There’s been a buzz around Turkish games market for a while. With almost 26 million gamers – and over 13 million of them spending money on games – it’s easy to understand Turkey’s market value. It ranges among main European markets, and leads the games market in MENA region. In 2013, €183 Million was generated in Turkish games market. Money spent on games shows double-digit growth each year.
Overview
No wonder global gaming companies’ focus is shifting towards this lucrative country market. Question is, do they create the profits they desire?
Several gaming companies are doing a good job in Turkish games market, but when they’re communicating with gamers at shows or local festivals, they find out that most of the gamers are not aware of their games. There are more gamers out there, who are starving for what these gaming companies actually offer – deep gameplay, challenges, competitive and co-operative gameplay styles, quality graphics, cool storytelling, action packed themes. Core, hardcore, or casual.
Turkish gamers are a unique community. You can’t just put your ads in front of them and expect them to click (or tap). They’re mostly engaged with meaningful content.
Good ‘Ol Brand Marketing … With A Twist
Our experience of over 10 years in Turkish games market has taught us one thing (among others): You should do some solid marketing, and you should do it consistently. It can be PR, community, social media, search or paid media. And you should do it with a twist – your strategy works great in other territories, but it may create a PR disaster in Turkey. I’ll share more on Turkish games market’s own dynamics and Turkish gamer’s mentality later in upcoming articles. For now, let’s focus on the main activities you should plan and execute to have success in Turkish games market.
Beat competition
High Quality Localization: We all agree that localization is beyond translating words. For us, it’s speaking the Turkish gamers’ language. Because, in addition to regional culture that you should take care of, there’s also the gaming culture to consider.
Quality Assurance: You just have to assure quality for your titles. If you can’t ensure quality at least for loca, just forget about monetizing your game in Turkey. Turkish gamers won’t spend money on something buggy and gibberish.
Inbound Marketing: Cost of acquiring users has been increasing. Generating organic traffic to your offers has been becoming harder, yet more important than ever. While planning your marketing activities, you should include all the available channels such as PR, SEO (additionally ASO for mobile games), Community Management, Content Marketing, Social Media, and exclusive media buys.
PR: Game journalists and reviewers are the most powerful influencers in Turkish games market. More on this later.
SEO: One thing about Turkish gamers that surprise global publishers -> They find their games through web search using quite interesting (and highly profitable) keywords.
ASO: Same as above but for mobile games. You should ensure your app store presence.
Community: Effective community management is the secret sauce of the most successful games in Turkey. CM boosts user interactions, and even engage players into in-game/in-app purchases.
Content: While marketing to people, you are not marketing to creatures of logic, but to creatures of emotion. Feed their emotional needs with carefully-crafted content, and they’ll love you forever.
Social Media: Your status updates compete against bikini photos, celeb gossip, TV memes. How do you trigger interest?
Media Buys: More brand awareness, exposure and engagement. While going with paid ads include natural ads in your marketing plan, too.
What Will You Do?
Unique community of gamers makes the Turkish games market a surprising one. Sure, you can make big profits in a short amount of time. Or, you can hit and miss. If you need assistance in our country market (be it Hit Crit’s activity areas or other aspects like payment gateways), just shoot me a message via www.HitCritMarketing.com or LinkedIn.
