Most of us have heard it… yes, we know the Gaming industry is on a roll and growing in sufficient numbers every year, but for those who have very little clue about it – here are a few pointers to put the industry into a perspective:
? Industry Revenue has a CAGR of 10%
? There are over 2.5 billion reachable gamers
? Global revenue exceeds $150 billion in 2019
Gaming has past the point of just a niche market or subculture of millennials and gen Z. We are looking at a very important global industry that impacts many of our lives just as music and sport does. An industry that you should just not ignore anymore and should start thinking about, even as a non-endemic brand, that is seeking to find new audiences for their products or services.
Why Gaming Audience?
You might be wondering how the Gaming industry and its audience can be of any relevance for your brand, which has absolutely nothing to do with it or why you should care. Gaming has evolved past just endemic products like: Intel, Razer or Logitech and has opened itself for non-endemic products as well.
I think you are forgetting how large the industry is and what opportunities it even offers to non-endemic brands to reach masses of potential consumers. We are already seeing different FMCG’s and power brands investing into the industry including: RedBull, Coca Cola, Pringles etc. Maybe the next one will be your competitor?
So what exactly is stopping you? According to the eSports marketing blog, Coca Cola already sponsored the League of Legends Champion Series in 2015 with a new slogan “New Year, New Look, Next Level”. This demonstrates how early power brands like Coca Cola understood the potential reach of their campaigns in the gaming space with non gaming related products.
Just as a comparison, other world leading sports such as Football, Baseball, Basketball or Tennis (just to name a few) are receiving successful large marketing investments from brands due to the sheer size of audience. It definitely makes sense for a sports brand like Nike or Adidas to invest heavily, but what about all the non-endemic brands in sports? They weren’t stopped by the distant categories due to the effectiveness of leveraging the sport audiences.
Logically, after accepting that the audience can be effectively leveraged from the gaming industry, you may think to yourself – Is it a quality audience that is right for our product or service? A common misconception of the gamer stereotype is generalized to low income teenagers that don’t prosper the right audience target for big brands. Nevertheless, proven statistics show everything except that. The gaming audience is a wide range of distinct audience groups and looking at a US Study from Nielsen, 61% of gamers fall into the age range of 25-34. They are the grown millennials with increasing income levels of over 60,000$ a year.
A difficult demographic to reach in traditional marketing nowadays due to the heavy shift in media consumption of millennials and gen Z. This perfectly presents major opportunity to expose young people to your brand and build a long-term relationship. Nielsen demonstrates that the gaming community is not only stereotypically wrongly represented, but that the audience is much wealthier than expected.
How to Position?
What objective does my brand have and how can the gaming industry support the goals of my brand? Do you focus on raising brand awareness, driving short and long-term sales or create a new market channel for your omni market channel strategy. So where do we start? A tough question to start wrapping your head around if you ask me.
The gaming industry has a spectrum of areas, which act as seat drivers for the industry growth. From traditional PC and console gaming, mobile gaming is outgrowing everything (especially in the Asian market), while VR/AR gaming is becoming the next development for gaming experience.
The 3 things that we recommend you do is:
? Talk to people with industry knowledge from different perspectives including: gamers, developers, publishers, influencers, etc.
? Immerse into the gaming culture by: attending gaming events, watching a gaming live stream, playing a game yourself
? Take a look at brand who have successfully entered the market that have been previously mentioned in the article
These steps help you get a foot inside the door of an industry that definitely is under-served for massive marketing opportunities to reach millions of potential customers.
