What Small Businesses Can Learn From Viral Video Games About Marketing
The gaming industry has grown from humble beginnings to become a world-beating marketplace that generates vast revenues and innovates at every stage in terms of everything from product development to marketing.
The way that viral hits emerge from this niche is especially informative, and small businesses stand to benefit from taking heed of the lessons that come from them, so here are a few examples to show what’s possible.
Leveraging User Generated Content: Minecraft’s Marketing Legacy
There’s much to celebrate in the incredible success of Minecraft, a game that started as a passion project for a solo developer, but rose to become a multi-billion dollar IP.
Chiefly, it demonstrates how user-generated content has immense power to create hype and connect customers emotionally, as part of a wider content marketing strategy.
The key is in building an experience that encourages users to share it with their friends, family, or even strangers online. This creates a multiplier effect, which exponentially increases your online presence and engagement rate. That’s something small business should certainly strive for, and centers the idea that user engagement is at the core of good marketing in any context.
Using Social Media for Strategic Promotion: Fortnite’s Influencer Marketing Masterclass
Fortnite has become an undisputed leader in the video game industry, and its success can be largely attributed to its influencer marketing campaigns.
Small businesses should take notes from this by targeting specific audiences with content that resonates. This could mean partnering up with celebrities or streamers who have already established relationships within their respective niche communities, as well as running ads on various social media platforms such as TikTok or Instagram to reach a broader audience base.
Such strategies tie in with what’s being achieved in the mobile and web3 games space by growth marketing consultants. Catalyzing the adoption of products and services through proactive, socially-driven campaigns is crucial, since it overcomes the sluggishness of organic growth, without costing the earth.
Optimizing Your Mobile Presence With Cross-Platform Interactivity: Taking Notes from Pokémon GO
Pokémon GO is a great example of how to maximize your mobile presence and create industry disruption. Through its cross-platform interactivity, it was able to bring together people in real life locations, while adding an extra layer of engagement through the game itself.
Small businesses can adopt similar techniques, such as location-based notifications or AR capabilities, that draw the attention of customers when they’re in a particular place. The scale may be different to the globe-spanning reach and vast revenues of Pokemon GO, but the principles remain the same.
Exploiting the Power of Memes: Among Us and Niche Virality
The story behind the explosion in the popularity of Among Us is an example on how harnessing memes can help turn niche products into viral sensations.
Its rise to fame was largely due to its unique art style, which gave players something they could easily meme and share with others. This created a multiplier effect that opened new doors for growth marketing initiatives.
For small businesses, it demonstrates a new way of engaging their target audience. Using humorous content or tapping into popular trends like TikTok challenges helps capture people’s attention quickly, thus reaching more potential customers than before.
This also feeds back into the idea of encouraging users to come up with their own content, which then perpetuates the spread of your products and brand, without you needing to do all of the legwork.
The Bottom Line
Adopting the marketing approaches which worked for viral video games might not lead to overnight success for small businesses, but it does give you a new perspective on promoting your organization that could lead to bigger and better things in the future.
