The Manaverse Podcast

Today we're talking with Pat Fuge. Pat is the Head Gnome of Gnome Games, Wisconsin’s Family Game store, with locations across the Fox Valley for customers to shop and play in. Pat talks about the early days of Gnome Games and how his approach to planning has helped expand to multiple locations and even venture into the world of gaming cafes.

https://gnomegames.com/

https://www.facebook.com/GnomeGamesWorld/

Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up fast, and right after that is the busiest shopping season of the year. If you want to make the most of the last two months of 2022, marketing your game store online should be at the top of your list which is why the FLGS Digital Marketing Bootcamp is back starting Nov 7, 2022.

We're taking all the strategies that we use for our clients and teaching the frameworks we use to drive online and foot traffic from Google and social media, build up an email list of paying customers, send campaigns that sell, and run ads on Facebook and Google that generate thousands of dollars in sales each month.

It's going to be 6 days of live training with a value-packed hour session each day plus a little Q&A at the end.

In case you need a little more incentive, Bootcamp attendees that go on to become MMA clients in the future will get the price of the Bootcamp discounted on the program!

We're keeping the Bootcamp small so the sessions can have the maximum impact, so if you want to be one of the 10 attendees for the last Bootcamp of the year, now's the time to join us!

Go to manaversesaga.com/bootcamp and enroll today.

Today we're talking with Rob Gruber, aka The Elf King. Rob is the owner of Good Times Games in Prince Rupert, British Columbia and he's built an incredible business by becoming somewhat of a local celebrity and personality. Rob plays the game store game a little bit differently and today we're going to talk about his approach to working within a small community and what sets his business apart.

Links

https://good-times-games.myshopify.com/

Good Times Games on Facebook

If your shop is based in the US, your game store's website may be a huge liability for you. Recently passed legislation has made the internet a public accommodation and that means that if your website isn't accessible, you're at risk of serious fines from the government and especially lawsuits. Game stores in particular are being targeted by a law firm in New York and if you don't want to be served with a five digit lawsuit, you need a solution. The best option on the market is AccessiBe. AccessiBe is an affordable AI based app that automatically makes your website accessible for all sorts of people and protects you with an accessibility statement and litigation support. It's an all in one win-win solution for game stores that only takes 48 hours to protect your business and make it more accessible to the people that need it. You can sign up for a free 7 day trial by going to manaversesaga.com/ada and protect your business starting today. Go to manaversesaga.com/ada now.

I'm also looking for a few more stores that want to make the end of 2022 their best quarter yet! I'm opening up a few more slots for clients of the Manaverse Marketing Agency this month so if you're either in the start up phase of opening up your game store and want to kick things off with a powerful digital marketing strategy that's been proven to attract customers and drive sales from day 1, or you're an established game store that wants to expand operations and use digital strategies like email marketing and paid advertising to grow rapidly, let's chat! Go to manaversesaga.com/mma and we'll put together a custom Q4 marketing plan for your business and talk about how we can make it happen for you!

Here's what we know

If you've been active in the game store owner groups on Facebook you've probably seen the posts recently about game stores and publishers being targeted by a law firm in New York and being sued for lack of ADA compliance.

So far they've sued Crafty Games of Washington, Games of Berkeley in California, Black Rowan Games in Tracy, California, GMT Games in Hanford, California, GameScape North in San Rafael, California, GameKastle and more. This is not an exhaustive list by any means but California in particular seems to be a hotspot.

But let's back it up a bit.

What exactly is accessibility and ADA compliance?

Without getting too into the weeds on the legislation, web accessibility is essentially a set of rules, behaviors, code standards, and design guidelines that were created by the W3C and are called the WCAG 2.1. The WCAG 2.1 is a massive 1,000-page guidebook that encapsulates a range of disabilities that go from hindering internet use to making internet use impossible without adjustments. This spectrum actually comprises 20-25% of the general population depending on if we're going with the CDC or WHO. There are many disabilities covered, and the primary categories that require attention are:

● blind people using screen-readers,

● the motor-impaired using only the keyboard to navigate,

● epilepsy, color blindness,

● cognitive and learning disabilities,

● visual impairments, and more.

