Utilizing Free Content for Board Game Publishers

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Asmodee Games, Board Games, Club Fantasci, David Lowry, Le Phantom de L' Opera, Marketing, Publishers, reviews, Social Media

The board game industry is all about the “Cult of the New” now. The next big game, next exciting Kickstarter, that is what is driving companies these days. It’s new content and a constant driving sales force and we as board game lovers fall in line and buy all that we can as it comes out. We forget about the games that came out before as the new games make it to the table five or six times before the next hot thing arrives for us to drool over. For years great games came out at a much slower pace before Kickstarter started launching what seems to be 50 new games a week.

With all the new people coming to gaming now, they don’t know about the
“old” games (anything over a year old it seems) as all the scuttlebutt is what is hot now or coming out. This is why I started the “Revisiting the Classics” reviews for Club Fantasci. There are so many great games that people forget about or have never discovered and that is a shame as many of past years games are just as good or better than todays games. How can we tackle this problem?

Well, first of all publishers have to learn to market their past games as well as their new games. Learning how to drive traffic to your website is key in any marketing strategy and then having the content there that is on the FRONT page is where it is at to successfully sell your whole catalog. You can do this in rotation so as not the over clutter your home page.

Recently I wrote a quick review for Le Phantome de L’ Opera for Asmodee Games. They put it on their front page of their site a couple months ago now and I still get hits on this review from their site. Is it selling games? I don’t know, all I know is people read this review everyday. That should help sell games if it’s a good review.

Mayfair Games posts reviews on the games direct page on their site but many of the publishers ignore this content or only post it on their Facebook page or twitter. While this makes your social media strategy easy as you always have new content (although many still don’t use this) it isn’t helping make the sale on your webpage.

Many may not agree with me, but I am a firm believer in leveraging your resources and board games reviewers are the publishers most power free resource their is. So publishers, when a review comes out, if you feel that is a great piece to help sell your game, use it. Don’t just use your favorite reviewers, you will alienate the other ones. Judge the review on it’s own merit and use that. Help the reviewer out as they are helping you out.

Maximize your online sales strategy with smart, efficient and effective marketing and watch your sales grow. Take care of your reviewers and they will take care of you. Most of all let’s do it for the love of spreading our love of this amazing hobby and the great games from before.

Best of luck!

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Board Games and The Cult of the New

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Board Game Geek, Board Game Publishers, Board Games, Branding, Club Fantasci, Cult of the New, David Lowry, Marketing, Social Media

I think about this topic a lot and I think most people refer “Cult of the New” to the people who buy games and feed the machine with the 50 new Kickstarters this week from every board game publisher ever. There are so many new games coming out that it is very, very difficult to keep up with and truly a lot of them are not “instant classics” so they won’t be around long on anyones “must have” list anyway.

One of the things that disturbs me is the way publishers tend to ignore what they have already put out in favor of constantly having to put out a new game and keeping that excitement going. Yes it is exciting to put out a new game and have new product to talk about but really, all the time when you haven’t even begun to maximize the sale of your current products? What about the first 3 games you put out? Once the Kickstarter was done the publishers basically stopped talking their product. At the clip the board game industry is growing and the amount of new people discovering games and the hobby, publishers are doing themselves a disservice by not promoting your whole game library constantly. Just because a publisher has a new product doesn’t mean you forget about the old. Old being completely relative here as it maybe only 12 months old before it is basically forgotten.

Once the review cycle seems to end for a new game, you rarely see any promotion on a game. The publishers I guess don’t feel a need to keep promoting to potential new customers or maybe they think the distributor is supposed to do this? I am not sure.

I wrote a blog for the music/entertainment industry called “Creating a “Buzz,” It’s Your Responsibility” because so often people seem to miss the whole point of marketing, branding and selling. As the publisher it is no one’s but yours to sell your games. You can’t rely on Board Game Geek to be your only source of marketing as good as it is or the reviewers. There is so much new content on their everyday, it can be very easy for your game to be lost in the information vortex.

