The 10 Key Components of a Gaming Go-To-Market Strategy

Creating an engaging, irresistible game is a moment of pride. However, it is only half the battle. The key to a successful game lies in marketing. After all, making a fascinating game is futile if your target audience doesn’t know it exists! Therefore, you need a go-to-market (GTM) strategy to increase awareness about your new game and push the gamers down the sales pipeline. 

A GTM strategy is a carefully designed plan that guides your marketing activities to achieve specific outcomes. It lays out the steps to help you flawlessly launch your game, and also includes a detailed description of your ideal customers and how to reach them.

In this blog, we share ten crucial components that are an indispensable part of a market strategy.

1. A game worth bringing to market

You need a game worth playing before creating a marketing strategy around it! Determine if your target audience will enjoy playing your game and whether it is ready to be launched in its current state.

Your game should be original to achieve success and offer an experience your players have never received before. Secondly, it should be "replayable." Consider adding elements in your game that make the players want to return and play again. Remember, your target audience should be as excited to play each time as they were the first time. Your game is market-ready once your game has the replayability, originality, and excitement quotient.

2. A defined goal

Every strategy should help you achieve a goal. So, your GTM strategy should include a clearly defined purpose. Determine if your campaign's goal is to get more downloads and purchases or boost awareness. Next, examine what you want your audience to feel when you launch your campaign. A clear vision of your goal will help you measure tangible results and assess if the campaign was a hit or a miss.

Whatever your objective is, stick to goals that are realistic and aligned with your market strategy. We recommend using S.M.A.R.T. goals. These are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Figure 1: S.M.A.R.T Goals. Source: GHCC

3. A clear timeline

Once you have a goal, identify how long it will take to achieve it and what stage you're currently at. Creating a detailed timeline will keep your marketing efforts on track and ensure you reach the goal you had planned to achieve in a reasonable amount of time. It also allows you to view your marketing strategy chronologically, which can be good for . 

That said, setting a timeline is not possible for every goal. If it is hard to determine how long it may take to achieve your goal, roughly estimate the ‌time each step will take and set your deadlines accordingly. But always set realistic deadlines. In case of an issue or controversy, quickly reach a middle ground to avoid delays. 

4. Your ideal customer profile (ICP)

Figure 2: Ideal Customer Profile. Source: Milburn Online

In-depth knowledge of your target audience is vital. It will help you reach them in the right places, get their attention, and persuade them to download your game. Create an ideal customer profile (ICP), which is a fictitious description of what your perfect gamer might look like. An ICP will help you identify if a prospect is worth investing time into and prevent you from chasing leads that will never download your game.

5. Competitor analysis

The best part is that you can create customer profiles from a pool of current customers. You don’t have to imagine the attributes and behavior of your ideal buyer as you would if creating a buyer persona. Simply surveying your current customers will help you create a customer profile and identify the highly likely customers to buy from you.

Figure 3: Example of a competitor analysis report. Source: Talkwalker

As the term implies, competitor analysis refers to a study of your competitors. It is a must-have component of your GTM strategy to pinpoint gaming companies that are a threat to you. Analyze your competitors' sales, strategies, games, website, and online presence. This will help you examine where you stand in the market and give you a benchmark against which you can measure your growth. 

In addition, knowing your competitors will give you an insight into opportunities where you can out-perform them. It will even protect you from committing common marketing mistakes, informing you what works in the industry and what doesn't.

6. A clear, engaging message

Having a clear campaign message and call to action (CTA) is another crucial component of a GTM strategy since clarity builds trust. Your ideal gamers will believe in messages they can fully trust and understand.

Another benefit of a clear marketing message is higher visibility. You may be tempted to include a clever message, but search engine crawlers favor clear words, ranking them higher on the search engine result page. Why? Because audiences don’t type witty statements in the search bar but instead use direct, straightforward language.

7. A selection of marketing strategies

Another crucial step in creating a winning market strategy is determining how you’ll reach your target gamers. This includes the marketing techniques and channels you will use to accomplish your business goals. These marketing strategies should be based on customer habits.

You can analyze the engagement rate of your audience across social channels to choose an ideal platform for promoting your game. Identify the platforms with the greatest reach and attention. Additionally, examine the return on investment of your previous campaigns to foresee what will work for you. You are likely to get the best results using social media, content marketing, and influencer marketing.

We cover the best video game marketing strategies for gaming companies in our blog, 11 Video Game Marketing Strategies You Can Use Right Now.

8. A clear go-to-market plan

While a GTM strategy outlines what you want to achieve, a marketing plan is a yearly, monthly, or quarterly plan of how to achieve those marketing goals. It is a roadmap that organizes, executes, and tracks your marketing strategy over a specific time period. Failure is minimal with a clear vision of how you can achieve what you want to. In addition, you save time and effort.

You may be thinking, “isn’t this just a clear timeline from earlier?” Well, you’d be mistaken! The four key elements to include in a go-to-market plan are:

• A brief overview of the plan (including timelines and goals)
• A summary of your target audience, their pain points, and behaviors.
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) include conversion rate, sales revenue, and organic traffic.
• Market strategies you will employ, such as social media and print media.

9. An outlined sales strategy

Apart from a marketing plan, a sales strategy is also a vital component of a go-to-market strategy. A sales strategy is a long-term roadmap for selling your product to ideal prospective buyers in a distinctive way. A common aim of a sales strategy is to sell to new buyers and upsell to the existing ones.

They include crucial information such as marketing goals, KPIs, sales processes, competitor analysis, product positioning, player personas, and selling methodologies. An ideal sales strategy guides a sales team from customer identification to acquisition to conversion and sales analytics.

10. Competitor analysis

Last but not least, a perfect marketing strategy includes a team structure. This is as important a step as creating the game itself. Only a robust team at each stage can ensure a fruitful game launch. Therefore, ensure you have a professional, responsible, and hardworking set of people at every step.

Ideally, a gaming company should have the following departments:

• Development department: To bring your game's concept to reality.
• Marketing department: To get the game to the public view, analyze sales, and create lasting relationships with the potential gamers.
• Administration department: To assist all employees.
• Finance department: To control the company's finances.

To sum it all up...

These key points will help you create a comprehensive market strategy that will be a success, frictionless and on-schedule. But we all know that it’s easier said than done! Creating a specific GTM strategy is often challenging for game studios, whose primary job is to create fascinating video games. Creating a cohesive market strategy is time-consuming, and busy game studios often have many game development-related tasks. Therefore, devs often resort to game marketing agencies to ensure their game reaches their ideal gamers.

A game marketing agency has the proper knowledge, staff, and tools to create a bespoke game marketing strategy. This strategy can help bring organization and cohesion to all aspects of your game. Not only will they create a customized go-to-market strategy, but they’ll also help you implement it. Most importantly, hiring a marketing agency will save you time, which you can use to ensure your game provides a flawless experience.

Find out more in Everything You Need to Know About Video Game Digital Marketing.

Game marketing agencies often offer many additional services that can benefit you, and can even enhance your game design and performance. No doubt, it is a win-win for you!

Do you want a one-stop solution for successful game marketing? Game Marketing Genie has you covered! We offer a personalized game marketing strategy to gaming brands ensuring their video games generate higher revenue.

Get in touch with us today to chat about your game.