Good PR - public relations - has long been a useful ally on the road to delivering success. Broadly speaking PR is a process for raising the profile of a venture, using selected media channels to deliver a carefully chosen message to a target audience. But there are many alternative meanings for the term, and it is often wrongly assumed that PR departments in gaming companies are responsible solely for communication with players. In reality, in the modern gaming market, a good PR campaign can extend far beyond just that.

In this article, Anastasia Zaiceva, Chief Communications Officer at ZiMAD, shares how PR not only helps them to interact with their audience but also how it directly affects the success and revenue of the company.

A marathon for the patient

If you want to use PR tools in your work, you’d better prepare for a marathon and not a sprint. You also need to consider how much time you are willing to sacrifice for this. Some companies spend a few months on PR activities, don’t see any results, and then drop the idea. This is one of the most common mistakes and a doomed approach. Public Relations is always aimed at long-term success because it takes time for people to learn about your company, gain the necessary knowledge and associations, and start telling each other about what you do.

It must also be noted that PR is all about emotions and feelings that people experience when they hear about your brand, which is very difficult to put into numbers. Instead, you will see the result by paying attention to what your partners and users think about your company and monitoring if their opinions change with time.

What is the benefit?

There are several ways of getting benefit from PR. First of all, good PR boosts your brand’s visibility.

The algorithm is relatively straightforward: you create helpful articles and posts for media and other communication channels you choose for promotion. After reading your publications, people may want to test your product, and if not, they will still learn more about your company and your products. You will become closer to your audience, and it will start to distinguish you from your competitors easily.

The second opportunity provided by PR is building trust towards what you do. This is the next step - when you share articles about your company’s areas of interest, cases, and products you make, this all helps build particular loyalty and positive emotions for your brand. And this works both for your users and for your potential employees.

The third important part is working with what partners and investors, both existing and potential, think about you. Investors and partners must be able to find information about you and your work not only in the 'About Us' tab on your website. Instead, they are interested in confirmed cases highlighted by a third party (media, influencers, and other sources).

Utilising the power of the media

High-quality publications in media are a good confirmation of your expertise both for your players and your potential employees, partners, and investors. It’s essential to be honest and open because playing games with trust usually ends up costing a fortune. In every company, there are professionals who’ve been working there for a long time and have tremendous and unique expertise. It’s essential to tell their stories to your audience and evoke positive emotions - and this is what good PR does.

Crisis management is also one of PR’s most essential areas of work. This is especially true today, when bad news spreads at the speed of light and instantly affects the company’s revenue, number of users, and loyalty level. It's important to communicate information about changes in the company or in strategy not only during the good times but during the bad times as well. If the data leaks from somebody else, you may not like how they put it, not to mention how such incidents can affect your business.

Last but not least is the policy influence. This refers to speaking about the market and trends in general or explaining certain phenomena rather than talking directly about your product or company. A great example is when a studio wants to introduce new mechanics or products to the market. First, they explain what this product is for and how it works and then show it to the audience. You first need to prepare the information field, and then you can present your company or product as a solution, so that it is perceived in the way that you want.

Can PR be measured?

Usually, companies refer to the number of articles they have published. All PR agencies and in-house PR specialists count the coverage. But there are a couple of metrics you should consider if you want to better understand the results of your PR activities. The first is the traffic going to your website and landing pages of your marketing campaigns. If you have a landing page for your product, you can track the sources of the traffic that comes to your website after you send out your press release with an active link inside.

The second metric to look out for is download spikes, which are primarily relevant to mobile games. Mobile game studios hold lots of marketing campaigns, but sometimes a major project can cause a tangible download spike. It can be a collaboration with a popular influencer, ads in gaming media, or even a viral TikTok.

Such metrics as 'Message All Through' and 'Tone of Voice' are quite hard to estimate. To measure them, you need to analyse the materials that were published in the media: see how often certain messages were published, their location in the text, and in what sense the company or the newsworthy event was mentioned.

The most pleasant and notable PR metric is feedback from partners and employees. Typically, when we create publications in B2B media, we mention our partners who also worked on some of our successful cases. This increases the loyalty of both our partners and our employees. People want to work in a well-known company and be assured that their product is in high demand.

Partners contact us once the publication is released and say, “Wow! We’ve seen your post! Thanks so much for mentioning us!”. This also applies to the employees. They want to work in a company everyone is talking about. They want to know that their company is famous and credible and that they create a great product.

Conclusion

Some people mistakenly assume that excessive PR activities attract negative reactions. But professionals say it’s impossible, and they are right. Instead, the important thing is how the campaign is conducted and its target audience. PR can draw additional interest and audience.

Here’s an interesting fact: PR doesn’t always require a massive budget. Instead it needs a specialist who knows how to work with journalists and build long-term relations with them. They need to know what pitch angle to choose for your product, and how to present it to the broad public. For example, the media includes different segments. In B2C for example we talk about the product, while in B2B, one of the main topics is the company’s expertise.

With careful selection of the channel, and good knowledge of the product, good PR will help to attract both users and the attention of partners and investors.

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About ZiMAD.

ZiMAD is an international company, developer, and publisher of mobile games. The company entered the market in 2009 and has gained an audience of 200M+ users of its products, with titles such as Magic Jigsaw Puzzles, Domino Online and Puzzle Villa. While the team is distributed around the globe, ZiMAD holds its headquarters in Florida, US.

Edited by Paige Cook