Ideas to Keep Your Business Top of Mind With Your Customers

Do you spend more time courting new customers or adding value to existing ones?

Most B2B (business to business) businesses I know get the mix all wrong. They spend tons of time, energy and money trying to bring in new customers. If they spent 30% of those resources on existing customers, they would be far better off. Why? Because existing clients already know about you so that cuts down the sales time. They are also more likely to refer you new opportunities. And referrals are much easier to close than cold calls. But what does this have to do with your B2C (business to consumer) Family Entertainment Center?

A lot. Think about your advertising. Is it directed to new people or existing clients? Exactly.

What are you doing inside of your center to get people to come back?

Loyalty Program

Sure some of you have or are thinking about a loyalty program, but how is it working? Maybe a better question is how are you working it? The single biggest way loyalty programs fail is because companies don’t tell their customers they have one. Or maybe they tell them about it, but they don’t explain it correctly. The key to a loyalty program is to make sure the customer feels GREAT about being loyal to your business. It should be a big deal. Make sure your staff knows this.

More Loyalty = More $$$ — Start a Customer Loyalty Program

What about a referral program for Customers?

Are you incentifying your existing clients with a reason to come back to your place AND bring someone new? You don’t have to over think this. Make it easy on you and them. It could be as simple as a BOGO (buy one get one) laser tag, a handful of game tokens, 100 redemption tickets or a free hot dog. Test different ideas every month. See how often each one works. Track it. Than offer a standard program moving forward.

Weekly specials or discounts

Pick your slowest night and offer the best specials. It doesn’t matter if it’s on food or on gaming or on something else…just give people a reason to show up. Then watch them do it. Pretty soon your slow nights, become your busiest nights. Be mindful that when choosing a loss leader (fancy term for something you may lose money on to get people in to spend more money elsewhere) that you may lose money on this offering. Don’t ever make these special offers without the fine print.

You can also do things that reach your customers outside of your venue IF you do the right things while they’re there. What are you doing to collect their information? If you have a rewards program you can get their name, e-mail and maybe a phone number or home address. If they have to sign a waiver you can get their name and e-mail at the least. You can ask them straight away if they’d like to sign up for e-mail discounts and coupons. How else can you get their info?

They may not love it, but you'll get new data — Google “Waiver Form” and find one for your Customers to sign

How you reach Customers outside of your space:

Email

This is a pretty easy and consistent way to stay in touch with your clients. Choose a service like mailchimp or constant contact (both offer free accounts for a limited number of subscribers) and begin sending a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter. Note bi-monthly can mean every 2 weeks or every other month. I know content can get tiresome to produce so make it easy on yourself. Set up a template that’s plug and play. Put in a few sections:

Calendar of events: Here you highlight what your upcoming specials, discounts or other big events for the coming month are

Featured game or experience: Pick something every month to showcase *Tip: If you have only a few experiences think about ways people can get more enjoyment out of them

Photo of the month: Take a pic of someone enjoying themselves or even better, ask your customers to upload a pic to your Facebook page and highlight that in your newsletter

FEC Funny: Do a search on Google for Arcade or Fun Center memes and share one in every note. Click to see an example from the search “Laser Tag Funny“.

Direct Mail

You can send surveys, product announcements, special promotions and more. They can be a postcard or a big fancy envelope with lots of info inside. This idea works a LOT better if you have their address. If not, than go the Val Pak route and pop a flyer in the envelope. Don’t like that idea? Find a direct mail firm who can deliver mail based on a zip code and target a few of your neighbors.

Could be a great way to reach new customers near you — We’ve all gotten this piece of mail

Social media

You have started a Facebook page, right? If you haven’t, now wouldn’t be too late to do so. Get your people involved in what’s going on in your world. Give them insight on how to enjoy your space more. Let them know from your perspective how they can work better with you. Add value to them. Always remember that your clients NEED (well, at the very least Want) you to be successful so you can continue servicing them. They are some of your biggest fans. Treat them as such!

You can use this on your facebook page to attract customers — Some centers are so sensitive 😉

Any of these options will work for you. If you did them all, that would work too. The key is to make a choice and then a concerted effort to make it happen. I hope you will implement some of these ideas because I am sure your business will grow.

July 5, 2017

5 Reasons Your FEC Should Be Using LinkedIn

Get Your FEC LinkedIn

Assuming you’ve the got the Real Estate thing handled the most important words for your business are no longer Location, Location Location. Those words are now Marketing. Marketing! Marketing!!! This post is going to provide you a quick education on why LinkedIn is worth some of your attention for your Family Entertainment Center. Here are 5 quick things you need to know, now.

It’s Strictly Business

Let’s pretend Facebook is used 40% business and 60% for personal use. Those numbers are a bit high, but they’re close. LinkedIn is 95% business and 5% personal. What this means to you is that promoting your business can be a bother to those on Facebook looking for cat videos or to hear about your weekend away. People on LinkedIn expect to hear about what your business is doing.

It’s a “Blue Ocean Strategy”

In the international best seller by W. Chan Kim, Kim makes a very important distinction between blue oceans and red oceans in business. A red Ocean strategy is one that all of your competitors are employing and the waters are bloody as a result of the “fight”. A blue Ocean strategy is one where you zag, while everyone else is busy zigging. Think about the number of FECs you see on Facebook and compare that to those on LinkedIn.

