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Greetings once more - your favourite supplemental GAD fest is back again, taunting you with prizes you probably won't win like a carrot in front of a donkey. If you didn't love it, you wouldn't keep coming back.
Something a little different this time, in that this competition actually requires you to think a little rather than splatter your 'artistic' daubings on a banner :) What we'd like you to do is come up with some ways in which Special Reserve could promote themselves effectively. Bear in mind we haven't exactly got the backing of the Sultan of Brunei, we'd like you to drop us a few ideas on how best to get across the fact that Special Reserve are cheap, reliable and have a wide product range.
This could be improvements to ways we currently run things, new product ranges you think would appeal to our customers (bear in mind we currently sell rather a lot of stuff - see left sidestrip), new exciting ways to advertise our existing offers or just any ideas that have been floating round your head. Is there some range of products you just can't get hold of that would be perfect for us to sell? Let us know!
Post your ideas in this thread and we'll announce a winner at around the end of February, let's say the 27th. The best suggestions will win whatever prizes we give them, most probably yer standard £25/£50 GAD prize.
(And before anyone brings it up, yes we do think about this stuff ourselves, but we wanted to see what you lot think as well. So button it!)
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And the winner is..... phi11ip, for the following suggestion:
"Here's an idea, and if carried out correctly could be very beneficial. I've got a nice example too just to prove to you just how beneficial it is. www.staghosting.com was a free hosting service set up last year with the intention of boosting the ratings of a a few sites belonging to a company, one of these sites was www.actiondays.co.uk. Basically, unlike your free hosting, this hosting only offered hosting to domain names, you get 200MB disk space and 4 Gig bandwidth a month, you can upload from any connection unlike Freeola. So basically the company which has nothing to do with hosting has just set up a hosting site, sounds stupid doesn't it? What the requirements of this free hosting are though is that you must display a couple of small text links on your site, on mine you can see them on the links section on the side of the page. Google counts each link as a 'vote' and increases the pagerank of the site in question meaning that it shows up higher in searches, I see you've got 'cheap games' pretty much sorted but you don't show up anywhere when 'PS2 games' is typed in. If people were to display these text links on their sites it would soon make you appear high up on the search results. www.actiondays.co.uk was absolutely nowhere when it started, it had a low pagerank and didn't appear on searches. Have a look now though and you'll see that searching for 'corporate event' on Google.com returns the site as number 2 out of 6,500,000. Think about it. You've already got the hosting capabilities, all it would require is a server and someone to monitor the sites every now and then to make sure the links are there."
Congratulations and well done to everyone who entered.
Something a little different this time, in that this competition actually requires you to think a little rather than splatter your 'artistic' daubings on a banner :) What we'd like you to do is come up with some ways in which Special Reserve could promote themselves effectively. Bear in mind we haven't exactly got the backing of the Sultan of Brunei, we'd like you to drop us a few ideas on how best to get across the fact that Special Reserve are cheap, reliable and have a wide product range.
This could be improvements to ways we currently run things, new product ranges you think would appeal to our customers (bear in mind we currently sell rather a lot of stuff - see left sidestrip), new exciting ways to advertise our existing offers or just any ideas that have been floating round your head. Is there some range of products you just can't get hold of that would be perfect for us to sell? Let us know!
Post your ideas in this thread and we'll announce a winner at around the end of February, let's say the 27th. The best suggestions will win whatever prizes we give them, most probably yer standard £25/£50 GAD prize.
(And before anyone brings it up, yes we do think about this stuff ourselves, but we wanted to see what you lot think as well. So button it!)
---------------------------------------------------------
And the winner is..... phi11ip, for the following suggestion:
"Here's an idea, and if carried out correctly could be very beneficial. I've got a nice example too just to prove to you just how beneficial it is. www.staghosting.com was a free hosting service set up last year with the intention of boosting the ratings of a a few sites belonging to a company, one of these sites was www.actiondays.co.uk. Basically, unlike your free hosting, this hosting only offered hosting to domain names, you get 200MB disk space and 4 Gig bandwidth a month, you can upload from any connection unlike Freeola. So basically the company which has nothing to do with hosting has just set up a hosting site, sounds stupid doesn't it? What the requirements of this free hosting are though is that you must display a couple of small text links on your site, on mine you can see them on the links section on the side of the page. Google counts each link as a 'vote' and increases the pagerank of the site in question meaning that it shows up higher in searches, I see you've got 'cheap games' pretty much sorted but you don't show up anywhere when 'PS2 games' is typed in. If people were to display these text links on their sites it would soon make you appear high up on the search results. www.actiondays.co.uk was absolutely nowhere when it started, it had a low pagerank and didn't appear on searches. Have a look now though and you'll see that searching for 'corporate event' on Google.com returns the site as number 2 out of 6,500,000. Think about it. You've already got the hosting capabilities, all it would require is a server and someone to monitor the sites every now and then to make sure the links are there."
Congratulations and well done to everyone who entered.
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I love the way one simple suggestion receives a reply like that!
Plus I've now referred over 350 people to the site, going by my previous experiences nobody would have bought anything, you might have got a few signups at the forums though as the Gameaday banner is sligtly more popular than the PS2 one...
Are there any more advertising techniques that haven't been used yet?
Plus I've now referred over 350 people to the site, going by my previous experiences nobody would have bought anything, you might have got a few signups at the forums though as the Gameaday banner is sligtly more popular than the PS2 one...
Are there any more advertising techniques that haven't been used yet?
Belldandy wrote:
> Accept Paypal as a payment method
That is bloody stupid.
You nonse, you use pay pal to pay someone with your credit card. You have to use your credit card on the site anyway, what would be the point?!
> Accept Paypal as a payment method
That is bloody stupid.
You nonse, you use pay pal to pay someone with your credit card. You have to use your credit card on the site anyway, what would be the point?!
Maybe someone's already said this but you should sort out your amazon-style 'if you liked this item then maybe you should buy....' thing. I bought Mario Kart and it reccommended that I buy a Gamecube - um, yeah, cheers, lucky you reminded me. And the game turned out to be rubbish too. That was one sad day in the kernel household.
Do a weekly/twice weekly gaming related cartoon strip on the site front page - http://www.pvponline.com/ is an excellent example of a strip themed around gaming/computer type things (most days). Must be someone out there willing to work for relatively nothing just to get their work published with a proper company.
Organise promotional giveaway with whatever related magazines you can find - even something as simple as a 3 month free membership - that way people have to go into your stores to claim it. Should be able to setup a way to redeem it online as well.
Start doing auctions on eBay for games - it would spread brand awareness and get more people on a mailing list, plus it could encourage repeat buyers and traffic to the site.
Accept Paypal as a payment method
Daft idea this, but anyway...have live webcam showing the SR office during working hours.
Have some kind of online customer service committment. Say, all queries posted in the customer service forum which include a real order number will be answered within 48 hours at the most. A lot of people don't have time to mess around on the phone or work odd hours so this could be good.
Run preorder competitions for certain big name titles - an example would be Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. You preorder it, then you get to enter a competition and include your order number with your email entry. Winner(s) get some kind of prize such as a free gad, special prize, etc
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