How do I get my brand business to be known?

[Voodoo Schnyder]

I started my clothing and weapons business in 2009 and while I had earning around 1 to 2k a day in both mainstore sales and marketplace sales, being 90% of them main store sales, I had to take a break from SL and took all my stuff off. Now I tried to get my store back and couldn't get it to run as well as before, someone rarely buys anything, although I get complimented on my designs every now and then. What would you recommend me to have more exposure?

My marketplace link: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/16716

[Sassy Romano]

Hi Voodoo, you seem a little confused as to whether you want to build the business or sell it as per the other thread.

You're likely to get lots of suggestions but unless you want to adopt a scatter gun approach and just try everything, before you can really answer your own question, my homework to you would be that the first thing you need to do is define who your customer is, where they are and why they'd buy your items.

Quality isn't an issue, it looks excellent, i'm jealous

So really it's the other two, who are you targetting and where will you find them?

I'm old school, my approach is to put my products in the places my customers will be.  I know exactly where i'd put yours but I think if you define who you were targetting, you'll find them too.

Needless to say, I appear to be one of the few that doesn't cave in to the view that "Marketplace is best" and inworld shopping is dying.

[Ann Otoole]

Marketplace descriptions are not searched so of course nobody finds your stuff. Only the name, keywords, and features are indexed.

You have work to do on all your marketplace listings. Fill in the keywords and list the main features on every listing.

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

1 - Titles are used for search and your product listing titles are very poor: =Void= 10,000 Days Later  tells me NOTHING about the product.

"=Void= Yang Baggy Urban Pants", for example, would be easier to find if you had a title of "Black Unisex baggy cargo pants"

The "resistance trench coat" would be easier to find if it were titled "Black Leather Trench coat with skull emblem" You are also wasting precious space in the title with the =Void= text. It's not helping you sell things.

2 - Many marketplace product photos are too dark to see detail. Use better lighting, and even edit them so the detail is visible.

3 - In addition to a title that makes it clear what the product is, use the keywords if you have to to further describe the product.

[Sassy Romano]

This is exactly my point, why the focus on Marketplace and jumping through hoops to "appear" in search?

Coca Cola does not just bottle drink and put a listing in the phone book and hope people search it and find them.

Get the products out there, in front of people.  Old school.

[Voodoo Schnyder]

I have to say I followed both your advices, I'm now trying to rent a few stalls and shops at urban grunge sims and shopping districts, as Sassy suggested and I think it might work at some point, just needs time, but sounds like will defnitively get me some exposure.. I have to say I also followed Ann's advice and I am very surprised! In a good way, 'cause I've started to do much more sales, almost instantly, I didn't have keywords at all in each product, was a tedious process to fill all keywords in the 90 products I have but I did it! Thank you guys!

[Zanara Zenovka]

You've got a good range in both quality and quantity, so as suggested, it's just a matter of getting it in front of people (I think your photos look fine btw - you've got a good brand consistency and relevant style - maybe some could be brighter and more eyecatching (bit hard with so much black) but there are better uses of your time atm).

Speciality malls are a good start - there are quite a few black-wearing subcultures you can tap into. Make sure you track your sales and put out a collision-based  visitor detector to see how many are actually making it into the store. Don't pay too much rent until it proves worthy.

I'd also suggest getting into some of the discount groups and hunts for the exposure. Sixty Linden Weekends are the biggest - not sure if they're taking on new stores atm - you can get merchant info in their office in the Heavenly Treasures sim. Lots of others around. You've got a big enough range to make that fairly painless - just set a couple of things for 60L, 55L whichever for a weekend, and your stuff is different enough to stand out a bit and get some attention. That gets a lot of people through your shop. It's also a good way to test diff types of products and see what proves popular.

As do hunts - check out slhunts.wordpress.com

The big ones can get 1000 people through your shop over a few weeks, and while most zap in and out grab the prize, and many don't even unpack it, you do get the odd sales, return visits and referrals, and again it's just more eyes on your stuff. Aim to have one or 2 running all the time.

Next is to make sure you've got a subscription mail list of some sort going, and encourage all these visitors to join up and ultimately convert to customers. This is your biggest marketing tool in SL. (Also SL groups but you'll get more willing to join a mail list.)

Also check out the marketing reading room in my inworld store - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Uzume/36/128/1800/ - there's links there to some of the really good online articles I've found that particularly relate to SL business - how to define your business, plan marketing that suits your biz, build customer relations, etc.

TL: DR: Make good stuff, get it in front of people, get good referrals, keep them coming back for more. You've got the first part, now for step two.