April 2015 – The Business of Social Games and Casino

How to increase traffic through content marketing

I came across a great blog post on how Fractl, a digital marketing agency, used content marketing to increase its referral traffic by over 6,000 percent. In the blog post, Fractl discusses several lessons that they learned, which helped them achieve this success. These lessons apply to almost any business and can help game and tech companies grow.

Don’t limit large scale campaigns with narrow-scope ideas

A mistake commonly made is creating a narrow focus for your campaign, implicitly limiting the reach. Content marketing, however, can be used in every stage of the customer journey. You also need to realize that one campaign will not impact every metric that you track but you need a diverse strategy to reach customers in different stages of their journey and thus impact more metrics.

In the blog post, there are four stages of the customer buying cycle. The best content marketing strategies focus on developing a long-term strategy that target all fours stage of the customer journey:

Viral campaigns. A campaign tangentially related to the brand that achieves a deep emotional reaction and thus encourages hockey stick levels of sharing and traffic.
Conversion-driven campaigns. These are targeted to a specific audience that is ready or almost ready to monetize.
Awareness campaigns. These are designed to increase exposure to the brand and attract and engage consumers who are at the top of the sales funnel.
On-site content. he multipurpose content is designed to build the brand and engage with the target market.

The key takeaway is that you should build your content roadmap so it touches potential users and existing customers at all parts of the customer journey. If you create a campaign focused on one niche goal, you are missing the broader opportunity.

Heavy research earns more press than knowledge curation

Fractl initially built campaigns that cast a wide net but they learned that sites that would republish their materials were primarily looking for exclusive research. They found data curation had moderate engagement while heavy research based campaigns have the highest engagement and syndication because they bring something new. This is relevant for even consumer facing games, if for example you bring new research into how people compete in casino games, it is more likely to be spread widely.

Quantitative research is stronger than qualitative

In Fractl’s research, sites and other potential influencers wanted to see more data-driven articles, infographics, and mixed-media pieces, followed closely by data visualizations, images, videos, and interactive maps. They were less enthusiastic about Press releases, interactive projects, quizzes, flipbooks, widgets, and badges. While articles might do well with qualitative results, most of the other top-ranked content formats require a type of data visualization that is most valuable when it features quantifiable results.

Gated assets create a value-add and incentivize people to give you their information

Fractl learned that there was limited value to being mentioned on other websites. Creating a white paper, eBook, list, or any other gated asset that adds value to your original research creates an incentive for people to go back to your website and continue engaging with your brand. By gating the asset, you enable your team to capture the contact’s information and further nurture them in your sales funnel.

A related suggestion is for you to save at least a quarter of your findings and then feature it in your gated asset. Make it explicit in your content marketing that there is more information for people to learn about if they click through or go to your homepage.

Learning which publishers drive the most qualified lead flow is critical to your success

It is important not focus your promotion around sites you like or you find prestigious, but to identify objectively the sites that will generate the most leads or reactivations. Fractl suggests creating audience personas to understand the optimal channels. “Audience personas are a characterization of your businesses ideal customer. Creating these personas forces you to consider what your customers value, what they hope to achieve, what they fear, and much more. By putting yourself in the shoes of your prospects, you can begin to get a sense for where they get their news and which blogs they might read—allowing you to improve your pitch targeting for brand awareness and conversions.”

Key takeaways

Content marketing can be a strong user acquisition and reactivation channel but it takes good planning.
The key is to build your content marketing strategy around the full customer experience, not just narrowly targeting acquisition or conversion.
If you create gated content, it can help capture leads and drive customers to your site.

More effective project management

One of the biggest challenges in the game space, and the overall tech space, is project management. Many companies do not even expect to hit the dates they have set. This situation creates planning issues, cash flow problems and prompts investors to lose confidence. An article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, “What Successful Project Managers Do,” studied 150 successful projects and determined four key initiatives by project managers tied to success.

The article first shows three different types of events that can impact schedule. These events can be classified according to their level of predictability as follows:

Events that were anticipated but whose impacts were much stronger than expected
Events that could not have been predicted
Events that could have been predicted but were not

All three types of events can become problems that need to be addressed by a project manager.

Develop collaboration

Since project progress depends on the contribution of individuals who represent different disciplines (e.g., art, design, programming) and are affiliated with diverse parties, collaboration is crucial for the early detection of problems as well as the quick development and smooth implementation of solutions.

