Why Company Branding Is Important to Your Video Game Company

When looking to market your video game there are many factors to consider, from the development of the game to your marketing strategy, but one aspect of video game marketing that can slip under some company’s radar is the branding and messaging of their own company. The thing to remember about branding your company is that how you present yourself can and will have a huge impact on how your company and product are viewed and impact potential customers likelihood to buy into your product.

If someone hears about your game from an ad or through a streamer playing your game and is interested to know more, the first thing they are likely to do is to search for your game online, and look at your website, social media accounts, Steam page etc. For this reason, it becomes incredibly important to take great care when looking at company branding and be sure to dedicate some time and effort to make your company branding stand out from the rest.

The first thing to think about when looking at company branding is the messaging, this is the way that you will talk about and describe your game and encompass the message that you want to get across to your potential players. This will be a crucial part of your branding process and will feed into everything else that you do with your company branding, so it is very important that you nail down the core messaging first before proceeding to other aspects of your company branding.

You must think about how you want your game to be perceived, the unique selling points of your game, and the best way to describe it to someone that has never played it before, by carrying out these exercises you will be able to better understand the direction that you want to take with your company branding.

The next step in this process is to start thinking about the landing spots of your potential players, so this includes your social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok), your company and games website (or both if you have both) and your Steam page, Nintendo eShop page etc depending on the platform your game is releasing on.

One thing that is paramount to good company branding is consistency. Consistency across your social channels, website, Steam page etc is a key part to helping your brand image and how both you as a video game company and your game are perceived. The consistency we are referring to here includes both copy and imagery, so the first stages of setting up your social channels and web pages should be to nail down all information, descriptions, tag lines and images, and use these throughout your communication channels. All of this will help to create a strong and recognisable brand image that can be a key factor in driving the success of your company and game.

For example, with one of The Game Marketers clients, Domain, we assisted them in redesigning the layout of the homepage and reviewed the user experience (UX) of the website, putting together a strategy to optimise the UX of the website. As Domain is a web browser game it was crucial for the homepage of the site to be clear and functional as well as eye-catching. Putting the emphasis on making the UX of the website as smooth as possible helped to boost sign-ups for the game and contributed to the overall success of the campaign.

This principle should be something that is at the forefront of your mind when thinking about your company websites and social platforms. You must first think about the end goal that you have in mind when a potential player visits your website or one of your social channels. This will depend on how far along you are on the timeline of your game. If your game is still in development but you want potential players to join your Discord for updates, then make sure that this is the primary focus of your channels.

Put a 'Join Discord Here' button at the top of your webpage, include the link to your Discord in the bio of your YouTube videos etc. Or if your game is in early access on Steam, then make it as easy as possible for potential players to get to your Steam page from your web page. It may sound simple, but really that is the point. By simplifying the journey that a potential player has to make, and by making things clear to your potential players instead of them having to scroll through a bunch of Tweets to find a link to your Steam page or trawling through page after page on your website to get to your Discord link, you will be able to maximise your games potential player base.

The importance of company branding within both your game and your video game company as a whole reaches beyond the business world and into the world of your potential players. Whilst you might think that putting time and effort into creating a slick company website instead of developing your game doesn't make sense, in fact, it can be a major factor in the success of your video game. Having a player-focused website with a smooth UX and user journey, consistent and engaging social channels and overall strong company branding, you will give your game the best possible chance of success when it comes to the release day and will help you to capitalise on opportunities that may otherwise have been missed.