What's driving the Pokemon Go craze so hard? Could it be Nintendo's content marketing strategy?

3 Lessons Pokemon Go Can Teach You About Content Marketing

by BrandingBuilding Your BrandContent Marketing Tips

Nintendo has taken the world by storm with its Pokemon Go reality app launch. The app’s success has led to over 15 million downloads, increasing Nintendo’s market value by almost a whopping 60 percent in one, little measly week. This has also reignited a fire under the buns of ole’ Pokemon fans all over again.

3 Things Pokemon Go Succeeded at in Its Content Marketing Approach

What’s the key to Pokemon Go’s almost instantaneous success? It went viral, of course! That’s the dream of any online business or brand. You want the word of your products or services to spread like a California wildfire, creating an uncontrollable buzz around your solutions. Nintendo was able to accomplish this with great success. Here are three content marketing lessons you can learn from the Pokemon Go craze created and nurtured by Nintendo.

Seems like the whole world is playing Pokemon Go, and the reality app was never even marketed or advertised.
Seems like the whole world is playing Pokemon Go, and the reality app was never even marketed or advertised.
Image Source: flickr

1. Create and Offer High Quality Products and Services

One reason for Pokemon Go’s great success is the fact that Nintendo, the world’s largest video game company by revenue, spared no change when having the game created. A partnership was created with Niantic Labs to produce the reality video game. Yet, neither of the company’s put any efforts into advertising. Rumor has it, that the only advertising that went down were a few tweets and retweets from Niantic.

Much of the traffic this new craze is experiencing can be contributed to word of mouth. But, the fact that the game seems to work as expected majority of the time tends to keep players coming back for more, and more, and more, and more… And, it doesn’t hurt that the game is free to download and play.

2. Pokemon was Modernized to Impress an Evolved Market

What's driving the Pokemon Go craze so hard? Could it be Nintendo's content marketing strategy?
What’s driving the Pokemon Go craze so hard? Could it be Nintendo’s content marketing strategy?
Image Source: YouTube

Originally, the Pokemon character could be found on trading cards, TV and Gameboy, Nintendo’s handheld 8-bit video game device, more than 20 years ago. The Japanese video game manufacturer decided to take its existing Pokemon content, and repurpose it to capture and recapture both new and old Pokemon fans.

In order to create a brand new game, Nintendo would have had to start from scratch. That would have meant creating new characters, marketing the new game as well as building a brand new buzz and audience for the new game. Because the original Pokemon game had already proven itself to be a valuable asset to the video game world, leveraging (and modernizing) this ole’ gaming solution made much more sense.

3. Augmented Reality is the New “Thing” in Video Gaming

What is augmented reality? It’s the process of integrating digital content in real-time with the user’s environment. The ultimate aim is to duplicate the environment of the real world in a computer. Many experts are pinning augmented reality as the number one reason for the continuously growing success of this reality app.

Snapchat filters are another example of augmented reality.
Snapchat filters are another example of augmented reality.
Image Source: flickr

Snapchat is a prime example of just how much users love augmented reality technology in mobile apps. Its users have “gone mad” over the Snapchat filters that give you the ability to overlay (or, literally distort) you face. It seems there’s no turning back from here. Reality apps are here to stay!

Content Marketing the Pokemon Go Way

Why do you believe Pokemon Go has become one of the most popular mobile game apps on the market? Do you believe that reusing old Pokemon content was a smart move on Nintendo’s part? Tell us what you think about this content marketing strategy in the comments below?

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Is Your Content Marketing Strategy Ineffective?

by Content Marketing Tips

Or, Is It an Audience Problem?

There has been a misunderstanding on the subject of dying content marketing strategy campaigns. On Wednesday, Kiesha Joseph posted an article on Examiner.com entitled, “It’s an audience problem, not your content marketing strategy.”

content marketing strategy time distributionIt was an answer to the question: “Why are our content marketing strategy efforts getting lost in the shuffle?”, and “Why don’t we see any results?” You have your website. You publish quality content. And, you publish every day…… no results, no readers. Something is not working.

While many small businesses think something is wrong with their content, Kiesha gave her opinion that is above this delusion, saying:

“In most cases, these trusted sites already have developed healthy audiences. Most entrepreneurs and small businesses who think their content is ineffective don’t have loyal audiences of their own. And, there lies the issue. You have an audience problem.”

Ms. Joseph is simply saying that you don’t need to spend more money to make your content more effective. The problem is not in your content’s quality or how often your articles are published. Your issues are actually an audience problem.

Are you lost in the Content Crowd?

Each day, people are searching for solutions to their problems. The amount of content that is published grows at such a fast pace. This makes it an impossible battle that the search engines cannot keep up with these days.

This is the reason why we cannot hear many entrepreneurs and small business online. Their content gets lost in the downpour, even if it’s published every day.

Content Marketing Strategy Campaign Problem

Once again, your content marketing strategy is simply not the problem. Instead, you have an audience problem.

4618683399_6ed3d04aac_zMany readers make it a habit to visit their “trusted sites” to search for solutions to their problems. Then, they pick and choose which content is relevant to their current problems, and their lives in general.

These sites have already developed and gained healthy audiences over time. Most entrepreneurs and small businesses have issues because they think their content isn’t good enough haven’t gained their own loyal audiences. This failure to gain loyal followers is what leads them to believe that their content isn’t doing it’s job.

Now that you know what the actual problem is, you must take steps and solve it. Some of these steps may include getting your content featured by:

  • Trusted sites
  • Native advertising
  • Advertiser tutorials
  • Earned media channels
  • Paid media channels, etc…

Better Content or Better Distribution?

In order to get better results, you have to put your focus in a right places. You produce content every day and yet… no results. Now, it’s time to focus on improving your content distribution. Better content distribution will bring you:

  • Improved quality of your overall online content
  • High feedback cycle related to your brand
  • Relevant backlinks to your site

Instead of spending money on buying new content, you need to invest in paid media channels and earned media channels.

Paid Media Channels VS Earned Media Channels

What’s the difference?

Like Todd Wasserman of Mashable once said:

“If you pay to have something distributed, then it’s paid media. But if someone else distributes it for you, then it’s earned media.”

It’s time to break away from all the online noise so that your brand can rise and shine above your competition. Start putting your online marketing efforts towards earned media and paid media channels to help you accomplish this. This will greatly improve your content marketing strategy efforts, making your brand more relevant to your target audience.