Online marketing – How to market your company: A talk by Badar Khushnood from Google Pakistan
Badar Khushnood is one of the leading Google evangelists in Pakistan. As Google’s official country responsibility he has taken the role of educating the majority of Pakistan’s software companies about Google. His recent talk about Online Marketing was recently held in Lahore for new customers looking to use Google tools to acquire new international customers. The talk helped experienced hands tweak their existing online strategies. I had the opportunity to attend Badar’s talk about how businesses in Pakistan need to start marketing themselves online from a Google perspective today.
It’s an interesting concept considering that many Pakistani companies need to explore markets outside of Pakistan considering where inflation and other economic factors have driven prices. People are looking for cost-effective goods and services producers at a very good price, and frankly speaking, we’re good at that. With a majority of the people attending from the technology world, it was a great place to network and meet with other professionals in the industry. Zafar Khan from Sofizar and Jehan Ara from P@SHA were major insights into how Google’s tools can help local businesses capture international customers.
Badar talked about some basic tools that all online marketers need to know inside out. As Google’s official representative in Pakistan, there was a Google-centric focus, but completely validated considering the amount of searches performed by web users using Google. What most users are unaware of is the potential market in Pakistan for Internet and mobile based marketing. Sharing some interesting stats from the presentation are that:
Pakistan is considered one of the most rapidly advancing countries in terms of broadband internet connectivity and mobile usage in the world. We rank at an impressive number 4 amongst the surveys conducted by international research firms.
The usage potential in the mobile domain is close to 226% year-on-year-growth. We are number 2 in this area amongst a number of fairly developed countries. We have around 90 million SIMs registered legally with the PTA.
So the potential is there for online marketing, so what’s going wrong? Badar talked about some interesting ideas that we’ve already implemented on our own website. Simple things like SEO, SEM and website optimization are given for tech companies. However for traditional product companies, it’s an important factor that can help drive more international customers to their websites.
Stephen DiMarco has hit a very valid point in his post about how online marketing needs to start to assess some of the more qualitative side of marketing in terms of a brand rather than just Google Analytics or PPC, etc. In a world that’s primarily driven by unique page views, PPC campaign numbers, CTR rates, and other hard facts, it’s an interesting thought. As a gaming company, we offer post-marketing services which includes this marketing and it’s driven by numbers. We’ve yet to see how this affects us a brand, and Stephen’s got us thinking.
There are a whole slew of developers that are online at the App Store, but there’s an inherent problem with trusting a single developer. Many developers have delivered a product that’s a stand-alone app that is basically a flash-in-the-pan while others have consistently turned out mediocre but reliable apps. Who do you trust; the company that turns out one stellar app after a long hiatus or a developer that just needs some new direction or energy in their creative processes? There’s no real concept of a brand, there’s no Unilever or P&G for the App Store and therein lies the problem for marketers for iPhone development.
Although many people would argue that apps are products that have a repeat purchase cycle, etc, there’s yet to be a single developer that’s built a very successful brand using just their apps. People view apps like a utility and look to promote them as such. Very rarely does anyone ever hear about the developer but rather the app itself. This is a problem in an industry where the first firm to truly brand itself will gain a massive first-mover advantage. Indeed it will be difficult, but if a firm is able to do so, they’d easily take over the App Store.
Social Network Games and Mobile Gaming: Friends or Foes?
The ongoing Mobile Gaming Forum (MGF) in London has been a major source of interest for us. Although we can’t fly out, but thanks to the frequent updates, it’s fairly easy to stay ahead of what’s going on. One of the topics that caught our eye has been social networks and mobile gaming. The MGF panel of experts talks about how there’s a need to integrate the two platforms together so that users get a seamless interface. One of the key forces driving the need for this bridge has been Facebook Connect.
Experts are talking about the potential users can easily extend their social network gaming to mobile games. Traditional features such as leader boards and high scores do help create a sense of social gaming, nonetheless, the major advantage that social network games can easily be updated through the Internet while mobile games can’t.
As developers for mobile games, it’s a dilemma we face fairly regularly while developing. Trying to get the same sort of numbers for social network games for our games for the iPhone is a daunting task. We’ve incorporated almost every way of connecting social networking into our games via email, share on Facebook buttons, etc. But it still falls short when we see the number of users playing Farmville or Café World on Facebook.
The revolution in mobile gaming has come a long way from the simple games of Snake and Brick to complex 3D titles such as Need for Speed and Doom. This revolution was primarily spurned by Apple’s iPhone, and mobile gaming hasn’t looked back since.
This revolution worried Nokia enough to run a survey about the potency of mobile gaming back in 2007 when the iPhone was released. Surprisingly, the predictions that Nokia management made were extremely accurate. Some of these predictions have made it to the general public, social media, augmented reality, while others are slowly catching on.
Based on the trends reported in the survey, we’ve made our own predictions about how mobile gaming will be like in 2010. We’ve listed each trend below:
Lots of money to be made
The recession has taken it’s toll on tech companies quite heavily. Layoffs and downsizing were common, but it’s also spurred for developers and publishers to become more competitive through acquisitions and mergers. However, the consumer spending spree still hasn’t died in technology completely.
The App Store hit 3 billion downloads; clearly customers are spending some portion of their income on apps. The release of the iPhone versions with improved 3G support has meant people can easily download directly to their phones. Popular apps became massive hits overnight fueling development sprees from various companies. Riding the wave has meant overnight millions for certain developers. The booming revenues for companies such as Gameloft, make it clear that companies are making money in the sector, proving it is a strong market.