As the authors point out, “most projects are characterized by an inherent incompatibility: The various parties to the project are loosely coupled, whereas the tasks themselves are tightly coupled. When unexpected events affect one task, many other interdependent tasks are quickly affected. Yet the direct responsibility for these tasks is distributed among various loosely coupled parties, who are unable to coordinate their actions and provide a timely response. Project success, therefore, requires both interdependence and trust among the various parties.”

If one or several of the people involved in the project believes that project planning and contractual documents provide sufficient protection from unexpected problems, developing collaboration among all the parties may require creative and bold practices. Thus, it is important to select the right people for the project and develop mutual interdependence and trust.

Integrate planning and review with learning

Project managers faced with unexpected events employ a “rolling wave” approach to planning. Recognizing that firm commitments cannot be made on the basis of volatile information, they create plans in waves as the project unfolds and information becomes more reliable. With their teams, they develop detailed short-term plans with firm commitments while also preparing tentative long-term plans with fewer details. To ensure that project milestones and objectives are met, these long-term plans include backup systems or surplus human resources.

One key difference between the traditional planning approach, in which both short- and long-term plans are prepared in great detail, and the rolling wave approach becomes evident when implementation deviates from the plan. In the traditional planning approach, the project team attempts to answer the question: Why didn’t our performance yesterday conform to the original plan? In the rolling wave approach, project managers also attempt to answer the question: What can we learn from the performance data to improve the next cycle of planning? In particular, they attempt to learn from their mistakes—to prevent an unexpected event from recurring. The successful project manager develops stable short-term plans and flexible long term plans while conducting learning-based project reviews.

Prevent Major Disruptions

Successful project managers never stop expecting surprises, even though they may effect major remedial changes only a few times during a project. They are constantly anticipating disruptions and maintaining the flexibility to respond proactively. The key is to anticipate and cope proactively with a few major problems.

Maintain Forward Momentum

When unexpected events affect one task, many other interdependent tasks may also be quickly impacted. Thus, solving problems as soon as they emerge is vital for maintaining work progress. Also in many situations, corrective action is possible only during a brief window.

In working to maintain a forward momentum, the manager seeks to avoid stalemates. A good project manager resolves problems by hands-on engagement, frequent face-to-face communication and moving about frequently.

What you should do as a leader

Although every project manager tries to minimize the frequency and negative impact of unexpected events, in today’s dynamic environment such events will still occur. Acknowledging the emergence of a problem is a necessary first step, allowing the project manager to respond quickly and effectively. Some organizations assume that almost all problems can be prevented if the project manager is competent enough—resulting in project managers who are hesitant to admit that they are facing an emerging problem.

By assuming the four roles discussed in this article, the successful project managers we studied are both intention- and event-driven and embrace all three orientations. Developing collaboration requires them to be people-oriented. Integrating planning and review with learning requires them to be information-oriented. Preventing major disruptions requires them to be action-oriented. Finally, maintaining forward momentum, which is pursued throughout a project, requires them to adopt all three orientations. Senior managers must ensure that all three orientations are considered when selecting project managers and developing project management methodologies.

Key takeaways

Good project managers are critical for getting projects done on schedule.
Effective project managers develop collaboration between different disciplines on their team, integrate planning with review and learning, focus on preventing major disruptions and maintain forward momentum.
An effective leader will let their project managers respond quickly and effectively rather than create a culture of fear so problems are hidden.

The Exporter’s Dilemma

Many companies, particularly in the game space, have failed to match their local success in international markets. Ones that believe they are particularly data-driven have often had the worst results. The biggest single contributor is that these companies experience false negatives, negative results that they then extrapolate to the opportunities outside their home market. I refer to this phenomenon as “The Exporter’s Dilemma,” as a homage to Clay Christensen’s seminal work, The Innovator’s Dilemma.

Parallels with The Innovator’s Dilemma

In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen shows that successful companies have trouble innovating because they know their customers too well. Innovating is about creating products that initially appeal to a new customer, which then evolves to penetrate the existing market. Existing customers do not find the new offering compelling, thus the company believes it is not an opportunity.

Successful companies also have trouble innovating because they are successful and they have built a structure that does not support small opportunities. Thus, an innovative opportunity may only contribute one percent or less to the bottom line, and thus the company does not put any resources into growing the disruptive innovation. Instead, a small competitor takes the opportunity and grows it into a business that then undercuts the established companies existing business.

There are parallels to both these issues when building an international social games business. Great games have already optimized for the core market. A top social game team is going to be a top team because they look at the metrics for their existing players and evolve the game to generate the best metrics from those players. That could include features that will perform well or licensing IP that resonates with the players.