What are the risks of having a non-compliant website?

Non-compliance penalties are no joke, as they can go as high as $75,000 even for the first violation. The more you fail to respect the requirements, the higher the penalties will be.

As a small business, it is in your interest to ensure that your website is accessible to people with disabilities. Not only will this increase the number of customers you can serve, but it will also protect you from some nasty fines and lawsuits.

From what we're seeing, the firm going around and suing game stores is usually looking for settlement amounts in the $20k range and they apparently do this for a living. And part of the shakedown is when they serve game stores the lawsuit, in order to become compliant they suggest working with specific companies they are associated with. So in some cases, not only do they exhort a settlement from the business, they also generate revenue for their associates at the same time.

What can you do about it?

So you basically have three options. Two of which I recommend and one that's mostly a waste of time. The first one is to go with a web accessibility plugin. These are usually free or very inexpensive and apparently get a website to about 10% of the way there. You probably shouldn't go this route since your business will still be exposed to the risk of lawsuits and fines, and it's not particularly effective on the actual accessibility side of things.

The second is to hire a company to make the necessary changes for you. This is the most expensive option, but if you can find a good web developer to work with that can show you what needs to be changed, you can also get your staff to do the work by hand over time. For stores with big websites this can be a major challenge since even just adding alt text to potentially thousands of product images and pages is a ton of work. This kind of work can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 and takes months to accomplish.

If you've built out the inventory for your online store you know what I'm talking about. Imagine doing that all over again, or paying someone else to do it.

The third solution is something more AI based like AccessiBe.

Full disclosure here. I recently worked with a client to figure out how we should protect their new store from these lawsuits and we settled on AccessiBe because it was clearly the best option on the market from our perspective. Since then I've joined their partner program and am going to be recommending their product for clients we work with moving forward.

I get a commission when I refer someone to AccessiBe so keep that in mind, but I believe it's by far the best solution on the market right now for protecting your business. You can sign up for AccessiBe and get your website protected today by going to manaversesaga.com/ada

Client's that sign up with the Manaverse Marketing Agency also get a special discount on AccessiBe, but I'll talk about that a bit later.

AccessiBe is an AI-powered machine-learning software that was developed with the understanding that successfully automating the process creates a simple, immediate, affordable,and compliant solution that serves as a win-win for the business owner and people with disabilities.

Without getting too technical, AccessiBe uses AI to analyze your website and automatically generates all the additional meta data that accessibility tools require to process your site. After around 48 hours after installation, the software generates all the necessary changes and when someone visits your website, they can use the widget to convert the site into whatever format they need.

Things like increasing the font size, adjusting the contrast, enabling keyboard navigation, to making it completely readable on a screen reader. The tech nerd in me loves the automation aspects of how it works and what's cool about it is that the more websites the AI analyzes, the better it gets at comprehending images and graphics accurately.

Once everything is processed, the software checks every 24 hours for new pages on your website and automatically updates them as well. So there's no additional work when new products are added to your store's site.

On the compliance side of things, your website gets an accessibility statement which is one of the legal requirements and very important in the case of a lawsuit. And in the eventuality of a lawsuit, AccessiBe also offers a Litigation Support Package, at no extra cost, in the case that your website's compliance is challenged. Along with their personal attention, the package includes professional audits, reports, accessibility mapping, compliance supporting documentation, guidance, and more.

Conclusion

So basically, AccessiBe should cover all the bases when it comes to accessibility and protecting you from lawsuits, and it's something that every game store owner with a website based in North America should be thinking about right now. I can't speak specifically to those of you listening in Europe but accessibility is still a worthy effort even if there isn't a distinct risk of a frivolous lawsuit coming your way.

If you want to get started with AccessiBe right now go to manaversesaga.com/ada and get signed up today.

Or reach out to me at [email protected] and let's chat about marketing your game store while also getting a discount on getting your website accessible at the same.

