TikTok Shares Insights into Emerging Gaming Trends, and Opportunities for Marketers

Gaming is huge, and the influence of gaming on modern popular culture is even bigger, with a massive amount of modern trends and shifts aligned with gaming and creators in the space.

Even seemingly unrelated trends have tied back to gaming, and as such, it’s worth paying attention to the emerging gaming discussion, and considering how it may tie back into your own marketing efforts.

I mean, anyone under 40 has been playing games all their life right? That could present significant opportunity for your promotional efforts.

Tying into this, TikTok has published a new overview of how its platform links into gaming culture, and the opportunities to promote gaming projects and related initiatives.

As per TikTok:  

“The global gaming community is massive, and judging by the amount of gaming-related content on the platform, many of these gamers can be found on TikTok. In fact, the top 100 gaming-related hashtags on TikTok receive more than 40 billion video views per month, according to internal company data. TikTok’s gaming community is also ready to spend. According to a recent survey, 65% of US TikTok users have made an in-app purchase within the last 3-6 months.”

In some ways, it’s surprising that gaming gets overlooked as a niche interest, or one that holds primary appeal with younger consumers, because while it is youngsters who spend the most time gaming, overall familiarity with the space, along with gaming nostalgia and connection, can be a powerful lure, in many ways.

In terms of marketing mobile gaming projects specifically, TikTok advises that game developers take a three-stage approach to their promotional efforts:

• Organic – This is your opportunity to show up with authenticity and build trust with your audience. Use your organic content to learn how consumers engage with your brand. This is the perfect plan to test content formats and then scale what works
• Paid – Use paid campaigns to amplify your top-performing content. Paid campaigns also give you the opportunity to directly test new audiences or target and optimize for specific business objectives
• Earned – Generate engagements and discussion within the TikTok community. The more you post and amplify your best content, the more you maximize opportunities and potential for earned community influence

I mean, those are pretty basic tenets of digital marketing, really, but they’re also important fundamental pillars for any strategy, in testing ideas with organic, promoting the best performers and engaging with your audience.

TikTok also notes that its platform works well as a partner channel, in pairing your promotions across mediums.

• TikTok compliments traditional media – Viewing an ad on TV after viewing a TikTok creator ad increases memory encoding of the TV ad by 13%
• TikTok amplifies social media – Watching an Instagram influencer’s content is 43% more memorable if you’re already primed to the content via TikTok
• TikTok primes digital video audiences: You’re 31% less likely to skip through a YouTube ad if you’ve first watched a creator ad on TikTok

Not sure that Instagram and YouTube would be totally happy to be included in these comparisons, as a measure to align with TikTok promotions, but the gist is that TikTok can be a great platform for reinforcing your messaging, and solidifying connection with your audience.

Finally, TikTok has also provided this 3×3 grid of tips for planning your campaigns, and maximizing your creative elements.

These apply to all TikTok campaigns, not just gaming, and it may be worth keeping this overview handy for your future TikTok promotions.

There are some handy notes here, and some important data points relating to the ever-evolving gaming conversation on TikTok specifically. But really, most of these notes relate to all digital marketing campaigns, and it’s worth considering these elements for your TikTok marketing efforts, as you look to build a more effective platform approach.

You can read TikTok’s full gaming overview here.