Episode #133: 3 Ways To Market Your Toy or Game Product For Free
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As a toy entrepreneur it’s pretty likely that your cost of doing business is high. From manufacturing the perfect toy or game, to going to trade shows, building a website, nurturing an email list, dealing with returns, and damaged goods…you may be finding it’s hard to do anything for free, even if you do it yourself. Today’s podcast episode is going to share how you market your toy or game product for free. Now look, we know nothing is truly free in this world, so these marketing tactics will cost you time to implement. But with time and the tools provided in this episode you could be marketing your toy or game product for free in a way that compounds your efforts over time.
Have you ever heard of content marketing? You likely already know what direct marketing is, the action of promoting and selling your toy or game product. But what is content marketing? Content marketing is a long game approach to creating awareness for your toy or game product. It takes time, consistency, and a deep understanding of your Ideal Target Market. In this episode I share several ideas for how you can start using content marketing for your toy or game product and highlight a couple of game entrepreneurs who are utilizing content marketing for their product in a brilliant way. Tap listen to find out what that is.
EPISODE CLIFF NOTES
Learn the definition of Marketing [04:00]
The Toy Coach discusses the main difference between traditional direct to consumer marketing and content marketing. [6:00]
Never heard of Content Marketing Before? Learn the definition of content marketing in this episode. [06:11]
Curious why small businesses should even consider content marketing? What’s the benefits of small business owners using this form of marketing? [07:34]
Find out why you might have a bigger ROI on content marketing versus paid ad marketing. [09:13]
You need to know your ITM before you build a content marketing plan. Do you know who your ITM is or better..what ITM stands for? Find out at this point in the podcast. [09:57]
Learn the 3 ways you can start content marketing. [12:53]
Start listening for ideas on what kind of content you can create around your toy or game. [12:57]
Two gamepreneurs created their own content marketing plan around their game product. [18:41]
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This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
Looking for content marketing inspiration for your brand? Learn from the creators of Bundle! Check out their website by clicking here.
Starting a blog?
You can use Wordpress or Squarespace to make that happen!
Starting a podcast?
You can use Anchor or Libsyn to make that happen!
Starting a video show?
You can use iMovie (included on Mac computers) and Video Editor (included with Windows) to shoot and edit those videos, and upload them to YouTube or Vimeo!
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[00:00:00] Azhelle Wade: You are listening to making it in the toy industry episode number 133.
[00:00:05] Hey, there toy people, Azhelle Wade here. And welcome back to another episode of The Toy Coach Podcast. Making it in The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. How are you all doing today? I hope you're doing great. I know there's a lot going on in the world especially in America. I hope your friends and family and yourselves are safe and that you're able to appreciate and enjoy the life that we do have. On the other hand, hopefully our country gets it together soon. Now on a totally opposite note, today's podcast episode is all about marketing and specifically a free marketing strategy that you should already be using to market your toy or game ideas right now.
[00:01:11] Now this is an episode for all my entrepreneurs out there. So if you're on another toy path, you're on the inventor path or you're on the corporate toy path. This isn't really the episode for you right now. But if you think one day you might be on this entrepreneur path, then I want you to listen very closely. Cuz one of the biggest things that most to entrepreneurs do is, skip marketing. Everyone wants to make a great toy, wants to make a fun game. Everyone wants to do the packaging and the product development process and work with a factory in order the samples and get the inventory. And almost everyone forgets about marketing. So the strategy we're gonna talk about today is a marketing strategy called content marketing.
[00:02:00] And when you hear the term content marketing, what do you think? I've got a feeling that you might be thinking social media. You might be thinking Facebook, Instagram, and like TikTok. And yes, while those are technically always, you can do content marketing. They're also not the best outlets. Why? Because you don't own the real estate, meaning you don't own Facebook. You don't own Instagram. You don't own TikTok, but what you likely do own. Is the.com that goes along with your brand. So today I'm gonna share with you some ways to utilize that .com and other ways to market your toy or game ideas for free using content marketing.
