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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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Hi,
I think special reserve should have a games festival in every shop, like a comptition, and whoever wins all the rounds of the game in their shop goes to the final, which is in one of the shops (picked at random)to play the winners of the other shops, so that every body who got to the final plays everybody else that got to the final, and who ever wins the WHOLE thing, gets a big prize, or lots of little ones.
I WILL LEAVE THE REST TO YOU, MR SPECIAL RESERVE.
I think special reserve should have a games festival in every shop, like a comptition, and whoever wins all the rounds of the game in their shop goes to the final, which is in one of the shops (picked at random)to play the winners of the other shops, so that every body who got to the final plays everybody else that got to the final, and who ever wins the WHOLE thing, gets a big prize, or lots of little ones.
I WILL LEAVE THE REST TO YOU, MR SPECIAL RESERVE.
Have more copies of new games ordered to your store. I once pre ordered GTA Vice City from one of your stores and I phoned up to see if it was there and the guy who answered the phone said there were none left because people came into the shop and bought it off the shelf. Pre order means your guaranteed a copy and when that doesn't happen you loose customers, believe me I didn't go to a Special Reserve store for a year.
I got one:
Build a chain of pet shops accross the UK, and sell discount pets. And when you buy 5 pets you get 1 free.
Pets need alot of food. I think. So you would get people coming back to buy food from your stores so you would get more sales.
You could also construct your own kind of pedigree dog. Call them Maxx and sell them at cheap prices.
Make a membership side to the pet shop, people could sign up and get a magazine every month with the latest pet news and reviews.
Then set up an internet forum where people can discuss their pets and then also set up PAD (Pet a Day) where if you write a review or walkthrough for a pet, like how to walk it or something then they win a pet of their choice for under £50. This would happen every day ofcourse and would attract loads of people to the site.
Man, it's a genious idea.
Build a chain of pet shops accross the UK, and sell discount pets. And when you buy 5 pets you get 1 free.
Pets need alot of food. I think. So you would get people coming back to buy food from your stores so you would get more sales.
You could also construct your own kind of pedigree dog. Call them Maxx and sell them at cheap prices.
Make a membership side to the pet shop, people could sign up and get a magazine every month with the latest pet news and reviews.
Then set up an internet forum where people can discuss their pets and then also set up PAD (Pet a Day) where if you write a review or walkthrough for a pet, like how to walk it or something then they win a pet of their choice for under £50. This would happen every day ofcourse and would attract loads of people to the site.
Man, it's a genious idea.
Can't find my original post so here's the gist again:
Have a monthly draw of membership numbers whoevers number gets drawn wins a GAD.
And a new one:
Run a league or create a few teams on Team compete/XBteam and offer prizes if the teams get to a certain level.
If you made your own league/leagues then perhaps membership to the league/leagues could be bought with reddies, cash/credit card etc or available for free if you purchased the games played in the leagues from SR.
Have a monthly draw of membership numbers whoevers number gets drawn wins a GAD.
And a new one:
Run a league or create a few teams on Team compete/XBteam and offer prizes if the teams get to a certain level.
If you made your own league/leagues then perhaps membership to the league/leagues could be bought with reddies, cash/credit card etc or available for free if you purchased the games played in the leagues from SR.
On each page have a scrolling text bar that has the latest offers on, and change it every few days. A lot of the time there are some good prices here for stuff but there is so much to look at...
Set up a site devoted to dancemat games across all systems, you could tie in Eye Toy and suchlike. Probably something imaginative like UKdancemat.com or something...
When a person joins or renews send them a voucher which they can give to a friend and that friend can then get half price membership BUT obviously doesn't get a voucher themselves. The person who gave them a voucher then gets a reddy.
Don't charge for game preorders until you dispatch or begin to process them OR if this is not possible because of your payments system then offer a better incentive - how about double reddies for every preorder over a certain value, say £29.99 ? You'd need a price limit else you'd get people preordering pc expansion packs at 14.99 and getting double reddies and I don't think you have a great margin on cheaper stuff.
Sell a selection of gaming magazines online - e.g. Official Xbox Magazine, Nintendo Official Magazine, Official Playstation 2 Magazine, Edge, Games TM or whatever.
You probably cannot discount them BUT you can do free postage and all of them will fit in one of your padded bag sizes and at second class postage it won't break the bank. Probably.
You probably cannot discount them BUT you can do free postage and all of them will fit in one of your padded bag sizes and at second class postage it won't break the bank. Probably.
Sell a small (at first) range of Anime DVD titles from the web site - do ADV titles, Manga Entertainment titles and MVM titles. Anime should )hopefully) be massive this year with loads of new releases and Ghost In The Shell 2 coming out at the cinema. My local comic store does these and if he can manage a reasonable selection SR should be able to.
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