In today’s day and age, video games are becoming much more mainstream and widely discussed topic. This is evident at the increasing sales of the industry, and more and more people getting into different games. When these games are released, they are often accompanied by millions of dollars of marketing to ensure that we as the consumer know the brand and want to purchase the game in question. While that is a tried and true way of marketing, I want to focus on a different aspect, Word-of-Mouth (WoM). Nielson reports that 92% of consumers believe suggestions from friends and family more than advertising and that beyond friends and family, 88% of people trust reviews written by other consumers as well as peers that they might not personally know. Despite all this, only 33% of businesses are actively seeking out and collecting reviews.
While there are many different avenues that businesses can take in regarding WoM sales, the option I feel is most overlooked is user-generated content (UGC). UGC is content created and shared by the community about a brand or product. It’s an honest way for consumers to communicate and is a great gauge of how the community feels about certain projects. 86% of millennials say UGC is a good indicator of the quality of a brand or service, as it keeps the community engaged, and it has been reported that UGC videos can increase sales effectiveness by up to 20%. This all comes with the benefit of added sales for little to no cost of you. With WoM comes a caveat, the product or brand you are selling needs to be quality and have a good experience associated with it.
In the US, two of the most popular websites to share UGC are Reddit and Youtube. For the sake of discussion, we will focus on Reddit. Reddit is ranked 5th in the US on the Alexa rankings and 17th in the world. It is one of the most popular places to submit UGC for others to see, and the more likes the UGC gets, the more visibility it gets. Reddit has communities for just about everything you can imagine. These communities are called subreddits (written as /r/ followed by the name of the subreddit), and /r/gaming is one of the biggest subreddits out there. With 19.4 Million subscribers, gaming is one of the main attractions to the website, and while /r/gaming is the largest, almost every game individually has a subreddit dedicated to it, so its important to check out more than 1 subreddit.
Reddit is a great source for seeing which games are being talked about, and with that can be a treasure trove for finding keywords to your product. There are many great websites to find keywords best used for SEO (such as Google Keyword Planner, and Ahrefs) and a quick free search on laterforreddit.com can show us as of writing this article, the most post titles include the games Forza Horizon 4, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Red Dead Redemption II, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. Not all games mentioned will have the game title in the UGC title. Currently, there is a trend from the game Soul Calibur VI, where they have an in-depth character creator, and people have been making characters from other media. Everything from recreating Thanos in game, to mimicking Marge Simpson, the community is proud of its creative talents.
It is important to note that simply using Reddit for promotion, similar to Google ads, can be worse than a waste of time, it can actively damage your brand and reputation. Unless you are willing to put in the time and investment to become a legitimate member of the community, you should not use Reddit to organically promote your content. As Nate Shivar, an SEO specialist stated: “The Reddit community takes a better eye towards buying ads to promote your content. There are good and bad ways to advertise on Reddit… But Reddit ads usually simply don’t give you the same promotional effect as organic submissions.”
Overall Reddit is a great place to understand the community, and when moving forward with a project, it can be used to gauge interest and find leads to sales, it can help generate keywords for assistance in search engine optimization, and it is fantastic at creating buzz for a release. Reddit can let the community dictate what they want to share with others, and it may not be the feature you thought would resonate with the community.
https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/?subreddit=gaming&threshold=5
https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/word-of-mouth-marketing-strategies-infographic
Austin Easler Game Marketing 