[00:02:42] Now, as we talk through this episode, and I tell you the freeways, you can do it. I'm also gonna share some paid alternatives because if you have a little bit of money to spend in the content marketing area these paid alternatives can make the process a little bit easier. So get your pen and paper out. Or if you're listening to this episode while you're driving or you're working out, remind yourself when you're done that you are gonna go to thetoycoach.com/133 to grab the links to everything I'm gonna mention in the show today, because it's gonna be a lot. A lot of great tools to help you with this content marketing. Let's dive in.
[00:03:19] Today I'm gonna share with you three ways to market your toy or game ideas for free using content marketing. And we're gonna of course, talk through some ideas of how that can happen. By the end of this episode, you're gonna know what content marketing really is. And I'm gonna share some ideas on how you can use content marketing to market your toy brand for free. And of course, we are gonna go through an example. And today's example is a content marketing piece created by a Toy Creators Academy alumni. A couple of game creators who are also sisters who are putting content marketing into practice right now and it is brilliant. Okay. So to start off, you know, I like to start with definitions, we gotta define marketing and we've gotta define content marketing.
[00:04:10] So marketing is the action of just promoting and selling your toy or game pro product, right. Marketing includes everything from market research, all the way up to buying an ad until the customer buys that product. Marketing is how you get people to know you and your brand exist and that your product is manufactured and ready to buy and maybe you're making a made to order product, you're telling them, you can order this today. Marketing's job is to communicate the values, the benefits of your product, how it looks, how it feels, how it works, but also it communicates the cost and how a customer can purchase it. It might say click here, add to cart, go to Walmart. Whether it's online or a specific store that you're sending people to.
[00:05:00] So your marketing might be something like throw the summer birthday party that the whole neighborhood would talk about with our water balloon launcher available for $9,99 at Walmart, Target and on waterballoonlauncher.com. Right. Great example of marketing, purpose of it, how you use it, clear statement there. Now the goal of marketing as a whole is to make a sale quick and dirty. ROI on traditional marketing, the goal of this traditional marketing, where you're just marketing from an ad and the goal is to make a sale. Typically the ROI on that type of marketing is calculated by impressions versus conversions. Meaning how many people saw or heard your ad and how many of those people actually bought your amazing toy or game product.
[00:05:47] It's a very immediate form of marketing. It's an expensive form of marketing, but it's also very quick to understand what's working and what's not. Now content marketing is very different. Content marketing is what we call the long game. So what content marketing is it's when you create and share content related to your brand or product in an effort to increase visibility through website traffic, or to build brand awareness through the shareability of some content you might create and your building enough trust factor by showing like customers playing with your toy product, or maybe showing the process of your product being created at the factory.
[00:06:32] You're doing all that so that somebody will take a chance on your product, even if they've never heard of your brand before. So content marketing can also communicate lifestyle of the users of your product. Meaning, it could show a little girl holding a doll or a little boy holding a doll. It could show a family gathered around a table at game night. Content marketing could show potential customers how your product's made, or it could highlight life stories of customers who have already experienced your product. Content marketing could even educate your customers on how to use your product and why you made it in the first place.
[00:07:13] The goal of content marketing is to increase visibility of your brand. And once that visibility is increased, the goal is to help your potential customers get to know your brand. So that one day they can hopefully buy from it. Now we gotta think about why small businesses should even consider content marketing? Why is it so important? Well, as a small business owner, you may not have the same budget as a big brand to spend on advertising, to get your potential customer, to know about your product, know about your toy brand. But content marketing can be done for free and can help you increase brand awareness. Big brands, like let's say Nike, let's say Disney.
[00:08:01] They don't always run ads that say go to Disney park. Or they don't always run ads that say buy these Nike shoes. But what they do have a lot of money to spend on is running lifestyle ads. Ads that tell people out in the world that this Nike shoe will give you a lifestyle you want. They're not advertising a particular Nike shoe. They're advertising the brand as a whole, but in order to make an impact on. Millions of viewers of TV shows or streaming shows or movies, you've gotta invest a lot of money in that kind of widespread marketing. So here's where content marketing comes in to save the day for small toy businesses.
