Fostering strong relationships with local businesses can significantly enhance your store’s visibility, community engagement, and overall success. By collaborating with neighboring businesses, you not only reach new customers but also create unique experiences that attract and retain loyal patrons.
First, Some Groundwork
I’m a firm believer in identifying your service area, ideally before you even open. Start by drawing a 5-mile radius circle around your store on a map. Increase this circle in a low-density area and shrink it a little in a high-density area. Then look for geographic features that form natural borders, like rivers, mountains, and highways. If your circle is near those features, draw the borders of your area to fit.
That area yields the richest results from any marketing or advertising you do. Don’t ignore the rest of the world, but focus your efforts in that blob on the map.
Do that anyway, even if you don’t pursue the advice in this article.
If you do use the content in this article, concentrate your cooperative efforts in this service area first. Start with the businesses that are close to you and have the most overlap with your own customers’ interests. Focus next on high-traffic routes to your store, especially on right-hand businesses on the drive home from work.
Don’t Go in Cold
Once you identify a good candidate for interaction, create a relationship. Check google for their slow time of the day and go visit. Go into their store and buy something. Interact with the owner or manager. Introduce yourself.
Then leave.
Give the business a positive review on Google, Facebook, or Yelp.
Talk to them again soon afterward. They’ll remember you, your engagement, and your review. Talk shop a minute if possible. Ask if they’d like to work together. Propose a specific event that provides benefit to both sides. During this conversation, propose exactly what it is you expect and what you offer on your side. Remember that the best relationships provide benefits to all participants. Here are some examples to provide some inspiration.
Shopping Center Co-Ops
It’s not common, but some shopping centers have an advertising co-op. You advertise the shopping center itself and feature the stores in the shopping center. Everybody pitches in for the advertising, either a fixed amount or a proportional amount based on square footage. If your shopping center doesn’t do this, talk to the other storefronts to see if they’d be interested.
Likewise, you could apply a similar proposal to nearby game stores. Ask everyone to pitch in on a big-ticket advertising opportunity, like billboards. You might advertise a simple message like Friday Night Magic, for example, and show the logos of up to four stores on the ad.
Local Game Manufacturers
Any local designers should be in your shop as often as possible already because they want to promote their games to existing game buyers. However, if you’re not already hosting them, invite them in to promote their games.After all, nobody is a more effective champion for a game than its creator.
Better yet, if the local designer is well-known, offer to host a “celebrity game” where customers can play with the designer. You can auction off seats in a Dutch auction and donate the funds to a charity of the designer’s choice.
Restaurants/Cafes/Coffee Shops
Offer to host a game night at the restaurant. Suggest social deduction games like Werewolf. Give away gift cards for prizes (provided by either you or the host).
Schools/Colleges
Ask if the school has a gaming club; if not, offer to provide the club with some starter materials if they have a teacher willing to act as the sponsor. If they are, offer to host events or provide prizes for events they run.
Pat Fuge at Gnome Games in Wisconsin has taken school relationships about 100 steps beyond this exchange. He has mapped out a game for every standard taught in schools at every grade level. Little ones learning single-digit addition? He has a game (or probably 20 for that one). The French Revolution? There’s a game for that. The periodic table? Pat knows what to bring.
Pat sets up game sessions with enough copies for every student to play and provides staff trained to teach the game. The school checks off a standard, and 20-30 new kids learn about Gnome Games.
If you want to learn more, drop Pat a line. He hosts a course where he teaches his method to retailers from all over the country. His store is https://gnomegames.com/
Social Media Creators
One of my crew was a big fan of Mann Shorts, a YouTube channel by a local creative team. He arranged a meet & greet with the team and its fans. They set up a table in the game room, and they offered a discount on merch with a $5 or more purchase from the store. It was a great sales day, and the foot traffic created the busiest Monday we ever had. The Mann Shorts guys loved the chance to meet their fans and they seemed very pleased with their interaction with the store. To see the kind of content they create, check out their channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbOO4-QoJKEMNusydXSVMaQ
Arcades/Video Game Stores
Jen Oven at Oddwillow’s Game Haven in Mukwonago WI trades prizes with a local arcade. Each side provides gift cards or prizes for the other shop’s tournaments. Jen’s store is https://www.oddwillows.com/ if you want to reach out to her for more—she excels at this type of marketing.
Anything Around
Jen at Oddwillow’s also corralled local businesses into doing a “shop hop.” Customers get a stamp card from any participating store and get a stamp from each store when they enter. Once it’s filled out, they can submit it for a drawing for free prizes from each location.
Jen credits both examples of local collaboration for bringing in new customers.
Measuring Success
With this type of cooperative promotion, don’t expect to measure success based on one-time sales. Instead, look for long-term community growth. A single Games Workshop customer spends about $3,000 during his or her lifetime in the hobby. Magic players spend almost the same amount. It doesn’t take many new customers to show significant growth with these figures.
