Massive Multiplayer Online Game
Demographics
Some people believe that videos games are pointless activities, and only teenagers waste their time playing these games. These people will be surprised to know that the average of video game players is somewhere around 26 years. In fact, teenagers account to only 25% of the video games players. According to the demographic statistics of the players of these games, 50% of them are full time employees. Around 36% of them are married; meanwhile 22% of them have children (Flew and Humphreys, 2005). Therefore, it will not be wrong to say that the demographic of video games’ players is quite diverse. From high school students, to early professionals to retirees and , people are quite fond of playing these games. If stated in other words, it can be said that video games are not appealing to the youth subculture, but people from every age and walk of life.
The huge appeal of video games is more astonishing because of the usage data that reveals the strength and potential of this appeal. On average, the number of hours per week spent by video games’ players adds up to about 22, and the usage does not form an association with the age of the players. This implies that older people spend the same amount of their time playing these video games as the younger people. Moreover, the potential of this appeal can further be highlighted by the fact that 60% of the players reveal that they have played a video game for at least 10 hours at a stretch. Some people also like to believe that fans of video games end up as loners; however statistics have something else to say. Around 80% of the players are known to play these games with someone they know in their real life, for example their family member, their partner or their friend.
In the wake of what has been discussed in the aforementioned paragraphs, it is rather easy for us to define the demographics of the population that we seek to target through the MMOG that will be launched by our company. The mean age of the people that our product would like to target is 25 years. The game will not be gender biased; it will be something that will be enjoyed by males and females both. The MMOG that is being launched by our company can be afforded by people of even the least income per annum. However, we assume that people earning over 12,000 dollars per year will be our target population. Since the mean age has been defined as 25 years, it is expected that the people of this age group are early professionals, or university students.
Communication of MMOG to the Target Market
After defining the demographic target market, the next step is to communicate the product, which is MMOG in this case, to the target market. Promotional mix has proved to be one of the most effective marketing strategies, in terms of communication and otherwise.
With integration of one of the aspects of promotional mix, the first method that we will be using to communicate this product to the target market is advertising and marketing over the social media. This method has been in use since centuries now, and is considered to be one of the most effective means of marketing. People always watch ads on the television, since television has now become a part of everyone’s daily life. Advertisements are also a relatively cheap way of marketing, especially when compared to personal selling. The reason why direct marketing will not be appropriate in this case is that MMOG is a new product for this company, and since there has not been a proper marketing department in the past we do not have the records of our customers with us.
The second method is the use and involvement of social media for advertising and promotion of sales. The fact of the matter is that social media is slowly taking over all other forms of media (Castells, 2001). People have social media applications downloaded in their smartphones, and they are always on the go of using these apps. Therefore, a business page will be created for this product and the company on Facebook, on which all the updates about MMOG, its features and sales will be posted.
The third method is the organization of a press release once MMOG is ready to be released. The public relations department can play a crucial role in the success of a product, and in the effective communication of the product to the target market.
Social Media Strategy
There are three main social networking websites that will be used for the promotion and marketing of MMOG. The first one is Facebook, the second one is Twitter and the third one is Instagram. These three websites have been chosen because of their popularity and usage among the target population. As mentioned earlier, a business page will be made in the name of MMOG, on which sale promotions, features, improvement, and any other updates will be posted. Similarly, Twitter will also be used to post these updates. Instagram is mainly an image-sharing oriented social media network; therefore that aspect of MMOG will be targeted here. The visual aspects of the game will be used for advertising and for the promotion of the sales of MMOG.
Currently, internet is a for interactive communication (Stewart & Zhao, 2000). Today, majority of people are watching television and going through their face book at the same time. People would be reading news and checking their twitter or their LinkedIn time after time. This shows that integration of social and traditional media is very common now days.
