Marketing is Just a Game - Day 2, 6:45 PM EST

[Garrett]

My curiosity peaked earlier today when CNET CEO and Chairman Shelby Bonnie discussed GameSpot, CNET's gaming industry portal, which covers over 7,500 products and has over one million users per day. Games are currently announced 1-2 years in advance and the site’s editorial properties track every single interaction a user has with each game, whether through playing the game, reading reviews, downloading trials, or watching movies.

GameSpot has developed a marketing service called GameSpot Tracks to determine exactly how people are interacting with games on the site. I asked them how they are monetized for the business model but apparently they aren't selling yet as it's still new. However, they do allow partners to analyze it and look at what they've done.

Shelby gave me an example of a call they received right before an enormous gaming conference. One concerned retailer was nervous because Gamespot Tracks was showing that his company’s product wasn’t going to sell as well as they’d hoped, and for that reason his company was cutting shelf space. He wanted to know how to boost the ratings for that particular game. This is just one example of offline brick and mortar retailers turning to online data as a means of determining what sales are going to be like.

Retailers are also currently teaching their sales forces how to handle objections on GameSpot Tracks to accurately predict what the most popular games will be 6-9 months from now.

I was impressed with GameSpot’s ability to measure consumer demand with maximum efficiency. We saw a few screenshots of the interface, which looked very extensive. One of the most useful features was that it allows you to pick certain competitors and measure yourself against them. It also allows you to see the ratio between interactions with your printed material versus the actual downloads of the game. It's a very simple yet informative interface with lots of data organized in a highly informative way.

Why is this interesting to me? This is the first time I’ve seen a media analyze info this way in a way marketers can use it – and use it well -- to determine how well a product is doing and what they can do to improve their product.

GameSpot definitely sparked my interest. I haven't seen anything like it before; they keep such close tabs on what users are doing and then transform the data into usable info for marketers. It's awesome.

I can definitely see this sort of data mining being a direction that online media marketing needs to move in, especially in regards to the product review sort of editorial content concept.

The other thing it is showing is that game marketers add value to the buying. They offer the consumers free trials, screenshots and movies, inviting them in. Ideally you want the consumers to come to you and ask for updates on given things.

Another thing that was discussed was the idea of value versus efficiency in the marketing message. Bonnie advised marketers to concentrate on the consumer as opposed to efficiency. For example, back in 2002 X10 webcams were fairly ubiquitous. X10 had a very efficient marketing campaign. They were everywhere because they bought bulk advertisements for cheap, but ultimately X10 failed as the marketers didn't get invited in by consumers, thus creating no long-standing relationship. Eventually, X10 was driven to bankruptcy.

To avoid this fate, marketers must get focused and ask themselves, “How can I help my users and consumers?”

He closed with four main questions for marketers:

How are you adding value to your customers’ lives?

Do you have the right window into the buying process?

Are you properly defining the “R” in ROI?

Are you getting credit for this new idea of Return?

He again brought back the idea of the buying process being more than just trial and purchase, firmly reminding marketers of the need to focus on awareness consideration and engagement.

It was obvious that he strongly believes the idea of “return” needs a broader definition. It’s not only sales but how people are using your product. Are they constantly considering other products within your product group? Are they actively engaging your product? It’s crucial to find ways to measure this and take credit for it as a marketer.