The Not-So-Secret Sauce of Marketing in The Gaming Industry! Share via

The gaming industry has, undoubtedly, prevailed as popular culture in the entertainment industry and it’s not news that it has also been widespread and capturing eyes in the industry. 

Frankly speaking, and based on Polygon in 2016, the gaming industry back then outperformed the music and film industries combined on various levels. The industry managed to line up gamers across the globe and over the years for an exclusive movie premiere of a game and sell it afterwards.

We think it has even flown miles away since then that it’s not about big brand names with limitless pockets that make those games what they are. It’s about their marketing team and to the extent they’re involved with their resources.

With this full-of-surprises industry, we will assist you with this revealing blog article of the brands of the not-so-secret ingredients should know about from the gaming industry’s marketing experts!

The article will highlight the successful tactics that made the gaming industry what it is today and give you all the top tips you need to apply.

What brands should know and learn from the gaming industry? 

Building communities

From the very beginning of the gaming industry, it has shown attention towards the power of building dedicated communities of users.

Marketers expected that sharing functionality between gamers will help them spread the word among their network and even label the top initiator gamers as their ambassadors. 

Bringing together millions of fans into online communities strengthens the complementary of the customer experience across different resources and peer-to-peer engagement. 

This is supported by research by linkdex, stating the great potential of driving greater reach and encouraging conversions through Ad display, in the right channel, with an average budget and enhancing the customer experience. 

Top Tip: Focus on high-quality users. 

Incentivized traffic is strong especially when reflecting directly on game ranking and game downloads. However, it might boost your bounce rate which means you’re advertising low-quality users.

Sales generation

Who knew games can generate revenue too? Special offers or promotions reached the gaming industry too with the “unlock” theme when finding coins, or items. And this unlocks the feel of achievement. Using this unlocking approach was invented by marketers to deliver a company-wide record ROI.

Further, this approach led marketers to discover the importance of sales landing pages that are packed with affiliate links to “free-to-play games” to catalyze quality users and sales generation.

Top Tip: Think like a customer.

If you’re seeking quality users/leads. Think like them. Use your SEO tool wisely. We’re sure you know your way around google ads, trends. But searching heavily about how your user’s going to search to reach you is a piece of must-have knowledge. 

In addition, Facebook paid ads that include catchy captions and intriguing designs are considered the most successful push campaigns nowadays. 

Also, look into media buying. Don’t panic by not-that-incredibly-high CPM and CPC averages. Traffic is mostly bought at average prices, so campaigns would still achieve a profit if done right.

Permission-based data capture

This is one of the best and trickiest ingredients. Marketers saw gaming as a great way to capture data through leaderboard competitions, so they offered engagement-based content that aligns with their permission opt-ins and marketing objectives. Such a tactic made them know more about their audience more than an app could and gain quality leads in the end.

Top Tip: Don’t sleep on your newsletter.

As your database grows, so does your newsletter email listing. You have to understand your customer’s narrative experience as a gamer and what they want to see content-wise in an email from you. 

Avoid the probability of going to spam or junk mail. If you want them to sail towards a specific call to action in your email. Make them. Send them the unlock reward there, send them a personalized email newsletter. Gamers aren’t readers, but they’ll read reviews about a brand-new game or an exclusive game-based movie release.

Audience engagement

Run a live game with a daily competition for a month with a rewarding unlock system and tell us what are your results! This is one of the successful ingredients markets used and it turned out to increase the engagement rates of every gamer to more than 1 to 2 hours per session. 

If you look at PUBG, you will know. Even in Candy Crush, it was successful that is considered now almost every woman’s obsession and we’re not exaggerating.

Top Tip: Love your players.

Craving more engagement? Love your players. As cheesy as it may sound, loving your audience means you’ll ease it for them. So don’t navigate them to your game’s website and then consume them in a long registration process. The less you make it, the more they love your game and stay even longer. Give them clear landing pages with CTAs. Allow Google+ and Facebook logins.

Video Content Marketing

This one went hand-in-hand with the emergence of the gaming industry. Studies from smart insights declared that video content is accounting 78% of the data traffic. Marketers used that statement by using the gaming influencers’ services efficiently. 8 of 10 channels on Youtube are now gaming channels. Gamers can watch gaming influencers in action for hours which brought back high ROIs and conversion rates

Top Tip: Influencers aren’t playing around

Influencer marketing is not hard to crack. Big brands’ names are now counting with a decent per cent of their revenues and conversions on the influencers they partner with. All it takes is a nice program with the right partners

Conclusion

With these ingredients, you can kick-start thriving any marketing campaign and see your business boost to the next level. So which one you’ll start implementing first?