On this episode, we are joined by Trevor Longino; he was the Head of Marketing & PR at a video games online retail store, GOG.com. He grew GOG.com’s revenues from mid-six figures annually to mid-seven figures monthly over the course of the four years he was there. GOG.com grew from #6 in its industry to #2 over his tenure.

Their success was made possible by a few different tactics, which Trevor attributes to the classic 4 “P”s of marketing: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. All of which he applied.

Over our conversation, we touch on branding, perception and the impact of manipulating pricing and product (an area many marketers do not seem to tweak or adjust).

In this episode you will learn about:

• How the Trevor revved up GOG.com’s revenue from 6-figures a year to 6 figures a month in 4 years.
• How to identify audiences likely to be interested in your products.
• How to build a firm foundation for your promotions by determining why you are in business in the first place.
• How to double or 10x your business with the 4 P’s of marketing.

Guest’s Top Tips

The 4 P’s of Marketing

Product:

Researching our audience online (via surveys) and finding out what higher-cost product we could offer in addition to our regular one.
Finding out the main features that our product needed to have to be attractive to users, and which features were not necessary (so we could focus on delivering only the kind of games and content that our customers wanted).

Price:

Adjusting prices on some product but, more importantly, making sure that as we signed new future product, we were able to maximise the price that we charged for it based on user feedback.

Promotion:

Free giveaways to drive user acquisition. We’d net 200,000+ new accounts on a giveaway. Further, organising regular promotions on games so that every game would go on a pretty good sale at least once in a 90 day period. This is because we found that low-value users would usually buy games over the course of 60 days or so, but if they bought at least three games, they would probably stick around and buy 10+; we optimised our promotion schedule to maximise the number of users who would probably buy three games. Finally, we used promotions tied to current events to get broad exposure to mainstream media and drive a lot of new users and sales.

Placement:

Getting ourselves in front of our audience was a constant struggle; partnerships with media, partnerships with game developers, and an ongoing process of improving our direct marketing channels was essential in acquiring new customers, getting them to that first game purchase, that third game purchase, and hopefully that eventual habit of frequently buying from GOG.

Lightning Round

Hiring People

He hires people based on potential.

Indispensable Tools

• Google Analytics
• Dashboard / Excel
• Project Management Tool

One Piece of Advice

Listen. Your users are going to tell you what you have to know. It’s easy to say you do, but you probably don’t.

Key Takeaways (with timestamps)

(3:25) You will not be able to know how the ways to solve an individual problem if you don’t study the fundamentals first.
(5:40) Before, your metrics are not nearly as good. Today, if you sent out an ad, you can monitor the performance, if it didn’t work out well, stop it and try another strategy.
(6:12) Product, Price, Placement and Promotion. The branding is done all the way since the start.
(7:00) You have to know “Why” you are providing service or a product to somebody. If you don’t, then you will not be able to promote it properly.
(9:50) It all has to do with branding; it makes all the difference.
(11:50) The way you think about your product is the way it will be perceived.
(19:20) It’s cheap to buy traffic, but if it does not give value to the business, then you are not maximising the channels that are right for you.
(24:30) You have to bring in people that are more likely to care for your product.