If you're currently one of the stores being sued, I definitely recommend you check out AccessiBe as an option. Even in the result of the lawsuit going to court, showing that you're taking steps to become compliant can go a long way.

Feel free to send me any questions you've got too.

New round table episode!

• Wizard's new $999 Beta booster pack product,
• The future of the friendly local game store,
• Are game cafes the natural evolution of the FLGS?
• What separates good retail from bad,
• And more.

Matthew Vercant and Pat Fuge join me to discuss the future of the friendly local game store and speculate on the future of Magic: the Gathering. Are lawsuits incoming? Is the game cafe model the only way to succeed in a world of ecommerce?

Listen to the episode and let us know what you think is coming over the next 10 years!

Just Games Rochester

• https://www.justgamesrochester.com/
• https://facebook.com/justgamesrochester
• https://instagram.com/justgamesrochester
• https://twitter.com/justgamesroc
• [email protected]

Gnome Games

• https://gnomegames.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/GnomeGamesWorld/
• https://www.facebook.com/GnomeGames

If you're in the start up phase of opening up your game store and want to kick things off with a powerful digital marketing strategy that's been proven to attract customers and drive sales from day 1, or you're an established game store that wants to expand operations and use digital strategies like email marketing and paid advertising to grow rapidly, let's chat! Go to manaversesaga.com/mma and we'll put together a custom Q4 marketing plan for your business and talk about how we can make it happen for you!

Today we're talking with Jason Garvin. Jason is the manager of Total Escape Games, a premium retailer of tabletop games, carrying a vast array of role-playing games, card games, miniatures games, board games, and more in Broomfield Colorado. Jason is going to give us some insight into the origins of the store, dealing with the day to day operations of running a large retail focused game store, how to manage an almost completely hands off owner of the business. So if you want to understand how to build a game store that runs without you as the owner being there all the time, it's time to pay close attention.

I'm opening up a few more slots for clients of the Manaverse Marketing Agency this month so if you're either in the start up phase of opening up your game store and want to kick things off with a powerful digital marketing strategy that's been proven to attract customers and drive sales from day 1, or you're an established game store that wants to expand operations and use digital strategies like email marketing and paid advertising to grow rapidly, let's chat! Go to manaversesaga.com/mma and we'll put together a custom Q4 marketing plan for your business and talk about how we can make it happen for you!

Hey, welcome back to the Manaverse Podcast! I'm your host Tom Traplin and this is the podcast where we explore what it takes to build a successful friendly local game store.

Before we jump into things, Q4 is coming and I'm looking for more game store owners to feature on the podcast, so if you get an email or phone call from me in the near future don't be too surprised. If you want a chance to tell the story of your game store and get featured on the podcast, I would love to talk to you! Send me an email at [email protected] and you could be my next featured guest on the podcast.

I'm also looking for a few more stores that want to make the end of 2022 their best quarter yet! I'm opening up a few more slots for clients of the Manaverse Marketing Agency this month so if you're either in the start up phase of opening up your game store and want to kick things off with a powerful digital marketing strategy that's been proven to attract customers and drive sales from day 1, or you're an established game store that wants to expand operations and use digital strategies like email marketing and paid advertising to grow rapidly, let's chat! Go to manaversesaga.com/mma and we'll put together a custom Q4 marketing plan for your business and talk about how we can make it happen for you!

So today we're talking about an article recently published by Polygon titled Long live the friendly local tabletop game store. I'm not going to read the whole thing in it's entirety but I definitely recommend you check it out right here.

Jake Tanner is the owner Unplugged Gaming in Manlius New York. Jake came into the tabletop gaming business from a different angle than most of the game store owners that have been featured on the podcast.

Before launching Unplugged Gaming, Jake, along with his business partner, owned and operated a highly lauded digital marketing firm called Digital Hyve that they grew to over 50 employees over a handful of years. Digital Hyve was acquired by the advertising firm Butler/Till last year, which allowed Jake to explore his other passions.

Unplugged Gaming launched this past November and on day one they did over $14,000 in sales, since then they have done over $270,000 in in store sales and are on track for a spectacular year one. We're going to dig into the Unplugged Gaming launch strategy and talk about how Jake and company got their business off to a great start.

