Smoked Brisket and “Pausing Marketing” Plans

image is property of Riley James Copy

Anyone who is launching a game or running a business is constantly thinking about the future. And even though it might feel like you are preparing for the end of the world, there are still going to be some curveballs that catch you off guard.

Unexpected stuff comes up all the time.

Maybe you find out that you need to move up/push back the launch by a few months, or you realize that there is a major mechanical problem with the game that will take some creative thinking to fix, or you find out that that commissioned art was a liiiiittle more pricey than we expected…

But whether it be a time problem, man power problem or money problem, a lot of table game businesses will want to hold off on moving forward with marketing.

And for the most part, this is fine: in the previous post I have issued a warning of thinking you can just do all your marketing in a month or two and everything be all hunky dory.

But as long as you set aside ample time to invest in everything you need for board game marketing to work, you should be fine.

However… PAUSING your marketing doesn’t work nearly as well.

And some brisket I made recently provides an excellent illustration…

My wife and I held a housewarming party recently, and I just this once I wanted to avoid the normal burgers, hot dogs, grilled chicken, etc. meal for big groups. All of that is DELICIOUS, but I wanted something special.

After all, we only would be moving in once, and I figured splurging was necessary.

So on top of hommade potatoe salad, coleslaw, and an extremely complicated earl grey cake (not important to the story but it was a HIT)…

I decided to smoke up a pair of briskets.

For most people that is a time-consuming CHORE, but when you work from home as a freelance board game marketer/copywriter, typing away on your laptop and reading books… its pretty easy to look up every 15 minutes and make sure the temp is between 200 and 250 F.

That sounds easy… and honestly even when you are using charcoal and wood it still is… but that isn’t the hard part.

The hard part is the timing.

And EVERYTIME I think “oh… I don’t need to get up at 6am… they are smaller, I can sleep in!”

Well, fast forward to 6 pm… over 9 hours after I started, and the briskets finally punched passed 165. I promptly wrapped them in pink butcher paper and prepared to finish them in the oven.

But since it was late, and I didn’t want to crowd the oven, I made a choice: I would finish one brisket that night and REHEAT the next day, and the other I would put in the fridge immediately and finish COOKING the next day.

I couldn’t find anywhere online that suggested doing this, but I reasoned that it was worth experiementing.

So the next morning I got up early, pulled out the unfinished brisket from the fridge, and let it rise up to temp… low and slow… at 205 for about 78 hours.

And guess what?

There was a reason I couldn’t find anyone suggesting that online.

• The brisket I cooked normally, following all the rules, turned out perfectly.

• And the brisket I paused midway through, and then resumed the next day, was tough and dry.

Turns out, conventional meat smoking wisdom exists for a good reason: after millions of briskets cooked over the years, people know what works!

Well, there is also conventional marketing wisdom.

And that wisdom has been founded on trillions of tests.

And while you may think, “whats the harm in pausing email marketing? Or pausing sending updates on Patreon? Or not responding on Discord? Just for a little bit, then I’ll go back to normal!”…

Much like a brisket, you can’t just pause, turn it on later, and have it resume like nothing changed.

Because from the perspective of your customers, subscribers, and followers, something did change.

You changed.

Customers need established patterns to get familiar with a brand. Parting with their money, time… hell even their email address… requires that they trust you will live up to all the promises you make to them.

And it may seem innocent, but when they are expecting an update, or expecting new content, and it just kinda stops out of nowhere.

You break trust with your customers.

And bottom line: if they can’t trust you to communicate regularly, why should they trust you with their money?

To conclude, I DO NOT want to be fear mongering here. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. But if you do adjust out of no where, you need to do two things:

• You need to let them know changes are coming

• You need to explain WHY you are making the changes

Remember, they are people! Tabletop games players just like you. They like to be kept in the loop.

But you need to realize one thing: even if you do this, you can’t just restart like nothing happened. It will take some work and investment to ramp everything back up when you are ready!