Are you convinced that your game possessed all the qualities to become successful? Great! But, as you may know, spreading the word can be quite the challenge. In order to open the doors toward successful viral marketing, you first need to have a decent understanding of certain marketing fundamentals in the game industry. In this article, we’ll take a look at those fundamentals.

During the game development process

Boosting virality is something you have to start thinking about from the earliest stages. By infusing the viral element in the game development process, you’ll increase the chance of your game going viral.

• Create a fluent design

Users are spoiled these days. There are so many well-designed games available, they have no reason to settle for a bad one. Sharing the content should become part of the user’s interaction, and this in turn will boost virality.

• Make sure your game has a purpose

This is not a mandatory element and it completely depends on the type of game you’re developing, but including something that actually benefits the users or makes their lives a little easier, will increase the chances of your game going viral.

• Make sure users are rewarded for sharing

If your existing users are going to share your app, you need to reward them for that. This means building in some sort of a reward functionality, such as unlocking a new level, or receiving a feature that is only available to premium users.

• Increase app retention

Now, say you’ll succeed in getting a large number of users. How are you going to retain them and ensure they’re not going to uninstall your game because they never play? You need to keep them interested. You can do this by sending some usefull notifications every once in a while, reminding them about how great your game is and telling them about new updates. This way, you keep driving them back to your game.

After the launch of the game

After launching your game, you need to be able to convince your existing users to bring on other users.

• Offer referrals

People have a tendency of referring friends and family to products that they like. They are also more likely to do this when they are being incentivized for their referrals.

• Let users share their results through social media

Most users are proud of what they achieve and wouldn’t mind bragging about it when they get a chance. Whether they have reached the final level of your game, defeated the boss, or beat their top score, if you give your users the possibility to easily share their accomplishments on Facebook, Twitter or other social networks, they will. And every time they share their results, your game gets more exposure.

• Don’t underestimate customer support

If your users encounter dilemma’s they can’t solve on their own, they will be very likely to give up, and eventually uninstall your game. Therefore, always make sure to offer customer support to help you users out when they’re stuck.