I’ve been inside a few big companies and I’ve seen exactly how it works.
In order to manage huge organisations, they divide them all up into cost centers. And the website is considered marketing so it gets given a budget on the theory that it brings customers. It uses the budget to make games and it does indeed bring customers.
Then a few years later, the shareholders are asking why their stock hasn’t outperformed the market, and they put in a CEO tasked with fixing it, and the CEO asks the head of the department in charge of websites what can he do to address the fact that his department is losing money instead of making it.
For sure. But it’s a harder sell internally to say: This game is generating revenue.
With a print ad you might say: This magazine has x monthly readers, so that is the impressions we get and it’s rather obvious how that might give you more sales.
With the game, you might have some visitor numbers as well, but if that is translating to sales is hard to prove. Additionally, they are already on your website.
You might have to do a survey of your clients or during the order process and ask them “how did you find out about us?” or something like that. And only if enough people say “I bought something from you, because of the game on your website”, will you be able to justify the expense of maintaining it.
I’ve been inside a few big companies and I’ve seen exactly how it works.
In order to manage huge organisations, they divide them all up into cost centers. And the website is considered marketing so it gets given a budget on the theory that it brings customers. It uses the budget to make games and it does indeed bring customers.
Then a few years later, the shareholders are asking why their stock hasn’t outperformed the market, and they put in a CEO tasked with fixing it, and the CEO asks the head of the department in charge of websites what can he do to address the fact that his department is losing money instead of making it.
While this is a nice theory, even with traditional marketing like print and tv ads, it’s always going to cost the company money.
For sure. But it’s a harder sell internally to say: This game is generating revenue.
With a print ad you might say: This magazine has x monthly readers, so that is the impressions we get and it’s rather obvious how that might give you more sales.
With the game, you might have some visitor numbers as well, but if that is translating to sales is hard to prove. Additionally, they are already on your website.
You might have to do a survey of your clients or during the order process and ask them “how did you find out about us?” or something like that. And only if enough people say “I bought something from you, because of the game on your website”, will you be able to justify the expense of maintaining it.