Christmas Campaigns and the Abominable Snowman

The Wife’s Perspective on Efforts to Support Game Development

We’ve been working hard to develop financial supply lines for game development without taking time from development efforts. The Shop is one product of our work, and it has come with many challenges, not the least of which is puzzling out marketing. During a recent brainstorm to get some air under our wings, we thought of a Christmas campaign aimed at Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.  

The first piece of our marketing puzzle was the shop. To create a holiday feel, we decided to decorate the Shop for Christmas. With its halls decked for the holidays, the Shop is now a very festive little place.

Another puzzle piece involved developing holiday items to feature in the shop. Chris is putting together some Christmas T-Shirts, a magical winter print of the Jemez River (East Fork), and possibly some motion graphics, which can serve as screensavers or be downloaded into digital frames.  

Price is a tricky piece of any small businesses marketing puzzle. Chris worked on setting prices that will appeal to buyers, account for costs, and leave a small profit margin. For our discounts, we tried to find a balance that allowed for good deals without erasing our profit margin. We settled on 20% off for Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, with a 15% discount afterward for Christmas shopping. 

The fourth and most challenging puzzle piece for us is promotion. We’ve been carefully crafting posts and web content, seasoning our words with a mix of friendliness, calls to action, and SEO (search engine optimization). As people who might fit in well on the island of misfit toys (at least in respect to social media), trying to get attention on social media feels like a show down with the abominable snowman. But we are determined.

Still, none of this matters without your participation, which is the hidden piece of the marketing puzzle. What can you do? Just visiting the shop helps us out, but if you find something on your Christmas list, go ahead and buy it. Also, liking and sharing our posts on social media costs only a second, but adds great value for us.  

It’s been a challenge to put together this puzzle, and it has taken more time from development than we’d like, but hopefully it will result in some financial oxygen. At the very least, it will result in experience and information, and we might even have some fun in the process.