How to approach virtual marketing

Like anything on the Internet and like anything in Marketing, no advice is guaranteed to work in your specific situation.

I discuss my thoughts. Other people may disagree.

Marketing is more an art than an exact science. In fact, marketing is really a series of experiments. You try something, and you see if it works. Then you tweak it a little, and you see if that tweak made a difference. Then you do the next little tweak and you see if that new tweak made a difference. You do this over and over.

The market is always changing. What works today might not work next year. Or even tomorrow.

Many big companies have come into Second Life during the early years and then left when they realized that marketing in a virtual world is not the same as marketing on the web. They can collect a lot of information from a website to learn about their visitors, but that sort of information is necessarily hidden in a virtual world. At least, it is at this point, to my knowledge.

The anonymity is great for virtual world residents, but not so much for those who try to market to them. So virtual world marketers actually have a lot more experimenting to do.

So, whatever you read in these pages, take them as suggestions of things to try. If it makes sense to you, go for it. If it doesn't, pass on it.

Even if something didn't work for someone, try it anyway. You could implement it just slightly differently, and that slight difference could make a big difference.

And if you have your own suggestions to share, please do!