You want morning business on a weekday?

Does your business feel like this in the a.m.?

Unless it’s summer or some other time when the kids are out of school you really only have one choice: corporate events. Those can be super hard to book unless you know how to connect with the right professionals. You know which social media site both caters to business professionals AND has a fabulous search feature to help you find them?? I’m not going to give out any names but it’s initials are Linked In.

You can offer team building opportunities

Corporate culture and team building is all the rage in business. Do you offer activities where two or more associates can play together or against one another? If you answered yes to that, than you can say you offer team building. Getting people out of the office for shared experiences is a tremendous way to get them to work better together on projects. This is your selling point.

Connect with event managers

Earlier I mentioned the power of search. That is where LinkedIn really shines. When you start building your network on LinkedIn you’ll be able to easily find and connect with folks who are responsible for building events for their companies. Connect with enough of them and some are bound to do business with you. Do a great job for them and they will tell their friends. Added bonus, they will likely book events for their kids too.

Bottom line is, you’re likely spending a portion your day working on a Facebook strategy (or just goofing off on Facebook, whichever). Do yourself a favor and allocate 15-20% of that time on LinkedIn. You and your business will be glad you did.

BONUS TIP

Click HERE for a quick video that will help you grow your LinkedIn network while you sleep.

If you want to learn more about how to leverage LinkedIn and other ideas to grow your FEC, check out our PLVR Club.

June 5, 2017September 7, 2017

5 More Things VR Arcade Owners Must Consider

Helping New and Future VR Arcade Owners

So this part two of a blogpost that would have been waaaayyyyyyy too long for one post. If you want to see the first five things I suggest, you should click over to 5 Things VR Arcade Owners Must Consider.

Since the list isn’t in any specific order you can stay here and read these five first:

VR Arcade Marketing Ideas — Marketing for your VR Arcade

6. How you will market your VR Arcade

It doesn’t really matter what your business is…you have GOT TO figure out how you will let the public know about it. Virtual Reality Arcades have it easy. Why? Because it’s sooooo visual. There are plenty of cool pix and great videos already on the web. As if that wasn’t enough you can always create new content every time a new customer comes in (be sure to get them to sign the video release form).

Setup a YouTube channel. Make sure you have a Facebook place/page setup. Instagram and Snapchat can both be great vehicles to gain exposure for your new attraction as well. Make sure you have an e-mail newsletter and SMS Marketing solution too. I could go on, but you should check out this post about Social Media Mastery for FECs for now.

7. VR Arcade Management Software

VR Arcade Management Software can be something as simple as a “Game Clock” and as complicated as the tracking of each play by game, by booth, by day and making sure the developers are paid for their work. That last part is important and will be the reason some VR Arcades get shut down…not paying their game licensing fees. A good software can also provide you with a leaderboard, a rewards program, an in goggle game selector and more. Actually, if you want to check out a good VR Arcade Management Software, you could just click that link. We’ve got you covered.

We can help!! — Please Operate Your VR Arcade Legally

8. Are you going to operate your VR Arcade legally?

This is just between us. You don’t have to answer or comment, but you do need to think about this…seriously. IF you are running a VR Arcade and NOT paying for the minutes that your customers rack up you are doing one of two things:

1. You’re only offering your customers FREE experiences which is better than nothing, but certainly not giving them the best available.

2. You are cheating the system.

Video Games are a lot like movies. You can’t just go to best buy, pick up a blue ray disk and then start selling tickets to people to come watch. Go read point #7 again about how our software helps with licensing.

9. How do you get more referral business

The single best way to get more referrals is to ask for them. When do you ask? When people are at the height of excitement. AKA right after they finish their time having a blast in your place. But here’s the thing, it’s awkward to be like “can you refer 10 of your friends who might like to come play”. An easier approach is to encourage people to share their experience on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or others. Simply have them write a post and tag themselves at your location and give them a pretzel, or a cookie, or 3 tokens or 2 minutes of VR or whatever you want. You will be amazed at how often people do this. Especially if you give them their “gift” on their next visit. See what we did there?

Oh yeah, and of course our software has a rewards program…see point 7.

10. What will you charge for your VR Arcade?

Man, isn’t this the $100 question on the list? Well, maybe not $100, but like $60…for an hour. I can’t tell you what to charge but hopefully I can give you some ideas. VR Junkies, our sister company and largest VR Arcade group in the U.S. charges $1.00 a minute and $45.00 an hour if they buy in bulk. I’ve heard of other groups charging $25.00 for an 8 minutes experience and I’ve seen places do $10 for 20 minutes. You’ve really got to know your demographics. It makes sense to set your price and give people 2 for 1 time for their first experience. That way you’ve set your value AND rewarded the early adopters. It’s always easy to lower your prices…raising them is another story.

So that’s 10 things you need to be thinking about. Okay, well it’s 10 if you went to the other post called 5 Things VR Arcade Owners Must Consider.

What did you learn?

What did I miss?

What will you do differently?