3 Marketing Strategies That Are Actually Working

Is there anything you’ve done–or haven’t done–for so long that you stopped considering that there might be a better way?

That’s the case for several marketing strategies I’ve used for years. Today I’ll share what I was doing, the problem I came to understand, and how I’ve tried to improve these methods.

Sharing Reviews

We offer review copies of a variety of products to hundreds of reviewers each month–this is a huge part of our marketing strategy (and our attempt to help customers determine which of our products are a good fit). Whenever a reviewer emails me a link to their review, I add it to our website. If they tag me (@jameystegmaier) on Instagram, I’ll also add the post to my story.

However, that’s it, and it has never seemed like enough to connect people with this invaluable content. Some publishers will make prominent posts about specific reviews, but I’m not comfortable elevating one reviewer above the others. Plus, because of the sheer volume of review copies we send out, on the average week we’ll receive close to a dozen links–that would flood our Facebook page (and not all followers are interested in every game of ours).

So about a month ago I started a different approach: On Friday morning I make a single post on our Facebook page that contains links for all reviews emailed to me over the previous week. It isn’t fully comprehensive, as not all reviewers email me their links, but it showcases a variety of content in a consolidated format. I’ve really liked this approach so far and will continue to implement it on a weekly basis.

Brand-Specific Newsletters

Over the last few years, our monthly newsletter subscribers have barely increased at all. Open rates remain above 50%, which is great–it indicates that most subscribers are genuinely interested in the content provided by the newsletters. But I’d prefer to continuously welcome people to Stonemaier Games’ most important and effective way to share news.

Last year a friend pointed out that some people are interested in specific brands (but not all brands) and that we might be able to engage those types of followers better with brand-specific newsletters. These newsletters could delve deeper into those brands, featuring future teasers and details, recent reviews and content, leaderboard updates, photos, launch notifications, and more.

The results so far are excellent. The World of Wingspan newsletter is the most popular–as is expected from our bestselling game–but each of the others has thousands of subscribers and even better open rates than the general Stonemaier monthly newsletter (e.g., Vantage’s most recent update was opened by over 83% of the 6600+ subscribers).

You can subscribe below to these brand-specific newsletters (or view archived newsletters on their respective game pages on our website):

• Expeditions/Scythe
• World of Wingspan (includes Wingspan and Wyrmspan)
• Rolling Realms/Rolling Realms Redux
• Apiary
• Vantage

Facebook Posts

For a long time, when I posted an article like this on our website, the headline and a few preview sentences would appear on our Facebook page, followed by a link to the full post. It’s a concise teaser for those who want to learn more (or ignore the post), and it plays a key role in our content marketing strategy.

The problem is that people who see the preview post on Facebook are much more likely to comment on Facebook without actually reading the full article. Sometimes this is fine, but on certain articles these types of comments make absolutely no sense–they’re commenting on a concept rather than the actual content. This type of behavior can completely derail an otherwise constructive conversation.

So now I post the full article on Facebook. There’s still no guarantee that someone will read the article before commenting, but since switching to this method I’ve never seen a comment so off the rails that I had to request that they actually read the article. Also, it’s more convenient for many people to read the full article on Facebook rather than clicking through to our website.

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What do you think about these changes? Are they effective for you? How could they be even better?

Also read: 10 Marketing Methods Used at Stonemaier Games (2024 Edition)

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