Although most people still associate viral marketing with video and YouTube, achieving satisfactory results with commercial viral video marketing has become difficult, due to over saturation. Viral games however can still provide great results, almost always surpassing those of video campaigns, here s why:
Viral game seeding is easier and provides more consistent results
There are many online games portals and community sites that will feature and actively promote your game for free. It s relatively easy to get a game on the front page of a few high traffic games portals, potentially getting your game in front of millions worldwide, but try doing that with YouTube, or one of the other main video sharing sites. Over saturation on the video sharing sites has meant that it s virtually impossible to make your video stand out from the vast number competing for your audience s attention.
Viral games get consistently higher viewing figures
The ease of seeding and the fact that there is less competition means viral games typically get many times more views than videos. Millions (or even tens of millions) of worldwide plays are commonplace with viral games. Getting those sorts of numbers with viral videos is impossible for all but a handful of the very best viral videos.
You can embed clickable links in a viral game
One of the main things that make viral games so effective is the referral traffic they generate. It s possible to put clickable web links within the game to drive traffic to your business, or a specific product website. Clickthrough rates on viral games are typically over 10 , much higher than other forms of online advertising such as banner ads. This is where viral videos fail. With no way to include clickable links it s just a case of inserting a web address and hoping the visitors come. Obviously doing this just can t compete with the direct clickthroughs generated by a viral game.
Viral games are interactive
Viral games draw the viewer in and encourage them to interact with your brand, rather than just passively watch the advert. This can give your advert a much greater impact, make it much more memorable and increase the chances of people coming back for repeat plays.
You get more for your money with viral games
Given the above and the fact that production costs are similar, viral games give you a much better return on your investment. Viral games consistently reach a much larger audience for roughly the same cost as viral videos.
You can easily, accurately monitor results with viral games
With viral games it s possible to insert a viral tracking service (or even Google Analytics) into the code to track detailed visitor data across hundreds of sites and all through one dashboard. This makes it much easier to see and monitor the success of your viral marketing campaign. You can also track clickthroughs to your website accurately with viral games, because links aren t possible within videos neither is accurate referral traffic tracking.
Viral videos can be used to promote games but not vice versa
This may sound a bit odd, considering everything preceding this, but inexpensive viral videos can be effectively used to boost traffic to a viral game. We often do this with the viral games we release, where we create a short gameplay video in order to further promote the viral game. Because it s just a video capture of the game there is very little time, work and cost involved.
Although videos are the first thing that spring to mind when you mention viral marketing, games are definitely more effective and worthy of your marketing budget.
Author Resource:
Simon Walklate is a professional Flash Game Developer who also runs Free-To-Play Flash Games website Flash Games Play. http://www.flashgamesplay.co.uk
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