[00:08:48] If you're a small toy business and you know, your customer well enough, you can create content that your customers will find instead of paying a premium to put your product in the face of millions of people whom only a quarter might be interested in your product. Content marketing is a long game. You will not get returns as quickly as you will on a direct ad or direct promotion, but likely. You will have a much bigger return on investment or ROI because with traditional ads, you need to spend on building the ad creative, building the ad copy, and then hiring the person to manage the ad campaign. And then you have to pay for the ad itself to get out in front of people.
[00:09:35] But with content marketing, You've just gotta create the content about your product. You could do that, or you could hire help to do that. And the goal for content marketing is for someone to find your product, not necessarily for you to have to pay, to promote it. The goal is for someone to find your product and someone being your ITM. My Toy Creators Academy, people know I'm saying ideal target market to find your product. Okay, next up. How do you determine what kind of content you should create for content marketing? Well, you gotta ask your ITM that ideal target market, the parents of the kids buying the product, or if your item is for an older demographic, then you're asking the kids or the kid adults themselves.
[00:10:25] You wanna know what kind of content they enjoy watching, reading, or listening to do. They spend hours a day watching cute pet videos on TikTok. Do they spend hours listening to self-help podcasts? Do they read a lot of blogs about how to raise genius kids? You want to build content that fits in with how your ITM already spends their time, the kind of content you create also depends on your product. You've got to find the fine line between what your ITM enjoys and what your product is. So if you have a line of basketball toys, maybe you're gonna make content that would appeal to parents who would buy those toys for their kids. So maybe that would mean content around basketball games or players that are popular.
[00:11:14] If you're doing a steam fashioned all line, you might wanna gear your content toward. Kids or tweens interested in science or educators looking for toys that are gonna teach their kids something in the class room. Now, I know you want a really clear example. I know you want an example of someone doing this today and we are going to get there. I promise before the end of the episode, we'll get there, but for now, why don't we talk about what kind of content you can create? Like how do you create this content marketing? If I'm not making these videos on TikTok Azhelle, if I'm not writing short posts on Twitter about this Azhelle about these topics. What am I doing?
[00:11:56] Well, I did mention earlier Facebook, Instagram, social media is not the ideal place for you to place the majority of your content marketing efforts. And it's because you don't own that space. Now I'm not saying that you don't post your content on social media because you do because you should and you will, but you should first place your content on a platform that you control. At any time Facebook or Instagram or TikTok can lock your account. They can go down, you can lose access to everything. So instead you wanna create your own home for your content. Think about it. Like you're building a house for your content to live in. Okay.
[00:12:35] So there are three types of houses you can build to build out your content marketing strategy. So I'm gonna start with the easiest and then move on to the hardest. Ideally you would want to have a blog on your own website. Second to that would be having a podcast that you won. Third to that would be having some sort of video content, which you might host on a platform like YouTube. Now you might be wondering, well, hold on Azhelle, why is a blog so important? Why is a podcast so important? And then why is YouTube last? Why is YouTube on there at all I thought we weren't doing social media. I ordered these places in the order at which they're easiest to complete.
[00:13:21] But it just so happens that in my opinion, the order that they're easiest to complete, if you flip that order is the order that is most effective and most likely to draw attention from most of people's ideal target markets, because right now, Video content is king. So I would have to push that perhaps a video show or a video podcast would be king for this situation, but we're not necessarily gonna call it a YouTube channel. So either you're gonna create a blog, create an audio podcast or create a video show slash video podcast. The benefit of owning this type of content is that you have full control over what it looks like. You can track the interactions on it.
[00:14:08] You can retain full control of the sales that come from it. And if somebody goes to your website to read your blog, to listen to your podcast, to watch a video of yours, they will always be able to get to it as long as your domain is active, because if you post something, you can put it on the very first page of your domain. And that piece of content does not have to compete on a timeline where other people are posting to it. Like Instagram, like Facebook, like TikTok. There's no scrolling out of your world because if somebody goes to your.com, they're going into your world. And that's what I want for you. So you might be wondering content marketing. How does it work?
[00:14:49] It's all really through the power of Google. Power of SEO search engine optimization. So every time you create some content around your product and you create a blog post out of it, or you create a podcast out of it, or you create a YouTube video out of it, you are building authority on your own website and increasing the likelihood that someone can discover that article and hopefully through that article, discover your product. So a really great thing to do with your product, if you can, is to either tell the story of how your product came to be. In a blog post or in a podcast episode or in a video you can also tell the story of your product being purchased and gifted to someone, to one of your customers.
