Five Ways to Waste Money on Advertising

 . The biggest chunk of the variable part of the budget goes to payroll. After that generally come advertising and other forms of promotion, which should run 8% to 10% of your budget but more often gets nicked down to 2% to 3%. Anyhow, if you do the any of the following, you might as well take that fistful of dollars you just spent on promotion, walk to the back of your store and flush them down your toilet. They will do about as much good there:

One and Done:  Running an ad one time is like trying to win at Warmachine with one roll of the dice. You need to run the ad multiple times for it to work  (Yes, Apple famously ran its ad for the Macintosh computer only one time and successfully launched it http://youtu.be/axSnW-ygU5g, but unless you’ve got Ridley Scot directing your commercial and can afford to run it during the Superbowl, not a good idea).

Hitting Them Where They Ain’t:  Good advice in baseball, lousy in advertising. Advertising where your customers aren’t means no-one sees your ad. If you want to promote your game about wine cultivation doesn’t reach the people who are interested.

No Point:  Too many ads get run with no call to action. What do you want the customer to do? They don’t know unless you tell them. Even Coke has an implied call to action in their ads:  “This beverage looks delicious. You should drink it.”

Too Many Points: I’ve got this space, or time on the radio or tv. Seems a waste not to get as much information into it as I possibly can. I’m going to put all sorts of information about my game or my store in here. Too many points means that none of them make an impression on the customer’s mind. Pick 1-3 points you want to emphasize and hit them hard.

I’m Bored:  I’ve run this same ad over and over again. If I see it again I will scream. Time to change it out and try something different. You may be bored with the ad, your customers are far more tolerant. Change just for the sake of change is bad. You change your ad when your customers tell you it is time to change it. How do you know when it is time to change it? When they stop responding to it.

And one more for good measure:

I Know What Makes a Good Ad:  I run a good game store or know what goes into good game design. Ipso facto, I know what goes into good ad design. No, you don’t. Talk with your ad rep. Realize that sure, they are trying to sell you advertising but also realize they do this for a living. They want you happy so you will buy more advertising and should know more about ad design than you do. After all, it’s what they do for a living.

Facebook for the Holidays

Facebook has become the go-to advertising medium for most people in the hobby game (and comic) industry, much to the dismay of my local newspaper publisher. We were discussing advertising earlier this week, well, he wanted to convince me to buy advertising since he reaches 35,000 people daily but didn’t have a very good answer when I asked him if he could get my message out to just those that were My Little Pony fans or Ticket to Ride players.  Unfortunately, despite the growth in boardgaming,  the industry is still a niche market, only doing a fraction of the sales that video games or movies do, meaning that Facebook, and other social media, with their capabilities to target specific niche market segments more so than traditional print media, prove very valuable to stores operating in the industry. That is why I found this holiday advertising guide sent out by Facebook interesting, especially some of the statistics the company provides (All of the statistics quoted come from the guide).  Like many “ebooks” , it has about 1-2 sentences in large type per page so you can read it in just a few minutes.

Granted that Facebook conducted the research but the statistic saying that 49% of surveyed shoppers indicate that Facebook will prove influential in their holiday buying give a pretty good indication that, if you want to reach holiday shoppers, you need to plan on having some form of Facebook presence. Even if most of your holiday sales come in the form of gift cards or certificates, a store needs to have top of mind awareness in the mind of the customer and making sure your customers see you on Facebook is one was to achieve that.

I don’t know if it is a case of chicken and the egg but Facebook’s research says that 47% of  consumers start thinking about holiday shopping prior to Halloween. I am not certain if we do that because of the avalanche of Christmas merchandise  and décor we start seeing in September, or if retailers put out the holiday stuff in September because customers already start thinking about it, but seeing Christmas merchandise alongside black cats and Halloween candy is a fact of shopping today. Incidentally, Facebook also says that time spent by users on the website starts increasing in the early part of October, peaking at New Year’s Eve, then slowly decreasing over the first half of the year.

We have two huge shopping days coming up in November. All US retailers are familiar with Black Friday, which, while it does not generate quite the massive sales it did in the past, still moves a huge chunk of merchandise. However, few US retailers participate in Singles Day, the largest shopping day of the year bar none. Primarily “celebrated” in China, Chinese shoppers will spend about 5 times as much on Singles Day (Nov. 11) as US shoppers spend on Black Friday. Eventually, some US retailers will figure out how to get a chunk of that.

