You’ve put in the work. You’ve got a game you know people are going to love. But marketing a board game is difficult. Now what? How do you get people to know about your game? – let alone care…
How do you grow your audience and build a community of gamers who are enthusiastic about your game – especially with how crowded the world of board game design has become. This is exactly what we faced when we realized our game was almost finished.
We’ve spent countless hours pouring over what the community has to say about this. Guess what the most common answer we get is:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There isn’t one.
There are some “best practices” that people have seen results from. And sometimes you get lucky in one way or another. But it’s incredibly hard to break through the noise of over 4000 game releases in a year!
All that said, we want to talk about one of those best practices that has worked very well for us: game conventions. Everyone is there because they love games. They’re looking for the next one. What better way to interact with board game fans than at a board game convention?
The question becomes then, once you have a booth at a convention, how do you make the most of it? We just recently presented Alynthia at BostonFIG (a convention for unpublished games), and we learned several things about how to make and run an effective convention booth.
Create Inviting Decorations
In an ideal world, people would always gravitate towards the best product regardless of how glitzy it looks. But in the real world, even if you have an amazing game, you need to get people’s attention. The way your booth looks makes a huge difference in the number of people who want to check it out. That gives you the chance to interact with them.
Match your theme.
Be prepared – people are going to touch your decorations. They need to be pretty sturdy and still look awesome.
Since the best board games have rich and compelling themes, make sure that your booth decorations enhance that theme. Since Alynthia is set in a Dragon-ravaged land, we created “ruins” by breaking some decorative plaster pillars we found at a local craft store and painting them with a textured stone spray.
We then got some twigs to make a nest and glued foam “scales” onto a styrofoam egg to create Dragon eggs.
Quality matters. A lot.
You’ve probably spent hundreds of hours on making your game perfect. Your decorations need to reflect the same quality. People are going to judge you before they even see your game. Make sure it’s a good first impression. We heard from many people at BostonFIG that our decorations and banners were the reason they stopped by, so make sure you invest in your booth’s appearance.
Xplody at BostonFIG.
We pulled out all the stops for this convention. Remember, there are tons of game publishers that would be happy to talk to that person who’s walking by. You need to grab them. Go big or go home, right? Here’s what we did:
A professional banner
Of all the decorations you could pay for, this is the most important! A professional banner for your booth will communicate the name of your game and also give your booth a quality image.
A couple tips:
- Make sure it’s easy to read from a distance – 20ft or more. Ours was legible from the other side of the room, and it really stood out.
- Hang it as high up as possible – above head height if you can. Low stuff is only visible when you’re AT the booth.
- Make sure you bring rope, zip ties, scissors, and tape! We used all of those to get everything set up.
A professional standup banner
There was some debate on our team about needing this, but it did several things for us that made us glad we had it. We ended up having a corner booth (which was great), so we had to find a way to advertise to two sides at the same time. We decided to put our banner along one side and the stand up banner (mostly) facing the other side.
The standup banner also allowed us to prominently display our company name as well as a sneak peak at our next game.
Giveaways
Everyone wanted a button. Ignore the “Scarlet Letter” vibes.
The venue didn’t allow us to bring stickers, the most common convention giveaway, so we got creative:
- First, we had business cards with our company info on one side and game info on the other.
- Second, we had custom mini buttons made that we presented in a box that looked like a treasure chest.
- Third, we had a raffle running to get one of three prizes if visitors signed up for our email list (more on that later). We showcased our raffle prizes in an old wooden box that we salvaged from a family member’s basement. It kept things on theme and had the added effect of drawing people in to ask questions.
Alynthia ‘A’ logo
Cut from a single piece of foam board and spray painted to look metallic, this was a completely hand made decoration that did a great job of reflecting the game’s theme and finishing out the space.
This is plaster and spray paint, and it grabbed everyone’s attention.
Themed decorations
We already talked a little about these, but they were a fantastic addition to the booth. They drew in kids and adults alike, they looked awesome while conveying quality and theme, and they were fun to make!
Various signs
Aside from our banners, all our signs were just printed on regular paper and put in clear table sign holders, but they really helped to explain our booth to everyone – from the raffle announcement to getting people to play the game to getting votes from the crowd (It was a convention with awards. Yeah, we got one!)
Tables and chairs
Many venues will offer a table and chairs for each booth. Most venues don’t have nice tables and chairs. We brought our own, and it added to the overall feeling of quality. Every other booth made you sit on metal chairs, but our booth? Padded seats, baby!
Make sure you have a nice tablecloth! We can’t stress this enough. It’s crucial to presenting everything else in a good way. We picked ours out to compliment Alynthia’s color scheme and we brought a lint roller to make sure they looked great.
Prepare a Pitch Pipeline
Now that people are stopping at your booth because of your incredible decorations, you need to give them your pitch as efficiently as possible. To engage with as many people as you can, it’s important to identify the different types of people who will engage with you and have a pitch ready for each stage:
- Some won’t come to your booth, or they don’t want you to talk to them. We had someone standing in the aisle who would go up to people and start the conversation, directing them to our table. This was very helpful to get people who may not have otherwise stopped to take a look.
- Some just want to hear the quick pitch, and move on. For that first pitch, it’s important to prepare a summary of your game’s highlights. What makes your game unique and why should people care? Be prepared for them to move on. This is okay! You want people to be excited about your game, and twisting their arm is not the way to get that.
- Some people will want to see more of the game, so we found it helpful to have a short demo of the game that we ran to give a taste of the game. We chose to show an example turn, which allowed us to explain the game to multiple people at a time, illustrating the mechanics in a short 10-15 minute slice and creating a space to answer questions about the game.
- Finally, some people are so excited that they want to play the game. It’s so exciting to see as a designer. If your game is longer (like Alynthia is), consider letting people play a shorter slice of the game to ensure more people have a chance to play. We didn’t do this until two thirds of the way through the day, and we ended up having a waitlist of potential players. It was helpful to have someone helping to guide the players through the game to keep the experience flowing smoothly.
Email Signups
No matter what type of person you interact with at a convention, you want to call them to action in an accessible way. People will forget about things if a connection isn’t established, and having an email signup is a great way to create that connection.
If you’re hoping to use Kickstarter (like we are), building a high-quality email list will give you a much better chance of successfully funding. We decided to run a raffle with our email signup. Every person who signed up had a chance to win one of three board-game-related prizes. Raffles give people who are on the fence some extra incentive to sign up. They’re also one way to build a good relationship with your customer base.
First Impressions Matter
Prepping your booth for a convention isn’t just a matter of making it pretty (but that doesn’t hurt). It’s also about communicating with potential customers that your game deserves their attention. It shows that you are invested in your game and that you’re focused on quality in everything you do. It’s also an opportunity for you to express your personality as a board game designer or publisher and allows you to take one step closer to success.
The result? Our email list grew a lot, we had several people tell us they wanted to buy Alynthia then and there, and, of course, we can now say that Alynthia is an award-winning game. Good luck presenting your game at conventions!