We continue in Part Deux (hey, the founders are French!) of Marketing and Sales Tips for Small Businesses. It’s all about how your employees can create a great customer experience so that customers can return over and over again!
Staff Training
Take the time to train your staff so that they are better equipped with selling to customers. You can make it a party by reaching out to your vendors and sales reps for games, toys, and other products.
Happy Team Staff Training
Email Newsletters
Newsletters are a FREE way to let your customers know about the latest specials, events, etc. Involve employees where they can provide some content. Such as a section on a sales’ person’s favorite toy and why, along with a picture of their friendly face.
In addition, give your employees access to vendors’ newsletters. Email newsletters can be great tools for employees to learn more about the items they are selling. Newsletters provide valuable tips, promotions, demo videos, etc. Was a product in a popular magazine? Was a celebrity spotted with an item sold in your store? Newsletters can provide great talking points for the latest products!
Blue Orange newsletter
Social Media
Like Newsletters, Social Media is another free way to let your customers know what is going on in your store. Are your employees playing a heated game of Spot it? Take a picture and/or video and post to your fans! Employee selfies wearing the latest fun gear? Employees will enjoy sharing something special that happened at the store and will make them feel a part of what makes your store special.
Twitter fun at Learning Express Roseville
Employee Contests
You can create employee contests or challenges based on the number of particular products sold within a period of time or based on who will be the first one to reach an objective.
Ask your vendors to sponsor the prizes. It doesn’t hurt to ask!!
Our sales guys travel the country to visit local specialty retailers. They see what is the secret to successful local businesses and how they are pillars in their local community. Blue Orange recently presented marketing tips at a convention and we wanted to share our findings with you. While these tips were made with toy stores in mind a lot of the principles can apply to nearly all local businesses. This is only Part One so be on the look out for upcoming blogs for more tips – yes, plural!
Demonstrations
Ask your vendor for a demo. Whether it’s a fun Blue Orange game or types of craft kits at your hobby/craft store. Keep them updated (watch for missing parts).
Try to keep demos at the appropriate eye level. If you have a toy store, keep the demos at children’s level for easy reach. Customers come in all sizes and ages so be cognizant
Keep inexpensive items close to the register for that last minute impulse buy.
Silly Times at Happy Team
Video Demonstrations
Display videos in-store
Use websites or social media to post instructional videos
Link to vendor videos through social media. It truly is the age of the video. Most vendors will have instructional/demonstration videos.
New Gobblet Gobblers video
Promote Birthdays!
Have an open book on the counter to create a mailing list for birthdays.
Create a birthday club on your website.
Send postcards or emails with $$ off coupons the week before the big day.
Suggestion Box/Read those online reviews
Invite your customers to give their feedback and check out reviews for your store online.
Display all positive comments, and discuss with your team how to fix the negative ones.
Brand Yourself
Add your store name and logo to shopping bags and t-shirts. Reusable bags are a great way to show your brand around the town!
Offer cute postcards featuring your logo or store picture at the counter.
Store Displays: Be Fun and Creative
Create window displays that are relatable and relevant – to draw people in and bring customers back!
Take advantage of vendor provided displays, signage and posters.
Explore your creative side with unusual and unique DIY display ideas. Pinterest is a great resource for ideas!
Share your displays on social media to gain additional exposure.
Castle Toys & Games in Beaver, PA awesome window display. We’re a little biased.
What draws you to your local neighborhood store? Leave your comments below.
How does a ‘yinzer’ from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania end up as a marketing intern for a board game company in San Francisco, California? Simple, I was a blonde hair freckle faced girl stuck in the east coast snow and humidity dreaming of California…just like everyone else.
The reality of my California dream came about 7 years ago as I watched my older sister pack her closet, lacrosse stick, and smile as she headed off to play collegiate lacrosse on the West Coast. As the youngest of four, I learned at an early age to follow the footsteps in front of me! Before I knew it, I was 18 years old and signing my life away to play collegiate lacrosse, for my sister’s conference rival, at St. Mary’s College of California.
And how does playing collegiate lacrosse connect to my 2,593 mile journey away from home? Skip over the hundreds of sprints, hours of practice, and preparing pregame speeches and you have a girl studying for a sports management and communications degree. Graduation was approaching and so was the dreaded post collegiate job search. Saint Mary’s College presented me with many opportunities for growth, but connecting with Blue Orange Games after graduation made that 18 year old’s decision to move to California worth it.
The strong Alumni and networking community of St. Mary’s led me to be able to connect with Martin Marechal, Blue Orange Games VP of Sales & Marketing and former student-athlete of St. Mary’s College of California. From there, the interview process for a marketing internship with Blue Orange began and before I knew it the job search was over! I packed my little Honda to the brim and head across country with my Dad.
