Marketing a poker game
Every Thursday here at Ohio State myself and my three roommates host a big poker tournament. It draws about 40 people, almost all of them having played in one of the previous weeks. It’s not a fluke that we get so many people returning to our game, we did a great job marketing it.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but we developed a pretty good marketing plan for our poker game. There are three key elements that help us draw players and keep them coming back:
- We provide a quality product at a fair price.
- We reward players that come regularly.
- People talk about us.
Let me explain those a little further:
1. We provide a quality product - that product being one of the best poker games on campus. It only cost $5 to play and there are unlimited $5 rebuys in the first hour. We are honest, we setup a fair tournament structure, we have a web site with all the information and rules, and people know that we run the same game, at the same time, every week. Honesty is important in poker - people know that we never skim money off the top of the pot and we make sure to tell people where all the money is going. Our website ensures that everyone knows the rules before coming. And the fact that the game is at the same time every week allows people to make room in their schedule to play.
2. We reward the regular players with a tournament leader board point system. We use PokerStars equation to award points to the top 9 players every week. At the end of the quarter the top 6 in points have a chance to play in a free roll for $100. This encourages people to keep coming back to our game so that they have a chance to earn points. Really, the $100 free roll is secondary to the bragging rights. Since the Tournament Leader Board is published on the website, everyone knows who the top players are. The only way to get to the top is to consistently make the final table and play good poker.
3. Because we provide a quality product and encourage our players to keep coming back, people talk about us. New players tell us that they heard we “run the best poker game on campus.” That’s great to hear, we try to run a fun game for everyone and give everyone a chance to enjoy a game of poker, meet some new friends, and hopefully make some money. We are proud of the fact that people talk about us and tell their friends we run a great game, it’s important to us.
Obviously these three components aren’t a magic recipe to the success of any product, but they help. If you have a product that people want and you can get people to recommend it to friends and family, you’ll be successful. If you are offering a service, reward your regular customers with discounts or special priveleges - make the important customers feel important.
Marketing can be applied to a lot of different areas of life, even if you don’t realize it’s marketing. Use what you know to make everything you do a success.
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