Operator looking for ways to increase interest, draw, followers?

Dr. Willy

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Operator looking for ways to increase interest, draw, followers?

Warning this is long winded post:

Thought I would throw this out to my fellow klov'ers. I am a part time hobby operator in my area. I currently have 5 locations; movie theater, a hipster bar, two pizza places, and a bowling alley. There have been a few bad operators in our area that screw over people regularly and were just shitty in general. I am trying to overcome that general stereotype for my local market and have arcades be a draw again.

My whole approach with my locations is bringing back the traditional arcade, as we all know and love. My location owners love this and have supported me, giving me free reign of their arcade spaces. My locations by no means are struggling, but the perfectionist in me is always striving to make everything the best I can.

I always said I never wanted this to become my day job, however that is changing as I love what I am doing with the locations and just enjoy getting games back out into the wild. I am in talks with another long time operator who I have made friends with and helped a lot over the past couple of years to take over his locations as he is getting to be of the age where he can't keep up physically and is looking to get out. If this does happen, I am planning within two years to be a full time operator. At this point I am trying to build my business and get the word out and am looking for suggestions to do so. I am trying to get better at using Facebook, Instagram, ect ect.

Right now everything the business earns goes back into buying more games. I run free play nights at a couple of the locations every few months, and have an arcade themed special night at my bar location coming up where we will be giving away a free machine via raffle. I am just trying to brain how to get a bigger following? Maybe I am just dreaming and won't actually get any type of following at all?

My facebook page has about 200 followers and I have been trying to run "boosted" posts more often to draw more likes/exposure. I have been toying with the idea of doing some type of machine give away via paid ticket raffle with all proceeds going to a local charity/local community.

Any ideas are welcome and appreciated!

Here is a link to my facebook business page, if you have suggestions for it let me know.

www.facebook.com/sklarcades
 
You're kind of at the mercy of the locations
themselves in terms of overall traffic.

I don't see how you can do much more, just be sure your
pricing is optimal, game times are running within margins
and you keep up on refreshing the mix of titles. Ensure
you cover multiple genres before installing duplicates.
(sports, fighting, racing, gun, beat'em up,
vertical shooter, puzzle, etc)
 
Free t shirts are cheaper and easier to ship. While a free machine will attract a certain crowd Not everyone wants a big arcade machine in their house.
 
If you want more traffic on FB, maybe you could try keeping a high score table for your location games. I like going out to play games, but if they aren't tracking the high scores, it is really fairly pointless to keep playing over time. This would require that someone at the locations be willing and able to record the scores as they are achieved though.

Also regular tournaments would be fun to draw in more people to the games.

The raffles for free games would not be something I would go to your fb page for. I would say go for a page that feels like a gaming community page. If it feels like you are just putting stuff up to try to drive more traffic, it probably will have the opposite result. People tend to really like to build communities though.
 
If you want more traffic on FB, maybe you could try keeping a high score table for your location games. I like going out to play games, but if they aren't tracking the high scores, it is really fairly pointless to keep playing over time.

A sticker on the game with your Facebook information so they can post it for you to verify and post, maybe even a hash tag they can use when sharing to their own Facebook?

Maybe even offer prizes for most high scores in a month, highest score per machine, holding multiple high scores on games you have on route, etc...
 
Free t shirts are cheaper and easier to ship. While a free machine will attract a certain crowd Not everyone wants a big arcade machine in their house.

Ah I forgot to say in my first post, t-shirts are in the works and I do plan on giving them out like candy.

If you want more traffic on FB, maybe you could try keeping a high score table for your location games. I like going out to play games, but if they aren't tracking the high scores, it is really fairly pointless to keep playing over time. This would require that someone at the locations be willing and able to record the scores as they are achieved though.

Also regular tournaments would be fun to draw in more people to the games.

The raffles for free games would not be something I would go to your fb page for. I would say go for a page that feels like a gaming community page. If it feels like you are just putting stuff up to try to drive more traffic, it probably will have the opposite result. People tend to really like to build communities though.

I will say I do need to do something like this, I just haven't come up with a clean way to implement it without bothering the locations employees. My bar and I talked about getting them one of those LED signs that scroll text and I could put up high scores on it.
 
I gave you a like, use social media. Make sure you have a sticker, card or something on each machine. Print a QR Code and URL on each sticker or card, can be as simple as a card taped to the machine, that links back to a website or a form that a player can use to fill out a report if the game is not working. The cards should also have your website/facebook page/instagram/twitter etc on it. Open a twitter and instagram account. Take pictures of the games regularly and post things on the social media pages. We also love seeing warehouses and storage areas (at least I do!) But its up to you if you want to share something like that on facebook.

Installing LED's on a game, put up a post, fixing a game, even if it seems mundane, do a post, unboxing a new game.. .do a post... , changing a game at a location, do a post ...you get the picture. High score table is a good idea too.

I wish my local op would do these things, they could be so much more successful if they just put a few posts up on their facebook page, they have one, but they have no clue on how to use it, right now its a dead page.
 
Have a league like setting people can form their own teams like 3 or 5 man teams. Set the format like Starcade and don't announce which games will be used during the week. Set the timer for each game. Have a mix of games like 1 driving, 1 fighting, 1 puzzle, 1 shooter 1 classic. Have the teams flip a coin, team that wins the coin flip gets to pick the game and person they want playing the game. That way there will be strategy involved in each matching up which player is best at driving, fighting etc. The other team gets to put whatever player they want to play that person. Then it switches 2nd team picks game and puts up player. As an year end prize give away trophy and or game etc.
 
I am trying to overcome that general stereotype for my local market and have arcades be a draw again.

Oh you weren't asking about generating more income, my bad.
I'm more keen on a heavy cash box, personally.
Good luck on crusade.
 
Add the high score kits that enable scores to be posted online and then show the scores on a monitor above the games in each location.

That would be a big draw I would think.

Check out https://www.highscoresaves.com/

Good luck living the dream...

:D
 
Facebook is a very strange thing. If you 'boost' the posts, make sure you only boost them locally. When you have a business facebook page, they don't show all of your posts to everyone who follows you. They just show it to like 10% or less...

So if you 'boost' your post and it gets a bunch of likes from people who don't live near you, and can't possibly be a customer, you end up in a situation where your posts aren't getting to your customers as a large percentage of the 10% or whoever they send your posts to will live across the country or even overseas. This is why buying likes and things never works well either.

If all of your followers on facebook are local or semi-local, then you have a built in customer base there that you can market to. So when you have a special event, etc. you can use the facebook list as a good way to get really high 'return' on whatever special or event you're doing (since all of your customers are super engaged since they're local).

Good luck with it...
 
One of my local arcades has a selfie league, you go to the location, play the game and if you get a high score you take a selfie of yourself with the machine, and post the selfie to a dedicated facebook page set up for the league, the leagues run for a month or 2 at a time with prizes at the end for the winners, this is an arcade with mostly pinball that is very engaged with the local pinheads so this may not be for you but you can try it if you are looking for creative ideas.
 
thanks for all the suggestions guys, I have them all written down and am going to try and start getting them setup and implemented.
 
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