A few years ago Bootleggers had always more than 2,000 players online. Nowadays there are always approximately 300 players online. You may say that those 2,000 were mostly dupes, but I believe the current amount of players is too low. Now there are two questions regarding the amount of players: why are players leaving and how do we get new players at Bootleggers? Those two questions are extremely important for the chief of this game; BSF2000. Since Bootleggers is part of his income, you might believe he want to invest in changes to attract new players. After all, the more players, the more customers, which means more ka-ching ka-ching.
So, what is the best recipe for attracting new players? At this moment I believe BSF2000 tries to attract new players by introducing new features. Well, the features are pretty much delayed, but BSF2000 promised several upcoming features. So far BSF2000 promised a new achievement feature and a new crew system. This article is not based on the fact of these features will ever come, but on attracting the new players. Do you really believe that players come back for an achievement feature or a new crew system? Maybe. The crew system is interesting to change, but that will only bring back old players. I believe it is extremely important to also attract new players to the game. Will a new crew system attract new players? A new player nearly gets in a crew, so I believe this is not a great way of attracting new players. If want to attract new players to the game you need two things: your product (the game Bootleggers) and some old school marketing. At this moment that marketing is nowhere to find.
A few days ago I visited the site YouTube and I noticed several banners of various internet games. It is an excellent way of marketing, but I am afraid it is unrealistic for BSF2000 at this moment. Why? Well, according to my little research it costs approximately €10,000 a day for a fancy banner on the homepage of YouTube. Those amounts are unrealistic, but there are more ways of marketing your game. To be even more exact, there are a lot ways which are free of charge. For instance, the best marketing you can have is the players who are advertising the game to their friends and family. Now here comes another problem. A big percentage of the Bootleggers community dislikes BSF2000. Why would they promote a game which results in a higher income for BSF2000? He is being called lazy and he does not meet his deadlines. Why would players help him if they believe they are being ignored?
Let’s forget BSF2000 for a while and let’s focus on Bootleggers. We are all here, because Bootleggers seems enjoyable. That or you are scared of going outside and talk to someone. To improve the quality of Bootleggers we have to attract new players. So, what is an interesting and easy way of marketing? There are plenty, but let’s focus on one of the most easy ways of marketing; social media. You may not know this, but at this moment social media is already implemented into Bootleggers. We have a fancy sticky topic at the Off Topic Forum where the social media of Bootleggers is displayed and when you gain in rank you are being asked if you want to share your promotion. It may be me, but I never ever shared my promotion on Facebook or Twitter (I don’t even have twitter?!).
Alright, so sharing promotions does not work, now what? What about just following Bootleggers at Twitter and ‘like’ the page on Facebook? Well, let’s have a look at Facebook. Once I search for ‘Bootleggers’ I get two pages of Bootleggers.us. That sucks. Two pages probably means one page is inactive and is not being used. It has to be clear for a player which page is actually active. Well, I decided to click on the page with the highest amount of likes; 979. The status update of the page was at February. For the record, it is nearly May now. At this moment the Facebook page of Bootleggers is useless. Complaining is easy, suggesting ideas is harder. Fortunately I am a Facebook slut and I have plenty ideas.
A Facebook page is used by a lot companies. Those companies are updating the people by sharing progress of new products and the companies are giving away some of their products. Why is there no such a thing at Bootleggers? Let players ‘share’ a certain update of the Facebook page and one random player will win a fancy prize. In the beginning nobody will do it, but eventually more players will follow. Of course it is possible to create a Facebook account just for Bootleggers, which means it is pointless to share since you probably do not have any friends on that Facebook account. Is that a problem? Not really, those accounts can simply not win. Tu-dum, problem solved.
Marketing is extremely important nowadays. At this moment BSF2000 is ‘attracting’ new players by introducing new features, which are usually delayed. Does he really expect that the current players are helping him to attract new players? I believe not. I believe it is time for more marketing at social media. Eventually that means we are attracting new players for BSF2000, because we are sharing the status updates. At this moment nobody shares such an update. Why? Well there are no posts to share and nobody gets rewarded for sharing the posts. It is time for a change, but it not our job to start this change. It is the job of the chief; BSF2000.
