Pokemon Go – A Marketing Opportunity?
Pokemon spotted in Clip ‘n Climb Laval!
With its overnight success, Pokemon Go is taking both the video game world and the real world by storm. Why? Because it is a free-to-play mobile application (IOS or Android), that incorporates a concept known as augmented reality. Using one’s smartphone’s gps/camera capabilities, the game enables users to find cute, little creatures called Pokemon in the world around them, which they can then catch and train and use to interact with others. The game bridges the gap between the reality and the digital, all while building upon the existing success of a transcendently popular gaming franchise.
But you might ask,
why would we care about the success of one simple mobile application? For starters, it has more daily users than twitter. That is an impressive statistic alone, but the opportunities that it presents are even more impressive.
Pokemon Go offers up new mediums for marketing that have yet to exist up to this point, and that alone makes it worthy of recognition.
How can you implement this potential in your own Clip ‘n Climb facility? The game has a feature called Pokestops, which is a great place for users to go to find Pokemon. At the release of the game these places were assigned at random, and can be any place from a park to a historical landmark, to a business. Unfortunately, there is no way, at the moment, to make your business a Pokestop if it isn’t already registered as such.
But if you are (which you can find out by simply downloading Pokemon Go, making an account, and simply going for a jaunt around your business), milk it for all its worth by:
- Advertising at the entrance and on your website that your business is a Pokestop. This will let users no that they can stop in to your business to find Pokemon even if they do not have their app out.
- And buy lures. They are rather cheap and available through in app purchases. They can only be used at Pokestops and they attract Pokemon. The more Pokemon around in your facility, the more Pokemon Go players you will find in your facility, and in turn the more paying customers you will have.