We talked about:

• The Unplugged Gaming origin story.
• How Jake built a group of raving fans on Facebook before launching his online store, and how that helped them start the business with a huge amount of momentum and sales.
• How focusing on SEO early on helped attract a major online influencer and how their deal doubled Unplugged Gaming's traffic.
• The most important thing a new store owner can do before opening their game store.
• The one piece of technology that Jake couldn't do without for running his business.
• How digital marketing can be used to grow and launch a game store in 2022.

You can get a digital marketing strategy created for your game store in the next 24 hours that gives you the blueprint for generating new sales and customers on autopilot. All you have to do is go to manaversesaga.com/growmylgs and put your information in and we'll put together a 90 day marketing plan that covers how to optimize your website for organic traffic, how to capture people on an email list that let's you sell to them again and again, what to post on social media so your game store stays top of mind for your customers, and how to run Facebook and Google ads that sell like crazy. If you want to be able to make sales 24 hours a day and reach new customers outside of your existing community, you need to make digital marketing a priority for your business. Kick off your digital marketing by going to manaversesaga.com/growmylgs

For most game store owners, SEO is techno jargon. Something that only the biggest ecommerce businesses need to think about. I've also heard variations of the sentiment that it’s impossible to compete with the big players like BGG and Amazon in the search engines.

That’s only half true. SEO definitely sounds like the kind of techno jargon you'd hear from a Priest of the Mechanicum, but your website can absolutely compete with places like Amazon when it comes to the search engines. You just need to pick your battlefields.

Your game stores' website isn't going to outrank Amazon for a particular keyword in the global sense, but search isn’t just worldwide. Google takes geography into account and someone searching for something in New York isn’t going to get the same results as someone in California or the UK.

Your website can definitely rank and get organic search traffic for keywords that matter to your business, it just takes some effort and little strategic thinking, which is luckily something game store owners are good at.

Get a quick crash course in the basics of search engine optimization and how to create pages on your game store's website that turn random visitors into paying customers.

You can get a digital marketing strategy created for your game store in the next 24 hours that gives you the blueprint for generating new sales and customers on autopilot. All you have to do is go to manaversesaga.com/growmylgs and put your information in and we'll put together a 90 day marketing plan that covers how to optimize your website for organic traffic, how to capture people on an email list that let's you sell to them again and again, what to post on social media so your game store stays top of mind for your customers, and how to run Facebook and Google ads that sell like crazy. Having a digital marketing strategy for your game store is one of the most important moves you can make in 2022. Customers are spending more time online and are expecting to be able to interact and shop at your store in the same way. If you want to be able to make sales 24 hours a day and reach new customers outside of your existing community, you need to make digital marketing a priority for your business. Kick off your digital marketing by going to manaversesaga.com/growmylgs

Dustin is the owner and founder of Board Gaming with Education and BGE Tabletop. He has experience teaching English as a second language to a variety of age levels – from kindergarten to university. He also works in the field of education in various capacities. BGE started off as podcast in 2017 and has expanded into a platform for educators to learn how to incorporate games into their curriculum, with a brick and mortar storefront planned for 2022.

Links

https://www.boardgamingwitheducation.com/

https://bgetabletop.com/

Why We Buy by Paco Underhill

https://www.facebook.com/groups/openinggamestore

BinderPOS

Crystal Commerce

Shopify

You can get your customized digital marketing plan right now by going to manaversesaga.com/mma to book your free strategy session.

Once that's booked we'll do a full assessment of your current digital presence. We'll do a deep dive into each of the six elements of digital marketing for your game store to identify what's working and what's missing. Then we put together a customized strategy for your business, and then when we're on the call we will work together to identify the unique aspects of your brand that set you apart from your competitors, as well as figure out who your ideal customer is and how to attract more of them.

At the end of the call you will have a framework for building out a complete digital marketing strategy for your game store and can find out how we can get that all implemented for you over the next 90 days.

Make 2022 your best year yet. Book your strategy session today by going to manaversesaga.com/mma