Social Gaming for Marketers

Are you one of the millions of Facebook users who spends much of their time planting watermelons or engaging in Mafia wars? If so, you’re part of a growing market of social gaming users.

Even for the non-gamer types, the ease and popularity of Facebook has made social gaming a favorite activity. Farmville is the game of choice for most of my FB friends, and myself as well, on occasion. There’s something so satisfying about harvesting the fruits of your labor!

These games present an interesting opportunity (and challenge) on both the development and the marketing front. At SXSW last week, John Pleasants, CEO of Playdom, spoke about this very topic. One factoid he mentioned was that it costs between $100,000 and $300,000 to produce one of these games, and with the market growing more saturated every day, it’s going to be continually harder for game companies to create a winner.

What makes for an interesting case study on the marketing front is the opportunity these gaming communities create for organizations. Recently, Bing completed a Farmville sponsorship, in which free Farm Cash was handed out to players who became a fan of Bing on Facebook. Needless to say, it was a popular promotion, as said cash is a valuable commodity down on the farm. Was it a success for Bing? Well, they garnered 400,000 fans in one day. Not bad.

But are they quality fans? Or are they just cash-hungry temporary fans? Time will tell. Either way, this presents an interesting  example for other marketers, looking to cash in on the 30 million daily active users on Farmville alone.

While Bing might be an odd match for Farmville, given that they’re a search engine and don’t really have any potential tie to farm activities, companies that are more in line with the particular games have a unique opportunity to seek out partnerships. For instance, DMOs might think about offering branded items (example: a California wine grape varietal for planting), buildings (example: a Colorado ski lodge) or landscapes (example: a Florida beach-scape) within the game. A book publisher might think about joining forces with one of the many word games, and so on. There are countless games out there, and more popping up every day. Why not explore them as a new marketing channel within the Facebook empire?

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