As discussed from my previous blog post, knowing how to advertise video games is one thing, but the execution in making the video game your advertising be successful is a whole other story. Here are the key tips to understand in being successful with your advertising.
Understanding Demographics in Gaming
Understanding the types of ethnicity and age, or what makes the gaming crowd different compared to sports fans, isn’t what I’m referring to when it comes to understanding the demographic for video games. While it’s nice to understand those things, what I’m really referring to here are the subgroups of fans within the video game community. Here is what I mean by this; there are certain groups of people in gaming that are fans of specific genres, like RPGs or First-Person Shooters, and would mainly play those games because they are fans of them. That is what meant when it comes to understanding the demographic; it’s not just the race or age group, it’s the fans of specific genre of games. Understanding them is the key in making your advertisement be successful.
For example, there are sites on the internet that specifically cater to Fighting Game fans, like Shoryuken or Eventhubs that many fans go to. Let’s say you are assigned to marketing a fighting game; the best solution to advertising it is by using this opportunity to have a sponsorship deal with any of those named sites. From there, they would always have the game shown on their site, which in turn would gain recognition and interest from the fighting game community.
Free Advertising
You may be wondering what I mean by this, but let’s say that you are trying to advertise a game and you have a hard time trying to get people’s attention. There may be a couple of individuals who would want to do the advertising for you free of charge, because they just really like the game and wanted it to get the attention it deserves. Encouraging these types of people to talk about the game on sites like Youtube or Twitter can really help it get recognition, without the need of you doing a marketing campaign. It all basically comes down to word-of-mouth, and it’s highly effective for games, especially in today’s era where the Internet exists. For example, according to an article from Kotaku, a study tells that 33% of adult gamers had purchased a game due to word of mouth from a friend or individual that has a large following on the internet.
Example of someone on Twitter showing off a game no one has heard about (Notice the number of likes & retweets).
I suggest reading this article on just how important word of mouth can do for a game.
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Images used for this blog post:
Key To Advertising Video Games 