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开发者应考虑游戏营销的4P原则

发布时间:2014-07-22 16:22:43 Tags:,,,,,

作者:Joseph Lieberman

游戏市场变幻莫测。人们最常犯的一个普遍错误就是想当然地认为,如果你制作了游戏,人们就会去下载。如果你创造了一款游戏,发行商就会找上门。如果你制作了游戏,玩家就会发现你。当你终于搞定了编码,并在软件中加入图像时,就可以坐等财神光顾……

醒醒吧!这在任何领域都是行不通的。如果你不至少花上创造游戏25%的时间来搞营销,你就走岔路了。这一行有太多事情要做了,但在你开工之前,你得先掌握一点营销的要领,牢记生一者的关键概念和你所做的每一个决定。

marketing_mix_4p(from vyturelis.com)

marketing_mix_4p(from vyturelis.com)

无论是从哪方面入手,所有营销的基础都与所谓的4P原则有关。即产品(Product)、价格(Price)、地点(Place)和推广(Promotion)。在本文我将阐述4P的最广泛意义,并将其与游戏联系起来进行解释。如果你的产品有什么需要克服的特定问题,例如设计一个包装,我建议你去看看每个4P原则的更详细资料。

产品

在电子游戏中,产品可能就是程序员和开发者想的最多的东西。这是好事,因为在游戏领域,产品就是最重要的因素。我们都知道有些非常糟糕的产品却因为采用了良好的营销手段而大获成功,但这些只是个例,并非常见惯例。推广优秀的产品远比推销糟糕的产品更容易,我想几乎没有什么独立开发者拥有推广糟糕产品的资本。产品中的两个关键词就是想要和需要。你得确保同时满足消费者的这两个愿望,并且这两者并不总是相同的概念!

我无法告诉你如何制作优秀的产品,因为这远非三言两语就能解释清楚。但我们在此还是能够说明一些影响销售情况的产品项目。

设计样本就是其中一例。例如,有个关键概念就是面向广泛用户制作产品。这意味着你得尽量兼容更多系统。要尽量设计那些不需要任何阅读和帮助手册的游戏和样本。你得在有限的时间内向新客户展示游戏,你不能让他们将这短暂的时间浪费在阅读帮助手册上。也就是说,如果游戏确实复杂到需要用户阅读一些帮助手册,那么一定要确保用户会去阅读并理解这些内容。记住:消费者“想要”立即体验游戏,但也“需要”了解基本控制方法。

关于产品的一个普遍问题就是,制作样品有哪些最佳方法?

这里有三种基本的样本类型:

限时版本

优势:让用户体验到完整版的大致模样,多数门户网站提供长达60分钟的样本……

劣势:你很难掐准可以让人们渴求更多内容的样本时间节点。

功能限制版本

优势:易于将额外内容呈现在用户面前。

劣势:有些人可能会因为没有体验到自己想要的功能,或者不理解某个功能而放弃购买游戏。

章节式版本

优势:易于在故事或游戏的高潮时终止内容。免费开放的章节可视为推广开发者网站的“免费”游戏。

劣势:可能会免费开放过多的游戏内容。人们可能玩样本就心满意足了,不会再购买新内容。

对于这个问题并没有唯一的标准答案。每种样本类型都可能被一些人成功地利用。设计优秀样本的关键在于当人们真的陷入其中时就进行妥当的收尾。我想用这个格言来总结:给予消费者所需要的一切,以及一点他们想要的东西,然后吊吊他们的胃口。

对我来说,限时版本是最无效的样本类型,但却是门户网站使用最普遍的一种。为什么?如果每个样本都一样,门户网站会担心这会令用户困惑,并且他们就是不相信你可以用上其他的好方法。但这也不应该成为你放弃最适合自己游戏的样本类型的理由。

产品还涉及到所谓的第5P原则——包装(package)。但这只适用于零售行业的营销,因为网络产品并没有什么包装。在此我们关注的是网络产品,所以不涉及包装盒的问题。当你进入零售行业就会知道:良好的包装就是游戏的卖点!

价格

这也许是任何行业最复杂的一个过程。价格是产品成功的一个巨大因素。价格的关键概念在于价格并不等同于价值。你应该关心的主要问题就是让产品价值大于价格,否则人们就不会购买。在这个部分,我将触及4种不同的价格概念。这个领域有更多概念,但这4者的重要性最为明显。

声誉定价这个术语是指,“更贵的产品质量更高。”十之八九的人会告诉你,面对两款相同的产品时,售价更高者产品更好。声誉价格与这个效应有关,20美元的游戏就比10美元的游戏更好。更高的价格会提升产品的价值,但未必等同于涨价。有时候你也可以使用折扣手段,在不损害声誉的情况下实现薄利多销。

渗透定价是一种声称低价可创造更多销量的价格策略。更多销量意味着更多市场份额。更多市场份额又意味着更多未来销量。10美元的游戏销量多于20美元游戏,但可能利润没有后者高。渗透式手段最好运用于拥有强大病毒传播能力的产品。也就是说,多人购买游戏未来就可能引来更多人购买游戏。在渗透定价策略中,你通常要牺牲单个产品的利润来实现未来产品或者当前产品之后时期的更多销量。

1美元概念。在网络销售中,任何愿意为游戏花1美元的人都有可能再投入10或20美元。也就是说网络销售的最艰难环节就在于让用户打开钱包。这也正是订阅式销售如此可行的原因,因为消费者每月都会自动打打钱包。“如果他们肯掏出1美元”就有可能支付更高的费用,但要注意这种思维效应会减少你之后通过1美元会得到的收益。在达到30美元价格之后,你可能就会返回普通的需求曲线。

无形销售常见于纯粹的美元和美分价值之外的东西。例如客服支持,开发者支持,下次购买的25%折扣。这些还只是你可以运用于产品的一些无形好处。通过提供这些无形的好处,你就可以在不更改产品价格的情况下增加产品价值。

地点

所幸对于你们来说,制作游戏并不需要受到太多的地点因素影响。下载、CD、零售或网络发行商……这就已经囊括了所有你将遇到的情况。地点就是销售和人们试用或购买产品的地方。每个地点决策都有自己的优点、短处,并且你还可能在任何“地点”摆放产品。

下载是我交涉最多的环节,但你也可以通过Swift CD等地方提供一个CD作为下载包装的一个部分。总体来说,获得下载相当于尽量让你的游戏分散到许多地方。 你可以向共享件平台提交可下载游戏,你也可以找到许多评论和报道游戏的平台,还有一些你应该接触论坛和兴趣小组。获得下载现在是一件困难之事,因为竞争太激烈了。

零售最为昂贵和棘手。如果你想进入零售商店就需要发行商的帮助。总体来说,将零售游戏投放到货架上一般需要10万至20万美元甚至更多。这还只是为游戏打开销路所需要的成本!通常开发者并不处理营销事务,所以这其中的学问并不在你的掌控之中。不幸的是,这还意味着你只是长尾销售的一个环节,你的产品对他们来说只是一个毫无意义的数字。现在零售行业已经是一个濒临瓦解的市场,但仍然存在盈利空间。

如今最盛行的一种地点形式就是网络发行商。这些非独家公司掌握了多数可下载市场。你每笔销售所获抽成介于20%至40%左右,并借此获得对方的用户。他们并不会积极推广你的产品,但你在他们网站所获得的曝光度却可能为你带来好处。这会让人们积极查找你的产品,所以要确保他们能够通过搜索引擎找到你的网站,这样你就可以直接推广自己的游戏了,甚至还有可能从门户网站那里分走一些用户。

推广

在大街上问10个人营销人员是做什么的,相信这10人可能都会告诉你他们就是营销人员。以上三点也是我们所做的事,但却并非人们所想的东西。推广是广告、公关和炒作(公关的子集)的整体。

炒作最难执行,也最难控制。多数公司会因为害怕酿成不可收拾的局面而避开炒作。炒作的东西一般都只是盛行一时,它最常产生的问题就是需求超过容量。所幸在下载领域这并没什么关系。要炒作的话,你通常需要一个病毒产品和巨大的公关、广告量,并且要让用户在极短时间内密集讨论你的产品。我想说的是,你可以将实现大规模炒作视为目标,但却不可将其作为投入精力的重心。

广告是一个更简单的操作,但也更为昂贵。要正确广告产品,你必须了解自己的目标市场和转化率。转化率就是指你每实现100次下载量可创造多少销量。广告必须具有针对性。也就是瞄准那些最可能购买游戏的群体。最近有不少网站关注Google Adwords,谷歌也的确是优秀的广告源,但我认为最近几年由于竞争加剧,谷歌可为网络游戏创造的利润空间也越来越少了。

这里的4(或5)P原则几乎是所有行业进行推广的主心骨。这里的目标就是让你去思考每一者的做法。你的产品看起来如何,样本设计怎么样?我们将在哪里销售产品,我们能否保证产品到达目标市场?让谁来处理产品的推广,我们可为对方和广告支付多少预算?对方是否拥有所有必要的渠道并且能够在产品准备就绪时就执行?我们针对这款游戏要定价19.95美元,还是尝试一些不同的定价模式?我们能够为销售的产品增加哪些无形的益处?(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版本的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The 4Ps of Marketing

By Joseph Lieberman

A preface for this article is that the game market changes extremely quickly. While the foundation of this article is the 4Ps of marketing and those will never be out of date, the specifics may change fairly rapidly. The original article published to GameDev.net focused on a lot of things that were very specific to the downloadable market. Instead I will focus this more on the marketing principals; so it won’t be out of date by the time you read it.

The most common mistake people make is assuming that if you make it, they will download it. If you create a game, the publishers will find you. If you make the game, the players will find you. That when you are done pounding the code and graphics into the software you have but to sit and watch the money roll in…

Wake up! It doesn’t work that way anywhere in the world. If you are not spending at least 25% of the time it took you to create the game marketing it, you are doing something wrong. There are a million things to be done, but before you do any of them you have to learn a little bit about what marketing is, keeping these key concepts in mind for each and every decision you make.

The foundation of all marketing, where it all begins, is referred to as the 4Ps. They are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. In this article I will go over the 4Ps in the broadest sense and try to relate it to game specific items. If there is a specific problem with your product that needs overcoming, such as designing a package, I suggest picking up some more detailed texts on each of the 4Ps individually.

Note:

This article was originally part of a series published on GameDev.net back in 2004. It was revised by the original author in 2008 and included in the book Business and Production: A GameDev.net Collection, which is one of 4 books collecting both popular GameDev.net articles and new original content in print format.

Product

In video games, product is probably the thing coders and developers think about most. It is a good thing, because in gaming, product IS the most important factor. I know, we all remember some really BAD products which had good marketing and turned out to make a bundle, but those are the exceptions, not the rules. It is far easier to market a good product than a bad one, and I doubt any indie developer has the assets to market a bad product. The two key words in product are want and need. You have to make sure you are giving customers both, and those two things are not always the same!

Ok so I can’t tell you how to make a good product… well, not in a few paragraphs anyway. Long story short here is make the game good, but there are some items in Product that impact your sales that we can talk about in this small space.

Design of a demo product is one. A key concept, for instance, is making your product accessible to a wide audience. This means compatible with as many systems as you can. Try to design the game and the demo to not require any reading and preferably any help files. You only have a limited amount of time to show your new client your game, you don’t want to squander that time having them read help files. That said, if the game is complex enough that some help file type reading needs to be done make sure you force them to read and understand. Remember: The customer wants to instantly play but needs to learn the basic controls!

A very common question concerning the product is what is the best way to make a demo?

There are 3 basic demo types:

Time Limited

Pro: Gives the user a taste of what the full version is like. Most portals require a 60 minute demo..

Con: It is very hard to time the demo to end where the person is hungry for more.

Feature Limited

Pro: Easy to dangle the additional features right in front of the user.

Con: Some people may not buy because they didn’t experience a feature they wanted, or didn’t know a feature was there that should have been dangled better.

Episodic

Pro: Easy to end the plot or game at a cliff-hanger. Giving away an episode can count as having a “free” game to use to promote your site.

Con: Could give too much of your game away. People may be content playing only your demo and never upgrading.

There is no right answer when it comes down to it. Every demo type has been used successfully by some people. The key to designing a good demo is that the demo ends right when the person is really getting into it. I like to use this motto: Give the customers all that they need and a taste of what they want and then leave them hanging.

I point out the irony that time limited to me is the least effective demo type but the one used by most portals. Why? Uniformity. If every demo was different, portals worry it would confuse users and they frankly don’t trust you to do a good job making it any other way. Still, it shouldn’t stop you from trying to get them to use what model you think suits your game best.

Product also refers to what is sometimes called the 5th P – Package. You’d only use that in retail marketing, as online stuff really has no package. Here we are focusing on online goods, so no box and no package, When you go into retail know this: A good box sells games!

Price

Possibly the most complicated process in any industry, Price is a huge factor in the success of your product. A key concept of price is that price is not the same as value. The main concern you should have is to deliver your product so that its value is greater than its price, otherwise people won’t buy it. In this section I am going to touch on four different concepts of price. There are many more, but these are some of the biggest.

Prestige Pricing is a term that basically says, “A more expensive product IS a higher quality product.” 9 out of 10 people will tell you, when faced with two identical products; the one with the higher price tag is the higher quality product. Prestige price refers to this effect; a 20 dollar game is a better game than a 10 dollar game. A higher price does raise the value of the product, but not necessarily equal to the increase in price. Sometimes it is possible to use a discount to give a product the volume of a lower cost without loss of prestige.

Penetration Pricing is the price strategy that says a lower price will generate more volume. More volume means more market share. More market share means more future sales. A 10 dollar game generates more sales than a 20 dollar game, but maybe not more profit. Penetration is best used with a product that has strong viral capacity. That is, the more people who buy the game create more potential for future people to buy the game. Read that line as many times as it takes to sink in. In penetration pricing you are often sacrificing profit per unit in order to generate more sales for your next product or for this product at a much later date.

The Hardest Dollar concept. In online sales it is common that anyone willing to spend 1 dollar on your game would be willing to spend 10 or 20. This is saying that the hardest part of an online sale is simply getting a user to open his wallet. This is also why subscription sales work so well, as the customer’s wallet is automatically open every month; thus neutralizing the largest hurdle. It is quite possible to use this “If they’d spend 1 dollar” mentality as justification for a higher price, but it is important to note that the impact of this decreases the further from 1 dollar you get. At 30.00 it’s likely you’ll be back to your normal demand curve.

Intangible Terms of Sale is often seen in offerings outside of a pure dollar and cents value. Customer support, support from the developer, getting 25% off your next purchase. These are just a few of the intangible benefits you can tack onto your product. By offering intangible benefits you can often increase the value of the product without altering the price of the product.

Place

Luckily for all of you there are not too many place decisions to make in games. Download, CD, Retail or Online Publisher… that covers all the main ones you will encounter. Place is the distribution and where people get the product to try or buy it. Each place decision has its own benefits, pains, and odds are you can put your product in every ‘place’

Download is what I work most with, though you can offer a CD as a part of the download package from places like Swift CD. In general, getting downloads amounts to getting your game in as many places as possible. To that end you have places to submit downloadable games like shareware directories, you have places that review and cover games, and you have forums and interest groups that you should approach. Getting downloads is a tough business these days, as there is a lot of competition.

Retail is the most expensive and most difficult. You will NEED a publisher if you want to get into a retail store. In general, putting a retail title on a shelf runs anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 dollars or more. That is just to get your title on a shelf! Usually marketing is not handled by the developer here, so most of this is out of your hands. Sadly this can also mean you are just part of long tail sales, and your individual product is just a meaningless number to them. Yep, expect to get raked over the coals in retail. These days it’s a collapsing market, but there is still money to be made there.

Nowadays the most common form of place is an online publisher. These non-exclusive houses hold most of the downloadable market. The amount you get per sale tends to range between 20% and 40% and in exchange you have access to their users. They don’t actively market your product, but the exposure you get on their site can be turned and used in your favor. It will get people looking for your product actively, so make sure there is a good way for them to use search engines to find your site so you can promote your games directly; hopefully stealing away a few users from the portals.

Promotion

Last but not least, promotion. Ask 10 people on the street what a marketing person does and all 10 will probably tell you that this is what they do. The above 3 are also what we do, but it’s not what people think about. Promotion is the combination of advertising, publicity, and buzz (a subset of publicity).

Buzz is the hardest to create and the hardest to control. Most firms actually avoid trying to make buzz because of the havoc it can cause. Buzz items are typically fads, and the problem it most frequently creates is demand exceeding capacity. In the download world it is not as big a deal, thankfully. To create buzz basically you need a viral product and a huge quantity of publicity, advertising, and customer discussion over your product in a very short period of time. I’ll go on a limb and say it should be your goal to achieve as much buzz as possible, but not really the focus of your efforts.

Publicity is ‘free’ advertising. Reviews, Interviews, and Previews are the most common forms of this. Also included are press releases, screenshots, and link exchanges. The downside of publicity is that it usually takes a lot of time and work to get. Remember, if you build it they will NOT come. Reviewers will not bang down your door, and you have to do more than just submit your game to some unknown E-mail address. To get publicity you must be tenacious. Get people’s contact info and talk to them as frequently as you can both before and after your game is released. Even after they review it, stay in touch and keep them informed of what you’re up to. You never know when someone will write an article and mention upcoming games or ideas.

Advertising is a much easier creature; it’s also much more expensive. To correctly advertise you must know your target market and your conversion rate. Conversion rates are how many sales you get for every 100 downloads. Ads must also be targeted. Target refers to what group is most likely to buy your game. Lately there has been a lot of emphasis on Google Adwords from sites, and Google is a good advertising source, but part of me thinks it’s a copout from doing research and finding better deals. In recent years Google has become less and less profitable for online games due to increased competition.

The 4 (or 5) Ps are pretty much the backbone for everything else in promotion. The simple goal here is to get you to think about each of them. How does your product look and how well is the demo designed? Where will we be distributing it and are we guaranteed to get where we want to go? Who is handling the promotion of our product, what budget do we have for that person and advertising? Does that person have all the contacts in place and ready to go when the product is ready? Will we charge the standard 19.95 for this game or are we going to try something different? What intangible benefits to the sale can we add?(source:gamedev


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