Video Game Marketing: Strategies for Growing Game Players

The video game industry is doing really well and is expected to hit $257 billion by the end of 2025. Reason being? Millions of gamers now actively engage across mobile games, consoles, and even virtual reality platforms. This means competition in the gaming industry is becoming more intense than ever.

For game developers, publishers and studios, it’s undeniably no longer enough to just create a great game. More is needed to succeed.

One of the key areas that should not be overlooked is smart marketing. With the right marketing strategies, you can increase your game visibility, attract the right audience and, of course, keep gamers engaged.

This article will break down the top marketing strategies for console and PC games, the right tools and channels that will help you grow your game. 

What Is Video Game Marketing?

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Video game marketing entails the strategies, channels and campaigns that are used to promote video games, attract new gamers and keep the existing ones engaged. It is actually something beyond launching the game. You need to also create awareness, generate hype, build a community and drive long-term growth. 

Why Is Marketing Critical in the Gaming Industry?

Marketing in the gaming space is very crucial for many reasons. In fact, with 2.7 billion people playing video games worldwide and tens of thousands of games launching every year, marketing efforts are essential to ensure games stand out in this competitive gaming industry. 

Here is more reasons why gaming marketing is really helpful:

• Let your target audience find you: Even if you develop the best game, you risk going unnoticed if you don’t implement the right or strategic outreach. 
• Drives installs: Visibility in app stores especially for mobile video games directly impacts growth. 
• Encourages player retention: Effective marketing approach will help you re-engage lapsed users with updates, events and even offers. 
• Supports diversified revenue streams: Marketing yet helps you create loyal fan base who generate stories through fan art, reviews and online content sharing.

Video Game Marketing Target Audience

Before you consider marketing your game, it is important that you understand your target audience. Here are the following type of audiences within the video game industry:

• Casual vs Hardcore Gamers
• Streamers, Influencers & Content Creators
• Niche Audiences (e.g., retro gamers, speedrunners, Web3 users)
• Publishers, Investors, and B2B Partnerships

Casual vs Hardcore Gamers

Casual gamers are typically the type of players who value games like Candy Crush. They value a game for its simplicity and often discovers titles through social media or app store rankings. When marking to them, have a clear message, eye-catching visuals and easy onboarding.

Meanwhile, hardcore games are players that have been deeply invested in the gaming experience. Often, they follow game releases, participate in forums and attend events. When marketing to them, consider using trailers, community-driven campaigns and targeted outreach on social media gaming platforms like Twitch and Discord. 

Streamers, Influencers & Content Creators

Nowadays, online influencers play a great role in how games gain popularity. In fact, approximately 50% of gamers argue that they discovered new games through recommendation from live streamers and content creators. 

Platforms like YouTube, Twitch and TikTok should now be considered in the game's launch strategy.

When marketing to this group, don’t only think about paid promotions. Consider it as a way to build genuine relationships or offer creative freedom. 

Niche Audiences (e.g., retro gamers, speedrunners, Web3 users)

This is a group of passionate communities with unique interests. You can think of niche audiences to be people like retro gamers, speedrunners and web3 users. Although these players are very few, their community engagement and influence are powerful.

Reaching out to them, therefore, requires specialized messaging, community building and tapping into platforms or forums where they actively hang out. 

For this, you may consider a targeted marketing campaign instead of using ads. 

Publishers, Investors, and B2B Partnerships

Not all the marketing in the video game industry is aimed at players. Remember, studios need to pitch their games to publishers. They also require funding from investors. Furthermore, they must attract attention from potential B2B partners, of course, for licensing and distribution deals. 

In these cases, marketing must be professional and data-driven. It’s actually less of flashy trailers and more of showing a game’s commercial viability. So, a well created pitch decks, gameplay demos, market research insights and a great understanding of the latest market trend is a must. 

Top Marketing Strategies for PC and Console Games

Visibility is everything in marketing and below are the top strategies that video game developers and marketers can use to gain traction, grow their community and keep players engaged.

1. Pre-Launch Hype and Community Building

Before your game even hits the market, it’s important to do pre-launch marketing. This is all about generating excitement, building anticipation and gathering your first wave of loyal fans. Here is what you’ll need:

• Build a community early: This can be through discord and other social media platforms. Share updates and keep gamers engaged.
• Collect feedback: Offer early beta access or gameplay demos. It’s important to let your early followers help you shape the final game and feel valued.
• Encourage user-generated content: This can be through fan art and memes to help spark organic interest. 

