“Coming from a marketing background, one of my obsessions is studying user behavior—how do people interact with something,” Nguyen said. | Courtesy of Tri Nguyen
If you lure them, they will come.
Besides concerts and New Year’s Eve, Pokemon Go can prompt the masses (of customers and Pokemon) to gather at certain places. For Tri Nguyen, a 2015 entrepreneurship graduate and managing partner of the local digital marketing agency TKM Labs, that was the drive to launch Lure Deals, a service that businesses can use to turn players into patrons.
“The magic of Pokemon Go—what it has done to user behavior is that it literally makes every place to go to going to be great,” Nguyen said. “The exciting thing we’ll be able to do is bringing people (to the business) so they will know where it is and what it is all about.”
Nguyen has been busy pitching Lure Deals for prospects around town. Sometimes, the prospects come to him. Upon meeting a business that shows interest, Nguyen will work on the promotion and how long will it stay active before moving to the LureDeal Network that will broadcast the deal to players via notifications or custom campaigns on social media.
David Cook, the director of mentoring programs at the Bauer College of Business, expressed joy for the direction of Nguyen, one of his former students of the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship.
“When they leave the program, they can turn any innovation into commercial,” Cook said. “Tri is a great example.”
The Art of the Lure
It was Lure Deals’ second go in San Antonio that proved the service’s worth.
“They mentioned there was a 20 to 30 percent increase in revenue on a day where they placed a lure for two hours,” Nguyen said, recalling his first micro test run of the service. “We placed the lure for one hour on a Monday at 7:40 p.m,” Nguyen said. “The dead hours—and it brought 70 people to that location.”
Since he works with small and medium businesses, Nguyen said the hardest part of creating the new company is getting business owners to understand the mechanics of the game and how he can help them.
And, since not all establishments are Pokestops, Nguyen had to turn down a lot of inquiries.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any control over that,” Nguyen said.
Similar to the servers at Niantic, the Pokemon Go developer, the torrent of deal setters and deal hunters really pushed the team at TKM Labs.
This has led to the nearly 5,000 users Lure Deals already has, even without additional marketing. Nguyen said no specific states are being targeted, but he is focusing more on cities and metropolitan areas. That, too, seems too be where most of the art is and, thus, most of the Pokestops.
“At the end of the day, it’s what the businesses and clients we work with want,” Nguyen said. If they want more users in a specific area, we’ll develop campaigns to acquire more users within those areas.”
Of course, Nguyen’s vision for Lure Deals goes beyond U.S. shores. Nguyen named Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan as prospects. While Niantic has not released the game in the two Asia countries, two mobile phone operators in Hong Kong said July 22 that they will place no data cap on the app.
“We have been in discussions with a couple of people who could be opening it up in Asia,” Nguyen said. “We definitely want to make sure our (working right) here first before we expand.”
“There are 1,900 plus users at the time of this map,” Nguyen said. At the moment, Lure Deals has up to 5,000 users with no additional marketing. | Courtesy of Tri Nguyen
Remaining Alluring
Even when big companies, namely McDonald’s and Yelp, have plans to start their own Pokemon Go-associated marketing platforms, Nguyen said Lure Deals will remain appealing.
“We charge per activation—so it’s per hour, per location,” Nguyen said. “Whether 1,000 people come or 500 people come, it’s still the same price for you. That’s why there’s a lot of value added for small-to-medium sized businesses that work with us.”
As for Lure Deals’ longevity, Nguyen doesn’t know. He does, however, believe it won’t be a fad. Nguyen said that Pokemon Go could stay around longer than “Candy Crush.”
Yes, even with Niantic’s much-maligned changes that have caused fallout among players.
“We’re set up to be completely independent of Niantic, whether it’s now or in the future,” Nguyen said. “We do not want to purely rely on the decision of one company to affect our future.”
So businesses can continue to catch them all.
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