Small businesses are always looking for new in store marketing ideas to help engage their customers. Using games to engage customers while in store is one marketing tactic that can be extremely successful when executed properly. If you’re thinking about using games in store to engage customers there are a few things you need to keep in mind when choosing a game. In this article we will review how to choose a game to use in your store, and then we will list a few games that would be great for engaging your customers in store.
Choosing a Game to Use In Store at Your Small Business
Choosing a fun game for your customers to play while they are in your store can actually be a little trickier than you think. There are a few things that you have to keep in mind when selecting a game to use in your store:
- Must be easy to understand. You don’t want to confuse your customers.
- Time is off the essence. Customers don’t want to spend more than 2-3 minutes playing the game.
- The prize must compensate for the level of difficulty
- Cannot be multiplayer. The game should be able to be played with one customer and one store associate.
- Must be FUN FUN FUN!
If you follow these guidelines when selecting a game to use in store then you are giving yourself a better chance for success.
Play Plinko In Your Store
PLINKO PLINKO PLINKO! Who doesn’t love The Price is Right?? Plinko is a fan favorite game on The Price is Right and can become a customer favorite in your store. Did you know you can buy a plinko board to use in your store? Simply search “plinko board” and you’ll see all of the different websites that sell Plinko boards.
If you use Plinko to engage customers in store, you can give one chip to customers who complete your call-to-action, as we discussed in our article “Engage Customers In Store with Games“. The customer can then drop their chip down the board and wherever it lands, he/she will win the prize associated with that column. Plinko is fun, easy to understand, quick to play, and can be played by one customer at a time.
Card Games Are Great In Store Marketing Games
Card games can be a lot of fun for customers. Card games are easy to learn, many customers will probably already know how to play. Card games can be played by one customer and one sales associate. Most card games are very quick to play. Not only that, but the cost of using card games to engage your customers is very low, as a deck of cards is only a few dollars.
WAR is a great card game to play in store. Simply deal one card to your customer and one card to your sales associate. Whoever has the highest card wins. If both the customer and your employee have the same card, they go to WAR. Again, the winner has the higher card at the end of the match. Games like WAR or High Low are great card games to play with customers in store.
Play Trivia In Store to Engage Your Customers
Trivia is another great game to play with customers in your store. You can come up with a list of trivia questions that pertain to things like:
- Your business or industry
- Your customers
- Your products or services
- The local community
If a customer earns a chance to play Trivia in your store simply pull a random Trivia question, ask the customer for an answer, and if the answer is even close to being correct, provide the customer with a prize.
All of these three games meet the In Store Game requirements that we set forth above. They are all fun and can be a great tool for engaging your customers in store.
Have you ever used any of these games in your store? How effective was it? Leave a comment below.
Have you ever considered using games in your store to engage customers? Everyone loves playing games right? Playing games remind older customers of their childhood and obviously the younger customers are probably still playing games all of the time, so they love it too. Small Business should use games in store to engage their customers.
Now I’m not just talking about businesses like bars and restaurants running fantasy football leagues as a marketing tactic. I think any business who’s target audience is primarily males, ages 15 – 50, should consider running a fantasy football league with their customers. Think about it, you have unlimited communication opportunities with 12-14 customers for 17 weeks! Here’s a list of some of the businesses that I think would benefit from using fantasy football as a marketing tactic designed to engage their customers and build stronger relationships with them:
Print the QR code on your business card… One thing to remember when planning to add a QR code to your business card is that if you print out a lot of them, you probably won’t go through them right away. This means your message must be a long-term message. If you are trying to promote an upcoming event, you may want to use a different marketing tactic. Whereby if you simply want to drive your new network to your website or blog, a QR code on your business card will work well. When implementing any new marketing campaign it’s critical to think through all of these little details ahead of time. Some business owners, strapped for time, simply read about the latest marketing idea and jump to implement it. It’s especially important to think through marketing campaigns that have costs involved like printing new business cards. Once you know what you want to accomplish by adding a QR code to your business card you can then go ahead and have them printed so that you can begin passing them out.
After settling on what information will be stored in the QR Code, any individual can generate their code for free through a number of internet websites, such as 
Watching Chris Johnson run and understanding his story it’s easy to see a number of parallels to successful small businesses. In this post we are going to highlight three aspects of Chris Johnson’s game that makes him so successful. We are then going to show you how Chris Johnson’s traits are mirrored in successful small businesses. There are many small businesses out there who are already the Chris Johnson of their local communities. For those of you who want to take your small business to Chris Johnson status you should find this post both refreshing and informative. 
Ask any successful NFL player and many will tell you that 80% of his success is due to how he prepares for games with only 20% coming from raw talent. Throughout the weeks and months (and even during the off season) NFL players like Chris Johnson are working to improve their game. They do this through technique training, strength & conditioning training, and especially film study. The process is usually prepare, compete, analyze, improve, and go after it again! Chris Johnson does this better than most. He uses the film room to see what he did well during games and what he can improve on. He also studies his competition to understand what their weaknesses are. He then goes out game after game trying to improve on his last performance by trying new things and exploiting his competition’s weak links. Successful small businesses do the EXACT SAME THING.
When foursquare users visit your store, and go to check-in on foursquare at your venue, they can leave a tip about your venue. Even those folks who aren’t actually in your store, but are reviewing your venue from foursquare.com, can leave a foursquare tip at your venue. Foursquare tips are limited only to the customer’s imagination.
Upon checking-in at a location, a foursquare user can click the “Tips” tab on her smart phone to review all of the latest foursquare tips associated with that venue. Others will be checking out your foursquare tips via foursquare.com. Either way, your message will get in front of the right people, at the right time (when they are either at your location, near your location, or checking you out via the website). 
I recently caught a special on TV about J. Willard Marriott, 
Here at Catalyst Marketers, we like to refer to Creativity as the new currency for business owners. When planning to start a business, or when deciding on a big change to an existing business, some folks begin with the question, “how are we going to pay for it?”. Other folks, perhaps those right-brainers as Dan Pink might refer to them as, start in an entirely different direction. Instead of asking how they were going to pay for what they wanted to achieve, these other entrepreneurs began by brainstorming fun & creative ways to help them achieve their goals. So in a sense, some right-brainer entrepreneurs are substituting currency for creativity, when making decisions about their small business.
