Tag Archives: online marketing
If you have never played Farmville before, congratulations – you’re smarter than 90% of Facebook users you may not understand what the hype is all about. However, if you are a committed Farmville player, you’re all to familiar with the addictive nature of the game, and likely find yourself constantly feeding chickens and building barns. Whether it is the altruistic impulse of helping your friends, or the fact that you just can’t bare to see your crops (your fake, digitize crops) dying, there’s just something about Farmville that keeps you coming back for more. And while Farmville is, for all intensive purposes, a complete waste of time, the game does have a few kernels of marketing genius mixed in. When creating the strategy for you own website, remember your cute pixelated chickens and use the following Farmville marketing methods.
1. Time Sensitivity
Most people have become addicted to Farmville due to the fact that it is time sensitive – if you stop playing your crops may die and you’ll lose the game. By mimicking this characteristic in your marketing strategy, businesses can utilize time incentives in order to keep people coming back to their site. By offering time incentives, you can encourage people to keep coming back and checking in so that they do not miss out.
2. Collection Method
On Farmville, users love being able to collect things, such as gold, ribbons, farm animals, neighbours, and so on. You can use this tactic in creating your marketing strategy for your website by offering your visitors the ability to collect points every time they visit your website, which can build up to offer an incentive or discount at your business.
3. User Progressions
Users are able to become more experienced in the game of Farmville as they move up levels. The more time they spend immersed in the game, the more levels they are able to complete, and thus the more access they have to different elements of the game. Businesses may use this tactic to allow website visitors to earn a reward for the time spent visiting the website. Consider building your site that it monitors the amount of time that a user spends on browsing, or how often a visitor returns over a certain period of time, then offer a reward or incentives to loyal shoppers.
4. Make it Personable!
Users have become so addicted to Farmville due to the fact that the game allows users to personalize their experience. Farmville allows users to design their farm their own way, as well as the ability to see how different users have designed their spaces differently according to their personal interests. Businesses may mimic this characteristic by allowing each user to design their own account and place their favourite items on their personal page, or offering products that they may be interested in based on their previous purchases. By customizing your website to be directed at each user’s personal interests, they are more likely to become a loyal member and visit the website more frequently.
5. Social Aspect
Farmville users become successful by being social with other users. Farmville rewards you for adding your neighbours (Facebook friends) or helping neighbours out. As well, users are given free gifts that they can share with fellow farmers. Businesses may use this tactic for their website by rewarding users when they refer the website to a friend or family member. You’d be surprised how many people will opt to forward a message to their friends when there’s the possibility of winning a prize or the promise of a discount involved.
Farmville has become a favourite game among Facebook users, and the tactics that Farmville uses in order to captivate game participants has proven to be extremely effective. And while I don’t condone spending hours planting pretend fields, I can certainly see the method behind Farmville madness.
What are some of the other way’s that businesses can market using the Farmville model? Please share your thoughts below!
James, author of the recent CIK Blog article, 10 Lessons to Learn from Print Newspaper Ads is back again with another great guest post!
Some products are so good or have such an esteemed reputation that they practically sell themselves, making them exceedingly easy to market. Unfortunately, the vast majority of products that you will have to market are mundane and frankly rather boring, only appealing so select groups of people. Your challenge as a marketer is to promote and sell as many goods as you can, but how can you broaden the appeal of a boring product to those people that are beyond your normal purchasing demographic? Below are four tips that can help you to market really boring products.
1. Create Emotional Connections
One of the best ways to market your product is to fabricate an emotional connection between your product and your target audience. In order to do so, you must first identify the strengths of your products and how they can play into the weaknesses and interests of your potential buyers. Ask yourself if the product fulfills a need or provides a solution to a common problem that a consumer may face. Once you’ve done your research on the product and how it can help consumers, the difficult part begins. You will have to use your imagination to connect the benefits of your product in some meaningful way with the needs of your target audience. For example, if you were marketing a set of knives, instead of talking about the merits of the knives, you could create an ad campaign that shows meals that are the end result of using the knives, which entices the senses and imagination far more than talking about the technical specifications of the product.
2. Make Use of Internet Video Marketing
One of the best ways to spread the word about your boring products is to market them on the internet. These days, more people than ever have access to the internet through their computers and phones. Virtually every one of your target audience will be connected in some way to the internet. Take advantage of the Internet’s multimedia capability and embrace it as a legitimate marketing tool. Video sharing sites like YouTube are excellent ways to promote your products. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Likewise, a video is worth much more. For example, a company selling blenders once created a successful campaign in which they placed different objects into their blenders to show their strength and durability. Aside from food, they also threw in other objects like golf balls and iPads. The sheer spectacle of throwing in an eccentric mix of objects into the blenders created an instant buzz with consumers, which made the videos go viral, allowing it to be seen by millions of people across the world. When creating videos for sites like YouTube, you’ll want to make sure that the material is memorable and connects with the audience. Humorous or self deprecating videos are often successful. Also, be sure to hire professional actors, since they are more likely to be able to convey the message that you want than amateurs.
3. Utilising Social Media
The hot trend in the last couple of years in internet marketing has been the emergence and use of social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. These websites allow people to connect with their friends and share information over the internet. Social media sites are not limited to individuals, however. In recent years, many marketers have been using these sites to get the word out about their products. For example, you can create a Facebook page dedicated to your company or product that will allow you to connect with your customer base. Customers that feel more in touch with the manufacturers of products that they buy are more likely to stay loyal to the brand and to tell their friends about your products, giving you valuable word of mouth advertisement.
4. Blogging
Another good way to use internet technologies to promote your boring products is through blogging. Blogging is a great way to connect with your audience and to make them feel like you are speaking directly to them. You can use your blog to talk about the positive aspects of your products in a less formal way than a normal advertising campaign. In addition, you can also post content about related topics. This will help your audience to understand your product in a broader context and how they can benefit from making a purchase. Furthermore, you can use your blog to create buzz around your product by foreshadowing future events that concern your product. For example, if you know that a new version of whatever you are selling is coming out in a couple of months, you can use your blog to give the audience a sneak peak at the new features, which can help to build their anticipation for the product launch.
James Adams is a UK-based writer and blogger who also writes reviews of vacuum bags for hoover cleaners and other cleaning accessories. To read more of his work you can visit their website.
Have you ever had to market a boring product? How did you make your message more exciting?
