If you’ve played more than a few phone app games you may have noticed what I have: the advertising. I am not just talking pop-ups, I mean several forms of advertising right down to game event sponsors, credits within the game for watching sponsored videos, and “hidden” marketing signage within the apps. While I think most people do not consider in-app advertising as a valuable means of marketing, and more specifically mobile gaming as a marketing channel, I do think that we should prepare ourselves for this platform to take a major pole position in the next few years. If I hadn’t experienced it myself, I might not believe it either, but I can recount several charities and name brand companies that sponsored events and billboards within my mobile games over the last year.
Why mobile gaming?
Gaming has been around for quite a while. So, why are brands just now recognizing it as a true marketing channel? There are two main reasons for this.
First, mobile devices have made gaming somewhat ubiquitous–they’re becoming much more mainstream. Second, since mobile game apps prompt users to return to their games, these apps often tend to see a very high level of engaged, regular users. Just think of how many of your friends and family are still regularly playing Candy Crush Saga in their spare time. These two factors make the gaming industry an ideal marketing channel for brands to further optimize in the future.
How do you use mobile gaming as a marketing channel?
There are countless ways for brands to use the gaming industry as a marketing channel. These opportunities extend well beyond banner ads and popups (although those opportunities still exist in the gaming industry, too).
For instance, some apps allow users to pay the company that created the app to actually participate. So, in a game like Pokemon Go, a brand could pay to become a Pokéstop in an effort to increase its own in-store traffic and sales. While this is a fairly direct way to motivate people to visit your store, there are a variety of more intricate ways to go about this.
Brands, for example, 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.
With the right targeting and messaging, this could be another creative way to not only drive people into your store, but also increase sales.
I don’t see small businesses having a need for mobile marketing efforts at the moment, but for larger corporations there are some seriously great nets that can be cast within a mobile app or game that could target a large group of your audience while they are highly engaged, which could potentially become a serious lead generating machine.
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