Marketing (or lack of thereof)

[PanzerLoco]

I wrote this with the Coolbank Opel Blitz in the back of my mind.

The anticipation surrounding the release of a new model is always a thrill for me. Diving back into the literature and studying photographs for each new release to determine the final appearance (color, figure, stowage, etc.) is pure excitement.

My point is the manufacturer's apparent lack of effort in marketing.

Why is so little information available before a release? Why not leak a few details to generate and sustain excitement and anticipation? What about opening pre-orders through distributors?

As for the upcoming Opel Blitz, my homework is done. My "door knocker" anti-tank gun from an Asiatam supplier has already been ordered. The color will be dunkelgrau to complete the early-war look.

Cheers! PZ Loco

[keilau]

Marketing costs money. Color brochure, magazine or internet advertising etc. The 1/16 scale RC tank industry is too small to have that kind of PR budget. It falls on the retailer to take pictures of the box and promote it. Matomart.com, MotionRC.com, Torro-shop.de, Toucanshop.com are filling some of the gaps. TamiyaUSA.com do a very poor job for their RC tank segment.

[Tang - RC.Senshado]

Everything keilau said and more

Companies are learning marketing is a bottomless pit and you can't accurately budget and expect a specific ROI. Some companies get in that trap and burn through all their money fast thinking their sales will scale with advertising spend.

With the lagging economy and a lot of failing businesses, people aren't gonna dig deep in their pockets for ineffective or low ROI marketing like the used to. We are at the mercy of the algorithm of what major services like Google want to show us. Entire hobbies have been killed off due to this.

Also keep in mind a lot of brands directly out of China are purely manufacturers and not "brands" if that makes sense. They know how to make a thing and get the basics like names and pictures up, but a lot of them don't know beyond that how to communicate into the other markets. Usually they relied on outside help with distribution to create that presence. Now they kind of shortcut or went direct in order to circumvent high costs or hope to sell more than a traditional business model.

Hiring out nice photography or videography is going to take money . A lot of people can shortcut it with AI). You can see it in product listings on ali all the way to amazon. I can't trust that the maker wrote an accurate description anymore because a prompt wrote it. The pictures are so generic I can't even tell how big the product will be based on pictures lol. All this to say, marketing is going cheaper and lower effort. As someone who works in the field, I think sales and marketing quality will stay at the bottom of the barrel for a long time thanks to improving AI. I think it will be a while before people are so turned off by generically made AI listings that they are more likely to buy things from quality listings and things that are tangibly better. And plus all the people with the creative sales and advertising skills will be gone by then, and everyone will be using the same generic prompts and techniques and as a consumer you'll be even more turned off. (On the plus side of AI, a small business or non english native firm can get started. The downside is that everything you see out there will look the same and it becomes even harder to stand out without putting more effort into marketing).

If you want to create brand awareness and campaign your products through physical reach, you have to have people traveling. People who can run around events and be ambassadors for your brand. If you're a foreign company that means you have to establish a team (and maybe operation) internationally. Also a huge sink for a very small level of exposure if we're only talking about a niche hobby. Very different scale if it's for an international toy show or something that can engage a large world wide audience for the same amount of effort.

Another method of advertising that I think has seen decline is the use of influencers and collaborations. This would supplement or offset you not having your team. Giving out free stuff for the hope of a mention from an internet stranger. For the "influencer", free merch isn't gonna pay their bills and a lot of people think it's easy so that pool of individuals is often saturated. I've worked with a number of up and comers. Some were all talk. Some did a great job but eventually burned out. Some just cut and ran as soon as you hooked them up. When that space got saturated, the real and big creators could command a rate to cover their efforts and the nobodies were dime a dozen and will plug your product for free merch. But then will it be effective on a person that gets 10 views on their channel? How about 1 million views on tiktok? Does that necessarily translate to sales? What if those 10 viewers convert to a sale but the 1 million didn't? And what if none of the 1 million views did not get a single sale; but perhaps it did get your name out there so people later convert. How do you put a price on that?

Pre order method for a tangible good is very dead in the water concept if we're talking about things coming out of China. The economics don't support anything less than full shipping containers worth of goods coming out of there. It'd fall on the distributor to take the gamble and order a large quantity up front and they are going to sell it as soon as they get it, not wait and tease.

All this to say, if a large percentage of people aren't responding to current advertising methods (trends) or don't need a whole lot of effort to be sold to, is there a point to doing a whole lot if you were the toy maker? I think for our niche hobby we're going to double down in wanting to see something tangible before we bite. Not a pretty listing. Aka product has to come out first or close to production, someone like Motion will have to do a nice video on it and have it in hand, and then people like you and me go and order it.

PS not clowning your question; just pointing out a reality based on my perspective. I too can't wait for the Blitz and want to buy a few!