2. Paid Advertising for Games

Try using paid ads. This is one of the fastest ways to get your game known to the right people. Do this especially during launch or when doing a content update. To break this down, do the following:

• Programmatic Display & Video Ads: Use automated ad placements across gaming websites, mobile apps and YouTube because they’ll help for wide reach.
• Social Media Ads (Meta, TikTok, Snapchat): This will be ideal if you’re promoting short and visual content plus if you’re targeting gamers based on their interest and behavior.
• Native Ads: You can consider placing ads within relevant content like blog posts or game review sites. The strategy is less disruptive and is more trusted by users. 
• Influencer Paid Sponsorships: You may also partner with creators to review or play your game. This strategy performs better because it feels more authentic. 

3. Influencer and Creator Marketing

Influencer marketing is often more effective than most strategies. Usually, gamers trust creators or popular gaming influencers they follow. Watching these influencers play makes many gamers also want to try. For the best result consider:

• Finding the right creator: Look for streamers or TikTokers with many followers and who already play similar titles. It will help appeal to your game’s target audience. 
• Offering exclusive content: Early access or developer interviews give influencers something unique to share with their followers.
• Use micro-influencers: Smaller creators basically drive more engagement because they make a tighter bond with their community.

4. PR and Gaming Media Outreach

Getting featured in top gaming media outlets can indeed help build credibility and spark wide interest. This is especially true for more experienced gamers and industry professionals. If you wish to use this strategy be sure to:

• Write press releases: Focus on what really matters and all that makes your game unique. It can be gameplay, art style, story, or maybe innovation.
• Reach out to gaming journalists and blogs: You can pitch them directly and include trailers, screenshots and your story. 

5. Game Launch Campaigns and Giveaways

A game launch can actually make or break its momentum. To make a successful launch campaign, you can combine the following marketing tips:

• Create a launch countdown: You can start building excitement with daily teasers or challenges.
• Run giveaways: Try offering digital rewards such as in-game currency, limited editions or even early access codes. 
• Host live streams or Q&A events: This can be through interacting with your community and answering their questions in real-time. 

6. SEO for Gaming Websites and Blogs

If you have a website or a blog for your game, consider Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is a low-cost and highly effective way to drive traffic over time. For this strategy: 

• Write helpful blog content: This can be guides, patch notes, behind-the -scenes valuable insights and more.
• Target what players search for: You can easily know this by doing keyword research. Think of something like ‘’How to unlock hidden levels in X’’
• Use internal linking: While sharing interactive content, insert links that direct users to your download or sign up pages. 

7. Retargeting Marketing for Player Retention

By now, you’ve gained players. However, you need to keep them. You can do this retargeting with the aim of pulling inactive ones back into the action. A few ways can be:

• Sending push notifications: Create new updates, limited-time events or rewards.
• Use personalized emails: You can offer something relevant based on how they played before.
• Run retargeting ads: Remind users why they loved the game in the first place.

What Marketing Channels Are Best for Promoting Games?

Usually, choosing the right marketing channels is just as important as having a great strategy. Different games should be targeted to different audiences. Here are some of the effective channels to help promote your game:

• Twitch and YouTube Gaming
• Steam, Epic Games Store, and App Stores
• Gaming Ad Networks (e.g., Unity Ads, AdColony, Blockchain-Ads)
• Discord and Reddit Communities
• Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram

Twitch and YouTube Gaming

If your game is highly visual and competitive, consider Twitch and YouTube. These are platforms that are powered by streamers and content creators who attract millions of viewers daily. They’re perfect for launch campaigns, influencer partnerships and building a long-term hype.

Steam and Epic Games Store

These channels help in both distribution and act as powerful discovery engines. With the right store optimizations, your game can easily show up in the trending charts and featured categories.

Gaming Ad Networks (e.g., Unity Ads, AdColony, Blockchain-Ads)

Gaming-specific ads network channels help you run in-game ads, rewarded videos and playable previews inside other games. They’re effective at driving installs from already engaged gamers.

Discord and Reddit Communities

If you want authentic and two-way interaction with your players, you can consider Discord and Reddit. They’ll actually help in community building, gathering feedback and encouraging the fans to spread the word.

Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram

These social media platforms will help you stay relevant and be part of the conversions. When using these channels, actively engage with comments, creators, and community to increase the reach.

What Metrics Define Success in Gaming Marketing?

