Joe's Arcade

Situation: Your friend's brother just bought an arcade.  He filled it with retro video games and wants to attract a younger crowd.  He asks you to help him get the word out, but he doesn't have much money or time to invest in a full-blown Web site.  How do you help him?

I think the first thing we need to identify is the budget. Once we have an idea of what we can spend - then we can strategize more effectively. We know the budget is small and we are on a short time line. Being that the audience is very young, we need to determine what tools/apps this audience is using and target those. There are a few things we set up immediately before even identifying the budget. 

• Facebook page
• Twitter page - https://twitter.com/joesarcadedfw 
• Instagram page
• Snapchat feed 
• FourSquare

Next:

• YouTube page 
• Get registered on Google/Apple maps

All of the above are not only free, but they target a young audience. On Facebook, you can boost posts for a few dollars and get decent reach (locally). This may be a good way to get the word out in the beginning before you have a steady stream of money coming in. Also, you can do offers such as "like and comment on this post to win X". On Twitter, you can do real time updates to connect with your audience. You can also update the audience if you are opening/closing early or have a change of schedule. 

Instagram is a great tool to showcase the inside of the store and what it offers. Snapchat is a fun way to show things to your followers. Maybe you want to give them a sneak peek of a new video game. FourSquare continues to gain users, so this is another free way to get yourself set up on a social media network. There are a lot of free apps. that help you manage and update all your social media accounts at once. This might be something to get since you have a lot of feeds running. 

I don't think YouTube is as important for this business, but it does allow you to showcase things going on inside the store. Maybe you are hosting a famous video game developer and you want to do a teaser video. Getting registered on Google and Apple maps will help future consumers find you since most people use their phone GPS now. 

The Website:

Being that the audience is young, I think having a website is required. Depending on the budget, you could design a very stripped down page with basic info and pictures. You could include the phone number, address, hours, games, and activities inside. 

Once you are more established, you could add an eCommerce tool for people to purchase gift cards. You could also make a new page about birthday parties and special events. 

If you are really tight on a budget, you could use a site like Weebly to start. I've made a couple pages on Weebly and they got the job done. This may be something you do short term before you can afford to get a fully functioning website up and running. 

If the budget is basically non-existent, I think developing a state-of-the-art webpage is out of the question. You are short on time and money, plus you may want to see how the business does before investing a lot of money. Since the audience is so young, you luck out with being able to use free social media networks. 

I don't think Flickr is really useful in this case. Younger kids use Instagram. Amazon, blogs, Wikis, Google docs also aren't really worth the time in this case. A Facebook page allows people to interact with your brand similar to a Wiki. They can post updates, suggestions, etc. Facebook is also more tailored to a younger demo. There isn't much data capture - yet - so GoogleDocs may not make sense. Eventually you can set up an email database so you can blast consumers with offers. You could use Exact Target for this once you are ready.

Overall, I would take advantage of the free tools first and then build from there. As your business develops, so will your digital presence.