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GameLook report/Affected by many factors such as changes in IDFA, stricter global regulation, and the ebb of overseas user bonuses, more and more people in the industry have realized that it is an indisputable fact that games go overseas to open a difficult mode.
Looking back on 2022, the scale of China’s game industry will fall to 260 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 10.33%, and the user scale will be 664 million, a year-on-year decrease of 0.33%. On the other hand, the overseas market also fell into weakness: the market revenue was 17.346 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 3.7%-this is the first decline in the past ten years.
But at the same time, SocialPet, a mobile marketing analysis platform, pointed out in a report that mobile game marketing will still maintain growth in 2022. More than half of the top ten games in global advertising in 2022 are domestic mobile games, and even in the TOP 50, games from Chinese publishers account for more than 60%.
On the one hand, there is the increasing overseas marketing expenditure; on the other hand, affected by the stock market and the decline in going overseas, under the industry context of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, overseas game manufacturers urgently need to upgrade their marketing needs – a more professional, refined and full-cycle marketing model Gradually go from optional to mandatory to get the most out of every budget.
Now, with the arrival of the new year’s summer vacation, many game manufacturers are gearing up, hoping to jump ahead of the new recovery cycle under the background of normalized release of version numbers. At the same time, how to tap growth in overseas markets as soon as possible and seize more shares has become the top priority of game companies at this stage.
Cost-reducing and efficiency-enhancing high-quality products are in the lead, long-term operation station C position
In the past year, the domestic game industry has collectively survived the winter, and strengthening the overseas layout has become the only breakthrough for sustainable development. However, as more and more companies pay attention to this big overseas cake, more and more powerful products are pouring into the market, and the demand for high-quality products is becoming more and more obvious. Coupled with the ebb of the global user bonus, the rise in marketing costs has been further deepened.
The development context of the game going overseas is basically the same as that of the Chinese mobile game market. The “2022 Report on China’s Games Going Overseas” shows that in 2022, the actual sales revenue of China’s self-developed games in overseas markets will drop for the first time since 2018, reaching US$17.346 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 3.7%. Against the background of the global game industry’s downturn, how to reduce costs and increase efficiency has naturally become a topic of common concern for overseas manufacturers.
Compared with the “old routine” of buying volume with soaring user acquisition costs, with the remarkable success of the high-quality strategy in the global market, overseas game manufacturers pay more attention to long-term operations. At present, one of the solutions recognized in the industry is content marketing.
More specifically, according to the gamma data report, more than 95% of the top games have deployed diversified content marketing, especially IP linkage and game live broadcast, which have become the most popular marketing methods. Among them, IP linkage may be familiar with big DAU products, or two-dimensional game manufacturers.
Newzoo’s “2022 Global E-sports and Game Live Streaming Market Report” shows that by 2022, the global game live broadcast audience will increase by 13.8% compared with 2021, reaching 921.2 million people, and this figure will increase to 1.4 billion people in 2025. In other words, on average, one out of every six people will watch the live broadcast of the game.
The cost of game marketing continues to soar, and the role of advertising with buying volume is gradually declining. In contrast, the huge global live broadcast audience directly creates the key role of game live broadcast in marketing and long-term operation.
Game live broadcast may not be 100% popular, but behind almost every phenomenal game in the world, there are batches of anchors who “fuel the flames”. Especially at the moment when going overseas is becoming more and more difficult, game live broadcasting has become the most important main means of content marketing for manufacturers going overseas.
Because of the live broadcast of the global hit “Among Us”
It must be admitted that from the war of thousands of broadcasts to the confrontation of top platforms, the structure of the domestic live broadcast industry has stabilized, and there is a fairly mature ecosystem for developers to choose from. But for overseas game companies, how to choose a reliable live broadcast platform is still a science in the ascendant overseas.
Deeper interaction with players, live broadcast has become a powerful tool
Going overseas, content marketing, live broadcasting-all kinds of keyword superposition can easily give the answer: TikTok.
As a short video entertainment platform covering more than 150 countries and regions, the key market is the United States with 150 million monthly users, and the global monthly users are over 1 billion. TikTok has already become an important position for publicity and distribution overseas that cannot be ignored. It is reported that 75% of players have discovered new game content on TikTok. And 60% of TikTok players will share and create with relatives and friends after watching TikTok game content. Overseas, there is no doubt about TikTok’s ability to promote and distribute games.
Among them, as many as 62% of TikTok LIVE users watch live broadcasts every day. Games have become one of the most popular live broadcast categories on the platform and an indispensable way for creators and audiences to create real connections.
Thanks to the high enthusiasm and high participation of the TikTok community, it directly promotes the creative trend of game live broadcasting. For example, in the live broadcast series The Game Room, influential creators and experts on TikTok will show different types of games in the live broadcast. The cultural barriers between different regions are being gradually softened by TikTok’s diverse game live broadcast content and prosperous community ecology.
In fact, including “Among US”, “Glory of the King”, “Wild Action”, and “Honkai 3”, which won the top ten most popular overseas games of the year as early as 2018… Many popular games have used TikTok for live marketing , with considerable success.
