Advertising & Promotions for Your Business Shouldn’t Take a Summer Vacay
by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com
August. The month surely brings some hot days of summer but it remains one of my favorite months of the year.
Why? It’s when Joanne and I have our wedding anniversary and it’s also when my family goes on our annual Aruba vacation. When you look around, the whole world seems to be on vacation. Is that a good thing for your business?
For operators, summertime and “vacation season” can mean business traffic goes up if you’re in a tourist area and down if you’re not. As a smart businessperson, you’ve probably figured out by now what to expect and how to plan for it. Equipment sales can drop at this time of year, too.
RePlay’s ad man Barry Zweben and I have a running joke about advertising in August. Years ago, I even wrote a column about it. Seriously, I think it’s important to advertise and promote your business every single day…maybe more so during slower times. You could be overlooked and possibly even forgotten if you’re not doing something to get attention.
If you’re not busy and don’t advertise, don’t expect an uptick in sales. If it’s already busy, you might be tempted to skip advertising altogether, questioning why you need it. After all, you’re already busy, right? The answer is simple: You advertise to maintain and build momentum so you can stay busy!
For fun centers, that means keeping up with advertising, billboards, social media posts and other methods of reaching your customers. If you’re a route operator, maybe you get with your locations’ management to find ways to help drive traffic. Arcade bars and other locations where pinball is the star should run and advertise special events to bring people in.
For suppliers and manufacturers, the same holds true. Even if sales are humming along, I go to pinball shows all over the world, and every month of the year, to promote our games. That’s where many pinball people are, so this travel makes sense. Fish where the fish are.
If you sell products or services to the amusement game industry, the “fish” are in the RePlay Magazine pond. Whether your sales are hopping or not, advertise, put bait on the hook and pull in some big sales! It’s always a great time to show and tell people about what you are doing.
If you didn’t advertise this month, there’s always September!
Jack Guarnieri started servicing electro-mechanical pinball machines in 1975 and has been involved in every phase of the amusement game business since then. He was an operator in NYC, then began a distributorship in 1999, PinballSales.com, selling coin-op to the consumer market. In January of 2011, he founded Jersey Jack Pinball (named after his RePlay Magazine pen name), which builds award-winning, full-featured, coin-op pinball machines. Email Jack at [email protected].
