GoCorral

I posted the RPG Customer Profiles I wrote in a RPG Discord server to see what people thought of them. I got a few responses that I’ll break down here.

New Customer Profile?

One person recommended adding an additional profile called Bobby Beer and Pretzels. That would be someone who plays TTRPGs largely for the social interaction with their friends. This would be the Watcher player motivation.

The Bobby profile definitely exists, but I don’t think its one that you can specifically market to for purchasing TTRPG products. If Bobby is more of a passive participant in his TTRPG group, then he’s much less likely to buy a TTRPG product. Maybe he’d buy it if one of his friends buys it first, but then your real marketing target is Bobby’s friends as Bobby will follow their spending behaviors.

The person I was talking had personal experience with a Bobby buying things. He also noted that the Bobby he knows fits pretty closely to the Greg profile. Additionally, the items that this Bobby bought were usually extra pieces for other TTRPG products other people had already introduced to him. So those other people would have more bang for your buck in the marketing sphere AND Bobby might just be a subset of the Greg profile.

However you look at it, five profiles is a bit too much and I still don’t see a good way to market a new TTRPG to someone who is going with the flow on the rest of their group. Bobby might exist as a psychographic profile, but its not a useful customer profile if Bobby isn’t going to be influenced by online marketing to buy TTRPG products.

Diversity is Bad?

One person responded by saying they liked diversity in theory. He danced around a direct statement, but it seemed like his broader point was that diversity in marketing messages is bad because its a form of reverse racism.

He used Roll20’s “Five White Guys” controversy from 2018 as an example of reverse racism for marketing within the TTRPG space. I plan on breaking down that controversy in a separate post. The broader point is that Roll20 chose to not give an unsolicited sponsorship to a group of five YouTube personalities because they were all white men.

This is part of appealing to Francie. If everyone visibly using your product is white, people will assume your company/product is racist. Good people don’t want to be associated with evil racism, so they don’t buy from companies like that. Ultimately inclusion is better for your product’s reach AND for building a happier community in the world where demographic barriers don’t prevent people from enjoying their hobbies.

Back to the person responding to my post. He seemed to think that inclusion in marketing is bad because… I don’t know. Probably just some racist idea that he chose not to fully articulate because he knew it putting it into text would make him look like an asshole. So we’ll just discard that critique.

The Debate

I got into a debate with one person who responded about how useful customer profiles are at all. His stance was that customer profiles are an antiquated look at how marketing works from the 1950s. That by grouping people that way you ignore parts of the market that you could potentially hit and end up reinforcing your own views based off those ignored elements (Bobby Beer and Pretzels?).

There’s a lot of incorrect assumptions that he made that I’ll try and break down.

Customer profiles are not an idea from the 1950s. The idea was developed in the late 1990s and not broadly used until the 2000s. Customer profiles have become even more useful in recent years as digital marketing allows you to target those groups more specifically. And they aren’t meant to be static. You evolve and change as the market changes. The profiles I chose were based off my own experiences talking with hundreds of other RPG gamers over the years. They’re not perfect, but I don’t think they’re inaccurate.

Focusing on customer profiles for marketing does mean that you’ll miss parts of the potential audience. But by trying to define profiles that describe most of the market you’re less likely to miss specific psychographic profiles. Marketing to Greg, Francie, Pete, and Carson might miss Bobby, but what percentage of potential customers exist within that Bobby profile? I’d guess not many.

The alternative to customer profiles is also worse at missing parts of your potential audience. One alternative would be to not consider your audience at all, which is obviously foolish. The other would be to get too specific with what you consider your audience instead of thinking of the broader market of RPG gamers. If I only market my product to a theoretical Taylor profile, then I’m missed out on Greg, Francie, Pete, and Carson.

Let’s use a theoretical Pokémon RPG as an example for how to mold the broad profiles to a more specific audience.

