IN FOCUS

• The video game industry is prospering - constantly growing in both Thailand and  overseas. LINE is a powerful tool to help brands market in this thriving economy.
• Brands can use LINE OA as a channel to communicate with the target group in many ways whether in building awareness, engagement and conversion
• Brands can expand their player base with LINE Ads to target their ads on the exact target group that they need.

In recent years, the general consensus towards video gaming has completely transformed. From a casual past time activity, video games have grown into a giant industry that ripples its influence on the global scale, creating jobs, products, and organizing countless competitive events that generate tremendous cashflow. This phenomena has driven both veteran and fledging business entrepreneurs to compete in the video game industry.

Nevertheless, there are ways to increase your marketing potential amidst this race to gaming industry dominance. Let us show you how.

The Popularity of Mobile Gaming and the Opportunity of Brands

The rapid growth of the video game industry is astounding. A financial forecast made by Newzoo projected the industry at 2 billion USD by 2023. On the regional level, AIS E-Sports is currently projecting the Thai video game industry at 27 billion THB, a 15.8% growth from 2019. There are 27.8 million Thai video game players (41% of the total population) with 71% of the players using mobile and tablet devices, with the remaining players using desktop computers and video game consoles.

This information aligns with the report made by Adsyndicate, which stated that the popularity of mobile gaming has translated into 23% of apps on iTunes App Store taken by mobile games. Numerous other agencies have viewed mobile gaming to be the most popular platform that users like to spend time on. This is due to improved internet system, user’s familiarity with the size of the smartphone’s screen, the increase in popularity of Esports, the increase of virtual content created to entertain people during the COVID-19, and many other factors. If your brand wants to execute a push marketing campaign, the behaviour and lifestyle of these gamers are not to be ignored due to the attachment they have to their phones. There is no better way to connect with the target group other than through LINE. We have accumulated a user base of 47 million people and currently the app that Thais spend the most time with (an average of 63 minutes/day).

Win Every Business Match With Your Trusty Weapon - LINE OA

In the conventional video game market, influencer marketing is important for effective brand public relations. In the current high competition landscape, however, your brand has to gain new ways to communicate in order to stand out from the crowd and not brand yourself under a repetitive image used by existing brands. Personalization Marketing is the best way to go. You need to give your customer exactly what each of their respective income allows. One of the tools that can perfectly pave the complete path of this smooth customer journey is LINE Official Account (LINE OA). Here are some examples:

1. Introduce and raise interest of your brand to the gamers

If you want to create awareness among gamers, you must first create a brand awareness and gain more followers. This is done by offering interesting service or content that gamers would find attractive such as:

• If your brand wants to promote new games, you can use Character Stickers - using the characters from your games to  represent different emotions. This will create awareness and attract gamers to acknowledge the game more.
• Once the initial awareness is established and you want to start organizing competitions, you can create contents that cover the news and updates of the event, parking information, and other details through LINE OA.

2. Be friending gamers with the right conversation and empathetic messages

You can create an impression to gamers by conversing and replay to them with information that is correct, comprehensive, and prompt. Get started with Personalized Communication by using MyCustomer. Not only does this function aids you in managing your customer base in-depth, it also creates a customer database by collecting user behaviour data from Mission Sticker, LINE OA followers, Gain Friends Ads, and many other channels. With this database, MyCustomer enables you to analyze the data via a dashboard that allows you to filter and group your customers. It can also design the suitable messages to broadcast, whether by using Rich Menu Personalized Broadcast Message or Promotion Code, for instance.

Your brand can also take advantage of MyCustomer by setting the type of language, characteristic, or answers and make your automated replies entertaining. By speaking the same way as gamers and using their jargons, a bond with your customers can be created. Your customers will feel that their needs are met and their inquiries are cared for, especially when they do not have to wait for too long for a reply. This helps reduce your cost while increasing the information you collect from the people who contacted you. You can also utilize the Chat Tags to these users in order to improve your service in the future.

3. A Seamless Experience That Increases Your Business Opportunity

Video game retailers or merchandise store that sells competition memorabilia from E-Sport stars and games can create a seamless customer experience for gamers and target group by using OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) such as

• Setting up a product pre-order system where your customer can pre-order limited collection items and rare merchandise before the customer arrives at the store.
• Giving our discount coupons, game time cards, and reward cards to create regular customers.
• Announce promotions or special privileges in order to increase sales and stimulate buying decisions before your competitors with LINE OA.

By having your marketing strategy revolve around LINE OA, your brand will become the trend setter that makes the first and lasting impression to the customers, increasing sales and opening up more opportunities to profit from.

Reach the Right Customers with The Right Personalization to Expand Your Fan base with LINE Ads

An interesting piece of information from Digital marketing institute is that, at the present video game is no longer exclusively popular among teenage males. People in the age range beyond 30 years old and 45% of middle age females are also video game players. This is a great opportunity for your brand to market a new and diverse fanbase while retaining existing ones.

By using LINE Ads (LAZP) as the main channel to advertise to specific groups of customers:

• Prevent your brand from going for views and prioritize precision targeting by setting your preferred Core Audience or Custom Audience with specified gender, age, OS and even location.
• Create Lookalike Audience that uses existing customer’s behaviour to determine a new consumer group to expand to. LINE Ads will then select the best ad space to place your ads, maximizing your ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).
• Ease the buying decision of your new customer base by directly transporting them to your video game’s installation page with a link given in your ad.
• Choosing the channel and time that you want your ad to appear.
• Measure your in-depth results in respondent volume in order to adjust your marketing strategy and be flexible.

Even though the competition is fierce in the rapidly growing video game industry, every brand has an opportunity to win their share of customer base if the brand understands the correct method to connect to the customers. By elevating your marketing potential with LINE and all its cutting edge features through effective communication channels with the right way to communicate, your business will leap beyond the success you anticipated.

LINE for Business is the complete solution to a business’s needs with the tools to support every video game business to overcome challenges and achieve success. Contact us if you are ready to plan the growth of your business.