forum, the best thing that ever worked for me is just to leave things as they are, the less work I put in, the more sales I seem to have. Go figure.

[darmid Illyar]

In all honesty I would recommend only things that cost nothing or have a minimal cost. Many people ignore advertising as they are bombarded with it all the time. The best advertising is word of mouth and people seeing your products being used/worn inworld. Classifieds I feel are a vast waste of money for many reasons. Unless your business is one of the few business types which might benefit from it – which seems to be land rentals/sales and “adult services”.

Facebook, blogs, inworld groups and I will also suggest Subscribe-O-Matic are likely the best things. There are many fashion blogs so see if some of the more popular ones will show your work to help get the word out there.

Also find a good quality hunt which has a good number of people who regularly take part in it. Ideally with a group size of at least 500 people.

Could also try DSN (Designer Showcase Network ) if they are still going. I have not received anything from them for a long while though.

It can be slow and tough to get started. So stick with it and even downsize your land if needed. An inworld store is a reassuring thing for people to see, even if few people buy inworld anymore.

Hope that helps!

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

---

But what now? I have the time to spend but I don't know what to do next.

 

---

Do you have a marketplace store?   I checked under the name BlacklightUnity and came up with nothing.  Show me the store and I can have better suggestions.

Learn how to take good product pictures, learn how to write good clear ad copy, and keep working on new products.

[phaedra Exonar]

I found your marketplace store there's a few thing you could do to improve it.  For one there's no description of the items, just some text say this is a demo, and others visit our web site but there's no link right there. For rezzed items we want to know the land impact, for mesh clothes is it fitted mesh, rigged mesh, dose it come in more then one size if rigged?  Your robot pet, what dose it do? You need to sell your item in the description. 

Many of your key words seem useless, or are not describing the item. for example:

meta name="keywords" content="Demo demonstration free cyberpunk accessories for trying out try out sci fi clothes attachments mesh high quality role play roleplaying rp cosplay"

dose not describe a bow, not only is it not helping people find your item, your item could be unlisted if some one reports it as key word spam.  Describe the item not your store.

I all so checked out your inworld store, you could rez your robot pet so people can check it out.  All so noticed your classified add it's easy to see by the price who your trying to compete with as you listing is just 3 linden less then there's.  To get you second place, you could save 4460 L$ a week by spending 3 L$ more then the 3rd place listing.  That saving could be spent trying marketplace enhancements.

Inworld sales give you L$, marketplace sales give you L$ and boost your marketplace search placement. Unless your selling things that people need to see rezzed before buying, to get started you don't even need an inword store.  Inworld you could all so try a small satellite shop at some place like INSILICO to help get noticed (just say in your profile you have an other shop in the wastelands).   General rule I have for a inworld shop is that my marketplace sales have to cover all the cost of the inworld store.  But if you have the L$ to burn, then having both can help getting you noticed when your starting out.

I think it's just once a year, and I don't remember when, but here's a sci fi convention in SL that would be a good place to get your store noticed.  Keep an eye out for that.

 Whatever you do don't expect to make a lot over night, it takes time to grow a brand, happy customers are the best marketing tool you have in SL, so every sale helps out over time. Good customer service is a very important.

 I don' t think cyberpunk is really a community as much as a collection of small RP sims.  Down the road you might want to all so think about how to grow the market, not just your store.  To give you an idea of the size there's over 3,000,000 items on the marketplace but only 5480 listed as cyberpunk. 

I have all ways been surprised how few cyberpunks there are in SL you would think this would be a perfect place for it.  Sounds like William Gibson did not get a good impression of SL, from interviews with him about SL, sounds like he never found any of the cool cyberpunk sims, and din't have a computer that could handle SL. 

Hope that helps.

[Bobbie Faulds]

Biggest thing is hunts and gachas. Subscribe to the SLHunts blog so you get a listing of what hunts are going on. Never do more than 2, max, a month. As a hunter, when I land at a store and see a wall of hunt signs that the vendor is participating in, I think, either they're desperate or well, guess I don't have to spend any money here with all the gifts. Best gift is an exclusive recoloring of something you already have in the store. Once the hunt is over, you can do several things. Some have an area where they put past hunt gift for sale at a reduced price as a way for player to become introduced to their store. Some put them in a gacha machine or in their midnight mania boards, both of which will draw customers.

Good luck.

[BlacklightUnity]

These suggestions are amazing and so are you all by suggesting them, instead of spending money on a marketeer that could or could not help me like you guys did, you helped out of free will and that's something I can never pay for. Thank you, kindly.

[Coby Foden]

What I would kindly like to recommend is that you edit the keywords in your products. Every single product in your Marketplace store has lots of keyword spam (i.e. words that have nothing to do with the product itself).

One example:
Your "Kanji Headband"
Keywords: cyberpunk clockers red bandana head sci fi kanji japanese elastic summer beach fashion design style unisex hair catch ribbon clothes clothing sf stickers asian fabric bracelet scarf unisex forehead

:smileysurprised:

What have these to do with the headband?
cyberpunk clockers head sci fi elastic summer beach fashion design style hair catch ribbon sf stickers bracelet scarf forehead

The idea of keywords is to make searching easier for the customer, not more tiresome with tons of irrelevant search results.

One more thing:
Give details of each of your products in the product's "Details" field. That's what it is meant for; product details.

Stating in the details field something like (as you have done):
"Clockers Items.
Visit our shop for more cyberpunk mesh stuff.
Check us out on social networks, our web site and others for more detailed info."

does not give any details of the product. Each product needs its own individual details, that makes shopping easier and nicer experience for the customer.