If I’m designing marketing a Pokémon RPG, I’m looking to target people that enjoy the video games, card game, or TV show. That interest is assumed and I don’t need to design a whole new set of customer profiles. There is a split the profiles DO cover between older players like myself and newer players like my daughter. As far as a Pokémon RPG is concerned, I’m a Greg who stopped playing a long time ago when the game was “still good” and dislikes the new games/cards. My daughter would be a Pete who is excited by the power of new cards and the desire to collect all the Pokémon. My podcast guest, Matt, is a Carson who likes designing his own Fakémon. Francie fits in here too but I don’t have a specific personal example to draw from. The profiles can be further refined based off whether the Greg/Pete/Carson we’re aiming our messaging at is a fan of the Pokémon video games, card game, or TV show. That’s beyond the scope of this little exercise though.

The main point is that the profiles I designed get modified for a Pokémon RPG, but you don’t have to design entirely new ones. You certainly could, but the broader profiles provide a starting point. The Greg, Francie, Pete, and Carson profiles did a decent job at describing the market for a Pokémon RPG. As you do marketing tests the profiles might seem like they’re not quite right for that purpose. If that’s the case, just adjust the profiles and keep going!

As my debate with this person continued, he started going through that refinement process. He described how he thought some audiences might fit within the profiles I designed along with having more specific ones for his TTRPG product and those of other people. It felt like he’d accepted customer profiles were a good idea but wanted to go in a different direction with them. He is thinking about his audience and what the different groups are, but didn’t want to use the broader profiles I wrote. All good, but he might be missing opportunities by doing that.

More Specific Profiles

My post did spawn a broader conversation on the Discord server about what the ideal customer was for each of the people designing their own TTRPGs. People’s answers were… too specific to be useful.

“People that like Lancer/4e/Beacon but really want movement to be at the forefront of the fighting experience.”

“People that like the dark universe and strategy of Battle Brothers, or the ones that want a low fantasy noble game like GOT but were disappointed by the shallowness of the house system.”

“My target audience are players who are interested in investigative games with a surreal and reality bending explanation, with a focus on an open mystery and roleplay.”

Those are very clearly designed profiles, but they don’t say much about why that person would like your game. Maybe that last one? The appeals they’re aiming at are extremely specific and deep in the weeds of TTRPG knowledge.

Could you design marketing for these? Sure, but it would be extremely narrow in scope. You’re cutting off WAY more of your market by being this specific compared to adapting the main profiles I designed.

No One Liked the Profiles

Well, two people liked the profiles. Most of the conversation was around NOT using the profiles and a bit around making them more diverse.

I think people were against them because they didn’t like the idea of being manipulated and manipulating other people in turn. I definitely understand that feeling.

On the other hand, success with any business venture relies on manipulating people into buying your product/service. That manipulation isn’t some moustache-twirling, evil, lying villain process. You need to remain honest and forthcoming with your audience. But you also need to understand what they want/need and provide your product/service as the best solution.

I pointed out that the biggest players in the TTRPG space are using customer profiles to shape their marketing. D&D, Pathfinder, and Daggerheart are succeeding with these tools. There’s no reason to throw them away for ethical grandstanding.

There was also some distaste towards the racial elements of the profiles I discussed. I think part of that is people’s unwillingness to discuss race and how it affects our society. We’d like to pretend that we’re not racist and that only other “bad” people are, but its not true. Being confronted with the reality of “your hobby is partially racially segregated just like every other part of society” can make people uncomfortable.

There is a larger part of the customer profiles that I don’t like and have decided to change. I picked the profile pictures with the guiding philosophy that the profiles reflect the TTRPG world. The TTRPG community isn’t very diverse, so the profiles aren’t diverse either. Several people pointed out that this is a form of giving into racism and evil. It’s the TTRPG marketing equivalent of “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Keeping the profiles as mostly white males would introduce unconscious bias. People that use the profiles to create marketing material (like me) would be more likely to make some more microaggression because they aren’t considering the true audience for TTRPGs is more than just white males. Even if the majority falls into that demographic slice, it’s still only about 60% of the market. From a moral perspective its good to change the profiles to be more reflective of the broader diversity within TTRPGs. Additionally, just from a purely cynical perspective it means you’re less likely to accidentally alienate large parts of your audience.

Adjusting the Profiles

The actual text of the customer profiles won’t need much change. All that I’ll be swapping around is the pictures. A new post with the adjusted profiles will go up the day after this post.