Based on TikTok’s differentiated advantages in terms of user traffic, creative content, and interest communities, TikTok for Business can provide overseas manufacturers with highly innovative marketing resources and a full range of platform services, helping developers penetrate the local market and achieve global traffic discovery and operation.
Specifically, taking Daren’s live broadcast marketing as an example, it includes various forms of cooperation such as land reclamation, account checking, liver replacement, card drawing, commentary, and COS. At the same time, TikTok for Business will also provide corresponding live marketing methods for developers with different needs, such as the new game live broadcast evaluation group suitable for new games, the game live broadcast appreciation group that helps the new version, and the game live broadcast viewing group that is beneficial to increase conversion, etc. Deepen the interaction with players at each stage to escort the growth of the game throughout the cycle.
Diversified marketing and refinement, synchronized with R&D
It is true that game live broadcasting is already an indispensable means of overseas promotion, and the multi-content marketing aimed at innovating and refining operations is not well known to the public. In the cooperation with developers, TikTok for Business continues to promote, and the approach is quite “hard core”-directly enrich the cooperation forms according to different types of needs, so as to achieve the goal of breaking the whole cycle of growth.
To put it simply, provide targeted and customized cooperation methods for different stages. Whether you need pre-marketing, continuous activation on the reservation user side, and guide downloads; or hope to strengthen the stickiness of existing users and introduce more new users through multiple interactive activities; or aim to cover the entire domain and aggregate high-quality content, To improve the accumulation of game assets and spontaneous secondary creation, TikTok for Business has a differentiated marketing mix.
Taking the promotion of new games as an example, many manufacturers have chosen to combine high-value crowd packages and launch brand advertisements such as R&F before the game goes online to help the game break through the crowd, accumulate game high-potential crowd in advance, and increase game reservations. . With Search Banner, it can promote search, realize one-click jump to the official website for effective drainage, and strengthen appointment and download conversion. Of course, the bidding advertisements that manufacturers are used to can’t be ignored. Advertisements are placed using highlights of talent live broadcasts as material, and more original game content can accurately reach more people and improve the overall ROI of the event. And these are just warm-ups for publicity and expansion. In the middle and long-tail stages of the live broadcast, TikTok for Business has also prepared a variety of resource combinations for manufacturers to choose their own solutions.
In order to better integrate into the local market, “Ragnarok Origin” (ROO), which was released by Happy Huyu in Southeast Asia in April this year, chose the opportunity of the Songkran Festival to promote it, and based on the characteristics of the local festival on TikTok, it focused on the variety show in the live broadcast. The game unfolded and nearly 100,000 live UVs were created, and the exposure effect was remarkable. Moreover, with the help of the influence of local KOLs and the warm-up cooperation of localized content in advance, coupled with the pre-running strategy of Spark Ads before the live broadcast, ROO obtained huge traffic when it started broadcasting. The style of Live Ads is also proven to give a big boost in terms of CPC, CTR and core viewership.
Joyful Interactive Entertainment will continue to deepen its cooperation with TikTok for Business in the Thailand and Indonesian markets. For example, after the version is updated, it will cooperate with local stars to introduce new gameplay, or launch a series of live events based on the game schedule.
In May of this year, a certain FPS game also chose to live broadcast the e-sports finals on TikTok to enhance game exposure and enhance players’ sense of participation. The three-hour live broadcast on the first day of the final brought nearly 200,000 UVs, and the overall live broadcast CPC and CPM costs were far lower than the industry average.
On the same day, the live broadcast of this event also performed well in Vietnam, with the overall exposure exceeding 100% of daily exposure, UV viewing exceeding 70%, and PCU exceeding 25%; the overall exposure of Thailand also exceeding daily exposure by more than 40%. Watching and broadcasting UV exceeds 15% – realizing low-cost and high-efficiency exposure, helping the game to quickly accumulate traffic.
Thanks to the platform’s unique ecological atmosphere, TikTok has become a new frontier for players to create and obtain game information, rewriting the way games are discovered and shared. Its diversified game live broadcast content and forms have become an important way to help overseas manufacturers refine their operations, and stimulate the growth of the product’s full life cycle in an all-round way.
In the final analysis, as high-quality and industrialization drive the quality of games and content to soar, channels to reach potential and target users become increasingly important. Today, when long-term operation has become the consensus of the industry, the more high-quality products, the more diversified and refined marketing distribution is needed. Only when R&D and marketing develop simultaneously can Chinese games go overseas quickly and far.
And TikTok’s “game” road is getting wider and wider, which also makes it an overseas option that cannot be ignored. Whether it is helping products go overseas or exploring traffic growth in the global game market, TikTok for Business is working hard to solve the full-lifecycle overseas problems for manufacturers by providing innovative long-term business methodologies.
On July 26, at the Game On Overseas Marketing Summit of Game Apps held by TikTok for Business, it may bring different answers to developers who are looking for overseas growth opportunities and achieving efficient overseas marketing.
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