7 Ways To Market Your Board Game Store Online to Increase Foot Traffic

Your board game store is open for business, you’ve set up the infrastructure, and you’re just waiting to welcome new customers. But, why wait when you can actively attract a steady stream of prospects to be converted into paying customers?

If you want your venture to be a success, marketing and promotions are key.

Traditional methods such as handing out flyers, hanging posters, and running discounts are an obvious first step, but if you want to reach a wider audience, it’s time you kick things up a notch and include online advertising in your marketing strategies.

Here are 7 strategies that you can use for marketing your board game store online and boosting foot traffic to your physical store.

Establish A Social Media Presence

As a rule of thumb, you should know who and where your customers are. With 82% of the US population using social media, having a social media presence can be incredibly helpful to your business.

You can use these platforms to establish yourself as a reputable business, create brand loyalty, engage with your audience to build genuine relationships, and gain valuable insights into customers’ purchasing behavior.

Actively engage with your key gaming audience by posting content in the form of reels, videos, status stories, or images, along with your location tag. This will help meet your benchmarks and improve your share of consumer spending.

Go Viral with Hashtags

Using relevant keywords and trending hashtags can be very beneficial to your online presence. You can reach new clients by using hashtags with keywords related to your niche or ones that are currently trending in the board game market, combined with names of board game series and well-known, well-loved board game developer studios.

Be careful not to overdo it, though. Ideally, a tweet should have 1 or 2 hashtags. This strategy combined with keeping the message concise can improve engagement by up to 21%.

Using too many hashtags will make your message look unclear and unnatural, which won’t resonate with your gaming audience. To prevent being labeled as spam, avoid using too many hashtags, as it might spell the demise of your brand reach and visibility.

Use Posters to Market Game Nights

Posters are a low-cost approach to advertising your company to a specific target market.

In addition to putting up posters with eye-catching images and compelling text to advertise your store in public places, you can also host a board game night to boost reach and improve foot traffic to your store. It will enhance both cross-selling and upselling.

For it to be a success, however, you will need to market the event across all channels.

Create digital posters with dynamic content that promise a fun, engaging night full of friendly competition, laughter, and socialization. You can make your own game night posters on PosterMyWall, an online graphic tool, for a cost-effective and personalized approach to marketing.

Paid Advertising For The Win

According to a Brightlocal consumer review survey, there has been a 9% year-on-year increase in the number of people looking up local businesses multiple times a week.

This means, in addition to having a social media presence, using push paid ads can help you reach your target audience and build awareness more effectively.

You can use Google pay-per-click(PPC) ads, which are known to get a whopping 50% conversions, to get the most bang for your buck. When promoting an ad, make sure you use the right keywords, focus on the right demographic, keep your CTAs short and to the point, use high-quality graphics, and optimize your ad for both mobile and desktop devices to gain traction.

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Retargeting advertising can also be used to encourage interested prospects to return to your site and complete the purchase.

Invite an Influencer To Promote Your Brand

An increasing number of consumers have started relying on influencers for their purchasing decisions. So, why not collaborate with an influencer or blogger in your industry and invite them to your store to do an Instagram or Facebook live or make a video/reel for product(s) review?

It will give you credibility, help put your store on the radar, and give you the exposure you need to reach people who may not have been aware of your board game store!

Be Customer-Centric In Your Marketing Approaches

Compared to businesses that don’t focus on customers, customer-centric businesses are 60% more profitable. Establishing yourself as a business that cares is thus vital for ensuring success.

One of the ways to make your customers feel valued is by keeping them informed of exclusive discounts, offering tips and tricks to make your board games even more appealing, providing exceptional customer service, and offering promotions. This will undoubtedly enhance client loyalty, leading to repeat purchases and increased in-store traffic.

Organize Giveaways and Contests

Offer a gift code to gamers in exchange for participating in your contests to prompt purchases. You can also sweeten the deal by giving away a big prize, such as a popular board game, to increase engagement and brand loyalty.

Here are some contest ideas that may help you achieve your objective:

• Host sweepstakes on holidays and special events. For example, you could hold a Christmas giveaway and ask participants to describe their favorite parts of the holiday in exchange for a chance to win their favorite board game.

• Organize an in-store contest and reward the winners with gift cards. To encourage prompt purchase, provide a time limit (not too close, nor too far).

• Partner with other businesses, such as a beverage or snack company, to increase the appeal of your sweepstakes and encourage more people to enter.

• Use gamification where users can win game pieces that can be exchanged for instant prizes or collections that can give them a large prize. This will build excitement among the users and boost sales.

Wrapping Up

To efficiently market your board game store online, you need to carefully curate a marketing strategy that is customized to your business. Keep in mind, though, that marketing can be fairly costly, so if and when you can, try to DIY your way through them using graphic tools like PosterMyWall.

PosterMyWall is an affordable option that you can use in numerous ways to boost your marketing and advertising. It has an impressive collection of templates for events and small businesses that you can use as inspiration and allows you to add your own branding elements for a more personalized approach.

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