[00:15:43] If they agree to let you post that with their permission, you can also share the story of your product going to its first trade show or your product landing in its first store. So let's say you have like an eco-friendly wooden toy brand, if you were to do content marketing, what you would wanna do is you would want to create content around eco-friendly wood toys. You could talk about wood products that you actually love. You could talk about products that inspired the creation of your product. The goal is really to create an article or a podcast that the people that wanna buy your product would be really interested in. Ideally, what will happen after somebody reads this amazing article that you've written about wood toys and how beneficial they are for kids of a certain age that you could say.
[00:16:37] Here are some of my top toy picks. One of them I created check it out. That is the joy and usefulness of content marketing. You will not get immediate results from it. It is an extreme long game, but it's a long game that can pay dividends over time. It's one that culminates and grows as time passes. So it's one that I think is really, really important for toy entrepreneurs to take part of. Now the way that you decide what you do and what you talk about and where you put this content has to come right from your customer, the person that has already bought your product, talk to them, ask them what kind of information would they wanna learn. If you had information about other wood toys, are they interested in that or are they only interested in knowing about your toy?
[00:17:29] They only be interested in content that's gonna teach them how to store your product in their home, how to play with it. Maybe different ways to use your wooden toy product is what they want. Maybe ideas for how to wrap it up for Christmas. That is the kind of information that your ITM might want to know and might want you to write articles about, but you have to ask them, you cannot skip this step. Don't think that, you know, even if you do, it's always good to double check. Okay. Now I promised you an example and we're gonna talk about an example that is in the form of a podcast. So if you were thinking like, okay, you know, I see how the blog could work.
[00:18:15] I could write an article about wood toys. You might say, okay, I see how YouTube can work. I have a doll. I can show how the, what the doll comes with. Maybe do an unboxing video. I get how the doll could work, but How in the world could a podcast be beneficial because you're thinking could a podcast be beneficial? How would it help? Well, I am so excited to share this example with you. So two sisters who have created the game bundle are starting a podcast and it's a limited series podcast. Limited series podcasts are like limited series TV shows. You have a certain number of episodes, and then it's gone.
[00:18:55] So these two sisters who created the game bundle, they've been selling it for years. Doing really well, getting some licensing agreements with like hallmark channel, amazing things. They are starting a bundle buzz podcast. So their product name is bundle. It's a family board game and they are starting a bundle buzz podcast. What is the bundle buzz podcast? It's brilliant is what it is, but no, what it is is in each episode of bundled buzz, they'll be joined by a guest with fascinating stories to share, to play a live version of bundle where they will recount funny memories, vulnerable moments, and their favorite stories. Ah, love that.
[00:19:38] Along with their podcast announcement, they have already shared some reviews of their podcast. So I'm assuming they had some, some people listen to a few episodes, maybe former customers, maybe friends and family, and the reviews are amazing. People say they can't wait to hear more. The episodes they heard were amazing. They couldn't recommend it any higher. And the quote that I love the most is bundle is a fabulous game and expanding it to the podcast format is a genius idea, excited to discover the guests special guests and hear them share their stories through bundle. So you might be thinking like, what is the benefit of all this Azhelle?
[00:20:17] Why do I wanna make a podcast about my game? I mean, think about it. Companies like apple spend so much time and so much money selling a lifestyle, selling a vibe and new small business owners don't have that kind of money to be spending on what is called in the marketing world awareness campaigns, campaigns for people to just know you exist. But what a small company can do is spend a little bit of money to create content that will live on. As long as they want it to live on and that content can be shared reshared resampled and put everywhere. So for the bundle game podcast, what it does is it helps build that idea of lifestyle. It helps people know what it will feel like.
[00:21:11] To play this game because maybe they don't know if they wanna invest in it. And then they find out about this bundle buzz podcast and they get to feel how exciting the game is, how the game evokes emotion and fun. And they say, you know what? I want that emotion and fun in my household. It's a way to get people to experience your product, even when they haven't bought it. Because you want them to know, like, yes, I know I'm a new business. Yes. I know. You've never heard of me before. Yes. I know. You're thinking what is the bundle, but your content marketing can bridge that gap and help them get to know you in a smaller amount of time.
