Your fields are beautifully groomed, your refs expertly trained, your site is picture perfect and any parent would feel safe to leave their youngsters with you. There's just one problem-the players don't come consistently! What could be wrong? You've put your heart and soul into the place, and done everything right, yet you constantly have trouble moving from "just getting by" to "operating comfortably." It's time to dig deeper and start thinking outside the box.

Yes, it's true, this is a subject near and dear to my heart; one that I've experienced and continue to experience today. The owner of the field that I am affiliated with, Sal Briguglio, and I were having a conversation not long ago that got me thinking. We really do have a great field, one of the most well-groomed I've ever seen. It's safe, clean, and the staff is experienced. Business stinks! I think our situation is a common model in the industry. Let's face it, to own a paintball field requires an extreme love of the sport, since by and large they are very labor-intensive and only fairly profitable. When you achieve excellence through hard work, you should be rewarded with boatloads of customers, right? Not necessarily.

We have great speedball fields. There are brand-new state-of-the-art bunkers; high, tight netting; and even a dual boundary setup for use with "X-Ball" format games. We practice what we preach and don't allow any unsportsmanlike conduct, period. We've stopped tournaments in their tracks when things got out of hand from overanxious players. We've built a name for ourselves in being a zero-tolerance field in terms of that type of thing. We routinely have tournaments, and are proud to see entire families in the bleachers cheering on their kids while experiencing a wonderfully positive, team-building environment.

This has worked against us with regards to revenue, but we're OK with that. You might think the opposite would happen, but grab yourself some of the newest tournament DVDs, and you'll see the type of mentality that many of today's tournament players are trying to emulate-a mentality that other fields in the area allow, which draws those individuals to their business. This isn't intentional on their part, but rather an unfortunate side effect to our strict policies.

That's only one side of the equation. Woodsball is making a huge revival and Sal was quick to mention riding that wave. He's right-in fact the most efficient revenue stream in the sport is the recreational, rental player. Our experience has been that this type of customer generally has a preconceived notion of the sport that involves the woods, camouflage, and-dare I say it?-"war games." That's OK for many reasons, and those players usually end up experimenting with speedball and the woods equally.

Obviously the name of the game has always been to target customers and produce revenue. For years, we've had a decent flow of rentals and a bunch of non-rental recreational players, and have been focused on a steady schedule of tournaments. Tournaments are great one-day revenue producers. If your field is set up for large tournaments like ours is, then it's fairly simple to organize and run an event as long as you have all your ducks in a row. Due to the collision of the current "poster-boy" tournament personality and our unwillingness to accept it at our establishment, this has become a much less effective base for us.

So we decided that we want to target woodsball players for the time being. Not lacking twists and turns, our situation has yet another odd dimension. We seem to have earned a reputation for being a "speedball tournament" field given our past focus and despite the fact that we have more than 15 acres of wooded fields. Local woodsball players don't think of us when they want to visit a field because of this. Additionally, the entrance to our field touts a massive, football-field-size speedball arena while none of the wooded fields are visible. We have unintentionally marketed ourselves out of the woodsball segment!

This is where thinking outside the box is a necessity. How are we going to get players to visit our establishment? Two markets seem likely: corporate and scenario. We've had scenario games before, even going as far to host a national level Wayne Dollack event. We had lackluster results, but we have mainly ourselves to blame. Advertisement was lacking as well as interest. We're not scenario players. We don't go to the games, or fully understand what it's about. Remember the last misrepresentation of paintball you saw on TV? Yeah, the involved party didn't fully understand what the sport's about and therefore didn't do a good job. Well, neither did we. To truly understand scenario, we must involve those players in the planning stages, and attend the events ourselves. Only after several successful events can we expect to build the foundation of a good reputation in that arena.

Corporate paintball outings, simply put, are a goldmine. They are a renewable resource, and one that is present in great quantity. Marketing ourselves toward this segment will be crucial for our future. However, one must be smart when visiting this type of venue. Full contact is necessary, and you will need to visit the human resources department of the company you are trying to solicit. You must be professional, dress accordingly, and bring examples of paintball's team-building quality, since that is the value they will see in hiring you. I am speaking in the future tense, because this is an ongoing experiment for us also. We are just beginning this phase and our success remains to be seen.

No two fields are the same and likewise won't necessarily benefit from cookie-cutter solutions. You must analyze your business and recognize problems, hopefully earlier than we have and before they adversely affect your bottom line. Paintball has so many different levels, and attracts such a variety of customers, that success must be discovered through educated experimentation in your specific setting. Think outside the box!

What marketing techniques has your field tried, and how successful have they been? marc@actionpursuit games.com

Marc Gottfried has been playing the sport with Total Greif Paintball Team (totalgreif.com) since 1989 and is a world champion brewmaster who operates a state-of-the-art brewery/nightclub in St. Louis, Missouri (morganstreet brewery.com).