Market Research

As part of your initial research into opening your facility, you will have already done extensive market research into the demographics of the area in which you plan to open, to establish that the population is suitable (age, kids, income, etc). Continue this to create a complete picture of the area from which you plan to draw customers. Identify better/worse suburbs within your area (some might be richer/poorer, some more residential, some more industrial, tourist areas, etc)

Establish who you are marketing to

Within that reseach you need to identify where you will target.

There are essentially two types of marketing: blanket and direct. In blanket advertising you focus on throwing your message out to the public in general through signage, newspaper ads etc and this encompasses sectors such as tourists etc... In direct, you focus on pre-identified market sectors and directly target them through mailshots, telephone etc..

For the general market you need to get in touch with places like your local Tourist Authority to investigate advertising with them, be it by having brochures printed to place in their shops, inclusion in thier "Things to do" magazines etc.

Direct marketing requirs more research into specific organaisations etc. Use local resources to identify all the organisations in the area that you need to target. For example:

• social/sporting groups
• church groups
• businesses

  Enter the details of every organisation into a database for easy useage.

Establish which methods you can use

Having identified whom to target, you need to identify which marketing methods you will employ, mainly in terms of your budget.

Actively Market to them

Marketing requies a lot of time (and alot of repeated tasks, such as telephone calls, licking stamps) so you may need to consider hiring someone to do the groundwork.

Devise strategies to target each individual market sector - you will very probably need different marketing material for each group.

One important strategy is to take contact details from every player who visits the facility or those who join as a member - up to you. You need their name, address, email address, date of birth etc.

This will open up one of key areas: perhaps your main focus should be attracting and maintaining Birthday parties to your venue. Birthday parties should be a significant income source for you. It is also a fiercely sought-after market so you need to work hard to secure it. Getting the details of all visitors means that you can, in your contact database, identify every kid between the ages of, say 7 - 12, in the surrounding area whose birthday falls within the next 8 weeks who has visited your facility. You can then contact their parents with an invitation to hold their party at your place.

Marketing the facility may very well take up a lot of time. Amongst the tasks involved are:

• Creating advertsing material and writing copy for them - such as printed flyers, posters, emails, newspaper ads
• Mailing out flyers every month, perhaps to varying suburbs or areas each time in order not to flood them.
• Telephoning companies to follow up your corporate marketing campaign
• Going through the database to identify the Birthdays of previous customers, to find those coming up within 8 weeks who might hold a Birthday Party at your facility

Analyse your marketing - is it working? is it cost-effective? Are customers responding?

Once your campaigns are underway, you need to constantly analyse them for effectiveness in terms of the number of actual customers who visit you as a result of each given method, but also its cost in terms of its results.

Are the customers that you are attracting through your marketing actually happy with the service you offer? Will they return and/or recommend you to others? Do research through feedback forms - perhaps offering free games or something as an inducement to takr part.

Adjust your strategy if necessary

If you determine that a given method is not working, try to work out why - is it that you just need to change something about it, or is perhaps just not appropriate for you and your market? Likewise, if your customers indicate specific issues, take steps to rectify them to provide the best experience for the customer.

Do not stop, ever.

Continually rexamine your strategy and plans and marketing opportunities, looking for avenues that are not providing results and identify new opportunities.