In today's competitive gaming market, running a successful game store goes beyond offering great products. To truly maximize revenue, savvy store owners must use all the tools at their disposal, including engagement-boosting tactics and strategic use of sales and discounts.
Here are several tips to turn your sales activities into a sustainable revenue generator that ensures your store thrives year-round.
Sales, Discounts, and Pricing as a Growth Tool
According to recent research, 48% of consumers have made a purchase online due to discounts and special promotions. While every industry and market has differences, offering discounts and sales promotion is a best practice in almost every vertical, from traditional retail to groceries, gaming, and beyond.
Using sales effectively results in a net increase in revenue for the brand, not to mention additional benefits such as acquiring new customers, marketing buzz, and more.
Sales can be timed to tie into a country or society’s cultural and bank holidays as well as stand-alone items, each with their pros and cons.
Sales During the Holiday Season
Pairing sales with a region’s holiday season is a time-tested strategy. For example, themed sales for Valentine’s Day or Christmas tie into strong cultural and societal traditions of shopping and gift-giving.
Buyers budget and plan year-long for gifts to loved ones (including themselves!) during the holidays; offering discounts when a buyer is in a buying mindset increases conversion as they are already open to spending and looking for the right opportunity.
A simple event calendar can help identify the best times to run an in-game store or webshop sale.
In addition, Shopify offers an excellent tool for every date a store should know for sales and promotions.
Since many buyers are saving and preparing for sales during the holidays, a well-timed discount can trigger an impulse buy. A buyer might immediately buy an item or several, even if they were undecided before seeing the sale.
Holiday season sales are an excellent tool for reducing friction to purchase and triggering impulse buys among buyers, and gamers are no exception.
Creating a New Game Sales Category or Event
Another tactic worth noting is creating a new cultural event for your brand or store, which requires a certain ‘critical mass’ of buyer awareness.
Steam is a great example of a store with multiple themed sales on Steam’s Special Offers page.
Even though most gaming stores (to put it mildly) are not Steam-sized, an imaginative and consistent marketing campaign for a branded and unique sales period can differentiate a game store. By being consistent, the store gives buyers a date or date range to look forward to benefiting from lower prices on items they’ve been eyeing.
Tips for Sales and Discounts in Online Stores
- Start planning your sales early: This will give you time to create a budget, develop marketing materials, and prepare your inventory.
- Recovery Discount. Offer a discount to sweeten the deal and entice buyers to return and complete their purchase.
- Discount Categories, Not Just Selected Items. Select a list of categories to apply the recovery discount. For example, if a buyer is tempted to buy a recovery pack, they may be interested in buying additional packs if the price is right.
- Combine Email with In-Game Messages. More touchpoints mean that buyers have more opportunities to reconsider the abandoned items. You should configure messages to be sent to the customer in-game in addition to email to ensure they are notified about the discount they are offered.
A word about statistics: The average eCommerce store benchmark for 2.5-3% conversion for new customers is considered a good rate.
Community and Influencer Engagement in Gaming
Community engagement is a powerful way for gaming store owners to boost revenue by fostering a loyal and active customer base. Here are some key tactics:
- Leverage Social Platforms: Utilize Discord and social media (e.g., X.com/Twitter, YouTube) to connect with customers, share updates, and promote products or events like sales and coupons. Building visibility creates trust, drives traffic, and generates more buzz around your store and offerings.
- Customer-Centered Growth: Engage the community by asking for feedback, addressing concerns, and encouraging involvement. This creates a welcoming environment for new and returning customers alike. Remember that engaging the community helps reiterate the tone of your brand as you’re ‘talking’ directly with your market.
- Community-Driven Marketing: Maximize awareness through frequent updates and community-focused initiatives. Active engagement keeps customers informed and encourages repeat purchases.
Consider creating and using community events, in addition to events around holidays and well-known sales days like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, to build a stronger, engaged customer base.
Creator Codes and Influencer Engagement
Involving content creators and influencers in the discount marketing campaign can boost sales and increase your brand visibility by tapping into their audience and followers.
Creator Codes allow your customers to support your streamers and other creators while removing all the headaches around handling payouts. You can create a code that will automatically send a predefined percentage of the payment to your creator's wallet.
With Tebex you can easily modify the following options to customize gaming creator codes to your specific needs:
- Code: Unique code that names the creator code the buyer will use
- Revenue share: The % of revenue that will go to the creator
- Customer discount: The % discount received by customers.
So What's Next?
Running a successful game store requires more than offering great products—it demands a strategic approach to sales, discounts, community engagement, and more.
By implementing the right tactics, store owners can maximize revenue and build long-lasting customer relationships. If you want to take your game store to the next level and explore how Tebex can help you optimize your sales and strategies, contact us at Tebex.io to get started.