That brings us to my current destination, Blue Orange Games: a fun and upbeat company that mixes education with fun and creates awesome board games. Board games have always been something that my family used to bring us together, so being able to bring other families the same joy was important to me. But honestly, who wouldn’t love to play board games for a living?! From attending events, to writing text for a game’s box, to managing the company’s Instagram account, I am lucky enough to be working in an environment where I can use my personality, creativity, and writing skills everyday.
It has been 10 months since the release of Disney Frozen, and the craze has remained strong. The love of Frozen has expanded to tooth brushes, costumes, plush dolls, and Spot it!
All over the world, people, young and old, have been captivated by the story of two sisters, Elsa and Anna. Their story brings a bit of unexpected darkness to the expected Disney Fairy tale.
A relateable theme of two sisters who become estrange and their struggles to find their way back to each other. Elsa had been repressed by her parents and kept from her sister, but eventually emerges into her own after realizing her powers of freezing the objects around her.
The Disney Frozen craze has brought limitations and new ideas to the world of Disney. The demand of retail objects became so high that Disney ran out of merchandise online and inside of their stores. At one point, Disney had to restrict all consumers to two items of purchase for many weeks; that was if there were even 2 Frozen items left to buy.
A recent release by Disney states that ‘Frozen-world” will be the latest feature added to Epcot. The attraction will be opening in 2016 as the construction to the current Norway Pavilion will take place this fall. “Frozen-world” will be a hit with a boat ride, snow play areas, and of course an area to meet and greet Elsa and Anna. As if this is not enough, a short film will be released by Disney in the next year, called ‘Frozen Fever’.
Blue Orange Games has caught the Frozen fever and teamed up with Disney to bring you a new adventure. Spot it! Alphabet Disney Frozen is a matching game that features characters and iconic symbols from the hit movie. Between any two cards there is always one, and only one, match. What could be better than the #1 family card game teaming up with the winner of two Academy Awards®?! This is definitely a game worth melting for.
The process of creating a Spot it! Alphabet Disney Frozen was a blast for the Blue Orange team. First, the marketing team gathered around and watched Disney’s Frozen together—and yes, Olaf made us laugh. Watching the movie helps to prepare the team to search through the Disney Database to find just the right images from Frozen. Once those symbols are selected, they are then tested by the toughest critics—children. This is to mostly check to see if the chosen images evoke memories from any part of the movie.
Whether you are caught singing ‘Let It Go” in your car or laughing with Olaf, chances are Frozen has warmed your heart. Young and old can relate to this theme of connecting with a loved one, coming into their own, or simply wanting to be loved. Throw in a funny snowman, great songs, and some sparkly dresses and you have a Frozen craze.
Spot it! Alphabet Disney Frozen is a great way to incorporate fun and learning with Elsa and Anna. It is a wonderful birthday gift and stocking stuffer too!
For the first time, I attended the annual Gen Con 2014 convention which is America’s largest “table top” focused convention (with more than 60,000 attendees every year). “The best 4 days in gaming” is the slogan, and it certainly lives up to the hype. The halls are flooded with people all gathered together to celebrate gaming culture in all its forms.
Gen Con crowd
It’s not just board games. It is also the larger “table top” community, which includes Role Playing Games (like Dungeons & Dragons and Shadowrun) as well as miniature games (such as Warhammer and War Machine). There is even a costume parade, where people dress up as their favorite characters. Other notable events are “Card Halla” a life size kingdom of towers built entirely out of playing cards. That is then crushed by objects dropped by con attendees from the floor above.
I spent most of my time in the exhibit hall, playing Blue Orange Games with our community of fans in the Family Pavilion. I got to see many of the friends that I have made at New York Toy Fair and Origins Game Fair earlier this year. I also got to meet several internationally acclaimed game designers, Bruno Cathala, Bruno Faidutti, and Charles Chevallier — all of whom have games coming out for Blue Orange next year. Of course many know that Bruno Cathala already released 2 games for us this year (Niya and Longhorn).
Bruno Cathala
I had the pleasure to meet several of the lovely people from our community of reviewers, that prior to Gen Con I had only communicated with on the internet.
Sandy Zimmerman and her 2 “geeklings” from Adventures With My Geeklings. Always nice to meet our biggest fans, especially when they are 2 lil’ gamer cuties! Their favorite games from the con? Our giant version of Pengoloo and our new 2014 game Aztack. You can check out more of their experience on their blog here.
Forrest Bower is the eccentric YouTube reviewer who helped build up hype for our wildly popular game BraveRats. It was great to meet him, as he is one of my favorite voices in the community. His passion for games shines through all of his videos, and he and his family are huge supporters of our games! He was kind enough to do several videos with me of our new games. You can check them out here: Doodle Quest, Longhorn and Niya.