Moving on to December, 62% of your customers will make their purchases between Dec. 1 and 24 with 25% making their purchases between Dec. 11 and 20. As Dec. 25^th gets closer, more customers turn to brick and mortar stores to make sure they get the items they want on time. Incidentally 65% will continue with holiday shopping during the period between Dec. 26^th and Jan 1 especially as they start using those gift cards they received for Christmas and 46% will still be in the mood for holiday shopping through much of January. So you’ve still got time to get your holiday ducks (turkeys?) in a row.

How To Waste Money On Advertising

This is the time of year when game stores (and most other businesses) set their budgets for the upcoming year. Another retailing magazine I get even sent out a survey a last week asking how I set up my budget for the year. Of course, the really forward thinking among us got it done last month. The biggest chunk of the variable part of the budget goes to payroll. After that generally come advertising and other forms of promotion, which should run 8% to 10% of your budget but more often gets nicked down to 2% to 3%. Anyhow, if you do the any of the following, you might as well take that fistful of dollars you just spent on promotion, walk to the back of your store and flush them down your toilet. They will do about as much good there:

One and Done:  Running an ad one time is like trying to win at Warmachine with one roll of the dice. You need to run the ad multiple times for it to work  (Yes, Apple famously ran its ad for the Macintosh computer only one time and successfully launched it http://youtu.be/axSnW-ygU5g, but unless you’ve got Ridley Scot directing your commercial and can afford to run it during the Superbowl, not a good idea).

Hitting Them Where They Ain’t:  Good advice in baseball, lousy in advertising. Advertising where your customers aren’t means no-one sees your ad. If you want to promote your game about wine cultivation doesn’t reach the people who are interested.

No Point:  Too many ads get run with no call to action. What do you want the customer to do? They don’t know unless you tell them. Even Coke has an implied call to action in their ads:  “This beverage looks delicious. You should drink it.”

Too Many Points: I’ve got this space, or time on the radio or tv. Seems a waste not to get as much information into it as I possibly can. I’m going to put all sorts of information about my game or my store in here. Too many points means that none of them make an impression on the customer’s mind. Pick 1-3 points you want to emphasize and hit them hard.

I’m Bored:  I’ve run this same ad over and over again. If I see it again I will scream. Time to change it out and try something different. You may be bored with the ad, your customers are far more tolerant. Change just for the sake of change is bad. You change your ad when your customers tell you it is time to change it. How do you know when it is time to change it? When they stop responding to it.

And one more for good measure:

I Know What Makes a Good Ad:  I run a good game store or know what goes into good game design. Ipso facto, I know what goes into good ad design. No, you don’t. Talk with your ad rep. Realize that sure, they are trying to sell you advertising but also realize they do this for a living. They want you happy so you will buy more advertising and should know more about ad design than you do. After all, it’s what they do for a living.

5 Ways to Waste Advertising Dollars

This is the time of year when game stores (and most other businesses) set their budgets for the upcoming year. Another retailing magazine I get even sent out a survey a last week asking how I set up my budget for the year. Of course, the really forward thinking among us got it done last month. The biggest chunk of the variable part of the budget goes to payroll. After that generally come advertising and other forms of promotion, which should run 8% to 10% of your budget but more often gets nicked down to 2% to 3%. Anyhow, if you do the any of the following, you might as well take that fistful of dollars you just spent on promotion, walk to the back of your store and flush them down your toilet. They will do about as much good there:

One and Done:  Running an ad one time is like trying to win at Warmachine with one roll of the dice. You need to run the ad multiple times for it to work  (Yes, Apple famously ran its ad for the Macintosh computer only one time and successfully launched it http://youtu.be/axSnW-ygU5g, but unless you’ve got Ridley Scott directing your commercial and can afford to run it during the Superbowl, not a good idea).

Hitting Them Where They Ain’t:  Good advice in baseball, lousy in advertising. Advertising where your customers aren’t means no-one sees your ad. If you want to promote your game about wine cultivation doesn’t reach the people who are interested.

No Point:  Too many ads get run with no call to action. What do you want the customer to do? They don’t know unless you tell them. Even Coke has an implied call to action in their ads:  “This beverage looks delicious. You should drink it.”

Too Many Points: I’ve got this space, or time on the radio or tv. Seems a waste not to get as much information into it as I possibly can. I’m going to put all sorts of information about my game or my store in here. Too many points means that none of them make an impression on the customer’s mind. Pick 1-3 points you want to emphasize and hit them hard.

