Advergaming, The Oldest Inbound Marketing Approach

Games could be the best tool for marketers to get visitor-participation and search engine exposure to their website.

The inbound marketing concept is looking for attract prospects visitors, inform them and finally convert them to loyal clients. Games are all the rage for marketers. And they may have a point. Who wouldn’t want to smash ants, or pop bubble wrap rather than shop for car insurance? And as for marketers, it’s easier to sell a game, rather than the tough task of actually selling the benefits of a floor wax.

An inbound marketer (such as myself), could involve his visitors with an html5 game on his website. And many thanks to Gábor for leting me to modify his Game to place it in my site. And certainly there would be traffic to the game itself. Many marketers may conclude that this move to Advergaming is a means of reaching out to the bored web-surfer. But is it all it’s cracked up to be?

Well, in some cases, it is. Take for instance the viral popularity of the Subservient Chicken craze. Burger King reaped the rewards of being attached to this popular game. And the audience was exactly the target market they were aiming at.

But having an on-line game may not give the added value it appears to give. There are a few drawbacks. For instance:

Visiting my website for playing an online game can abuse my monthly bandwidth and make my server busy. In addition, game visitors will most likely not be viable clients. So leads aren’t necessarily going to be generated simply because they’re playing a game.

And I’m reminded of a friend of mine who’s task it was to create an on-line game for a bathroom cleaning product. He designed a very acceptable game where the player could “clean” a virtual bathtub. Until someone realized that no one wants to clean a bathtub, let alone, spend ten minutes on-line cleaning one. Eventually, the idea was scrubbed, as it were. So choose your game wisely!

Young Drivers ( yd.com ) is a well-known company. And the website has many many daily visitors based on compete.com data. Do they come to the website to register for a driving class? They might, but there is a free flash game on the website which can ask driving question and give the visitors grade of knowledge.

So why I have used a free game on an inbound marketing company website?
I will not tell you the first answer because it is my secret;
Second, the visitors, man aged 18 to 25 will drive our social media brand for free;
Third, comlete.com will count the number of our US visitors;
And forth, we have the opportunity to analyze our visitors.

Is not enough for a start-up business to use advetgaming as an old inbound marketing approach for almost FREE?

Game on.