The online gaming industry is a very lucrative but competitive one. While there’s a huge amount of gamers ready to play their favourite games online, there are also many sites ready to cater to those needs. So, in this modern world, creating an online gaming brand just isn’t enough; you have to find a way to market it to your target audience effectively.
Despite knowing the importance of good marketing to online gaming brands, most brands are yet to leverage it. The reasons for this are numerous; while some have no idea how to start, others don’t know the right strategy for their brand. Whatever category you’re in, this article will explain some sure-fire cost-effective ways that’ll help you market your brand to your target audience.
Sooner or later, people who want to play MMOs, first shooter games, or casino tables online will flood your site. You just have to be consistent, and you’ll surely see growth in your brand.
Budget Friendly Marketing Ideas For Your Online Gaming Brand
To succeed in the online gaming industry, you must find a way to market your brand to the right audience. No matter how good you believe your brand is, if people don’t know about it, they can’t use it, and that obviously means there’s no profit for you. Here are six ways to boost your brand’s presence and growth online.
1. Optimized Blogging
Since the invention of the internet, blogging has been used for both information distribution and product marketing. Let’s put it this way, an online gambler and cryptocurrency enthusiast who wants to wager on his favourite games with cryptocurrency will definitely hit a search engine for explanations on how to go about it.
If your brand accepts payment in cryptocurrency, you can write a detailed blog that explains the processes involved. When people search for this type of information, they come to your site, and once they notice you also offer the services they seek, you might have gotten a new customer.
Even better, creating a blog costs little to nothing. If you’re too busy to create them yourself, you can outsource. Thousands of writers with gaming and writing experience can help you with informative and exciting blogs. Another benefit of blogging is that when people share your blog posts with their friends, family, or even on their social media feed, you’re basically getting free promotion and possibly new customers.
2. Email Newsletters
According to Statista, more than half of the world’s population has an email address. That’s roughly 4.26 billion email users currently. This is also proof that with a good email marketing campaign, you can reach millions of people without spending or stressing much.
You might start to ask, how do I get the email addresses of people interested in gaming? Do I just send emails to random people? All these are valid questions with answers tied to our point. While there are different ways to get emails, like leads and prospect buying, you can get free and effective emails for your brand through effective blogging.
Your blogs should include spaces for visitors to leave their contact details, maybe through comments or by filling out special forms. You can also get emails from player registration, bonuses and promotional offers, interactive content, and surveys.
Also, your emails need to be of the best quality. Always use enticing subject lines that make users click. Your content should also be informative and engaging. It can be about a new map or skin in the game, bonuses or promotional offers, or even answers to frequently asked questions.
3. Utilize Social Media
We don’t need to emphasize heavily the importance of social media in any marketing campaign, especially in the online gaming industry where almost every customer has at least one social media account.
Do solid research on your audience and see what platform they predominantly use. Generally, it’s better to have an account on all major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. Create your profile, post regularly, avoid sounding too robotic or serious, and interact with other accounts when necessary.
Also, have public interactive channels on platforms like Telegram and Discord where you people can share experiences, ask questions, and connect with other users of your brand.
4. Reach Out To Influencers
In 2022, Nielsen reported that 70% of gamers spend roughly 6 hours a week watching their favourite gaming influencer play. Influencers are growing more powerful in the gaming community and are one of the best ways to market your games.
In 2020, The developers of Brawl Stars partnered with 10 YouTube influencers to push the game to a broader audience. When the game launched, it took them little or no time to hit 5 million players, and by the end of the year, many other influencers had already hopped, and Brawl Stars became YouTube’s most played mobile game in 2020.
These influencers have a big and loyal fanbase that follows them. When you partner with them to the hype and play your games live, their followers will join in. But before going for any influencer, research the type of games he streams and see if it matches yours.
5. Get Reviews
Most people search for reviews of a product or service before using it. Getting reviews for your brands is one of the fastest ways to get people to trust you because people will generally believe fellow gamers’ opinions over what they see on your site.
Firstly, list your brands on well-known review platforms and encourage your users to drop positive reviews. You can also give incentives to users who write reviews of your brand on review platforms or app stores.
However, before you even start to accumulate good reviews, ensure your site has official profiles on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Users trust brands with official profiles. Remember that the more positive reviews your brand get, the more likely people will want to use it. Also, be careful because if your brand only has good reviews, people might think you faked them.
6. Create Video Content
Some people might not be interested in reading long blog posts or articles, especially if your game is a bit complex or hard to follow the best way to counter this and market your brand simultaneously is to create video content.
Videos are powerful tools because they give viewers a real and visual taste of the gaming experience. Also, videos allow you to show off your brand’s best features effectively and accurately. Viewers can also decide to share the videos, attracting more people to you.
The Bottom Line
As we’ve shown, there are different ways to market your online gaming brand to the right audience. There are dozens of other methods, but these are six of the most cost-effective options. It’s best to be consistent when using these methods because online marketing is not a day’s work.
Your blogs and video content should be engaging and informative. You should also reach out to influencers for promotion and interact with users. Lastly, ensure your brand is registered on major review platforms and encourage users to drop good reviews on those platforms and the app stores.