[00:21:56] if you wanna hear more about bundle, or if you wanna learn more about their bundle buzz podcast, go to thebundlegame.com, it's just fantastic. So check that out, thebundlegame.com. Okay. So before we get into what tools you need to get started doing this whole content marketing thing for free. I wanna talk a little bit about what you should do once you've made all this content. I know I talked a little bit about how social media, isn't something that you own, and I don't want you to live there. And that is true. But if you start creating your little miniseries podcast or your miniseries YouTube channel, what you should do with whatever content you create is repurpose it on social media.
[00:22:39] How you repurpose that is just using clips from if it's a video, if it's an audio, use some of those clips and put them on social media. In my opinion videos work just the best. So TikTok, Instagram reels, all great places for that video. If you don't have video, you can also put audio on the TikTok, on the Instagram reels. You just want to give people the opportunity to experience your product before they buy it. You know, how much easier it is to sell something when it's in somebody's hands. I remember experiencing this first hand when I was doing trade shows for customized me, just experiencing the difference.
[00:23:18] Once you get a product into somebody's hands, it is so much easier to sell it, but when you're selling a physical product online, you can't do that. So you've gotta come up with other ways to create a connection with that product and someone can't touch it. How else can you get them to quote unquote, feel it. All right. So let's get into the tools because I know some of you might be thinking like, oh my gosh Azhelle I am so hyped. Let's get into this content game on. I got ideas. Let's go, but hold on, I'm gonna give you the tools. I'm gonna let you know what you need to use. Okay? So for a blog, if you wanna make a blog, you can create a blog site over at wordpress.com.
[00:23:58] You can actually create a free blog, but that blog will be hosted on WordPress' site. And remember what I said about owning your content. So if you want a custom domain for your blog, you can pay a $5 a month fee to have the ability to host a custom domain of your own on WordPress. Still use their site building features and blog building features. But then own your own domain. You can also create your own blog on a site like Squarespace. I use that for my blog. It's thetoycoach.com/blog. If you're like what? She has a blog. Yeah. So thetoycoach.com/blog if you wanna just look at that and see what it looks like.
[00:24:35] Now podcast, if you wanna make a podcast, you can use anchor, this is free. Trying to lay down all the free tools. If you want to make a podcast for free anchor is a super simple podcasting tool. When I first found them, they were actually advertising how you could make a whole podcast from your phone and no other tools. Anchor boast that with them, you can create, distribute and monetize your podcast all for free. Then I would say the industry, the Rolls-Royce I'd say of podcasting platforms would be Libsyn. That's L I B S Y N, but I'll put the links in the show notes. And while that's the paid option, you know, if you wanna go paid.
[00:25:13] They do have like a two month free if you really don't have the budget for, to pay for a podcast, I do not want you starting with a two month trial because trust me, you will get everything all set up and then you will never wanna move. And then you will be stuck paying for it. So if you can afford to do it, just now start with a free tool. You can always move over your content from one tool to another. So that's always a possibility. Now video, if you wanna do video, this is the most pricey option. But you can do your video on YouTube. But let's talk about like, just a couple of options. So. For free you can put your video on YouTube.
[00:25:54] Now I know you're thinking like, Azhelle that's not owning my content and it it's true. That is not owning your content, but it is doing the same kind of SEO work that I want you to do with content marketing. To really own your content you're gonna need a paid tool like Vimeo. And Vimeo works very similarly to YouTube. They have their whole kind of like creator world within Vimeo, like YouTube does, but it doesn't, you know, it's not owned by Google in the way that YouTube is. So it doesn't have that as much searchability. If you want to make sure you own your content and you just want to post the videos on your own website, that is a great option to make sure you fully own your content.
[00:26:35] And not just giving it away and posting it on YouTube. Now the free option would be to use your phone, to take these videos or to use your iPad. If you have one or your laptop camera, if yours is decent, but is anybody's decent, let's be real. Your video quality can actually be easily enhanced by just making sure you're facing a big source of light, like a window when you're taking the video. So like you are looking at the light, your camera is facing away from the light that I've seen has improved video quality dramatically for me. If that still doesn't work just know you don't have to start out with a high tech camera. You can use your phone, you can use your computer camera.