This phenomenon can be used to bring your brand’s audience online to their social media sites and therefore allow the consumers to interact with the company. In order for this plan to work, you need to integrate your traditional advertising and social media channels. Primarily, you should make strong channels online that will attract the consumers. If the websites or the pages are not attractive, no one will waste their time on it. Your second goal should be to attract your customers towards those social media channels. One major way for you to do that is by compelling the consumers to check out your social media sites. If you have published an advertisement in the local newspaper about the game, you should encourage the users to check out your face book page by including the social media icon in the advertisement. You can mention that they will be able to try out a demo of the game online. You can state that they can attain reviews of the game. In gaming, the idea of community building is very important. You should stress on the idea challenging and competing with people from all over the world. All the traditional sources such as TV commercials or radio commercials that you produce should always mention a social media connection to your company. Lastly, you can also make quizzes, contests or interesting videos that will compel your consumer to visit your social media connections as well.
Effectiveness of different media used
Once a promotional and advertising campaign has been initiated for a product, it is very crucial to assess whether it is successful or not. Before we get in detail of the different metrics used to figure out the success of a program, we should know what the benefits of measuring effectiveness are. We should assess the effectiveness of a program in order to avoid costly mistakes. It is possible that the promotional technique that we are using is costing us a lot of money and is not of any use. Due to this reason, its best that we measure the effectiveness and see if it is working or not. Furthermore, this sort of effectiveness also comes handy if we wish to evaluate the alternative strategies. In addition, it will help us increase the efficiency in general. Lastly and most importantly, we should see if it is effective so we know that our objectives are being achieved.
The internet has made it very easy to test the effectiveness of advertising. The use of interactive advertising through new media such as internet has given the marketers more powerful and specific tools to quantify their success. Back when advertising was only limited to traditional media such as print media and television, one could figure out its effectiveness through awareness, impression and other metrics. A very important metric was through figuring out the success of the product and the popularity of the product.
Now days, the consumers can be sent specific landing pages with offers or customize content. If online media such as web pages are used, you can figure out its effectiveness by seeing the traffic on that page. Furthermore, email campaign, coupon codes and date collected via online forms in exchange for special offer can also be crucial methods in figuring out a program’s success. These methods will not only tell you about the effectiveness of the advertising method, but it will also tell you more information about the customers as well.
If social media is being used, the effectiveness can be figured out by seeing the number of people like your pages. You can also assess its effectiveness by seeing how many people like your page every single day. Furthermore, if social media like twitter is used, the number of followers also provides you with an idea about the effectiveness of the program.
Marketers can also easily send various offers to many test emails lists or use different message in different online advertising venues. By doing this, they can easily see which message or which sort of advertising works best of them. Email service providers go on to inform you the rates at which emails are opened by recipients. Once you have made a website for this game, you can allow those visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. The rate at which consumers are actually checking your emails gives you an idea of how successful this method of advertising is.
Lastly, online analytic services can inform you about the keywords that customers are using to find the website. Furthermore, these services also inform you about the site or sources that direct consumers to your website. It is very important to monitor the analytics and find out what is actually generating the sales and the traffic. For instance, if the rank of your website increases only because of search engine optimization, you know that this method is working for you. This can be helpful such that you should invest more and more in this way of advertising.
Because of advanced advertising techniques, it is very easy to see what exactly your consumers are thinking. You can judge their likes and dislikes by their own comments on the news that you update. Furthermore, online polls and surveys can also be created easily. You can upload that and easily connect with your consumers and see how effective your strategies are.
References
Flew, Terry and Humphreys, Sal (2005) “Games: Technology, Industry, Culture” in Terry Flew, New Media: An Introduction (2nd edn), Oxford University Press, South Melbourne 101 — 114.
Castells, Manuel (2001), “The Internet Galaxy,” Oxford University Press, Oxford pp. 9 — 35.
Stewart, D.W. & Zhao, Q. (2000). Internet marketing, business models, and public policy. Journal Of Public Policy & Marketing, 19 (2), pp. 287 — 296.
