Business Lessons the Gaming Industry has Taught us

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Source: https://www.cpacanada.ca/

The commercial world turns on one fundamental principle: that a business needs to offer something that customers actually want to buy. The only way to stay solvent is to make sure that what you produce actually sells, and a big part of this is recognizing what it is your audience wants.

Enterprises manage this with varying degrees of success, and even big businesses don’t always get it right. With this in mind, it pays to brush up on your skills and develop a sufficient understanding of how such a concept works, and also how to do it well.

One such example of an industry where this is key is gaming, where trends and attitudes shift continuously with consumer attitudes. With that in mind, what can we learn from this industry?

Ensure variety 

Knowing your audience is important, but irrespective of who you’re selling to, there is one universal commonality among all demographics: people like variety. No matter how niche your product is, your consumers will not all have the same tastes as each other, and you need to recognize this individuality and cater to it. 

One sector that does this well is the iGaming/casino industry. Outfits like online casino Karamba offer a multitude of games and entertainment options for their clients to pick from, ranging from live casino all the way through to scratch cards and sports betting. This means that anyone who enters their site is guaranteed to find something that appeals, no matter their personal preferences.   

The same rule can be applied to all industries and sectors: ensure sufficient variety and you’ll always stock something your customer wants.

Listen to your audience 

Source: Pixabay

If you pose this question – ‘how can you find out what your audience wants?’ – to an inexperienced entrepreneur, you may find that they scratch their heads in bewilderment. In fact, this response indicates that the business owner in question is overthinking things because one of the easiest ways to work it out is simply by listening to what they’re saying. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is a prime example of a company applying this principle and profiting as a result. Despite the developer’s previous offering, Call of Duty: WWII, relying heavily on a campaign mode, many consumers indicated a preference for multiplayer gaming. The developers responded by adjusting their newer offerings to meet these expectations, removing campaign mode completely. The result: a multiplayer-focused title that was the most successful CoD launch to date. 

Apply the same principles to your own outfit, and you may well achieve the same result. 

Don’t alienate sections of your audience 

Source: Pixabay

It’s not only about knowing what your customers want: you need to understand what they don’t want too, as the developers of Star Wars Battlefront II discovered to their detriment. The company behind the game found that they greatly upset a significant portion of their audience when they offered huge gameplay advantages to those who paid for micro-transactions with real money. As a result, an overhaul of the entire system was necessitated upon the game’s release, which proved a very costly mistake to have made.

So, how can a company like yours avoid doing the same? The answer is, once again, straightforward: you need to do your research. Before you release any new products, get a consumer group together and ask them for their honest opinions on the concept. It doesn’t have to be expensive – both large and small enterprises can make use of their social media platforms to do this without shelling out any money at all.

Simple it might be, but it’s also hugely worthwhile as there’s little point in sinking time and capital into an idea if the end result is going to prove unsuccessful among your audience.

When it comes to marketing and selling a product, it’s vital that you understand what your audience expects of you. Their opinion on your latest idea or invention will make or break its success, so you want to have a handle on their thoughts long before it ever hits the shelves.

Although this is, naturally, more difficult for smaller companies, who are likely to be limited by a lack of resources compared to their larger counterparts, there are many ways to achieve your end goal, and most of them involve simply keeping your ear to the ground and listening to what your audience has to say. Do this well, and your business should go from strength to strength.