unique prizes, design engaging themes and lighting effects, set reasonable difficulty in clawing, and use social media for promotion with higher visibility. Meanwhile, renew prizes regularly and introduce seasonal promotions to raise engagement by customers.
Know Your Audience
The secret to successfully running a claw machine is to understand your deep inside. With different target groups, different needs, and different expectations about a claw machine exist. Children love to see bright-colored cartoon character toys inside the machine, while teenagers and adults prefer the latest fashion trends in toys or hot game-linked merchandise. Thus, at the time of placing the claw machines, you need to analyze the characteristics of the main consumer groups based on location and flow.
In doing so, one may start off by collecting data around observations and customer feedback. For example, there are definitely some locations that could work for customers wanting trendier items, while others would more suit traditional cute dolls. One may request surveys, customer feedback, or data analysis tools to deeply know customer needs and preferences to optimize prize selection and machine configuration. Market research suggests that for some products, like hot toys or limited collaboration items put into the claw machines targeting their 20-35-year-old core consumer stratum, participation increases by as much as 30%.
More precisely, customer understanding involves not only prize preference knowledge but also understanding their psyche and playing habits. Some just love the challenge of high difficulty and savor the sense of accomplishment with a prize won, while others would prefer winning frequently to keep them relaxed. Thus, a well-defined customer profile will help you precisely tune the difficulty of the machine, prize types, and thereby achieve greater customer engagement and retention.
Unique Prizes
The biggest attraction of a claw machine is uniqueness in prizes. If the prizes you give them are ones they can see everywhere, customers will lose interest very fast. That’s why you need to provide a rare and unique prize for them to catch their eyes. Partnering with big brands to supply limited-edition prizes, or trending internet-famous products, will be a good way to make your machines competitive.
Because of this, as indicated by research into consumer behavior, a claw machine with limited commodities or rare toys will always attract more eyeballs, thus more participation. A claw machine therefore that offers trendy dolls resulting from collaborations, and which are limited-edition, will generate 15% to 20% more revenue compared to other machines that give out ordinary prizes. The feeling of exclusivity will trigger a competitive mindset in customers, especially teenagers and those in their young adults, who try as many times as possible for these prizes that are hard to get.
It is very essential to renovate the prizes regularly. Keeping the same prizes inside the machine for an extended period will certainly kill interest in them. Renovation or changing of the prizes can be done monthly, or quarterly, depending on the season or trending at that moment. This gives the returning customers a continuous interest in it and another chance for those who try again. When something is the most popular in anime or a movie, you add merchandise related to it in stock to stimulate consumption.
Bright and Fun Design
Aesthetic appeal, mixed with so many entertainment devices, is the key for a claw machine to stand out among them. A bright, colorful, uniquely designed claw machine would catch customers’ attention and trigger the desire to participate in this activity. The design of a claw machine in commercial streets or malls is like an advertisement, which determines whether customers can be attracted to stop and try.
Scientific research shows that colors have a great impact on human beings’ emotions and activities. As shown by the research data, more than 50% of passersby are attracted to the claw machines simply because of their brightly colored and striking outlooks. Soft-lighted machines with simple and novel designs hugely succeed in encouraging customers to try it out. You can further beautify your machine with LED light shows, dynamic screen displays, and so on. Secondly, it should be designed with consideration for layout and convenience. A design that is simple and intuitive can enhance the customer experience, while operations that are overly complicated might deter customers, affecting the enthusiasm of participation.
The design of the machine can also be in sync with the of the prizes. For example, if you choose to offer movie-themed prizes, the look of the machine can be designed in a movie poster style, adding in an interactive and immersive element, making customers feel like they’re entering a scene related to the prizes.
Engaging Themes
Besides design, the other important way to increase the appeal of a claw machine is themes. A clear and engaging theme can make the claw machine create a stronger emotional connection with customers. You can design various themes according to customer interest or seasonal change, such as anime themes, movie themes, or holiday themes.
The themes can make them more attractive or even match the prize that would be picked out. For example, during summer, you could introduce an ocean-themed claw machine with prizes related to the beach or the sea, and during Christmas, it could be a Santa Claus-themed one, but with prizes of Christmas dolls or seasonal merchandise. The designs that create a holiday atmosphere take part in creating not only a feeling of festivity but also in stimulating one’s desire to make purchases.
The higher the relevance of the claw machine’s theme to customers’ interest and current pop culture, the higher the participation rate. Some movie or anime-themed claw machines can draw 20% to 30% more traffic than ordinary machines. It is the emotional resonance and popularity of the topics that create conditions where the claw machine is more likely to become a hotspot for customer discussion and sharing.
Easy-to-Win Setup
A claw machine is fun because it’s , but the difficulty has to be just right. If it is too hard or too easy, that may affect customers’ willingness to participate. It could be that customers try a few times without winning, feel frustrated, and ultimately lose the wish to continue trying. If customers can always get prizes easily, they will think the game is too easy and will lose interest little by little. It is therefore important to set a reasonable level of difficulty so the customer remains engaged and satisfied.
Market research has shown that the customer repeat rate can increase by 30% if the success rate is set between 15% and 25%. Thus, it is able to control the difficulty through adjusting the claw’s grip, positioning of prizes, and the sensitivity of the claw. Besides giving customers a sense of achievement, it motivates further challenge.
Having small prizes serving as “consolation prizes” is another strategy towards customer retention. Even though customers do not win big prizes, they would still get small toys or souvenirs. This allows them to think that the game was a fair one and try again. This would enhance interactivity with the game and, thus, satisfaction of customers to a great degree. Spending would also increase in this manner.
Using Social Media
Nowadays, living in a world full of social networks, it is impossible to limit promoting claw machines to offline marketing. Social media will allow one to boost the visibility of one’s arcade claw machine and tease customers. You can create content and share it both on Instagram and Tiktok, focusing on the arcade claw machine with prizes in demand or videos taken when customers manage to grab a prize. These are shareable visual contents that could easily trigger the participation of customers.
Data from research indicates that over 60% of youngsters enjoy sharing entertainment activities on social media. It may initiate some interactive activities, such as encouraging customers to share prize-grabbing moments on social media with specific tags in order to win free game opportunities or other prizes. Apart from increasing the exposure of the claw machine itself, this might create word-of-mouth between people and therefore attract more customers.
Posting updates of prizes that are new or the latest events could constantly attract customers’ attention. For example, some arcade claw machines in malls attracted thousands of participants within weeks by posting videos of releasing new prizes. This method of marketing keeps the existing customers interested and attracts new customers through user-generated content.
Seasonal Promotions
Seasonal promotions work as one of the most effective methods in increasing revenue from the claw machines. Special promotions you run during seasonal changes and holidays will greatly improve customer participation. You can organize an event like a “Christmas Limited Draw” during Christmas. You can give away toys to your customers with a holiday theme or limited prizes to excite the customers. According to statistics, the revenue of a claw machine on holidays is normally higher than on regular days, around 50% to 70%, especially when there are limited-edition prizes during these holidays, which further increases customers’ desire to spend more money.
Initiations of “buy more, play more” promotions could also be done where customers are given **extra
game opportunities** once they reach a certain amount of coin input. These little promotions can increase the frequency at which customers spend their money. Simultaneously, the holiday-themed decorations and design combined with the overall atmosphere make it a memorable experience
