9 Ways to Make the Most of Your Game Campaign

Posted by Alistair on 25.04.2023

While our branded games are of course great engagement tools, with years of development and experience going into the gameplay, they still need a push to get them in front of your audience and achieve the results you’re after.

So, what steps can you take to make sure your game performs at its very best?

1. Offer a prize incentive

Whether it’s a ready-to-go game for a quick turnaround, or a tailored game full of bells and whistles to sit within a larger multi-channel campaign, prizes are the magic ingredient that’ll bring it all together and keep players coming back again and again.

Not only will you give your players that little extra incentive to play and submit their scores to the leaderboard – a prize competition is also a good way to structure the campaign period and lay the foundation for all the other steps outlined below..

Got more than one prize to give away? Even better! Offering up daily or weekly prizes encourages players to keep coming back to your game for additional chances to win.

Not sure where to start? Check out our ultimate guide to prize ideas! You can also browse our library of case studies to see what others have done, or get in touch and we’ll be happy to offer up some suggestions.

2. Make it about the experience (no top-spot prizes!)

If you were to cast your eye over the aforementioned guide to prize ideas, you’ll notice that we do not recommend offering top-spot prizes. No sir. Take that nonsense somewhere else.

Aside from encouraging cheats to play your game and dominate the top spots on the leaderboard, you’ll risk turning away potential players. They might see scores that are impossible to beat and feel that there’s no point in even trying.

Instead, you should be aiming to provide all players with a positive experience. By drawing a winner from everyone who’s submitted a score, you’re letting them know that it’s just a bit of fun and it doesn’t matter if they’re not very good at the game.

All in all, players are far more likely to keep coming back and engaging with it.

3. Set the right minimum score

We’ve talked about providing a positive and inclusive experience, but it’s still important to set some sort of minimum score threshold that challenges players and keeps them coming back to get their name on the leaderboard. You want just the right balance between feelings of frustration and reward – a dopamine sweet spot, if you will.

So, how can you make sure that the score for your particular game will achieve this ideal balance? The good news is we’ve done it for you!

All of our games have been developed and tested with gameplay in mind, with default minimum scores determined based on our experience and historical data. This ensures that the games aren’t too easy, but challenging enough that players may need a couple of attempts to hit that minimum threshold.

For this reason, we don’t usually recommend adjusting the minimum scores in our games. You can learn more over on our FAQ page.

4. Promote the game to your mailing list

If you’ve spent any time building a mailing list (or indeed multiple lists), you’ll know that those contacts represent the most engaged in your overall audience. It’s people who have already expressed an interest in what you have to offer and are happy to hear more from you.

Why not reward that loyalty by inviting them to play your game and win prizes? You’ll have yourself a ready-made engagement campaign that helps to fill up your email or newsletter pipeline for the weeks or months ahead.

Better yet, you can create a dedicated segment of your mailing list based on the players who submit their scores to the game leaderboard. You can then send daily or weekly emails (depending on the prize frequency) to announce the winners and, in doing so, remind them to play again for the next prize. It’s a win-win!

The Jingle Balls and 12 Days of NOT Christmas case studies provide examples of how we did this very thing with our own competitions.

5. Get on social media

From Facebook and LinkedIn to Instagram and TikTok, social media platforms are ideal for promoting your branded game competition.

Challenge followers to play for prizes, respond to comments to keep the conversations going, and encourage people to share the game and tag you in their posts (many of our packages include social sharing features to help with this very thing).

If you can build rapport with the people coming to your social media pages, they’re more likely to play your game and potentially sign up to your mailing lists.

Remember, consistency is the key to building momentum. If possible, plan out your posts in advance and include any branding and campaign messaging in your videos or image designs.

If you’re launching your game in the lead-up to Christmas (and especially if combining it with an online advent calendar), you may be interested in our post on social media advent calendar examples.

6. Take advantage of your website

Make the most of the traffic to your website by including clear links out to the game. This can help convert window-shoppers to engaged players and build that positive and lasting connection with your brand.

Ideas include a dedicated section on your homepage, a promotional banner that drops into view from the top of the screen, or a prominent CTA in your website’s sidebar for desktop users.

7. Use display advertising and paid social

If you have the budget, display advertising can be an effective way to entice players to your game landing page. You could look at taking out ads on popular websites relevant to your audience or industry, with remarketing options also available to encourage visitors to come back and play again.

Likewise, paid social media campaigns will help you to reach a wider online audience – whether it’s finding potential new followers or existing followers who you’d like to re-engage.

8. Explore wider promo channels

For larger tailored campaigns in particular, you’re likely to consider a multi-channel advertising strategy comprising some or all of the following:

TV
Radio
OOH (Out-Of-Home)
Streaming services
Print media

Nickelodeon, for example, combined many of these channels to promote their SpongeBob and Patrick Star games (with great success, we should add).

You might also want to explore how influencers or brand ambassadors could help to promote your campaign, by leveraging their audience and creating content around them playing the game and encouraging followers to beat their score.

This is exactly what Nurishment did with their branded game, when they had international footballer Daniel Sturridge challenging his social media fans to knock him off the leaderboard!

9. B2B promo channels

Trade shows and events

Games for trade shows are a whole subject unto themselves, but you don’t need a game set up in trade show mode to still promote it at events.

A creative example of this came from Sleeping Giant Media, who promoted their game at B2B Expo in 2021 by distributing anonymous calling cards in the style of the Netflix hit ‘Squid Game’. These cards were dropped around the event and included a QR code that people could scan to play the game. Nice!

Email signatures

This is a quick win and great for B2B campaigns in particular. By adding a link to the game landing page in email signatures across your organisation, you’ll spread the word far and wide through your day-to-day internal and external comms.

Good ol’ word of mouth

It may sound obvious, but simply mentioning the game in conversation will pique interest and encourage people to play. Whether it’s small talk before starting a business meeting, sharing the game on your LinkedIn feed, or adding a bonus slide to an upcoming talk or presentation, these small things all add up to help promote your game and show off your organisation’s fun side.

Bringing it all together

Carrying out any one of the above actions will help your audience engage with the game, but they are most effective when combined together. The games with the highest total average engagement times we have seen have done just that.

If you have any questions about promoting your game and making the most of your campaign, feel free to get in touch and we’ll be happy to help. You might also find the answers you’re looking for over on our FAQ page.

Now go get ‘em!

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