Is Viral Marketing Better With Videos or Games?
Author: Simon Walklate |
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:
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:
Seeding your viral game is easier
Because of the many high traffic online games community sites and portals that are constantly looking for new content it's easy to get you game featured. These website will often feature new games on the front page, providing massive amounts of traffic to your viral game and potentially getting your game played by millions worldwide. Try getting on the front page of YouTube or any of the other high profile video sharing sites and see how far you get. The sheer volume of submissions the video sharing sites get makes it virtually impossible to get anywhere near the front page, which means your video just gets lost amongst millions of others.
Viewing figures are higher for viral games
Because they are easier to seed and get in front of people, viral games generally get seen and played by many more people than videos. It's common for viral games to achieve millions of plays, whereas only a very small number of the very best viral videos can hope to compete with these numbers.
Viral games can link directly to your website
It's easy to insert clickable links to your business or product website into your viral game. And people do click them (usually in their thousands). Typical clickthrough rates on a viral game are over 10% (many times higher than banner ads). It's impossible to include a clickable link in viral videos, the best you can do is include your web address within the video and hope people visit your site. The actual traffic generated this way can't hope to compete with direct clickthroughs from a viral game.
Viral games are interactive
Rather than just have your audience passively view your advert, viral games encourage interaction with your brand to provide a much more engaging experience. This often makes viral games much more memorable and increases the chance of repeat plays.
Viral games are more cost effective than viral videos
Considering the above points and the fact that viral video and viral game production costs are similar, this makes viral games much more cost effective. More views for the same spend as well as the fact that viral games are much more engaging makes them much more appealing as a marketing tool.
You can accurately track 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.
You can use viral videos to promote viral games, but not viral games to promote viral videos
Although it may sound odd at first, viral video is a great inexpensive way to get some extra traffic to your viral game. We use simple gameplay videos to accomplish this. Because they are just video screen grabs they take very little time/money to put together. Conversely, using a viral game to promote a viral video just isn't possible or even desirable, for obvious reasons.
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.
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:
Seeding your viral game is easier
Because of the many high traffic online games community sites and portals that are constantly looking for new content it's easy to get you game featured. These website will often feature new games on the front page, providing massive amounts of traffic to your viral game and potentially getting your game played by millions worldwide. Try getting on the front page of YouTube or any of the other high profile video sharing sites and see how far you get. The sheer volume of submissions the video sharing sites get makes it virtually impossible to get anywhere near the front page, which means your video just gets lost amongst millions of others.
Viewing figures are higher for viral games
Because they are easier to seed and get in front of people, viral games generally get seen and played by many more people than videos. It's common for viral games to achieve millions of plays, whereas only a very small number of the very best viral videos can hope to compete with these numbers.
Viral games can link directly to your website
It's easy to insert clickable links to your business or product website into your viral game. And people do click them (usually in their thousands). Typical clickthrough rates on a viral game are over 10% (many times higher than banner ads). It's impossible to include a clickable link in viral videos, the best you can do is include your web address within the video and hope people visit your site. The actual traffic generated this way can't hope to compete with direct clickthroughs from a viral game.
Viral games are interactive
Rather than just have your audience passively view your advert, viral games encourage interaction with your brand to provide a much more engaging experience. This often makes viral games much more memorable and increases the chance of repeat plays.
Viral games are more cost effective than viral videos
Considering the above points and the fact that viral video and viral game production costs are similar, this makes viral games much more cost effective. More views for the same spend as well as the fact that viral games are much more engaging makes them much more appealing as a marketing tool.
You can accurately track 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.
You can use viral videos to promote viral games, but not viral games to promote viral videos
Although it may sound odd at first, viral video is a great inexpensive way to get some extra traffic to your viral game. We use simple gameplay videos to accomplish this. Because they are just video screen grabs they take very little time/money to put together. Conversely, using a viral game to promote a viral video just isn't possible or even desirable, for obvious reasons.
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.
Information:
Simon Walklate is a partner in UK based online game designer The Motion Monkey who specialise in viral game development.
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