If you want to make starter decisions and improve your marketing campaigns, you’ll need to track the right metrics. Here are the performance indicator that will help you know what’s working and what needs improvements:

• CPI (Cost Per Install) and CPA (Cost Per Action)
• ROAS and LTV (Lifetime Value)
• DAU/MAU and Retention Rate
• Engagement Metrics (Sessions, Session Length, Virality)

CPI (Cost Per Install) and CPA (Cost Per Action)

These two help measure how much you’re spending to get new players into your game. CIP will track the cost to acquire a single install while CPA will look at the specific actions after the install. They’re best for:

• Mobile games
• User acquisition campaigns
• Paid advertising performance

ROAS and LTV (Lifetime Value)

ROAS and LTV will help you know whether your marketing efforts are profitable in the long run or it’s just short wins. For ROAS, you’ll find out how much revenue you earn for every dollar spent on advertising. Meanwhile LTV will show you how much a single player is worth over their entire time engaging with your game. Best for:

• Games with in-app purchases 
• Subscriptions 
• High monetization models

DAU/MAU and Retention Rate

These will help you know if players love your game. With DAU/MAU, you can easily know how many people play regularly. Retention rate will help you track how many players return after their first day, week or month. Great for:

• Live serve games
• Multiplayer titles
• Community-driven games

Engagement Metrics (Sessions, Session Length, Virality)

Engagement metrics help show how addictive, fun and socially shareable your game really is. Sessions will tell you how often users open and play your game. Session length shows how long they stay each time and virality indicates word-of-mouth growth. Best for:

• Casual games
• Viral mobile games
• Any other games that are focused on stickiness 

Examples of Successful Gaming Marketing Campaigns

Just to show you how effective gaming marketing looks, below are a few examples that delivered strong results.

Gala Games User Acquisition Campaign

Gala Games company launched a 60-day user acquisition campaign. The aim was to help drive high-quality Web3 users to its blockchain powered music platforms. This campaign used Blockchain-Ads best features that focused mainly on NFT collectors, GameFi users and Ethereum/Polygon network. They only used a budget of $60,000 and the result was remarkable. 

This campaign saw a 132% boost in conversion, 8,000+ new active users and a 2.4x return on the ad spend from on-chain transactions. 

Meta Fighter Presale Example

MetaFighter, which is a blockchain-based fighting game, wanted to enhance its token economy and increase community engagement. What they did was run a 60-day campaign. They spent $89,176 in the campaign on Blockchain-Ads that used Web3 audience targeting to reach out to GameFi players, crypto traders and DeFi users.

Several campaign hooks were used like ‘’play-to-earn’’, ‘’Fight to Earn’’, ‘’Free to Play’’, and more. These helped them gain 1,200 new token holders and over $758,000 in token purchases, delivering an 8.5x ROI. 

Aradena Games User Acquisition Campaign

Aradena Games is a Web3 desktop game that combines tactical card combat with 3D hex battlers. They had challenges in desktop app advertising and needed a targeted strategy that would help reach out to native Web3 users, drive sign-ups and enhance token sales. What they did is running a 30-day user acquisition and token sales campaign.

With a $20,000 budget, they used Blockchain-Ads to help build their custom Web3 audiences. The focus was on players with NFT trading history and those interested in play-to-earn mechanics. The result? A 3x ROI on token sales, $2 per sign up and $4 to just acquire frequent active players.

Future Trends in Gaming Marketing

Around 89% of gaming companies are planning to increase their marketing budget in 2025. This will focus on AI-driven campaigns, in-game monetization and gaming community engagement. Here is a quick look at the trends driving the future of video game marketing. 

AI in Game Promotion and Content Generation

Artificial intelligence is helping transform how marketers create, optimize and deliver content. They’re helping in making campaigns more efficient and personalized from generating ad creative to automating player segmentation. Other uses of AI include:

• Help studios runs smarter A/B tests and generate video trailers
• Chatbots help enhance gaming community engagement in real time

Evolution of In-Game Advertising (Native and Rewarded Ads)

In-game ads are becoming more seamless and less intrusive. Native ads for example blend into the game world whereas reward ads offer in-game benefits in exchange for views. These offer benefits like:

• Improving user engagement and offering new revenue streams.
• Encouraging partnerships between brands and game developers that feel natural and player-friendly. 

Increased privacy changes and probabilistic modeling

With stricter data privacy laws and the decline of device identifiers like IDFA, marketers are now shifting towards probabilistic attribution models. So, this is how it’s working:

• Instead of tracking individuals, these models can now estimate performance using aggregated data and behavior patterns.
• Video games are now transparent with users while adopting tools that balance privacy with marketing effectiveness.

Increased demand for social gaming

As platforms like Blockchain-Ads continue to grow, the line between video games and social spaces is becoming increasingly blurred. Why?

• Players want to hang out, create content and connect with others in real time, not just playing.
• Marketing strategies are changing and success now depend on community engagement, encouraging user-generated content and designing features that support real time interactions.