Store for a RL company

The store has been built and is ready for placement, but before buying any piece of land...

I could use some advice & tips on the best LOCATION for a store.

It´s for a RL company and they don´t want a private Island (....yet )
They also do not want a rented store in a mall.

Best option is on the mainland?....traffic? ....lag?
What are the pros and cons? Further ideas or advice?

What types of products? You haven't given us much information to go on.

Roadside is always best... adjacent to linden land - the more linden land you have around you the better

It´s a pharmaceutical company that wants to advertise and promote in SL.
The shop I have built for them is small, fits on aprox, 2048sq.m
But the needed space would be bigger than 4096sq.m. .....would be more appropriate to have some space for expansion.

Don´t want too much clutter or lag from adjacent parcels etc.

That's impossible to predict on the mainland, where land can change hands at a moment's notice.

If your client is unwilling to commit to an island, then I strongly recommend buying at least an 8,056m land parcel to provide buffer and reduce the amount of land in the sim that can be used by others. After all, we're talking $40/mo land tier, and if a phramaceutical company can't afford that, they're obviously not long for RL much less SL.

So what is the sl store going to be selling? I don't think there's much demand for pharmaceuticals in virtual reality.

Having a lot of experience with pharmaceutical marketing and advertising (that is the RL business I am in), it is very surprising to me that any pharma company would consider displaying their brand or product information in Second Life without the ultimate control that a private island would afford. Even the smallest brand managers have budgets that would make the cost of an island trivial.

Given the highly restricting regulation of pharma advertising and disemination of product information, and the potental legal liabilities if any of this is not handled perfectly, I find it hard to imagine any pharmaceutical company would go into this kind of thing without adequately protecting their brand, and their patients.

I don't mean to sound negative. This just isn't the type of thing pharma companies would or should do, on a shoestring budget.

I don't know about that. With some of the recent problems in SL I'm sure many residents could use some tranquilizers.

Quayyyyyy Ludes


Lol

1. It´s not about the budget, there is budget for this......but to start off it might be better to experiment on a mainland plot.

2. They don´t want to sell items ingame. For now, just advertise.

SL is all about imagination.
(Regan´s and Tya´s answers were on topic)

If all they want to do is advertise, all they need is 16 m2

Just promise it's not Viagra you're selling!

That goal makes their SL presence quite problematic. No one is going to go out of their way to visit a store that has no products. Other than putting up billboards that simply piss off residents, advertising a company within SL is difficult to pull off.

So I take back my advice about buying a large parcel of land, because that will simply isolate their building even further. Instead, you'd be better off buying a stall in a few malls. That way you get visibility regardless of people's disinterest.

Buying a place for people to visit and learn about the RL thing CAN be interesting. I visited the nissan and dell islands as well as a very interesting one about meteorology.

If you dont want a private island, the advise I give to everyone is buy land adjacent on as many sides as possible to "protected land". This way you wont be touching so many neighboors.

Protected land is is linden land that wont be built on, like roads etc

You have to be carefull when looking for protected land due to the annoying habit of linden labs naming entitre sims "protected land" before they have finished creating them fully.

So the only safe real protected land is the linden owned land called "protected land" in sims where not the entire sim is called that.

If your RL business is suitable for a pg area, then I recommend putting it in one. That way you wont have any embarresing porn clubs nearby. Pg land is also cheaper.

Great advice Cortex, thank you!

Note that these locations have a lot to them besides simply being an ad for the brand. Graphics Pro, for your plan to be effective, make sure that the build is more than just a recreation of a RL drugstore, or worse just a bunch of pictures. Think like a science museum, with a bunch of interactive exhibits about the pharmeceuticals, how the company makes them, and how they help people.


Now was that really necessary?

Why? This makes no sense to me.

Yes, those are great ideas Johan, the educational part of any RL company in SL is a good thing.
Better to have some quality info ingame instead of redirecting the visitors staight to a RL website. ( Immersion breaker!!)

Why experiment first on a small plot before going all out on a private SIM? The plan is to see what kind of reactions the visitors will have. And..No ,this is not about putting big flashy ads in the sky to block and pollute the neighbours views.

Depending on what it is your company's products do or cure, this might be a valid idea:

There's a place in SL that allows people to experience what it's like to be schitzophrenic... you wear an attachment, go into mouse-view and walk through a building. It is incredibly intense. It was set up by a RL educational institution and they claim that it is about as close as one can get to experiencing the disorder.

If applicable, you could perhaps set up a similar scenario or something along those lines where, through their avatars, people could experience or understand what it is that your company is trying to cure / help. At the end of the tour / experience you have your advertising, notecards, souveniers or whatever.

That way you're attracting people based on giving them a unique / fun / interesting experience. The fact that they also get exposed to your brand / company name is your main objective, but theirs is that it's a 'unique experience'.

Still of course along the lines of an educational build, but make it more 1st person, almost like a 'ride' at a theme park, rather than just a bunch of edjumucational posters or whatever that might be boring to folks. Again, not sure if it applies in your case, but thought I'd mention it.

-Atashi

/me hands Johan a notecard labeled Snow Crash.