So a few months ago I ordered some stickers from Shutterfly. In case you’re unaware on who they are, they’re a typical photo print site where you can upload photos and get it printed on about anything.
Anyway, they were having a sale so I said sure and tried them out. The package was a flat cardboard envelope.
I opened up the package and there was my stickers in a sheet. They’re not too bad quality, but I wouldn’t recommend them unless they’re over 50% off (cheaper to get stickers elsewhere). Anyway…
However, something else was included in my package…
A wine voucher with my stickers? It’s more likely that you think. At first I thought this was some weird cross-promotion, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense to me…
Think about your audience
Shutterfly was clearly incentivising its customers to buy more. At this stage in the marketing funnel I’m clearly a customer- I’ve bought something from them and have received my product. But why wine?
My best guess is because of their target audience- who likes ordering custom photo gifts and wine? That’s right, women in their 30-50s. And uh, the occasional 22 year old college grad, minus the wine part.
In most of their example images, the models are women of varying ages; some of the photos show families, but most are of women.
While wine clearly isn’t a gendered product, Naked Wines is most likely expanding their awareness by partnering with a company that has a similar audience.
Partnering with others
The biggest takeaway I have for this is two things:
- Know your audience
- Don’t be afraid to work & partner with groups with similar audiences
While the Shutterfly example is more of a company getting adspace with another company’s audience, you can partner with other groups to cross promote. Sharing each others’ games, boosting them all, etc.
With games it’s safe to say that if a player likes RPGs, they’re not going to play one and then abandon the genre altogether- they’re going to look for more RPGs. Consider teaming up with creators for similar games!
The easiest way for us game devs to partner together is to share each others games- retweet posts or make new posts sharing each others games. Another way is to participate in bundles and collections with other devs. Although I’ve yet to try it, you could go more personalized with collaborative events.
To summarize:
- RT / share posts
- Participate in bundles / collections
- Host collaborative events
At the very least, get out there and talk to others who are making games with a similar audience to yours!
I like to learn from example, so I thought this quick post would be an interesting read to at least somebody. Feel free to tell me what you think on Twitter or in my marketing channel on Discord!