Second Life: Five Primary Benefits for B2B

Every time you try to sit down, you fall on the floor. You bump into walls and occasionally fall into the ocean. You have difficulty speaking. And you have this strange habit of going limp and hanging your head like a rag doll when you havent been doing anything for a while.

This scenario may sound somewhat familiar to parents of toddlers, but it’s actually a description of a new avatar in Second Life, a virtual online environment where visitors adopt 3-D personas (called avatars) that can move, speak, and see. Just like toddlers, newcomers to Second Life need to work hard to learn to do things that we adults take for granted in the real world. And there are other challenges to overcome when you consider Second Life in the context of B2B marketing: technical complexity, lack of proven ROI, and the need to keep visiting avatars entertained and well behaved (attention spans in Second Life tend to mimic those of toddlers, too).

However, despite all the controversy swirling around Second Life these days, marketers are discovering that it can potentially add value to a business in ways that traditional marketing tools cannot. Second Life and other emerging social networking tools are still primitive, but they are worthy of consideration because they presage—even if they don’t necessarily define—a new way of interacting with customers.

Although anyone can visit Second Life for free, owning a stake and moving up in the world will cost you, just like in the real world. Virtual properties (called islands) are for sale, and owners can build homes, offices, factories, and meeting places. There is even a currency, called Linden Dollars, that trades at about 250 to one U.S. dollar.

Though roughly 8 million people have signed up for Second Life, only 50,000 people are online at any given time, according to Claus Nehmzow, a partner at PA Consulting—one of the first consulting companies to enter Second Life. Despite that disparity, the number of concurrent users is growing at 20% per month and shows no signs of slowing. (In fact, Gartner has predicted that 80% of internet users will have an active presence in virtual worlds—although not necessarily in Second Life—by 2011.) Today’s users, who include analysts, journalists, and bloggers, are a particularly vocal and influential group, and they generally remain online for 30-60 minutes at a time—much longer than the typical website visitor.

Second Life is a convergence of the three primary types of online participatory media: social media (FaceBook, MySpace); gaming (World of Warcraft, the Sims); and simulation and training (Forterra). Its hybrid heritage gives Second Life flexibility and makes it a potentially powerful tool for B2B marketers in five primary ways:

• Shared real-time experience. A website is an isolated, one-way communication channel, but Second Life allows visitors to interact in real time using many different media at once. For example, an avatar visiting a virtual meeting hall can view a video while text messaging with another avatar watching the same video.
• A new forum for explaining complex products and services. By combining different communications channels in Second Life, companies can let customers see and experience products and services that are difficult to conceptualize in traditional media such as print. For example, PA Consulting has built a “smart home” in Second Life where visitors can play with futuristic high-tech and energy-saving technologies for the home. On Dell’s Second Life island, visitors can enter a giant 3-D Dell computer to see the inner workings of a PC. Most important, if visitors have questions, a virtual representative can answer them in the moment.
• Inexpensive prototyping and customer focus groups. For example, PA Consulting built a virtual bank branch for a client to gauge customer reaction to the space and to give bank representatives a chance to try different sales techniques on visitors.
• Training and recruiting. Second Life is becoming a valuable training ground for Cisco, which recently conducted its network academy instructor training series inside the virtual world. Meanwhile, PA Consulting uses its virtual island to ask job applicants questions in real time, just as during a job interview, as do other organizations, including Microsoft, HP, and the Vancouver Police Department.
• Global reach and accessibility. Second Life meetings can replace in-person meetings and teleconferences. Dell, for example, has a virtual conference center for meetings and events and a theater for product announcements and webcasts. Cisco holds its monthly user group gatherings and events with partner companies in Second Life and has a virtual trade show floor where the company holds product launches for the press and analysts.

Though there are potential benefits to Second Life, it is still in the early stages of development and should be considered experimental. Here is a short list of challenges and lessons learned from our research:

• “Human” presence is important. Without greeters at the door to show people around your virtual world, visitors will get lost and frustrated and will leave. Your greeters can also pass along brand messages and steer people toward a purchase in the real world.
• Events are everything. Even avatars need a reason to talk to your company. Events, whether business oriented or fun, are the best way to draw people in. And tell people to arrive early to the event so that you can train them to navigate your property.
• What happens in Second Life doesn’t stay there. Second Life users tend to be technologically savvy, highly connected, very vocal, and occasionally downright reckless and nasty, participating in virtual vandalism and defacement of corporate islands. Be sure to communicate your marketing intentions clearly and monitor other social channels, such as blogs, to see how your message is coming across.
• Develop security workarounds—or stay up late. Most corporate firewalls block access to sites like Second Life. Some set up alternate access means, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), for Second Life users. Your best bet: Hold your Second Life events at night so that people can log in from home.
• ROI is elusive. The returns on Second Life so far are more focused on brand awareness and savings that result from using it as a substitute for in-person meetings and onsite training.

Second Life and other social networking tools are new, primitive, and unproven, but this new way of communicating isn’t going away. Companies can and should begin to test strategies for marketing in these “second worlds.”

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