A game marketing strategy is built on game developers’ and publishers’ perceptions of their products and the game business environment, including all recognition they achieve during post-launch game marketing efforts.
It is not easy to separate post-launch marketing from all marketing stages that publishers get to gain the most possible greatness. After a marketing campaign, marketers are always facilitated by some statistics, which are the result of their mind and performance. However, these metrics stay untalkative unless they are processed and analyzed. These analyses determine your next game marketing strategy.
This article discusses post-launch game marketing and its relationship with post-launch game strategy. Following that, some information comes to assess you to take each post-launch game stage successfully.
What is the difference between pre-launch and post-launch marketing?
Pre-launch marketing includes all the stages that you need to form the strategy to market your product, such as setting goals, chasing competitors, targeting relevant audiences, developing unique Value propositions (UPV), etc. In the article “Game Marketing Strategy: The Marketing Transformation in the Game Industry”, all terms and stages have been discussed.
The meaning that is followed as post-launch marketing truly comes after pre-launching and launching in the third step, When you start to extract and analyze the metrics. To dive into the process of post-launch marketing, we get a brief review of some examples.
post-launch game marketing examples
The Minecraft publishers have considerable experience in running community events to make community engagement and contests. They successfully motivate the targeted audiences to create and share content that is officially called user-generated content (UGC). The Minecraft publishers promote their events through official media channels, like social media and blogs. However, a big “why” is still unanswered: what is the reason behind choosing social media and blogs to promote the Minecraft events by the game publishers?
To answer this question, you need to access the metrics the Minecraft publishers face after their initial marketing efforts, which is impossible! As well as understanding the reason behind the Fortnite game marketing to run cross-promotion methods with Marvel and Star Wars.
In other words, evaluating metrics leads experts to specific strategies in post-launch marketing steps. It might just be a brief expression of the necessity of post-launch game marketing.
Why is the Post-launch game marketing strategy necessary?
Post-launch game marketing drives publishers to take less risk and make more reliable decisions about upcoming marketing strategies. In the following, you will find the necessity of evaluating metrics after a game marketing campaign.
Getting to know targeted audiences
Reaching a huge amount of audience seems impossible. You might keep in touch with only a group community close to you, but you certainly are not able to talk with millions of audiences without any intermediary, specifically when you get in touch through media. So, if aiming would be to estimate their thought and favorites, the metrics should be considered as their words about your campaign and their preferences. Evaluating these metrics means trying to understand their words.
Getting to know deeply targeted audiences boosts all efforts in marketing and product designing, here in the case of game development.
Recognizing the competitors
The truth is that you need them to stay in competition and win. So there is no choice except to analyze them and read their minds, like a football team.
But you always face here two news. The bad one is that competitors never show their weaknesses and strengths to you voluntarily. On the contrary, they do their best to keep all these frailties and powers secret. The good news is that game marketing metrics never leave you alone in this case.
Acknowledging market trends
Team footballs are allowed to run their last training session in the main pitch to get to know the place deeper before gaming. You might wonder why it would happen when the structure of pitches is the same all around the world, and players are truly familiar with that. But after deeper consideration, you will be able to understand the importance of the pitch. Players need to find their spot again and again and position their bodies with the new pitch individually and together as a team. As well as a football team, you must understand the market that you aim to win, factors like game environment trends, new technologies, and consumer behavior changes. Analyzing the metrics of your previous marketing campaign helps to recognize all these things, adapt, and innovate.
Enhancing the post-launch game strategy stage
post-launch game marketing also gives some crucial leads about the validity of the game product and its potential to be successful through the targeted audience’s preferences and satisfaction.
To sum up, evaluating metrics in the post-launch game marketing stage clarifies insights and leads game marketing strategy to more reliable strategies, lower cost risks, the way targeted audiences perceive your brand, and suitable promotional tactics and channels.
How do game marketing metrics lead to success?
