Like any business, a 3D selfie business can be hard to get off the ground without the proper marketing. Using traditional marketing tactics such as billboards or radio ads can prove especially costly for a new business. As a new or small business your margin for error is small so it's paramount to focus on activities that are low cost, but have high ROI. More importantly, you want to focus your attention on activities that give you a high chance of getting you in front of your target customer. At Twindom we've had the privilege of seeing what's worked well and not so well for our customers operating 3D selfie businesses with their full body 3D scanner.
Update: This post was originally published with 3 bullet points. We've since expanded it to 5 as we've learned more ideas on what types of marketing work for a 3D selfie business.
Here are the top 5:
- Offer free 3D scans
- Get local press
- Stay flexible and test lots of locations
- Partner with local events and businesses
- Do email marketing
Offer free 3D scans
Once a customer has taken a 3D selfie, even if they did not originally plan on making a purchase, we find that customers are so blown away by seeing themselves in 3D for the first time, that the 3D preview often upsells the customer into purchasing a 3D printed figurine. Also, once a customer has done in 3D scan, you can target them with email marketing to get them to purchase at a later date if they don't purchase a 3D printed figurine in-person. More on email marketing later in the post.
Press
We and our partners have received local, national and global press with hardly any effort - and press generates a lot of business. 3D selfies are so new and so cool that it usually only takes a single cold email to get the attention of a local reporter (especially if there’s a free 3D portrait in it for them).
It would cost >$10,000 to buy the same attention that a single news story affords you. Spend time trying to get press before spending a single dollar on other marketing efforts, even if it’s only a small local newspaper.
Stay flexible and go to lots of locations
Staying flexible and experimenting with lots of customer groups and locations is a great way to keep your 3D selfie business top of mind in your community. The mobility of your full body 3D scanner is especially important for this unless you want to spend hours in setup and takedown every time you try a new location to see what works for you.
The final 2 points were added after the original posting of the article. Based on what we've recently in the 3D selfie industry, partnering with local businesses and doing email marketing are both things that can high marketing ROI.
Partnering with local businesses and events
Joint promotions can benefit all parties involved by expanding your customer base and getting your business name out there with the local community. This is a great opportunity to educate your customers on what 3D scanning is and to get them thinking about getting a 3D selfie made for other occasions. Good examples of this are working with a local school to offer 3D selfies for sale at a school picture day or working with a local sports team to get 3D selfies of the team made. For setting up a full body 3D scanner at an event you can check out our sample 3D selfie event workflow guide.
Email Marketing
If you ask anyone who has worked in the photography industry they will tell you that one of the most important things to focus on is following up with customers with promotions and coupons to incentive more purchases. Once you've 3D scanned a customer, most of the hard work is over. You don't need to spend anymore money to acquire the customer and should be focusing on how you can maximize profit out of that customer. Email marketing can be very effective at this by reminding customers of your 3D selfie business or by offering them a deal like "buy 1 get 1 free." To do this properly you should be sending customers a minimum of 4 follow up emails after they've been 3D scanned. Sending follow up emails to customers is built directly into the Marketing Tools of the Twindom Cloud Platform.
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