When the company expands internationally, features that a Frenchman might like may be unattractive to an Australian. The Frenchman might like a feature where players work together to create beautiful art, while the Australian might prefer that by cooperating you create a race course. With IP (intellectual property), some of the strongest IP in one market may not have value in other markets. While a science fiction game in the US around the Star Trek IP would have a strong fan base, the same IP would not generate any traffic or appeal in Italy. Continue reading “The Exporter’s Dilemma”

It’s about the customer journey, not the touchpoints

There was a great article in the Harvard Business Review, “The Truth About Customer Experience,” that shows more importantly than focusing on providing the customer with good discrete interactions you should focus on the entire journey. Interestingly, even if you have great metrics at each touch point (e.g., people are satisfied with onboarding, customer services call are resolved positively), overall customer satisfaction may be negative because of the holistic customer journey.

The article uses the example of new customer onboarding for a pay TV provider to show how the journey can be negative even when each touchpoint gets positive feedback. As the article describes, “Take new-customer onboarding, a journey that typically spans about three months and involves six or so phone calls, a home visit from a technician, and numerous web and mail exchanges. Each interaction with this provider had a high likelihood of going well. But in key customer segments, average satisfaction fell almost 40% over the course of the journey. It wasn’t the touchpoints that needed to be improved—it was the onboarding process as a whole. Most service encounters were positive in a narrow sense—employees resolved the issues at hand—but the underlying problems were avoidable, the fundamental causes went unaddressed, and the cumulative effect on the customer was decidedly negative.”

The root of the problem is that many customer focused functions (sales, CS, community management) are siloed in different organizations that have individual and insular cultures. These groups shape how the company interacts with consumers but although they may aim to optimize their contributions they lose focus of the customers desires.

The article describes four ways that companies can overcome this problem, effectively embedding the customer journey into your operational process. It is not about removing the functions but building an internal system that looks at customers holistically. Continue reading “It’s about the customer journey, not the touchpoints”

The importance of competitive intelligence

In most businesses, the need to know what your competitors are doing is a given. In the social gaming space, however, competitive intelligence (CI) is either an afterthought or not even considered critical. That thinking at best leads to a sub-optimal product and at worst facilitates losing your market to another product.

Why Competitive Intelligence is important

Good competitive intelligence is invaluable to all companies, including those in the mobile and casino gaming spaces.

CI shows you the minimum quality level acceptable for your game. In the mobile space, most users will try multiple applications and then settle on one, a winner take all environment, though in casino they may play two or three. Thus, your potential customers are also playing your competitors’ products and deciding which one to invest their time in the future. If your game is clearly inferior, weaker graphics, slower tech, etc., you have lost.
Your competitors are not stupid and you should learn from them. Internally, they are looking at the same opportunities and problems you are trying to tackle. By understanding features and initiatives they are taking to improve, they can inspire you on ways to manage the situation. Not that you want to copy everything they are doing, but understand how they are approach problems and if you have a different approach make sure your solution is better before deploying it.
You can learn from their mistakes. It is great to make mistakes because it means you are trying unique initiatives; it is not great to repeat mistakes as that has no value. What is even better is if somebody else makes the mistake to learn from them without having the cost.
You ensure you are value competitive. A car company would not never release a new model without understanding how its price and features compare with other cars. It would base the price on the competitive feature set, including branding, and then price their car so it is a reasonable option for consumers. Very few people will purchase an auto when they can get a comparable one for half the price.In the game space, companies mistakenly believe users are price inelastic. Many players, particularly those likely to monetize, understand what they are spending money for and how much they will get for it. The value is often in play time (e.g., I will spend $20 in a bingo app to play an extra hour). If the player feels your game is much more expensive than comparable games, they are less likely to spend in your app and will shift their spending to competitors (and you will see lower revenue from higher prices).

Continue reading “The importance of competitive intelligence”

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Don’t limit large scale campaigns with narrow-scope ideas

Heavy research earns more press than knowledge curation

Quantitative research is stronger than qualitative

Gated assets create a value-add and incentivize people to give you their information

Learning which publishers drive the most qualified lead flow is critical to your success

Key takeaways

Like this:

Develop collaboration

Integrate planning and review with learning

Prevent Major Disruptions

Maintain Forward Momentum

What you should do as a leader

Key takeaways

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Parallels with The Innovator’s Dilemma

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Why Competitive Intelligence is important

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Sustaining competitive advantage

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