It’s all in the cards.
We’re going to talk about two things today, incentives and simplification, and how they can increase sales in your LGS.
People respond to incentives, Magic players aren’t any different. When you give players a good reason to do something, you increase the odds of them doing it. Prizes are an incentive to play in tournaments for some players, and having a good time with friends can be just as important.
If you want to increase the number of players in your tournaments, or the sale of booster packs, or fat packs, or intro packs, or anything really, all you have to do is give your customers an incentive to do so.
Arcenio Gaming Club in Madrid increased their FNM attendance by 115% in two weeks by giving their players a good incentive in the form of a loyalty card. Loyalty cards like the kind you get at sushi restaurants can be a powerful tool, buy 9 all you can eat sushi dinners and get the 10th free? Yes please!
Let’s say you want to sell more booster packs. You could create a card with 12 spaces on it and for every 3 booster packs a customer buys their card gets one stamp. Once a card is completed (36 packs) they could exchange that card for free entry into a booster draft, or 10% off their next singles purchase, or whatever you think would entice your customers the most.
You can easily do the same thing for FNM and other daily events. Create a program that rewards the behaviour you want to see and then reap the benefits.
Make it easy for your customers to give you their money.
If your LGS runs tournaments in store, there are pretty good odds you also sell concessions. Soda, chips, and chocolate bars are pretty common and they are a great way to capitalize on your effectively captive audience. There is an issue here though.
As a business owner, you want to reduce the barriers preventing your customers from spending money in your store as much as possible. Every little thing involved in the transaction process can potentially sway a customer towards inaction. Even things like not having change on hand can stop someone from grabbing a drink out of your fridge because the minor hassle of going through the debit process just isn’t worth it.
As humans, we like things simple and straight forward and this tactic takes advantage of that fact.
It works similarly to the previous example of the loyalty card that gets filled out over time, but instead you create a card that gets redeemed and paid for upfront. Let me explain.
Print out a card with 10 spaces on it that your customers can buy for the price of 10 concession items. Each space on the card can be redeemed for a drink or food item without the need to exchange money.
You can combine this with the incentive idea from above and give the customer a free concession item once the card is used up.
This type of product works well because:
- it allows your customers to grab food items quickly during events,
- it feels better psychologically for them because they aren’t spending money every time,
- they can share the card easily with friends,
- and best of all, your business gets the cash flow upfront.
Tabelraze, in Montpellier, France used this tactic to increase their concession sales by 200%!
What strategies have you used to increase the sales in your LGS?