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Video game developers are now using social networking tools to gather more valuable insights in an effort to improve the focus of their marketing efforts. As detailed in MediaPost’s article, “Social Media Fires Up Video Game Marketing”, video game marketers are utilizing social networking communities to target specific genres, delivering the message straight to the people who play and buy the games, rather than purchasing mass advertising that reaches a broad scale of age and gender.

And while the marketing focus historically has been on the person buying the game, the video game industry now realizes efforts need to tie in the player. “We have a lot of data on the person who purchases the games, and for years we assumed that person also played the game,” says Tracy Williams, director of global brand management at Activision. “Now, we are getting more dynamic data about the number of people who actually play the game, which is about two or three age brackets lower than the person making the purchase.”

By integrating social networking communities such as Twitter and Facebook into their games marketers have seen an increase in web traffic and a marked improvement in marketing efforts. Expect to see even more interesting marketing strategies in the future has marketers continue to find ways to fine-tune the focus of their marketing strategies and convert marketing efforts into sales.

image from MediaPost