How To Market Online To Gamers

It has been said several times before: companies no longer own their brands – we do. But how does this apply to the video game industry and its transition into the social space? If companies no longer own their brands, how do they market to gamers?

While attending ECGC, I was able to hear Capstrat’s Cord Silverstein speak on the matter. While Cord isn’t a gamer, the focus on the video game industry gave the presentation an interesting twist. After just coming back from E3 2011, this topic is even more important than before.

Nobody Trusts Marketers

One of the biggest issues social media has introduced to the marketing world is that, well, people just don’t trust marketers. And while this isn’t news, it’s important because they no longer have to pretend to trust them or listen to mass messages distributed by companies. This is especially prominent when dealing with gamers in the social space. Gamers have dealt with things in the past like the “bullshot” – combining a screenshot and bullshit, it’s a fabrication of a game image to misrepresent the graphics in the game. So gamers are used to displaying a high level of skepticism toward any marketing effort geared their way already.

Challenge number two for any online marketer: “Online users are selfish, lazy and ruthless” – Jakob Nielsen. People spend 12-18 seconds on a page then decide whether to stay on or jump ship. Gamers are even greater examples of difficult-to-reach online users. Gamers see themselves as skeptical yet savvy consumers. They have the same trust characteristics as other online users except that their trust is spread out over more channels, lessening the weight of influence on a particular source. In essence, they’re difficult to engage online since their interests are a mild wide and an inch deep.

According to Cord, Gamers in particular epitomize Jakob’s statement. Gamers are selfish and want the next item, level, achievement or kill streak. They’re lazy since they want to get through game play with as much optimization and as many exploits/cheats as possible. And they’re ruthless. They’ll do whatever it takes to win.

But Gamers Are Informavores

On the other hand, gamers are “informavores” – organisms that consume information. They have a voracious appetite for information and they relish a challenge, love crowdsourcing information and they are generally very detail-oriented. An important point when marketing to gamers: “If your message isn’t being dissected by the community of gamers,” said Cord, “you’re putting out the wrong message. Bad conversation is better than being ignored.”

Much like an audience online, there is a way to approach them in an effective manner.

  • Begin by listening (use Google Alerts – it’s simple and free)
  • Identify influencers
  • Recognize discussions
  • Track congregation points
  • Understand markets

So after doing all of that, how else do you market to these informavores who are selfish, lazy, ruthless and distrustful? Figure out your story. Stories are what we remember and people, quite simply, love stories. How can video game companies in particular share their story with gamers? They can share features: how many players are supported? What’s the resolution of this game? They can share the value: how many hours does it take to play this game? How many side quests are available? What sort of rewards can be unlocked? And most importantly, video games can share their actual story. What’s the game about and what’s in it for the gamers?

Gamers also have specific intrinsic behaviors that marketers can put to good use. Gamers generally love to create content, share experiences, and connect with brands through their games.

Cord also mentioned (and referenced my previous blog article, “How Video Game Companies Are Using Facebook“) that through Facebook, gamers love videos and free DLC. This should be kept in mind too when considering social media marketing for video game brands.

A Great Example to Learn From

An example of a fail was EA’s Sin to Win campaign for Dante’s Inferno. This is a great example of how not to market online to gamers.

The idea for the campaign was to incorporate the social space by getting people to “commit acts of lust” with booth babes at Comic-Con, then put the pictures up on Twitter, Facebook or email them in. To make it viral, the more babes that were “lusted” then the more chances a person had to win.

In short, Cord summed it up: “The community was like ‘what are you smoking.’” The horrible campaign resulted in a trending hashtag #EAFail and caused outrage across gaming communities. This was an example of social media marketing being utilized without listening or caring about the community. They didn’t understand their market and they didn’t listen to the gamers before launching the campaign. Fortunately, they pulled the campaign and listened afterwards. But not before it totally backfired.

How do you best engage gamers online? What social media campaigns for video games have you liked or disliked?



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