Last year I recommended Jonah Berger’s fantastic book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, which discusses how to generate word-of-mouth marketing for your product. It is a particularly valuable book for mobile game companies, where word of mouth is often credited with the success of a product (see Flappy Bird) but is a virtual black box, with most companies considering it a matter of luck. Rather than luck, Berger shows how you build a product or marketing campaign to generate word-of-mouth success.
Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 percent to 50 percent of all buying decisions, according to Berger, and probably an even stronger force in games. Berger shows that while traditional advertising is still useful, word of mouth from everyday consumers is at least ten times more effective. Continue reading “The key to growth: word of mouth”
The big buzz phrase in the Bay Area the last year or so has been “growth hacking,” and the ideas behind it can help significantly game companies. The underlying principle in the phrase is that modern start-ups should be focused on using the new tools available via technology to grow rapidly their user base rather than relying on older, sometimes outdated, marketing techniques. Growth—unlike marketing—usually encompasses multiple aspects of an organization, with the growth team not only bringing in users but also working with the product team to optimize the product for growth. It stresses the importance of product to growth and how the two should work together rather than having marketing set aside in a corner. The phrase itself was coined by 
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