[00:27:18] But if you are really feeling like, I don't know, Azhelle, I feel like this is lowering the quality of my brand and I really need to buy a camera. I'm gonna tell you, you don't have to buy one that breaks the bank. a friend of mine, Marissa from the toy book created this bonus resource for the students of Toy Creators Academy. And it's all about pitching your toy ideas. So when she sent her video to me and she was like, oh, it's done here. It is. I was like, what camera are you using? Like, what is this magic? So Marissa suggested this amazing camera for me. So I'm gonna suggest it for you. The camera's a J5 Create 4k ultra HD with five X zoom capabilities.
[00:27:58] And I know with all those spec, you're thinking like, oh my God, that sounds expensive, but it isn't. The camera was only $50 when I bought it. And that was a little while ago. I will leave the link in the show notes. So you can grab that camera, go to thetoycoach.com/133. Now, if you watch my YouTube channel, I just wanna be clear. A lot of the videos that you're watching on my YouTube channel, the newer videos is a, a newer camera. But I started with this J5 Create and I had it for about a year. And it's a great camera. It's still the camera I take on the go. If I'm going to toy trade show and I need a camera to do like group coaching calls or client meetings or podcasts this is my travel. Easy to set up, go to camera. So I still highly, highly, highly recommend it.
[00:28:50] Okay. Now back to free a free way to edit your video for YouTube. If you're like I'm doing a YouTube channel or a Vimeo channel, whatever you're gonna do is gonna be with a tool that comes. Built into your computer. So if you have a Mac it's iMovie if you have a PC, I saw that it's something called video editor. And there you have it. That's really what I wanted to share with you today. That's really what you're gonna need to get started. I hope that I have driven home the importance of content marketing. It's definitely a long game. It's not guaranteed to work. I have to say like some markets might be so saturated already with content that is just not guaranteed to work.
[00:29:33] But I highly recommend that you put in some effort to creating content about your product around your product and around the, the portion of the toy industry that your product lives in. If your, ITM tells you like, Hey I spend my days watching TikTok videos of people like dancing to those trends that you always see. So if I had, let's say a doll company. What would I do? What would be something funny and trendy that I could do? What I would actually say you do is one, do a trendy dance video where you're holding your doll, or two, if you can get really savvy, pose your doll. So they look like they're doing the trendy. That is how we're gonna play with content marketing, whatever, your ITM, your ideal target market enjoys, lean into that.
[00:30:29] If they like watching videos about puppies, is there a way that your product can relate to trendy puppy videos that are going on out there? You really wanna find this like sweet spot between , what they love in their content consumption and what your product. Let's talk about your homework for next week. Is this go out, ask some of your previous customer. How they like to consume content online and it could be content that's for fun. It could be content that they like to learn about, like something related to your toy product. It could just be, what kind of content makes them feel good online? They might tell you, oh my gosh. I love watching like wedding proposals.
[00:31:15] They could tell you, oh, I love watching unboxing videos. They might tell you. Oh, I just, I don't know. I love watching little brothers and little sisters just like interact and tell each other how much they love each other and just love it. It just makes my day. You wanna find out, what they enjoy and then look at your product and figure out. What type of content could I create that crosses these two things in a way that I, the content creator actually feel excited about. You don't wanna just create things for the purpose of creating it. You do wanna sell your product, but you've gotta be excited about it too. So think about yourself if you're like, okay they love. And on boxing and they love weddings. So which one of those three things do I like the most?
[00:31:57] Okay. I'm really into unboxing. Let me try that. Let me do unboxing, but with my products and look at the types of videos that they like to watch and try to emulate those. And then after you emulate them, try to experiment with your own version and play with that. That's where you are gonna find some magic in content creation. Okay. Send me a message on Instagram or send me an email and tell me how you're doing with this homework. I wanna know. As always, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I know that your time is valuable and that there are a ton of podcasts out there. So it truly means the world to me that you tune into this one until next week. I'll see you later toy people.
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