The "A" word

I'm looking for non-evil (no ad farms, naturally) ways to advertise my store and a friend's island. What could everyone recommend?

There are a number of ways: inworld classifieds, advertising at malls, clubs or other social places, and there are outworld sites: SL blogs, magazines, newspapers, and SLX banner ads.

/me nods

Are there any that seem better (more effective and/or less annoying) than others?

Well, I think the most effective means is having an article written about your things in a blog/magazine/newspaper with high readership. e.g., M2, Second Style, Prim Perfect, NWN. Everything else is a crapshoot that requires cash outlays of varying amounts, and is a matter of trial and error.

For rentals (the area I know best), there are rental directories that basically house ads for properties, a one stop shop for people looking for homes/land. Those are very effective. If your friend is renting her island, this is a must-do for her.

Posting on forums is a fairly effective method, and also very inexpensive.

I would not personally pay for any sort of "highlighted item" status on SLX etc, it doesn't seem to make a difference (though doubtless somebody will now come along and tell me that it has gotten them millions of dollars' worth of sales). Sending appropriate bloggers review copies can be handy, or making an amusing advertising video, or creating a freebie for distribution that also hands out landmarks.

Probably the least intrusive would be product placement. That is, if your product is something that fits well somehow into a particular scene in the sim. Then maybe a tastefully done "click here for info on this fabulous widget" notecard dispenser.

True, new products in the forums is a great place to post and get lots of exposure.

Mari:

Simwide hunts are very popular now. The recent "Trash and Treasures" hunt was a lot of fun, Tuli gave away a couple of skins and the smaller stores were new and eclectic and neat to find. Each hunt should have something valuable, like decent skin, and one or more weird things for the people like me to treasure in their inventories until the right moment for an ice cream cone avatar arrives

I could see Livingtree putting together a very fun hunt, that could be advertised in Fashcon and SL Freestyle. MUCH more exposure to active shoppers than the forums.
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Marianne, make sure it's in your profile Classifieds and/or Picks. I get to a lot of new places by viewing people's profiles and seeing where they like to shop, visit, etc. A picture of new merchandise on that same posting in the profile also helps. Changing it out regularly as well.

You could walk around populated events with a sandwich board.

You could rent little shops in popular malls and put out a couple teaser products with a LM to your main store. (^_^)

Or.... Find a land management group that funds itself through advertisement. NCI has a whole advertising network set up to help pay for most of the fees acquired from running all the land, events, and hosts & teachers that make up the program. It's great visibility for a number of places, and I'm often checking out the LMs myself. (^_^)y

I would recommend asking on the SL forum about how to advertise your store. It'll make people curious about it. But if you don't want to resort to those tactics then you can get a SLelebrity to visit your store without her panties on.

I need glasses. I misread "and a friend's sim" as "in a friend's sim". Either I need glasses or I need to start drinking earlier in the day.

Product placement is still a good idea whenever/wherever you can do it.

That was one of the things I didn't get about the CSI:NY episodes. SL has celebrities (Slelebrity)?

For some things, exchange advertising grabs my attention more than anything else. Like if I'm in a store that sells 50's clothing, somewhere in the store is an ad for another store that sells 50's accessories or hair or shoes, cars, homes, furniture, etc. Or at least has a retro section even if they are not exclusively about those products. In turn, each of those stores has an ad up in their store for the other stores. Etc.

That won't work for some things but it certainly would be convenient for shoppers (ok, I really mean convenient for ME), especially for the more niche and hard to search for and find products.

If I was in a non-niche clothing store that I liked and saw an ad board for a store that sold shoes, accessories, etc. I'd shrug and tp over since that's way easier than pulling up search again to find the next part of the outfit.

And since it is related products and not direct competition, I'd think businesses would be happy to do some sort of ad exchange program.

And I do mean an ad board which is tastefully sized and strategically placed, not a solid wall of boards with names and no descriptions and no clue what they sell.

It would take work on the part of the related but not the same product business owners to find each other and start the process but, in theory, you would be reaching your target audience with relevant advertising and, as it's an exchange of advertising between the stores, would not cost anything more than time and effort.

I just started out trying SLX banner advertising. So far, I've gotten 23 clicks out of 18,851 impressions, for a whopping return rate of 0.122% in the last 38 hours.

I don't know if that's good or bad. I know that this method of advertising is not terribly effective, but comparing apples to apples it may be decent.

Maybe my ad isn't terribly effective. I will redesign the ad and compare the rates. If they are comparable, I will decide then if I want to keep going with it.

Outside of the normal methods, I've done a couple of interviews for inworld press, One for HodgePodge Variety and the name of the other publication elludes me right now. Both articles boosted traffic and sales temporaraly beyond anything I have experienced before. So definitely a good gig if you can get it.

With you being the most public child Av I am aware of, that could be a good angle to use to help you promote your business through in-world press.

I've recently started noticing SLCN TV. The ads are very tastefully done and I've checked out several of the places/shops being advertised. I do not know what their advertising rates are, but their ads are definitely FAR BETTER than ad-farms. I refuse to check out anything I see adverised in that manner!

DISCLAIMER - I HAVE NO CONNECTION WITH SLCN TV!!!

Marianne, I don't read blogs or trust the classifieds too much. I still feel they are somehow rigged with traffic. I found my best shopping method is to use the new All search tab and key in a real specific product - like "cravat." I get a list of places that have a cravat listed as an object on the parcel. Sometimes it's not even a shop, but if I can find the cravat, I can find who made it, and then find the shop through their profile.

So isn't there some way of getting your individual objects listed in the search? I don't know how effective that is - maybe I'm the only one who shops this way.

Weston, classifieds have nothing to do with traffic. They are solely based on how much money you are willing to part with. The places tab is what is influenced most by traffic, and the new search is marginally affected by traffic.

I recently went on a hunt, and ended up spending over $700L. Doesn't sound like much, but I don't spend much in general. AND I'll be going back to look at a few things I didn't buy at the time.

That's because the hunt was fun, the prizes were silly but not just the usual freebies, and the sim was interesting.

A hunt might be even more effective if some of the prizes were things to use in combination with products for sale. In other words, they have some usefulness on their own, but go well with something else that's for sale. That way your prizes support future sales.

when i get in world ill drop you the text of the class i teach in how to increase traffic...there are a number of ways to advertise that i go over and all are low or no cost and very effective.

Why cant malls and large stores rent a spot on a wall for a flat clickable ad? Like the walls at NCI for freebie stores etc? If a shop or mall had a designated area with a grid of ad space and rented out the spots, people can go to the wall and check out the ads.

Sorry no spinning, spouting particles or strobe flashing.

What do you think?

For some it would be more economical than renting a store to put in a vend if they dont need to

Ive often used rented carts for just the purpose you describe but to me they are more effective than a flat one sided add...often you can put up what effectively is a 4 sided add with 4 panels of diff information pointing in 4 diff directions. Also in my experience, alot of cart rentals are the same price as ad boards or cheaper and their placement is much better.

Thanks, Jojogirl an everybuggy f'r all the suggestions. A lot to think about.

A lot of it comes from being able to offer legitimately high traffic land. NCI is on a very short list of land ownership organizations that can make that claim. Putting up any old ad-sign in any old mall location might be a brief eyecatch, but you won't have the same scale of crowd hovering around it like you see in the Kuula sandbox. (^_^)

So, simply being able to offer legitimate advertising space does wind up being very difficult as it eats prims, requires a pretty specialized vendor/server system, and a lot of trust and effort on the part of the advertiser to be sure they're able to deliver results. (^_^)y