Gone are the days when gaming was considered only for the kids or hardcore gamers. With the gaming industry expanding rapidly, it has attracted people from all age groups and segments including women, athletes, kids, youngsters, and more. With the latest technologies like AI and AR, more and more people are getting attracted to gaming that has led to stiff competition in the gaming industry.
No matter how good your game and brand are, if you are not able to the maximum gamers, it is all waste. Here, marketing plays a very crucial role to establish yourself in the growing gaming industry. So, if you are launching a new game, relaunching an existing one, or simply trying to get more players, the right marketing strategies are needed. The right marketing strategy will help your games and brand stand out from the rest. The following parts of the topic will help you to know in detail about the mobile games industry and the marketing strategy in the gaming industry.
Part 1. Games Industry Trends in 2021
The games industry is going at a fast pace and to prove the same, TechJury has stated that the worth of the gaming industry in the year 2021 will be around $180billion. Over the last few years, the gaming industry has seemed some major changes, developments, and trends which are surely going to continue in the year 2021 as well. Some of the key trends that can be observed in the gaming industry in 2021 are as follows:
01 Increased Diversity
The gaming industry was a male-oriented industry till a few years ago but the trend can be seen changing over the years and 2021 can be seen as a year with equal male/female gamers. The number of women as developers and players can be seen increasing in the year 2021 reaching up to half the total gaming population. The present-day games also have games with female leads and games inclusive for women.
02 Cloud-Based Gaming
The demand for cloud-based gaming has increased manifold over the years and the trend seems to carry on in 2021 as well. It has been seen that online gaming services have exceeded sales when compared to physical games. Cloud gaming offers several benefits like direct streaming, avoiding hassles of game downloading, avoiding incompatible hardware issues, and more.
03 5G Internet
The gaming industry hugely gets affected by the expansion of the network and as the reach of the 5G network increases, so will be the gaming industry. With the faster network, downloading games will become very fast and the expansion of the network will give you the opportunity to download and play games anywhere anytime.
04 New Platforms for PC Gaming
Till now, the PC gaming market is dominated by Steam which is Valve’s PC gaming marketplace where more than 47% of the publishers have their game here. The year 2021 will witness new platforms for PC gaming and GOC is already here.
05 Expansion in The Gaming Console Industry
The next-generation consoles- Xbox Series X and PS5 have been already launched at the end of the last year and will surely dominate the gaming industry in 2021. Both these latest consoles have already become popular among the gaming enthusiasts as they come packed with some interesting features like high-end SSD in PS5 and Smart Delivery in Xbox to name a few.
06 Growing Chinese Game Industry
It is expected that in the year 2021-2026, the gaming industry of China will register 14% CAGR. The Chinese gaming industry is growing at a fast pace and a few of the reasons for the same are eSports popularity, growing use of gaming apps, the launch of games from Tencent, cable network modernization, better cloud infrastructure, and more.
07 Time for Some Remakes and Reboots
The year 2021 will see some interesting remakes and reboots of the earlier popular versions of the game. The new versions of the classic games are going to be a hit trend in 2021. The remakes have always been popular and game of thrones season 8 marketing was a hit in the year it was launched.
Part 2. Useful Marketing Strategies for Games Industry
If you are willing to maximize the visibility of your brand in the gaming industry, the right marketing strategies should be used. Below we have shortlisted the best strategies for gaming marketing that will help you to increase the downloads of your game and make it popular among people.
01 Use Social Media Platforms
Social media is just the right place for marketing and promoting your games and brands. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others have users of various age groups and genre and thus proves to be the best platform to reach out to a large audience.
Analytic tools can be used to decide upon the customer demographics so that you can choose to selectively reach the people depending on their interests and behaviours. To promote and market your games and brand on social media, use engaging and interesting content which can be in the form of text, videos, or animations.
02 Use Video Content to Promote
Promoting your brand and games through video content is highly effective and this can be ascertained from the fact that out of the top 10 channels on YouTube, more than half are related to the gaming industry. In addition to playing games, gamers these days also enjoy watching videos related to the gaming plans, other people’s games, and also esports events. Live streaming is also an interesting concept and sites like YouTube, Twitch and others can be used for the same.
03 App Store Optimization
The strategy of app store optimization can be used to improve the visibility as well as the ranking of your game on the app store. Use the right keywords and phrases that will help your games to be discovered in the app store and thus will get more traffic.
Launching your games on multiple platforms also increases its visibility. Thus, it is suggested that in addition to Android and iOS, submit it to other stores and markets as well like Xiaomi, Amazon, Baidu, and more.
04 Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing works in all industries and gaming is no exception to this. Using influencers will help you to reach a larger number of potential customers and will offer more exposure to your games and brand. Find out the top influencers in your niche, check their profile, and followers, and then depending on their plans (main promotion on cash), you can hire them to promote your games.
05 Gaming Review Websites
Posting about your games on gaming review sites will help you promote the game and also get the know the views of the users. Post all about your game like its description, supported platform, website link, teaser video, and more. Ensure that your description looks engaging and professional so as to get the attention of the users. Adding a promo code to the site is another way by which you can attract potential customers. Some of the popular gaming review sites are Pocket Gamer, Android Authority, Android Guys, and more.
Part 3. Make A Marketing Video Online for Your New Game
To introduce your new game on YouTube, Facebook, gaming review sites, and other social media platforms, a good teaser video is required. Creating an impressive video can be a tricky task and the help of a professional tool like Wondershare VidAir can be taken here. Working from the browser, Wondershare VidAir is a free tool that requires free sign-up for working.
You can check out the templates available in different categories to create a video matching your game theme. The video, audio, text, and other content of the template can be customized as required. The free version of the tool processes the videos in 720p resolution with a watermark while the upgraded paid version processes without a watermark in 1080p resolution and with free 2GB of cloud storage.
Conclusion
The gaming market is becoming highly competitive and thus to remain ahead of the others and tap into the potential, it is important to use the right strategies and tools as listed above. Depending on your target audience, type of gaming, budget, and other factors, the combination of the right strategies can be used. Videos work as an excellent choice for promoting your games and to create professional-looking videos, tools like Wondershare VidAir works as saviour.