Post-launch game marketing is mostly dedicated to gathering all data based on game marketing metrics and analyzing them to understand many different aspects of the market, including the competitors, audiences, market trends, etc. All game marketers need these statistics to develop their approach affordably and reliably.
Before collecting these statistics, it seems necessary to find their meanings and functions. Here are some essential marketing metrics to improve marketing efforts.
User Acquisition Metrics
User acquisition metrics refer experts to the average of new users who already found the product interesting to install and play your game. In this case, the new users and install ratios metrics play key roles.
New Users
new user acquisition rates indicate the marketing appeals to absorb new audiences and total user acquisition trends.
Install Ratios
The comparison between the install ratio, ad impressions, or click rate takes you inside your campaign marketing effectiveness.
Engagement and Retention Metrics
Does your game and marketing strategy engage targeted audiences and guarantee their retention? To figure out the answer to the question, you can find the metrics below.
Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU)
To perceive the engagement rate, you need both daily and monthly active user metrics. These metrics apply a deep investigation of the game’s stickiness in a period. Through the DAU/MAU, you will reach the rate of user retention and engagement.
Session Length and Session Frequency
Both these metrics indicate how much time players spend their time in per session and frequent sessions. They are not directly related to post-launch game marketing, but they provide a wise understanding of the gameplay mechanics and the game design within your product. You might need them to develop return visits and engagement rates.
Churn Rate
The players might stop gaming your game after a while for various reasons including game satisfaction. The churn rate applies to the percentage of players who did not continue with your game over a period.
Playtime
The playtime metric leads you to user engagement level by measuring the total time that they spend actively with your product over all sessions. No way except to understand this metric to develop the gameplay experience and the product’s potential.
Community Metrics
Many game publishers not only dream of building a huge community but also highly pay to make it true. Two community growth rate (CGR) and user-generated content rate (UGC) metrics illustrate their weaknesses and achievements by measuring forum members, discord servers, and the quality of user-generated content that improves engagement and loyalty.
Monetization Metrics
Monetization metrics like the average revenue per user rate (ARPU) and the conversion rate (CR) also demonstrate how well your product and marketing campaign would be successful in converting potential customers to paying ones.
Brand Awareness Metrics
Many marketing campaigns aim to achieve a high brand awareness. In this case, experts carefully monitor impressions and reach rates that apply to the times promotional contents are viewed and the number of people who see them. Furthermore, the amount of Likes, shares, comments, and followers on social media platforms can show the brand’s appearance and audience preferences.
Marketing Campaign Performance Metrics
In following the brand awareness metrics, each time clicking on game advertisements (CTR) and total revenue generated from advertising (ROAS) are two essential metrics in evaluating a marketing campaign’s performance.
There are other metrics like net promoter score (NPS) and user reviews and ratings that make a game marketing performance clear.
By tracking these metrics, game developers and marketers can gain a comprehensive understanding of their marketing performance, make informed decisions, and adjust strategies to improve overall effectiveness.
Q&A
1. How does post-launch game marketing lead you to success?
Post-launch game marketing primarily focuses on collecting and analyzing data from various game marketing metrics to gain insights into different market aspects such as competitors, audiences, and trends. Game marketers rely on these statistics to create a cost-effective and dependable strategy. Before gathering this data, it’s important to understand what these metrics mean and how they function. Below are some key marketing metrics that can enhance marketing efforts.
2. Is pre-launch game marketing against the post-launch game marketing?
The concept of post-launch marketing follows the pre-launch and launch phases, occurring in the third step when you begin to gather and analyze metrics. To explore the post-launch marketing process, let’s briefly look at a few examples.
3. What are the examples of marketing campaign performance and brand Awareness Metrics?
Many marketing campaigns focus on increasing brand awareness, which involves tracking metrics such as impressions and reach to measure how often promotional content is viewed and the number of unique viewers. Engagement on social media, including likes, shares, comments, and followers, also reflects brand visibility and audience preferences. Additionally, key performance metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and return on advertising spend (ROAS) assess campaign effectiveness.
Sources: Udonis, Game Analytics
