Deji Atoyebi — March 10, 2017 Follow @I_amAtoyebiDejiThe rise of Pokémon Go drew attention to the significance of mobile gaming to online marketing. Although the app’s daily active users are on the decline, its latest reviews prove its continued acceptance (bugs aside!). However, for fads fade with time, we’ve got to move on. After Pokémon, what’s next? Is gaming worth the effort?
Well the statistics are enough evidence of the countless opportunities that abound in integrating gaming with your marketing strategy. As of December 2016, mobile games accounted for about 24.85 percent of all active apps in the iTunes App Store, and in the US mobile gaming penetration is expected to grow by about 58.9% in 2017. In this article, I will give reasons (besides the stats) why gaming is a good channel to gear your marketing energy towards.
WHY GIVE GAMING A CHANCE?
1. To Target Your Buyer Personae:
Games have the tendency to bring your target audience together and to make you reach them more effectively. This review, for example, is one of many showing how Pokémon Go helped to build relationships. This proves a good initiative, because people who are motivated by a common cause are more likely to take the same actions (which, in this case, may be buying from you).
Be prepared to target your buyer personae from the outset if you’re currently giving gamification a thought. For example, if you sell to millennials, attempt to discover the games that would fly with them.
2. It’s Great for Location-Specific Targeting:
Suppose you own a brick-and-mortar store, chances are you’re interested in reaching more people within your city. Gaming comes in handy, once again. Adweek has this to point out:
“Brands… could use geo-location services to push targeted messages and coupons to people who are playing the game near their brick-and-mortar locations. In practice, the brand would craft a personalized message that’s targeted for customers, or a subset of customers, who play a particular game. Then, when users with their geo-location services turned on happen to play the game near the brand’s physical store, the brand can push those targeted messages out to them.”
3. Serves as a Good Basis for Remarketing:
Picture this. You’ve got some type of game set up on your business site. A visitor stumbles on it and has such a fun time playing that she gets fully engrossed in it. After much time playing, she quits your site and forgets everything about it. Weeks go by…
Fortunately, you’ve adopted a remarketing strategy on Facebook and she eventually sees your ad in her feed. Your site immediately rings a bell – the ‘AHA!’ eliciting kind of bell. She visits it and has a swell time. Your site’s URL sticks.
The next week, during her free time, she jumps on your site to game. On reaching there she decides to view the products for sale. Now she’s developed a soft-spot for your business (thanks to your game) and buys something. Goal achieved!
Now, while you may consider the above analogy an over-simplification of the buyer’s journey, it portrays what might become of your business if gaming is properly harnessed. Look at it this way: as we tend to remember a stranger who’s helped us more than we do one who hasn’t, so do we easily remember the games we played because of the entertainment they provided.
Remarketing involves displaying your ads to users who showed interest in your business. After adopting a remarketing strategy while having gaming under your belt, users who know your site for a game they enjoyed are likely to return… and may even turn to customers, soon enough.
4. Content Marketing Can Be Dull:
Let’s face it; at times, content bore. There’s a lot of outright unappealing content out there, and your prospective buyers may have had enough of what they assume to be shitty and rehashed stuff.
Gaming adds an exciting side to your business (although you’ve got to keep an eye on your buyer personae’s interests to determine its suitability) and may provide you with more results than you’d ever obtain by placing all your eggs in the content basket.
Wrap Up
We all love to have fun. Game is fun. As opposed to popular belief, business can be mixed with pleasure – which, in this case, is gaming. With gaming, you can make the best of your marketing campaigns. All it takes is a trial. However, I can’t help laying emphasis on your customers’ interests because while gaming is great, it might not be a silver bullet for your type of business. Stick to what works for your customers and prospects.
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