I can only assume the reason you went through all the trouble and hard work of putting out a game that you want to sell as many copies as possible for as long as possible. Yes, I know there are a few that don’t really care as I have talked with them. They just wanted to put out a game and hope people liked it. They had no desire to create a career of do the work of promoting the game itself. So if it is true that you want to sell as many games as possible, that means you commit to promoting for the life of the game.

In the excitement of putting out a new game, we kind of get addicted to having something new to promote and all the excitement that surrounds it. When we don’t have anything new coming out, we feel as if we are falling behind everyone else and possibly feel pressure to have new product all the time. Musicians do this all the time. They record 17 CD’s but only sold about 300 copies of each. They feel like their music is old but yet no one has heard it so it was fresh to the rest of the world and instead of focusing on a dedicated marketing and social media campaign, they rely on new music to have something to talk about. This is just throwing money down the drain constantly. Don’t do this with your board games. Work the plan and keep your games out there for new people to discover all the time. There is a reason that Ticket to Ride keeps selling. They are great games with a ton of work put in by Alan Moon at every convention possible and working it, working it, working it. Having your games listed on your site is not enough. That isn’t actively promoting or selling, that is passively promoting and selling.

Focus on great games, not quantity of games. How many Kickstarters have come out that you still want a year after they have come and gone?

Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower also talks about this in his “Board Game Breakfast” video (19:16) released on Monday.

As a business owner, don’t be a “Cult of the New” company. Be a “Cult of the Quality” company. Put out great games, developing a serious marketing campaign and a long term social media campaign for the long term on all of your games and sell more games!

Board Game Publishers Help a Board Game Reviewer Out

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Artwork, Bloggers, Board Games, Branding, Marketing, News Outlets, PR, Publishers, Reviewers, RPG, Social Media

One of the most frustrating things I find in trying to review new games of any kind actually is not having good imagery to work with. It completely surprises me that a good amount of the board game publishers out there don’t have good artwork to be used for bloggers to use to promote their games. This should be absolutely STANDARD fare for any company so let me give a few tips from a marketing guy in the entertainment industry.

1. When launching a new product especially on Kickstarter and you want people to blog about it, make sure you have the box cover art available as an image on your Kickstarter page or at least your main web page. I am sure you many of you know that this helps with SEO when we can appropriately use text in images let alone having a good featured image to use when we post on social media such as Facebook. This helps the review always put out great content on your behalf as well. It makes them look good and your are the Hero because of it.

2. ALWAYS have your new launch on your main web page. This should be your current news and should be posted at the same time as your kickstarter. Get is started and save it as a draft until ready to launch. Once your Kickstarter is up, post the link in it. The main goal of any business is to drive traffic to their business page. This will not only help you look professional, up to date and busy but also allow people who may not know about your other products a chance to check them out and either purchase or put on their wish list.

3. All board games that you publish should have it’s own page on your website. I have seen a rash of this lately where publishers have no content what so ever for a game that has recently come out. This is completely dumbfounding to me as I don’t understand why you would put out a product and not have it on your site showcased. I know most of the publishers may be one person operations and time is very tight, but marketing and branding is absolutely crucial to your success as a business. If you need help keeping up your website, social media, marketing, PR etc…. Let me know, my business can help 🙂

4. Make sure you have a list of bloggers, news outlets and reviewers set up so you can email all of your updates. Don’t rely on them to see your subscribe button. Take it upon your self to do the research and make a list. It will take you one day to do it. Ask for help if you need to. It is on your shoulders to be successful and get the news out. Make it easy for the people who are providing your free PR about your new games.

5. Social media is key to marketing these days and yet so few have really learned to used it in a way that reaches out to new reviewers, bloggers or news outlets. Again use the tools available to you to find new sources of PR. The use of hash tags is very important and gives you a very easy way to mine for information and people who will help promote your product. Don’t just tweet to the people you know or like. Answer all tweets if possible and build relationships!

6. Make sure your imagery in on http://www.boardgamegeek.com and available for use for reviewers to put in their reviews of your board games. This only makes your game look better than people having to use crappy pictures they have to take with poor lighting, camera’s or cell phones. Always make sure, you are able to put YOUR best foot forward with marketing and that means making sure everyone has access with rights to use your artwork for reviews.