Forest Bower interviewing me
I got to meet Dan (The Game Boy Geek) and Zee Garcia, both from the illustrious Dice Tower network of reviewers, who for many gamers are THE go to source for information on our games.
I had the chance to hang out with my friends in the Dice Hate Me / Geek Allstar collective after hours. They are a rowdy bunch of gamers mostly based in the North Carolina area who have a passion for innovative game design and clean-playing games with dirty tactics. Their podcasts are a great way to keep in touch with the pulse of the gaming scene and their “the state of games” podcast is in my opinion the best on air. Needless to say, it was a pleasure to see what the “cool kids” of board games were playing at the con.
My favorite game of the con, was the Korean smash hit “Coconuts” (distributed in America by Mayday Games). One of the purest fun experiences I’ve had in a while. And since the con, I have played it dozens of times. In Coconuts, players try to shoot rubber coconut pellets into big plastic cups, using adorable plastic spring-loaded monkeys. Pure, simple, chaotic fun.
The highlight of the show for me was getting to meet game inventor Charles Chevallier. He taught me how to play his new game Wakanda, coming out for Blue Orange in 2015. He also graciously lost a game to me which means I got the joy of beating a man at his own game! Of course I had to capture the moment of triumph:
Charles Chevallier
Gen Con was also an opportunity for me to play with prototypes from designers (some of whom were friends I made at other cons, other of whom were new). I brought back many great ideas that we will be testing out with our community of family testers in the months to come.
Blue Orange Games hosted its annual Giants Event this past weekend. We invited all of our Bay Area retailers to enjoy a night of games, food, drinks, and baseball…and most importantly—to unveil a new Spot it! game!
The office slowly turned into a party space with games on every table, lots of snacks, and a rotating hot dog machine. Each table offered seating for guests, as well as many of our favorite Blue Orange Games. Toy store owners and workers were able to enjoy playing new games, such as Battle Sheep, Aztack, and Niya; while enjoying classics, such as Spot it! and Gobblet. The competition became intense when co-workers challenged each other to a game…which always followed with several rematches.
Guests were also introduced to Blue Orange’s Spot it! San Francisco Giants edition. This Spot it! features images from all of your favorite sites and memories at and around AT&T Park. Each attendee was asked to grab a Spot it! San Francisco Giants edition Ice Breaker pin to get the party started. This ice breaker pin consists of a Spot it! card to wear on your shirt, you then go around to other guests to try and seek your match! To learn more about creating an Ice Breaker pin for your next party, keep your eye out for upcoming posts on our blog, Facebook, & Pinterest.
Toy store guests walked into the world of Blue Orange and were able to connect with many Blue Orange workers and the atmosphere in which we work. Upon entering, guests checked in and received a ticket to the Giants game, as well as a chance to enter into a drawing. The drawing consisted of many Giants themed prizes—Giants flag, bobble head, hats, & best of all two tickets to the Virgin Mobile Suites. Drawing winners were announced toward the end of the event and headed to the ballpark!
We were excited to feature a photo booth for our Blue Orange team and guests to have some more fun. The photo booth consisted of a fun backdrop and many crazy props to create a fun and creative picture! Stores gathered their whole crew to squeeze into one picture and strike a pose.
Once 7:15 hit, it was game time. The event moved down to AT&T Park to enjoy a beautiful night of baseball in San Francisco. This annual event is always a great way for Blue Orange to connect with their retailers and to appreciate them. We would like to thank all of those who attended our event, and to those who could not make it—we hope to see you next year!
Look for Spot it! San Francisco Giants edition coming your way soon. Go Giants!
Tomorrow marks the second annual TableTop Day – an international event championed by former Star Trek: The Next Generation star Wil Wheaton. The event is a direct result of the succes of Wheaton’s Youtube series of the same name — part of Felicia Day’s premium channel “Geek & Sundry” — in which Wheaton plays popular board games with other celebrities. (TableTop on Youtube)
Wil Wheaton plays Munchkin with Felicia Day, Steve Jackson and Sandeep Parikh
Wheaton’s charm and deep knowledge of board games has made the show very popular among board game aficionados all around the globe. It is a great way to learn about new games and how to play them.
TableTop Day is a wonderful excuse to unplug for a day and play games with your friends and family. Here at Blue Orange, we are celebrating the event by going out to 3 of our favorite local games stores (Gamescape North, Games of Berkeley, and Games Unlimited) to play games with our community of fans.
I will personally be going out to Games of Berkeley to talk about our game development process and to demonstrate 3 of our new 2014 games, out next month:
