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分析Zynga吸引和留存用户的营销方式

发布时间:2011-12-31 14:20:41 Tags:,,

作者:David Fallarme

Zynga是社交游戏这个新兴行业中的无可置疑的领头羊,他们的统治地位表现在公司庞大的用户量上,其用户量与行业前5大社交游戏公司中另4家的用户量总和相当(游戏邦注:数据来源于AppData排行榜)。

诚然,Zynga能够取得如此地位,凭借的是构建行业内最佳产品的实力。关于Zynga是否可被称为游戏公司,抑或仅仅是一家使用可爱图画和心理技巧来产生盈利的媒体公司,有过许多场的争论。但是,该公司在行业内处于统治地位是不可否认的事实,他们在产品设计和营销上都处于领先。

Facebook帮助Zynga保住首位之座

Zynga成立于2007年,作为登陆Facebook的首批社交游戏公司之一,他们可以利用该社交网络中不甚严格的隐私环境。

我们都还记得,当初《FarmVille》不断发布的邀请消息多么恼人。尽管这种措施令人讨厌,但确实发挥了作用,而且效果很不错。

那时简直是Facebook社交游戏发展的黄金时代,可以免费发布广告,用户获取成本较低,很容易便可以实现大范围的病毒性传播。Zynga正是利用这种有利的环境,仿制其他游戏,开辟通往行业领先之位的道路。

在意识到Facebook内潜藏的病毒性潜力后,Zynga将与社交网络持有者保持亲密关系视为头等大事。有传言称,两者间的共生关系使Zynga获得平台的特别照顾,他们可以最先获知新功能和政策,可令公司先于其他开发商开辟新渠道。这会使他们比竞争对手拥有更大的用户获取优势。

吸引用户参与游戏

Zynga的秘密武器是他们的产品设计策略和对Facebook政策的了解。接下来我们从策略层面上剖析他们的营销和用户获取方法,看看他们是如何吸引并挽留用户。

1、向已获取用户进行交叉推广

zynga-xpromo-examples(from themarketingstudent)

zynga-xpromo-examples(from themarketingstudent)

交叉推广的形式包括游戏内置广告、游戏区域上方的条幅广告以及各种交流渠道和社交媒体账户。

他们有着上亿的庞大用户基础,这使他们发布的游戏都能够登上Facebook前10大游戏排行榜,尽管有些游戏的质量并不高。

2、凭借Facebook广告让游戏在发布早期抵达巅峰

在Facebook早期阶段,所有人都可以免费向所有用户推广内容。但是随后Facebook收回了病毒性渠道的控制权,将其替换为现在的广告网络,Zynga自然也会对此新形式加以利用。

就Zynga目前的表现来看,公司似乎偏爱将游戏在发布早期推向巅峰状态。公司每年发布多款游戏,只有这样才能让公司避免过于依赖少数几款游戏。

zynga-dau-peak-early(from themarketingstudent)

zynga-dau-peak-early(from themarketingstudent)

游戏在早期达到巅峰离不开对社交网络的利用。他们的游戏几乎都不适合那些选择独自玩游戏的用户。Zynga游戏设计中颇令人不悦的一点便是在早期向你征收“好友税”,也就是说,你必须邀请好友才能通过游戏的某个阶段并继续进展下去。出于这个原因,Zynga每月在Facebook广告上投入了巨额资金,约为500万-1000万美元。

于游戏发布早期阶段在用户获取上投入大量资金,Zynga得以最大化同时玩游戏的玩家数量,确保玩家总是可以找到玩伴,这样他们就会乐于在游戏中继续进展下去,并在其中加大时间投入。

如果游戏能够从用户身上获得极好的收益,那么公司就会不断地针对该游戏进行广告宣传。以《CityVille》为例,虽然游戏已经发布超过1年,但是Zynga仍然继续对其进行广告宣传。

3、良好的公共关系

现已证实,Zynga也很擅长获得媒体的关注。这使得他们有机会接触到那些非Facebook渠道的用户。

他们与著名明星和品牌合作,包括Enrique Iglesias、Lady Gaga和Capital One。通过开展此类合作活动,他们可以吸引更多的人在Facebook圈子之外讨论公司的产品。

4、慈善公共关系

自海地地震起,Zynga就开始对灾难救援和紧急事件快速地做出响应。他们在日本海啸、墨西哥湾原油泄漏和海地救援中的表现使公司获得良好的媒体形象。

公司最新游戏《CastleVille》也引起外界媒体的关注和报道,他们声称每当用户“赞”《CastleVille》的粉丝页面时,公司就会向慈善机构捐赠资金。

保证用户留存率

1、Facebook通知

利用好友来保持用户玩游戏的兴致,这已证实是最有效的手段。你每天都会看到有好友赠送礼品、向你索取礼品或邀请你加入游戏。

这样你就能理解为何Zynga在游戏发布早期急于获得大量用户,因为如果要将玩家留存在游戏中,好友所发挥的作用要比Zynga广告更有效。

Zynga最初便是通过这种渠道让游戏登上排行榜,他们通过玩家在《Farmville》中的活动向好友列表中的所有人发送通知。Facebook已经取缔了这种滥用通知的渠道,但利用好友依然是游戏公司说服用户回到游戏的强大手段。

2、CRM和游戏动机

游戏玩家会不断收到与所玩游戏相关的提醒。你会在更新消息中看到自己所收到的免费礼品和游戏功能更新内容。如果你很长时间不玩游戏,Zynga还会给你发送邮件,通过大量免费物品吸引你回到游戏中。他们尽其所能地获取用户的关注。

3、强大的玩家社区

每个游戏公司都会拥有部分骨灰级玩家和鲸鱼用户。Zynga的做法是,确保这些骨灰级玩家(游戏邦注:即会编写游戏攻略、与其他玩家交流和讨论游戏技巧的玩家)有个聚集地并互相激发游戏动机。Zynga的信息板很活跃,有许多不断刺激整个玩家社区的骨灰级玩家。

2011年上半年,Zynga还发布了忠诚度奖励项目RewardVille,如果玩家每天玩足够的时间就可以获得赠品。

zynga-facebook-fanpage-post(from themarketingstudent)

zynga-facebook-fanpage-post(from themarketingstudent)

4、高标准的产品价值

如果你曾经玩过Zynga游戏,你就会注意到游戏有着很高的产品价值标准,游戏中遍布“快乐时刻”。这种精致的设计被扩展到公司所有的营销资料中,所以每次你接触到Zynga所制作的东西时,都会回想起在游戏中体验到的那些“欢乐时刻”。

令人佩服的是,他们可以将这种产品价值渗透到所有东西中,即便是那些ROI(游戏邦注:即投资回报率)很低或不甚明朗的渠道。Zynga的Twitter页面有5万个关注着,与公司旗下游戏数亿的用户量相去甚远。公司YouTube页面中视频的用户观看次数也很有限,但是Zynga依然投入足量的资源确保其展现良好的品质。

从Zynga营销中汲取的经验

排除捐赠障碍比高调宣传更重要

从上述内容可以看出,我们将Zynga最光鲜的一面置于其获取用户方法的次要地位。讽刺的是,这些需要投入最多精力的工作产生的回报却不甚理想。

你可以衡量自己的用户获取方式中的关键步骤,看看能否用较低的投入产生较好的效果。我曾经为某个慈善组织工作过,他们通过自动薪资扣除(游戏邦注:比如每员工每月捐赠5美元工资)而非举办那些能够上报的捐赠盛会,获得了大量的捐款。

但就Zynga而言,通过媒体报道来推广的确是个很有价值的做法,因为他们那时候忙着准备IPO,而且公司也有足够的资金来做这些事情。但是,多数企业却并没有这么幸运。

测试和改善营销方法

Zynga的产品设计是由数据驱动的,因而他们的营销采用的也是相同的方法。Zynga采用的是以反馈参数和测试为导向的运营理念,因而他们会不断从实际操作中学习和改变,而不是单纯依靠以往那些经验之法。

这使得他们时刻取得营销策略的领先地位,先于其他开发商探索和使用新营销方式。

高质量呈现所有内容

你努力让用户在自己的产品中获得高质量体验,那么也需要重视用户与产品互动的每一个细节。

想象下,假如你住在一家昂贵的5星级酒店,入住后收到酒店发送给你的感谢邮件,却发现邮件中出现各种纰漏,会有何感觉呢?即便是拥有庞大用户群体的公司,也需要时刻重视细节的力量,持续呈现高质量的内容。

游戏邦注:本文发稿于2011年11月20日,所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

A teardown of Zynga marketing: how Zynga sucks you in and keeps you there

David Fallarme

Sometime at the end of November, Zynga will finally release their IPO. It is one of the most anticipated IPOs of 2011, as Zynga is the undisputed top dog in the new industry of social gaming.

Their dominance comes from their massive userbase; 4 of the top 5 social gaming companies would need to merge simply to compete with Zynga’s enormous footprint on the industry (see AppData leaderboards).

Certainly, Zynga achieved this position on the strength of building best-in-class products. Much debate exists whether Zynga can truly be called a gaming company or whether they are merely a media company that uses cute graphics and psychological exploitation to generate revenue. But what is undeniable is that they are dominant, which they do through leadership in product design and marketing.

How Facebook helps Zynga stay #1

As one of the first game companies on Facebook, launching in 2007, they were able to take advantage of the social network’s then-lax privacy settings.

We all remember how annoying it was to incessantly have FarmVille posts in your news feed. They spammed the hell out of everyone. But as annoying as they were, there was an even more annoying truth — they worked. Extremely well.

This was the golden age of Facebook social gaming — advertising was free, users were cheap and achieving virality on a massive scale was easy. Zynga jumped on this, cloning and spamming their way to the top.

Aware of the viral potential within Facebook, Zynga has since prioritized a close relationship with the social network. Rumours abound that they get preferential treatment because of their symbiotic relationship, allowing them to get an inside track on new features and policies to ensure they are the first to exploit new channels. This ensures them a huge user acquisition advantage over their competition.

Acquisition: getting you in the game

Zynga’s secret sauce is their ruthless product design mathematics combined with an intimate knowledge of Facebook policy. Let’s now go to the tactical level, breaking down their marketing and user acquisition strategy, looking at how they get and keep users in their ecosystem.

1. Cross-promote to your captive audience

This cross-promotion takes the form of in-game ads, banners above the gameplay area, and complete saturation of all communication channels and social media accounts.

Their enormous userbase — around 160M monthly users — allows them the benefit of launching a top-10 Facebook game every time, regardless of game quality.

2. Peak early with Facebook ads

In the wild west days of Facebook, everyone was able to push content to tons of users for free. But Facebook has since wrested back control of its viral channels and instituted an ad network in its place, one that Zynga begrudgingly participates in.

Zynga has shown a preference to push its games to peak early. With the company launching several games a year, this is necessary so that it does not spread itself too thinly.

Peaking early is also important to take advantage of network effects. Their games are nearly unplayable for those who choose to play alone. Zynga game design is notorious for levying you with a “friend tax” early on; that is, at some point, you will have to invite friends to play so that you can progress in the game. For this reason, Zynga has huge budgets for on-Facebook advertising, estimated at $5-10M a month.

By throwing swaths of money into user acquisition at an early stage, Zynga maximizes the amount of people that start to play around the same time, making sure that you always have someone to play with, which keeps you happily progressing, which keeps your interest (and time investment) in the game high.

Depending on how well a game monetizes its users, the ad budget for a game can essentially be unlimited. Keep an eye out for it: you’ll see that Zynga continues to run ads for CityVille despite the game being one year old.

3. Buzz-worthy PR

Zynga has also proven to be good at getting press. This ensures that they’ve got a chance to reach users who aren’t normally within their reach.

They’ve partnered with high-profile acts and brands such as Enrique Iglesias, Lady Gaga and Capital One. By making these kinds of connections, they’re able to get a wider scope of people talking about them off-Facebook.

I should note that in the artists’ case, it’s likely that Zynga is the one paying for the partnership — they are the one piggybacking on the artists’ reputations for press.

4. Goodwill PR

Ever since the Haiti earthquake, Zynga has been quick in responding to disaster relief and emergency events. Their work with the Japan tsunami, Gulf coast oil spill and Haiti relief ensured that they always had good press about circulating in the media.

CastleVille, their latest game, generated some press when they announced that they would donate to charities when users “liked” the CastleVille fanpage.

Retention: keeping you playing

1. Facebook notifications

This is arguably the most effective way to keep you playing — by using your own friends to keep you invested in the game. At least once a day, you can expect a friend to send or ask you for a gift, or ask you to join their game.

Multiply that behavior across multiple friends with whom you play several Zynga games, and you start to understand why it’s important for them to get a huge rush of users upfront. Your friends do a much better job of keeping you in the game than Zynga advertising.

This was the channel that Zynga originally used to rise to the top; they used your gameplay in Farmville to shamelessly send notifications to everyone in your friends list. Facebook has since clamped down on the spamminess of notifications, but it remains a powerful way for gaming companies to keep their users coming back.

2. CRM and incentives to play

As one of their players, you can expect to receive incessant reminders about the games you play. You’ll get free gifts and new feature updates showing up in your news feed. If you’ve stopped playing for a while, Zynga will send you a “we’ve missed you” email with a basket of free goodies to get you playing again. They do everything in their power to make sure their game is top-of-mind.

3. Strong community hooks

Every gaming company attracts its fair share of hardcore players and spenders (“whales” in social gaming parlance). Zynga ensures that these hardcore players — the ones who write game walkthroughs, exchange tips and discuss the game with other players — have a home to congregate and goad each other on. Zynga’s message boards are active and well-staffed with moderators who keep a pulse on the player community.

In the first half of 2011, Zynga also launched RewardVille, a loyalty rewards program that lets players collect gifts if they play enough times in a day.

4. Extended “moments of delight”

If you’ve ever played a Zynga game, you’ll notice that it’s held to a high standard of production value. It’s full of little “moments of delight”. This level of polish is maintained all throughout their marketing materials — so that every time you come into contact with anything Zynga, this feeling comes to mind and you re-surface those positive “delight” emotions that the product team made sure were in the game.

The admirable part is that they maintain this production value on nearly everything, even channels whose ROI is low or difficult to ascertain. Zynga’s twitter page has 50,000 followers, which is astonishingly low given the hundreds of millions of people that have played Zynga games. Videos on their YouTube page also get dismally low view counts, and yet they devote enough resources to ensure they are high quality.

Zynga marketing lessons

Frictionless beats flashiness

Notice how I ranked Zynga’s user acquisition methods — the high-profile, newsworthy stuff is last. Ironically, the stuff that requires the most effort gives the least payout.

Think of the key steps in your own user acquisition funnel and where you can tweak efficiency while keeping investment low. In most cases, it’s a behind-the-scenes, totally unsexy tactic. I once worked for a charity who got the great majority of their donations via automatic payroll deductions (e.g. $5 from every paycheque), instead of the big flashy events that would end up in tomorrow’s paper.

In Zynga’s case, it may be worthwhile for them to run all the media-friendly stuff because they are a pre-IPO company with capital to burn. Most organizations are not so fortunate.

Test and refine: not just for engineers

Zynga’s products are data-driven, and so their marketing employs the same approach. By having a culture of metrics and testing, they are constantly tweaking and learning instead of relying on “what’s worked before”.

This allows them to be on the bleeding edge of marketing tactics, using and exploiting them before anyone else does.

High-quality across the board

You’ve worked hard to create positive feelings for users of your product — take the effort to maintain it in every interaction they get with your brand.

Think about staying at an expensive 5-star hotel, then getting a “thank you” email from them after your stay that was in plain text and with riddled typos. Even for a company with 160M users, the little touches matter. (Source: The Marketing Student)


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