A lot of things might come to mind when someone thinks of Magic in your local community. Maybe their best-ever topdeck, maybe some nostalgia over their favorite plane, maybe the latest Banned & Restricted announcement. And maybe, if you know how, your store.

The concept is called "Top of Mind." It means, when a customer thinks of their game, they think of your store. Whether that's when they want to play it, when they want to buy it, or when they just want to hang out and talk about it—you and your store should the first thing that pops into their heads.

That means stocking everything in the given product line, and never running out. It means running all in-store play offered. It's not an exact science, and it's not always easy. But the WPN's top performers know how it can pay off—it just happens to be one of the principles of the Premium Quality Checklist.

Here’s how it works.

Magic product: All Standard Sets Available

That's item #13 on the Premium Quality Checklist. It's there because Premium stores are the kind of stores that achieve Top of Mind with their communities.

Black Diamond Games, for example, a Premium location run by Gary Ray. In this article, Gary runs down how his store achieves Top of Mind with Dungeons & Dragons. Step one to staying is stocking the entire product line.

According to Gary, the benefit of keeping a full product line in stock won't necessarily show up in your sales data. It's a psychological thing. Players need to be able to assume that if they want it, you've got it. And they can't make that assumption unless you've got everything.

In Magic, that means at least having all Standard-legal sets readily available. (MIchael Bahr goes so far as to say stocking them in all configurations, even sealed cases.)

But of course, that's only half of the Top of Mind equation. Players also need to be able make the same assumption about events.

Run All WPN Programs

That's item #38.

Just like stocking all products helps register you as a go-to carrier in the mind of your community, scheduling all events helps players assume that, if there's an event that you can run, you're running it.

The data back this up—running the full suite of any given season's events correlates with higher performance. Let’s look at last August's Magic Weekend: Commander as an example.

Stores that that scheduled the full complement of Throne of Eldraine events drew 24% more players at Magic Weekend: Commander than stores that did not schedule everything.

If players know they can come to your store for everything they could possibly want from packs to sleeves to dice, they're more likely to do so. When people know you’re reliably running all events, they’ll associate your store with Magic events.

The most obvious upcoming example is Magic Weekend: Pioneer. Pioneer is a new format. It's got official support at all levels of competitive Magic, but all the same, it's new. The Pioneer community is just beginning to form, and maybe it hasn't reached your store yet.

But being Top of Mind (not to mention being WPN Premium) means you schedule it, right alongside Prerelease, FNM, and all the rest. If you want players to think of you when they think of Magic, they need to know that when there's an event coming up, they can safely assume you’re their go-to.

So log into WER right now and schedule all your Theros Beyond Death events!