It doesn’t take much to frustrate people who love what you do and want to help you. You should be facilitating these relationships and making it very easy for them to help you since it is FREE. You aren’t sending free games to everyone that reviews your product as a matter of fact you send very few games in comparison to the reviews that come out so make sure you are utilizing, maximizing and capitalizing on what is available to you and the awesome people in this hobby that want to support what you do!

If you have any questions or want to consult with us. Please let us now!

Looking forward to the great games your bring us to play!

David Lowry

Hobbyists Shouldn’t Open Board Game Stores

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Blog, Board Games, Club Fantasci, David Lowry, Hobby Stores, Marketing, Social Media

I have spent a fair amount of times in Board Game stores over the last 12+ years and I can tell you without a doubt, that most of the stores I go into, the owner is more of a hobbyist than a business person. Ask anyone who is successful at running a store like this and they will tell you how incredibly difficult it is to keep the doors open, make smart business decisions and keep the clientele coming back. So as a potential customer, business owner and marketer please let me give you board game store owners my two cents.

1. Clean your damn store – I can’t say this more whole heartedly enough. Customers hate walking into a store that makes them feel like taking a shower by the time they leave. Vacuum, dust and straighten your product and for the love of what ever you find holy, please shampoo your carpets at least once a year. You wonder why women don’t come to your store? Hmmmm….. I can’t tell you how many times I brought a female friend to a game night that would never return because your place is a filthy mess and your bathrooms are the grossest thing on the planet. It is your job and responsibility to police your customers that use your store for gaming as well as making sure your employees AND yourself clean the store everyday.

2. Learn how to use social media – I know at least locally, none of the stores here in Nashville have any real social media presence, understand social media and do absolutely no outreach to the local gaming groups or anyone else for that matter. First of all, social media is free so there is no excuse and secondly for those of you with small budgets, what other choice do you have? There is no excuse to not utilize this avenue of advertising period.

3. Learn how to target market – It is your responsibility to understand who shops in your kind of store, how to reach them and then actually do it. It is also your responsibility to try and attract other potential customers to your store and find ways to reach them and actually do it. Again with social media and email campaigns alone you can do a lot here. Get to making it happen.

4. Understand who controls the money – It is very well known that women control 95% of all the wealth in the world. What does this mean? It means they decide what gets bought and they are the ones buying it. You want to increase your bottom line? Learn how to market to women. What would women come to your store for? Do you sell productions that maybe might be of benefit to them or their children? How do you reach them? What do you think might key them into your store vs. GameStop or some other place to spend their money for their kids?

5. Learn to ask for help and then take it – Find out locally who is an expert and who can help you and work with them. Don’t ask them to do it for free. Pay them or at least barter with them but make sure it’s a fair trade. Quit thinking your 20% discount is a fair deal to people who usually make $100 or more an hour at their job because they are good at it.

6. Make your store THE store – What does this mean? It means get out from behind your counter and offer REAL customer service. Know and understand your product as best as possible so you can actually SELL it. I can’t tell you how many times I sold a game because the owner knows nothing about board games. Treat your customers like you would want to be treated. Create RAVING FANS (look up the book) and see if they start bring people to your store, talking about it and having all their gaming sessions there. Put on cool events not just the same old LCG events or D&D events that barely draw anyone. Look at your inventory, see what you can possibly come up with to have fresh, exciting events happen. Hook up with local talent, cosplayers etc… Make no mistake, it is absolutely nobody else’s job but YOURS to get people in your store to purchase things.

Look I know most gamers would love to have a store and play board games all day long, but in reality, you shouldn’t have much time for that. This is a business and businesses take a vast amount of time and effort to run. You should be busy working, marketing and making your store the one place everyone wants to come to. It’s easy to fall on the Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh online sales or Warhammer 40k crowd but that stuff won’t be around forever. Keep up with the latest and greatest, be bold in your marketing and create an awesome atmosphere for gamers to come to and watch what happens.