I’m Bored:  I’ve run this same ad over and over again. If I see it again I will scream. Time to change it out and try something different. You may be bored with the ad, your customers are far more tolerant. Change just for the sake of change is bad. You change your ad when your customers tell you it is time to change it. How do you know when it is time to change it? When they stop responding to it.

And one more for good measure:

I Know What Makes a Good Ad:  I run a good game store or know what goes into good game design. Ipso facto, I know what goes into good ad design. No, you don’t. Talk with your ad rep. Realize that sure, they are trying to sell you advertising but also realize they do this for a living. They want you happy so you will buy more advertising and should know more about ad design than you do. After all, it’s what they do for a living.

Promotional Posters and Why They Get Hung

We receive lots of promotional material:  change mats, book marks, penny cups, temporary tattoos, flyers, postcards.  However, the most common item that publishers send us is posters.  The store just received two from different publishers, one that probably won’t get hung  since it doesn’t do a very good job serving as a silent salesman for the product, and one that went up on the wall almost as soon as we pulled it out of the shipment.

The store has limited wall space for promotional materials as we would rather use most of the available space for either displaying products running events, so the artwork on a poster either has to really catch the eye, fit into a section of the store that doesn’t accommodate other store functions or do a superior job of selling the product advertised.

One of the two posters we received came from Pazio and promoted the recently released Ultimate Magic book for Pathfinder.  It features the Pathfinder logo at the top of the poster, accompanied by the Ultimate Magic logo itself and a shot of the book cover.  Pazio filled the rest of the poster (its’ about a 2’ x3 ‘one) with an enlarged reproduction of the cover and the tagline “Annihilate your enemies.”

The problem with this poster, and why it’s not going up on the wall,  is that it serves only as reminder or institutional advertising.  It offers no call to action, no selling points, no real reason for a customer not already familiar with the Pathfinder line to pick up this book and look at it.  Granted, a non-Pathfinder player won’t shell out their hard earned dollars for a copy of Ultimate Magic.  However, putting information on the sheet about the book such as contents, which classes it helps, number and type of spells, etc.  would have helped a potential customer decide if they wanted to spend the money on Ultimate Magic.  As the poster reads now, what info does the customer receive?   “Annihilate your enemies.”  While a worthy thought, it doesn’t give much help to the customer in deciding whether to shell out the $40 for the book or not.

Meanwhile, we also received a poster for Chaostle from Chivalry Games, a thing of beauty and a joy forever.  Well, I’m exaggerating a bit, OK a lot but still, this poster presents the info I want to see on a poster.  Chivalry Games has shown off and demoed prototypes of Chasotle at conventions and trade shows for a number of years now and has finally gotten the game to market.  The poster shows the box and product name at the top, has a description of the game in the center and actually shows a photo of the game, with an enlargement of a playing piece, at the bottom. We were on the fence about ordering Chaostle but the poster cinched the deal as it can serve as a silent salesman for the game. We have the poster hanging in one of the game rooms so, as our customers play other boardgames, they get to stare at the poster promoting Chaostle, with information on it that answers most questions they might have about the game.

Why Advertising?

A recent thread on the Game Store Resource Forum (if you are not familiar with it, the GSRF is hosted by Brian Guenther of Diversified Games and is  a forum for aspiring game store owners to ask questions of those already owning and/or managing game stores, hopefully to keep them from making mistakes already made multiple times) dealt with advertising, specifically what forms of advertising should he use? 

Advertising is necessary for any business to succeed. Word of mouth is great and works extremely well to reach a limited target market.  However, to get word out beyond that immediate group, you need some form of mass communication. A famous story, attributed to William J. Wrigley of the eponymous chewing gum company, tells of the time Wrigley flew back from a business meeting and was discussing his highly successful company with a companion. The conversation turned to advertising and the companion asked Wrigley, “Your company is one of the best known companies in the world.  Wrigleys’ Spearmint and Doublemint gum sell at stores throughout the company.  I can’t walk into a grocery store and not see Wrigley’s products, yet you spend millions of dollars a year advertising a product found in the pockets of every boy and girl in America.  Why?”

Wrigley thought for a moment then pointed out the window.  “For the same reason the pilot doesn’t turn off the engines once we are airborne.  Advertising is the engine that propels our sales.”