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As we get ever closer to Black Friday and the Christmas holidays, more and more people are going to be starting to hit stores, both in the real world and online, to find the perfect gifts for their friends and family.
Leveraging virtual stores as a pivotal component of your omnichannel e-commerce and marketing strategy offers a multitude of advantages. These include eco-friendliness by reducing the need for physical locations, extended shopping hours without the hassle of crowded stores, global reach that transcends geographical boundaries, and the flexibility of seamless updatable themes. In conjunction with more traditional channels such as social media, paid advertising, influencer marketing, and CRM activities, virtual stores provide diverse options to cater to your specific goals and target audience.
The more inspiring and unique your digital experience is, the higher the financial gains off the back of it will be. We’ve compiled a list of different strategies you can use this holiday season to maximize the success for your virtual space.
1. Utilize 3D 360° modeling and virtual advertisements
Why not make use of 360° product modeling and create a virtual store for people to access anywhere, at any time. Sync it with the back-end of your website and your e-commerce solution and you’ll provide your customers with a seamless buying and checkout experience.
A virtual store can mirror the real world when it comes to crafting an authentic experience for customers, albeit improving it, using virtual space’s unique capabilities, and therefore you could easily invest in advertising space and set up billboards located in areas of your choice to reach new customers, or retarget prospects.
2. Gamification
Gamification can take many different forms, and that’s part of the beauty of it. Virtual experiences that include gamification or incentives of some kind to encourage user engagement and interaction are far more successful that those that don’t.
By encouraging customers to explore the entire store looking for ‘tokens’, you’re not only ensuring they are exposed to your entire range, but they’ll spend longer on your site and are more likely to spend. You’re also providing customers with a far more rewarding experience than if you were to just sell-sell-sell.
3. Hosting Events within your virtual space
To sell products or a service you need to appeal to the customer, and provide them with reasons to purchase from you over your next biggest competitors.
Events enable you to showcase your true brand, provide a memorable experience and engage people. These can take several different forms, from interactive exhibits to art galleries and fashion shows, to live demos of new products or luxury make up trials.
Hosting a Christmas-themed event also holds a lot of promise, enabling you to make the most of the creative outlets digital realms provide. Whether it be through creating a virtual winter wonderland or a meet-and-greet with your very own holiday mascot, there’ll be something for your customers to enjoy and make your products more appealing to holiday shoppers.
4. AR Features
One feature you can implement into virtual experiences or social media platforms is AR (augmented reality). AR can provide a fun yet interactive way for users to experience by trying on a product for example.
A creative way to use AR in your holiday marketing is through the use of social media. Using AR features on apps like Instagram or Pinterest will help you gain more traction as a brand. Users are also far more likely to share their experience with their followers, friends or family through word of mouth and give them the chance to try it too. You could experiment with Christmas-themed options such as virtual Santa hats, glittery virtual make-up or other Christmas-themed accessories such as scarves, shoes and gloves.
You can even combine AR try-on features with other features such as gaming. One of our projects, ‘Sunglass Hut Utopia’, combined AR try-on technology and gaming into a unique virtual store that celebrates Sunglass Hut’s unique style with an event that focuses on allowing the personalities of their customers to shine through in their choice of sunglasses.
5. IRL Events
Why not host a real event to mirror the virtual experience or events you’ve created? By providing an IRL experience as well as a virtual one gives people the option as to which they could attend. If you’ve got the tech you could even have people visit the virtual store whilst in the real one with headsets
Ready to boost your holiday sales with a virtual store? Contact us today and transform your seasonal success.